Plotting

Law


Girl, 4, found dead in Florida canal near family's vacation rental

FOX News

Newburgh Heights Police Chief John Majoy joins'America's Newsroom' to discuss the'alarming' trend and encourages parents to monitor their children's social media. A 4-year-old girl in Florida was found dead near her family's vacation rental in Port Charlotte, Florida, officials said on Friday. The Charlotte County Sheriff's Office said the girl, 4-year-old Evelyn Geer, had been missing for "several hours" after wandering off from her family's VRBO vacation rental home. Deputies said that Greer was located along the water's edge down the canal behind the vacation rental home her family was staying in. Greer's body was found while officials were searching the area by boat.


AI Doomerism Is a Decoy

The Atlantic - Technology

On Tuesday morning, the merchants of artificial intelligence warned once again about the existential might of their products. Hundreds of AI executives, researchers, and other tech and business figures, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Bill Gates, signed a one-sentence statement written by the Center for AI Safety declaring that "mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war." Those 22 words were released following a multi-week tour in which executives from OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and other tech companies called for limited regulation of AI. They spoke before Congress, in the European Union, and elsewhere about the need for industry and governments to collaborate to curb their product's harms--even as their companies continue to invest billions in the technology. Several prominent AI researchers and critics told me that they're skeptical of the rhetoric, and that Big Tech's proposed regulations appear defanged and self-serving.


Researchers use AI to predict crops in Africa to help address food crisis

FOX News

Fox News' Eben Brown reports on how more companies are using A.I. technology to set retail prices based on data-driven supply-and-demand. A new artificial intelligence (AI) tool could help African countries better track and predict crop rotations and yields, providing a key tool to help mitigate food crisis across the continent. "Relying on conventional analytic techniques alone will not deliver the effective decision-making we need to meet these challenges," Racine Ly, the director of data management for the project, told Science X. "Since this is data that researchers and decision-makers most importantly will use to make decisions, we needed to make sure that the data is correct, and the predictions are accurate," he added. AKADEMIYA2063, a research organization, said the Africa Agriculture Watch (AAgWa) tool will help prioritize and maximize the production of staple foods such as maize, cassava and sorghum. WILL AI EVER BE SMART ENOUGH TO DECIPHER FEDERAL REGULATIONS?


ChatGPT took their jobs. Now they walk dogs and fix air conditioners.

Washington Post - Technology News

Companies that replaced workers with chatbots have faced high-profile stumbles. When the technology news site CNET used artificial intelligence to write articles, the results were riddled with errors and resulted in lengthy corrections. A lawyer who relied on ChatGPT for a legal brief cited numerous fictitious cases. And the National Eating Disorders Association, which laid off people staffing its helpline and reportedly replaced them with a chatbot, suspended its use of the technology after it doled out insensitive and harmful advice.


Country stars sound alarm on 'Wild West' of AI in music; exec talks taking legal action

FOX News

Country star Tracy Lawrence talks about his experience using AI and why he thinks there needs to be more regulations while appearing at the ACM Awards. At the heart of most talented singers is their innate ability to write meaningful music. In the country music world, there is a premium for artists who can not only sing but write their own hits, so for some country stars, the concept of artificial intelligence being used in the music industry is nonsense. "I would struggle to think something that couldn't feel could really write a song, to make somebody else feel," musician Riley Green told Fox News Digital of the threat of AI in music at the ACM Awards. "I mean, the world's always going to change. Nothing's worth freaking out over, I think is the main thing. Riley Green is wary of music written by AI, questioning how much people would be able to take away from it. AI HAS KEANU REEVES, HARRISON FORD, ELON MUSK'S EX-GIRLFRIEND GRIMES AT ODDS OVER ITS USE Nate Smith isn't exactly concerned with AI infiltrating the music scene. Other artists have fears over AI's involvement within the industry. I played around with … a little bit of the AI stuff," Tracy Lawrence told Fox News Digital.


Does artificial intelligence pose the risk of human extinction?

Al Jazeera

Tech industry leaders issue a warning as governments consider how to regulate AI without stifling innovation.


AI has created areas so grey, you could write a song about it

ZDNet

These days, it feels like I needs to put a disclaimer at the top of my stories so no one assumes any part of the content is generated by artificial intelligence (AI). However, only human brains were involved in the making of this piece -- one writer's brain and two editors' brains, to be precise, and none have been implanted with a chip. Unfortunately, we're now at a stage where we can no longer easily distinguish between humans and robots. We've not reached the all-controlling level of Skynet yet, but the power of AI today marks a pivotal point for a technology that had been chugging along -- mostly in the backend -- for years and is now finally more accessible, and understood, by the general public. Here's which are most (and least) at risk This emergence is all thanks to generative AI platform, ChatGPT, which has fascinated many of us with its ability to mimic humans and assist with various tasks, including software coding, creating travel itineraries, and composing email messages and essays.


Federal regulators fine Amazon $25 million over child privacy issues

Washington Post - Technology News

The U.S. government alleges that Amazon violated the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, a 1998 law that has recently been enforced against other popular tech companies including Fortnite-maker Epic Games and YouTube. More than 800,000 children under the age of 13 have their own Alexa profiles, according to the lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice on behalf of the Federal Trade Commission. About five years ago, the company began offering a number of products specifically aimed at children, including the "Echo Dot Kids Edition" smart speaker and parental controls called "FreeTime on Alexa."


The Download: meet the longevity obsessives, and how China's regulating AI

MIT Technology Review

Earlier this month, I traveled to Montenegro for a gathering of longevity enthusiasts, people interested in extending human life through various biotechnology approaches. All the attendees were super friendly, and the sense of optimism was palpable. They're all confident we'll be able to find a way to slow or reverse aging--and they have a bold plan to speed up progress. Around 780 of these people have created a "pop-up city" that hopes to circumvent the traditional process of clinical trials. They want to create an independent state where like-minded innovators can work together in an all-new jurisdiction that gives them free rein to self-experiment with unproven drugs.


The Leak That Has Big Tech and Regulators Panicked

Slate

In February, Meta released its large language model: LLaMA. Unlike OpenAI and its ChatGPT, Meta didn't just give the world a chat window to play with. Instead, it released the code into the open-source community, and shortly thereafter the model itself was leaked. Researchers and programmers immediately started modifying it, improving it, and getting it to do things no one else anticipated. And their results have been immediate, innovative, and an indication of how the future of this technology is going to play out.