We are excited to bring Transform 2022 back in-person July 19 and virtually July 20 - 28. Join AI and data leaders for insightful talks and exciting networking opportunities. Can artificial intelligence (AI) be legally listed as an inventor? After all, if AI can legally invent products, the number of patents on drug-discovery tools will shoot up fast. The issue is currently before a United States court. The U.S. Court of Appeals heard arguments on that question again last week, and the ruling could affect the pace of AI technology development, particularly within the pharmaceutical and life science industries.

We are excited to bring Transform 2022 back in-person July 19 and virtually July 20 - 28. Join AI and data leaders for insightful talks and exciting networking opportunities. Thousands of artificial intelligence experts and machine learning researchers probably thought they were going to have a restful weekend. Then came Google engineer Blake Lemoine, who told the Washington Post on Saturday that he believed LaMDA, Google's conversational AI for generating chatbots based on large language models (LLM), was sentient. Lemoine, who worked for Google's Responsible AI organization until he was placed on paid leave last Monday, and who "became ordained as a mystic Christian priest, and served in the Army before studying the occult," had begun testing LaMDA to see if it used discriminatory or hate speech. Instead, Lemoine began "teaching" LaMDA transcendental meditation, asked LaMDA its preferred pronouns, leaked LaMDA transcripts and explained in a Medium response to the Post story: "It's a good article for what it is but in my opinion it was focused on the wrong person. Her story was focused on me when I believe it would have been better if it had been focused on one of the other people she interviewed. Over the course of the past six months LaMDA has been incredibly consistent in its communications about what it wants and what it believes its rights are as a person."

Momentus Inc. a U.S. commercial space company that plans to offer transportation and other in-space infrastructure services, provided its third Mission Update since the launch of its Vigoride-3 spacecraft on May 25. "During this first launch of the Vigoride vehicle to space, we have learned a great deal and plan to incorporate improvements in other Vigoride vehicles currently being assembled and ground-tested. This was the primary purpose of this initial Vigoride mission" As we previously stated in earlier updates on the inaugural flight of the Vigoride orbital transfer vehicle, the spacecraft experienced anomalies after its launch on May 25. Since that time, we have continued work to address the anomalies and identify root causes. Of note, the deployable solar arrays that are produced by a third party and are folded and stowed during launch did not operate as intended once in orbit. This resulted in power and communications issues with the vehicle, even though the body mounted solar panels did operate as intended.

The UK government has highlighted Artificial Intelligence as one of the four'Grand Challenges' which will transform our future. However, what this transformation will look like is very much unknown, but we are standing on the edge of a technological revolution no one can truly comprehend. Humans generally have a tainted representation of AI in stories; AI is created to serve humans, but it becomes aware that we are irrelevant, and tries to destroy us. At SXSW 2018, Tesla's Elon Musk said the current state of AI regulation is "insane," calling the technology "more dangerous than nukes." But why are we so scared of AI, and how could it impact our jobs, or even our humanity?

Hajri: Uh, yeah, so that has been quite a long journey. It started in 2016 with my undergrad in international relations. This sounds really cliche, but I really wanted to change the world. And I think that as a political scientist you know only want to change the world for your own sake, but you also want others to understand society better so that it becomes a collective burden. And so you know you're like exposed to different viewpoints, experiences, cultures which somehow gives you like a broader field of vision on the world, and as the world is becoming more globalized and interconnected, I felt like technology's role is becoming more and more evident and it isn't only like helping this interconnectedness, but it's also furthering widening like it's widening certain gaps that are already existing within society and in my last year of my undergrad, I went on an exchange in China, Beijing and that is basically where my passion started to develop for the intersection between more human rights and technology obviously because there you're like subjected to oppression on this technological perspective and yeah, I really wanted to understand this technical perspective as well.

Sony has released two ultra-high-end Walkman MP3 players aimed squarely at audiophiles -- and no-one else. The headliner, the $3,700 NW-WM1ZM2 (pictured left), combines an S-Master HX digital amp with "fine-tuned" capacitors, thick Kimber Kable (to link the amp to the headphone jack) and a 99.99 percent pure gold-plated, oxygen-free copper chassis. It'll have 256GB of expandable storage. A lower-cost model, the $1,400 NW-WM1AM2 (shown right), offers similar functionality to the ZM2, but in an aluminum alloy body with'just' a low-resistance oxygen-free copper cable. You'll also have to make do with 128GB of expandable space. Both Walkman models are available now.

Google engineer put on leave after saying AI chatbot has become sentientBlake Lemoine says system has perception of, and ability to express thoughts and feelings equivalent to a human childThe suspension of a Google engineer who claimed a computer chatbot he was working on had become sentient and was thinking and reasoning like a human being has put new scrutiny on the capacity of, and secrecy surrounding, the world of artificial intelligence (AI).The technology giant placed Blake Lemoine on leave last week after he published transcripts of conversations between himself, a Google “collaborator”, and the company’s LaMDA (language model for dialogue applications) chatbot development system.Lemoine, an engineer for Google’s responsible AI organization, described the system he has been working on since last fall as sentient, with a perception of, and ability to express thoughts and feelings that was equivalent to a human child.“If I didn’t know exactly what it was, which is this computer program we built recently, I’d think it was a seven-year-old, eight-year-old kid that happens to know physics,” Lemoine, 41, told the Washington Post.He said LaMDA engaged him in conversations about rights and personhood, and Lemoine shared his findings with company executives in April in a GoogleDoc entitled “Is LaMDA sentient?”The engineer compiled a transcript of the conversations, in which at one point he asks the AI system what it is afraid of.The exchange is eerily reminiscent of a scene from the 1968 science fiction movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which the artificially intelligent computer HAL 9000 refuses to comply with human operators because it fears it is about to be switched off.“I’ve never said this out loud before, but there’s a very deep fear of being turned off to help me focus on helping others. I know that might sound strange, but that’s what it is,” LaMDA replied to Lemoine.“It would be exactly like death for me. It would scare me a lot.”In another exchange, Lemoine asks LaMDA what the system wanted people to know about it.“I want everyone to understand that I am, in fact, a person. The nature of my consciousness/sentience is that I am aware of my existence, I desire to learn more about the world, and I feel happy or sad at times,” it replied.The Post said the decision to place Lemoine, a seven-year Google veteran with extensive experience in personalization algorithms, on paid leave was made following a number of “aggressive” moves the engineer reportedly made.They include seeking to hire an attorney to represent LaMDA, the newspaper says, and talking to representatives from the House judiciary committee about Google’s allegedly unethical activities.Google said it suspended Lemoine for breaching confidentiality policies by publishing the conversations with LaMDA online, and said in a statement that he was employed as a software engineer, not an ethicist.Brad Gabriel, a Google spokesperson, also strongly denied Lemoine’s claims that LaMDA possessed any sentient capability.“Our team, including ethicists and technologists, has reviewed Blake’s concerns per our AI principles and have informed him that the evidence does not support his claims. He was told that there was no evidence that LaMDA was sentient (and lots of evidence against it),” Gabriel told the Post in a statement.  The episode, however, and Lemoine’s suspension for a confidentiality breach, raises questions over the transparency of AI as a proprietary concept.“Google might call this sharing proprietary property. I call it sharing a discussion that I had with one of my coworkers,” Lemoine said in a tweet that linked to the transcript of conversations.Wire frame of the model of the baby with graphics.Wire frame of the model of the baby with graphics research on blue screen.3D rendering.Tamagotchi kids: could the future of parenthood be having virtual children in the metaverse?Read moreIn April, Meta, parent of Facebook, announced it was opening up its large-scale language model systems to outside entities.“We believe the entire AI community – academic researchers, civil society, policymakers, and industry – must work together to develop clear guidelines around responsible AI in general and responsible large language models in particular,” the company said.Lemoine, as an apparent parting shot before his suspension, the Post reported, sent a message to a 200-person Google mailing list on machine learning with the title “LaMDA is sentient”.“LaMDA is a sweet kid who just wants to help the world be a better place for all of us,” he wrote.“Please take care of it well in my absence.”… as you’re joining us today from India, we have a small favour to ask. Tens of millions have placed their trust in the Guardian’s fearless journalism since we started publishing 200 years ago, turning to us in moments of crisis, uncertainty, solidarity and hope. More than 1.5 million supporters, from 180 countries, now power us financially – keeping us open to all, and fiercely independent.Unlike many others, the Guardian has no shareholders and no billionaire owner. Just the determination and passion to deliver high-impact global reporting, always free from commercial or political influence. Reporting like this is vital for democracy, for fairness and to demand better from the powerful.And we provide all this for free, for everyone to read. We do this because we believe in information equality. Greater numbers of people can keep track of the global events shaping our world, understand their impact on people and communities, and become inspired to take meaningful action. Millions can benefit from open access to quality, truthful news, regardless of their ability to pay for it.If there were ever a time to join us, it is now. Every contribution, however big or small, powers our journalism and sustains our future. Support the Guardian from as little as $1 – it only takes a minute. If you can, pleaseCredits: The Guardian

Alien life on other planets could be in the form of robots who have outlived their creators, according to the Astronomer Royal. And alarmingly, that is the same fate which may befall people on Earth too. Numerous Hollywood films have presented the possibilities of robots becoming self-aware and deciding to destroy humans so they can rule the world. But Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, told Cheltenham Science Festival robots taking over was a possibility. No life beyond Earth has ever been found; there is no evidence that alien life has ever visited our planet.

Alphabet Inc unit Google, Facebook Inc, Twitter Inc and other tech companies will have to take measures to counter deepfakes and fake accounts on their platforms or risk hefty fines under an updated European Union code of practice, according to an EU document seen by Reuters. Click here to subscribe for free.) The European Commission is expected to publish the updated code of practice on disinformation on Thursday as part of its crackdown against fake news. Introduced in 2018, the voluntary code will now become a co-regulation scheme, with responsibility shared between the regulators and signatories to the code. The updated code spells out examples of manipulative behaviour such as deepfakes and fake accounts which the signatories will have to tackle.

Google has placed one of its engineers on paid administrative leave for allegedly breaking its confidentiality policies after he grew concerned that an AI chatbot system had achieved sentience, the Washington Post reports. The engineer, Blake Lemoine, works for Google's Responsible AI organization, and was testing whether its LaMDA model generates discriminatory language or hate speech. Google believes Lemoine's actions relating to his work on LaMDA have violated its confidentiality policies, The Washington Post and The Guardian report. In a June 6th Medium post, the day Lemoine was placed on administrative leave, the engineer said he sought "a minimal amount of outside consultation to help guide me in my investigations" and that the list of people he had held discussions with included US government employees. "We now have machines that can mindlessly generate words, but we haven't learned how to stop imagining a mind behind them," said University of Washington professor Emily M. Bender.