Government
Bulgaria investigates fire at weapons site that owner calls sabotage
Bulgaria is investigating the cause of an overnight fire at an ammunition storage site run by a private defence company. Interior Minister Ivan Demerdzhiev said the authorities are not ruling out outside interference in the incident in central Bulgaria. No-one was injured in the blaze that triggered a series of explosions. EMCO company, whose weapons are used by Ukraine against invading Russian forces, said the fire at its site was sabotage and that human error was completely ruled out. It did not say who might be responsible.
Dramatic insider warnings over AI fall flat with some in Silicon Valley
Each September, a who's who of executives from across Silicon Valley descends on San Francisco's Palace Hotel to charm investors at a conference hosted by the investment bank Goldman Sachs. This past week, between talk of growth and potential returns, tech titans found themselves addressing the abrupt resignation of Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon. Coxon, a 27-year-old who worked at OpenAI before joining its chief rival Anthropic, said on Tuesday that people building artificial intelligence (AI) believed the technology could destroy humanity. They are gambling with our lives, he said, these will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything. Coxon is by no means the first AI insider to publicly sound the alarm.
Anthropic's CEO proposes a three-step plan to curb AI development
At least one CEO of an AI company is calling for a slower pace when it comes to developing artificial intelligence. Anthropic's CEO Dario Amodei wrote a lengthy post detailing a goal of pacing the speed at which AI is built, instead of forging ahead at the rapid rate that AI is currently on. Amodei proposed a three-tiered approach to achieve this, with Anthropic already committing to the first step. The first measure calls for "frontier AI" companies to commit to "ongoing, employee-like access" for third-party evaluators who would focus on verifying compliance with certain safety standards, evaluating if AI model training is aligned with the goal of slowing down and reporting incidents. The second step requires these AI companies to establish "common safety standards" with the help of governments in order to limit the rate of unchecked AI progress.
Oscar-winning film producer Jeremy Thomas dies aged 77
Oscar-winning producer Jeremy Thomas, whose films included The Last Emperor and Sexy Beast, has died aged 77. The British filmmaker passed away peacefully surrounded by family and loved ones at his home in Oxfordshire on Friday, his publicist said in a statement. Thomas built an international reputation over a career spanning five decades, working with directors including David Cronenberg, Nagisa Oshima, Julien Temple and Nicolas Roeg and backing independent films alongside mainstream successes. He best known work, Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor, won nine Academy Awards, including best picture, and earned Thomas an Oscar as producer in 1988. Thomas repeatedly collaborated with Bertolucci, also producing The Sheltering Sky, Little Buddha, Stealing Beauty and The Dreamers.
Anthropic boss Dario Amodei calls for AI development to slow down
The head of leading AI company Anthropic has called for the pace of development of artificial intelligence models to slow down and to be closely monitored. In an essay on Saturday, Dario Amodei said developing AI was not in question, but the risks associated with it were serious and companies and governments must be given time to address them. He proposed a three-point plan that includes independent monitoring of AI models as they are developed, industry-wide regulation and global regulation. There have been growing concerns recently about the technology's potential risks - the most serious of which suggested there is a greater than 10% chance it could kill all humans within the next decade . Anthropic previously said it had identified and disrupted attempts to use its AI model for malicious activity which could support the development of biological weapons.
'We must slow the pace': CEO of Anthropic calls for an AI slowdown
Dario Amodei said that AI development, if left unchecked, 'could outrun our ability to understand and control' it. Dario Amodei said that AI development, if left unchecked, 'could outrun our ability to understand and control' it. 'We must slow the pace': CEO of Anthropic calls for an AI slowdown The CEO of the artificial intelligence company Anthropic issued a new appeal on Saturday for the AI industry to "slow down" and offered a three-part plan for doing so, saying that his company would "unilaterally" commit to the first of the steps. In a post on social media, Dario Amodei shared a link to an essay titled We Must Pace the Frontier in which he lays out how Anthropic would provide "third-party evaluators with permanent, employee-level access to our systems, so that they can verify adherence to our safety measures, report on incidents, and assess models' alignment during training". The move comes after a former Anthropic researcher warned on Wednesday that AI could precipitate human extinction by 2030.
153 million driver's license scans may be on the dark web
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Teen boy rescued after days adrift in Alaskan waters
To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. A 15-year-old boy has been rescued after spending days sitting atop a boat that had capsized in the frigid waters of Alaska's Bering Sea. The boy, identified by family members as Derek Parker Aghnaanga, was the lone survivor from the skiff, having lost his older brother and cousin in the incident. The trio had departed from St Lawrence Island on Friday 4 September and were due back the following Sunday afternoon, the US Coast Guard said. But when the 18-foot fishing vessel failed to return, they launched a search effort.