Gina Rinehart is an honorary life member of the IPA and'a generous contributor to many causes,' IPA executive director, Scott Hargreaves, says. Gina Rinehart is an honorary life member of the IPA and'a generous contributor to many causes,' IPA executive director, Scott Hargreaves, says. Australia's richest person, Gina Rinehart has previously donated to Institute of Public Affairs but thinktank won't say if she remains a donor A thinktank known for its rejection of the climate crisis and a conservation group that has opposed renewable energy projects refused to identify their funders during a fiery Senate inquiry into climate and energy misinformation on Wednesday. Chair of the committee, Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson, asked Rainforest Reserves Australia's vice-president, Steven Nowakowski, who had funded nine full-page newspaper advertisements promoting an open letter attacking a shift to renewable energy and promoting nuclear. Nowakowski said they were paid for by donations, some coming from the signatories of the letter, but would not name them.

Paedophiles are being urged to use artificial intelligence to create nude images of children to extort more extreme material from them, according to a child abuse charity. The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) said a manual found on the dark web contained a section encouraging criminals to use "nudifying" tools to remove clothing from underwear shots sent by a child. The manipulated image could then be used against the child to blackmail them into sending more graphic content, the IWF said. "This is the first evidence we have seen that perpetrators are advising and encouraging each other to use AI technology for these ends," said the IWF. The charity, which finds and removes child sexual abuse material online, warned last year of a rise in sextortion cases, where victims are manipulated into sending graphic images of themselves and are then threatened with the release of those images unless they hand over money.

The "worst nightmares" about artificial intelligence-generated child sexual abuse images are coming true and threaten to overwhelm the internet, a safety watchdog has warned. The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) said it had found nearly 3,000 AI-made abuse images that broke UK law. The UK-based organisation said existing images of real-life abuse victims were being built into AI models, which then produce new depictions of them. It added that the technology was also being used to create images of celebrities who have been "de-aged" and then depicted as children in sexual abuse scenarios. Other examples of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) included using AI tools to "nudify" pictures of clothed children found online.

There are huge volumes of child sexual abuse photos and videos online--millions of pieces are removed from the web every year. These illegal images are often found on social media websites, image hosting services, dark web forums, and legal pornography websites. Now a new tool on one of the biggest pornography websites is trying to interrupt people as they search for child sexual abuse material and redirect them to a service where they can get help. Since March this year, each time someone has searched for a word or phrase that could be related to child sexual abuse material (also known as CSAM) on Pornhub's UK website, a chatbot has appeared and interrupted their attempted search, asking them whether they want to get help with the behavior they're showing. During the first 30 days of the system's trial, users triggered the chatbot 173,904 times.

The 30th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-21), taking place virtually, started on August 19th. The weekend just gone saw the running of numerous workshops and tutorials. We also look ahead to some of the other events planned for this week. The first #IJCAI2021 workshop kicks off today 17 Aug AI For Sports Analytics #AISA Room RED 1 Speakers: @StatsOnTheT @the_spearman et al https://t.co/Y7nm9wS0Yk Something I really enjoy with conferences is learning about mathematical problems directly from people working on solving them. During the week end, I heard about the vertex p-center problem, and loved it.

Wall Street is buzzing over Alphabet's blowout June quarter financial results. Analysts are growing more confident over the prospects for many of Alphabet's emerging businesses including YouTube, autonomous cars and cloud computing. The internet giant reported better-than-expected second-quarter earnings Monday. It posted adjusted earnings per share of $11.75 versus the Wall Street consensus of $9.59 for the June quarter. Alphabet shares are up 4.3 percent in Tuesday's premarket session to $1,263.50.

Apple built its success on devices. Devices are what it does, and what it's done forever. Everything the company makes is expensive, immaculately designed, and completely finished inside and out. You don't buy an Apple product to tinker with it, you use it until Apple releases something better. This strategy has made Apple the most valuable company in the world. But even Apple must change, a point CEO Tim Cook made during the Worldwide Developers Conference this week.