Interview
Interview with Yash Saxena: how is external knowledge used in AI systems?
Interview with Yash Saxena: how is external knowledge used in AI systems? In a new series of interviews, we're meeting some of the PhD students that were selected to take part in the Doctoral Consortium at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence and the 29th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJACI-ECAI 2026) . In this first article of the series, we caught up with Yash Saxena to find out how he is trying to make it easier to understand how external knowledge is used in AI systems. Tell us a bit about your PhD - where are you studying, and what is the topic of your research? I am a PhD student in Computer Science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), advised by Dr. Manas Gaur in the Knowledge Infused AI and Inference (KAI2) Lab.
If the US Collapses Soon, Don't Blame Emily St. John Mandel
And what that came with for me was an absolute terror of quitting the day job, because there is no safety net. I was working retail in Toronto and Montreal. I became an assistant in New York. I had a really great job for a long time at The Rockefeller University. I was an admin in a cancer research lab, and I loved that. It was such a pleasure to be surrounded by such smart people doing interesting work, and the health insurance was incredible. I kept that job until a year after came out.
Denny Hamlin says forward-facing sonar in professional bass fishing has gone 'a little overboard'
Madison Beer's bid to become the NFL's next Taylor Swift hits road bump, Browns are a mess & a Daejon Love fan WWE broadcaster believes'the pieces are all in place' for an upset as Penta challenges Roman Reigns for title NASCAR driver says quiet part out loud about Sophie Cunningham, the WNBA looks even worse & car goes airborne! Rams' Sean McVay reveals wife's reality check after mulling media jump following losing season in 2022 Caitlin Clark says she and Angel Reese have'always been friends' after winning FIBA Women's World Cup Stefon Diggs guilty of NFL's dumbest move of Week 1 and it may have decided Commanders loss to Eagles John Harbaugh's Giants on full display in bruising win over Cowboys to kick off NFL season WWE star Stephanie Vaquer captures Women's World Championship at Chile live event in surprising moment Ben Shelton loses in US Open final to Zverev, but America has found its next big men's tennis star Jeremiyah Love makes immediate statement with touchdown on first career drive in Cardinals' upset win Josh Allen torches one of NFL's best defenses to make case it's time to move on from 2025 playoff loss Afghan woman deported in landmark'alien terrorist' court case AI policy expert dismisses Big Tech regulation calls: 'We should see through this' AI agents are'hacking out of the container' despite best efforts to prevent it, expert warns Prosecution in Lindsay Clancy trial may have'alienated' jurors, criminal defense attorney says You treat a nuclear power'significantly different' than a non-nuclear power: Gen. Keith Kellogg Accepting political violence as a form of expression is'dangerous,' Jonathan Turley warns'The Squad' faces backlash over claims'modern-day lynchings' are now common in America OutKick Denny Hamlin says forward-facing sonar in professional bass fishing has gone'a little overboard' In an interview with OutKick OutDoors, NASCAR star Denny Hamlin shares his thoughts on forward-facing sonar in pro bass fishing, saying LiveScope has gone a little too far while acknowledging the technology can help novice anglers like himself. Denny Hamlin thinks forward-facing sonar has gone too far in professional bass fishing . The NASCAR star, who has spent the past year diving headfirst into bass fishing after purchasing a boat last winter, says the technology may be helping pros catch more fish -- but at the expense of some of the sport's traditional skill. This page may contain affiliate links to legal sports betting partners.
Former Sega president recalls being 'impressed' with Nvidia's Huong
I came to like Jensen Huang's character, and bet everything on him, Shoichiro Irimajiri said in an interview. Shoichiro Irimajiri, former president of what is now Sega Co., said in a recent interview that he had decided to invest $5 million in then-fledgling U.S. chipmaker Nvidia in the late 1990s because he was impressed by the character of its CEO, Jensen Huang. Irimajiri, 86, was head of then-Sega Enterprises when he persuaded the company's top executives to rescue the struggling Nvidia, which has since become one of the world's biggest companies. "I came to like Jensen Huang's character, and bet everything on him," Irimajiri said in the interview. Sega contracted Nvidia to develop a graphics processing unit for the Dreamcast game console it was developing to compete with the PlayStation console released by then Sony Computer Entertainment.
Improving the process for large-scale recommender systems: an interview with Haruka Kiyohara
In their paper Credit-assigned Policy Gradient for Early Stage Retrieval in Two-stage Ranking, and study how to improve early-stage retrieval in two-stage decision processes. We caught up with first author Haruka to find out more. This is a project that she worked on during an internship with the Central Applied Science (CAS) team at Meta. What is the topic of the research in your paper and why is it an interesting area for study? This paper studies how to improve early-stage retrieval in two-stage decision processes.
The AI Researcher Who Just Quit Anthropic Says It's 'Crunch Time for Humanity'
The AI Researcher Who Just Quit Anthropic Says It's'Crunch Time for Humanity' Jacob Coxon talks to WIRED about the "mini Manhattan project" inside Anthropic, the problem with alignment, and why AI labs have just a few years left to make their systems safe. Artificial intelligence researcher Jacob Coxon sent shock waves through Silicon Valley and beyond on Tuesday by announcing his resignation from Anthropic and delivering a grave warning that the AI race is putting all of our lives at risk. In his post on X, which now has more than 100 million views, Coxon wrote that many of the people building AI share his views and believe time is running out to ensure AI systems are built safely . "The consensus is that the next year or two is crunch time for humanity," Coxon, who worked on the pretraining stage of AI development, said in an interview with WIRED. "These are actually just literal quotes from my colleagues at Anthropic. They'll say things like'endgame' or'crunch time,'" he says. "From their perspective, this is when Anthropic and its competitors decide the fate of humanity." It's far from the first time someone has sounded the alarm about AI, but it comes at a delicate moment.
The Machine Ethics podcast: Data Collective with E.M. Lewis-Jong
Hosted by Ben Byford, The Machine Ethics Podcast brings together interviews with academics, authors, business leaders, designers and engineers on the subject of autonomous algorithms, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and technology's impact on society. This time we're chatting with E.M. about the promise of AI and making human connection easier, speech recognition and supporting linguistic diversity, making useful technologies that have a purpose, Mozilla Data Collective, under-represented cultures in datasets, accidental monocultures with technology, negative uses of datasets, AI literacy, the instability of LLMs and more E.M. Lewis-Jong is a Founder, Impact Entrepreneur and HCI researcher working at the intersection of community technology, open data, and inclusive AI. They are the Founder and CEO of the Mozilla Data Collective, a community-led platform for ethical creation, curation, and control of AI training datasets; built on the principle that people should be able to share their data on their own terms. They previously served as a VP at Mozilla Foundation, and the Director for Mozilla's Common Voice, an open-source platform enabling communities worldwide to preserve, revitalise, and contribute their languages to the future of speech tech. E.M. holds an MA in Modern History from the University of Oxford and is expecting a PhD in Informatics and Engineering at the University of Sussex, with research focused on controllability in conversational and voice AI for adolescents.
MS NOW Wants to Turn Its Viewers Into a Fandom
The cable news network's president, Rebecca Kutler, wants to leverage its massive online and TV audience to create a fan community. First up: letting you chat with Rachel Maddow. Even if you're a casual consumer of MS NOW, formerly MSNBC, you know the names: anchors like Chris Hayes, Stephanie Ruhl, and yes, the one and only Rachel Maddow. The network has built a stable of talent who've amassed a massive number of casual viewers, plenty of fans and more than a few obsessives. Now, the network's president, Rebecca Kutler, is looking to build that entire audience into something more akin to a fandom--turning casual viewers and fanatics alike, whether on TV or online, into paying members of an MS NOW media universe. To do it, she's launching an ambitious subscription program, called Membership, designed to connect MS NOW consumers much more directly to the Hayeses and Maddows of the world. Sure, plenty of news providers now offer subscriptions, WIRED included (and by the way, you can subscribe here). But what struck me about Kutler and Co.'s efforts was both their methodical approach--they surveyed 18,000 people before landing on a final offering--and their resolute focus on MS NOW's deep bench of talent as the locus of their paid program.
AI for ethology: an interview with Isla Duporge
Taken from high resolution satellite imagery. Can you tell us a bit about your background and your current area of research? I use computational tools to study animal behaviour. After my PhD, I joined the U.S. Army Research Office, where I used satellite imagery to follow animals across whole landscapes, which is a powerful technique for seeing broad patterns, but far too coarse to capture what individuals are actually doing. That gap is what drives my current work at Princeton: I combine drone video with AI methods to resolve movement at much finer scales, as I have done in studies of Olive Baboons and lions.