In an unusual twist in the governor's race, a wealthy Democratic businessman is suing former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa over the use of a common phrase in political campaigns. Stephen Cloobeck, a philanthropist and Democratic donor who made his fortune in real estate and hospitality, filed a lawsuit against Villaraigosa this week after the former mayor repeatedly described himself as a "proven problem solver" in campaign materials. Cloobeck, who has applied for a federal trademark of the phrase "I am a proven problem solver," texted the federal lawsuit to Villaraigosa late Tuesday, though the former mayor has not been served yet. The lawsuit argues that Cloobeck has been using the phrase since March 2024, and that "it has acquired extensive goodwill, developed a high degree of distinctiveness, and become famous, well known, and recognized as identifying Cloobeck's campaign." "In light of the fame, acquired goodwill, and overall consumer recognition of [the phrase Cloobeck is seeking to patent, he] is very concerned that the public will likely be confused or mistakenly believe that Villaraigosa's campaign is endorsed, approved, sponsored by, or affiliated, connected, or associated with" Villaraigosa, the suit alleges.

There is a general concern that present developments in artificial intelligence (AI) research will lead to sentient AI systems, and these may pose an existential threat to humanity. But why cannot sentient AI systems benefit humanity instead? This paper endeavours to put this question in a tractable manner. I ask whether a putative AI system will develop an altruistic or a malicious disposition towards our society, or what would be the nature of its agency? Given that AI systems are being developed into formidable problem solvers, we can reasonably expect these systems to preferentially take on conscious aspects of human problem solving. I identify the relevant phenomenal aspects of agency in human problem solving. The functional aspects of conscious agency can be monitored using tools provided by functionalist theories of consciousness. A recent expert report (Butlin et al. 2023) has identified functionalist indicators of agency based on these theories. I show how to use the Integrated Information Theory (IIT) of consciousness, to monitor the phenomenal nature of this agency. If we are able to monitor the agency of AI systems as they develop, then we can dissuade them from becoming a menace to society while encouraging them to be an aid.

We introduce Disk2Planet, a machine learning-based tool to infer key parameters in disk-planet systems from observed protoplanetary disk structures. Disk2Planet takes as input the disk structures in the form of two-dimensional density and velocity maps, and outputs disk and planet properties, that is, the Shakura--Sunyaev viscosity, the disk aspect ratio, the planet--star mass ratio, and the planet's radius and azimuth. We integrate the Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolution Strategy (CMA--ES), an evolutionary algorithm tailored for complex optimization problems, and the Protoplanetary Disk Operator Network (PPDONet), a neural network designed to predict solutions of disk--planet interactions. Our tool is fully automated and can retrieve parameters in one system in three minutes on an Nvidia A100 graphics processing unit. We empirically demonstrate that our tool achieves percent-level or higher accuracy, and is able to handle missing data and unknown levels of noise.

A new Genetic Programming variant called Liquid State Genetic Programming (LSGP) is proposed in this paper. LSGP is a hybrid method combining a dynamic memory for storing the inputs (the liquid) and a Genetic Programming technique used for the problem solving part. Several numerical experiments with LSGP are performed by using several benchmarking problems. Numerical experiments show that LSGP performs similarly and sometimes even better than standard Genetic Programming for the considered test problems.

Large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT and GPT-4 have made significant progress in NLP. However, their ability to memorize, represent, and leverage commonsense knowledge has been a well-known pain point for LLMs. It remains unclear that: (1) Can GPTs effectively answer commonsense questions? (2) Are GPTs knowledgeable in commonsense? (3) Are GPTs aware of the underlying commonsense knowledge for answering a specific question? (4) Can GPTs effectively leverage commonsense for answering questions? To evaluate the above commonsense problems, we conduct a series of experiments to evaluate ChatGPT's commonsense abilities, and the experimental results show that: (1) GPTs can achieve good QA accuracy in commonsense tasks, while they still struggle with certain types of knowledge. (2) ChatGPT is knowledgeable, and can accurately generate most of the commonsense knowledge using knowledge prompts. (3) Despite its knowledge, ChatGPT is an inexperienced commonsense problem solver, which cannot precisely identify the needed commonsense knowledge for answering a specific question, i.e., ChatGPT does not precisely know what commonsense knowledge is required to answer a question. The above findings raise the need to investigate better mechanisms for utilizing commonsense knowledge in LLMs, such as instruction following, better commonsense guidance, etc.

New chat AI applications like ChatGPT offer an advanced understanding of question context and memory across multi-step tasks, such that experiments can test its deductive reasoning. This paper proposes a multi-role and multi-step challenge, where ChatGPT plays the classic twenty-questions game but innovatively switches roles from the questioner to the answerer. The main empirical result establishes that this generation of chat applications can guess random object names in fewer than twenty questions (average, 12) and correctly guess 94% of the time across sixteen different experimental setups. The research introduces four novel cases where the chatbot fields the questions, asks the questions, both question-answer roles, and finally tries to guess appropriate contextual emotions. One task that humans typically fail but trained chat applications complete involves playing bilingual games of twenty questions (English answers to Spanish questions). Future variations address direct problem-solving using a similar inquisitive format to arrive at novel outcomes deductively, such as patentable inventions or combination thinking. Featured applications of this dialogue format include complex protein designs, neuroscience metadata, and child development educational materials.

Founded in 2005, 2K Games is a global video game company, publishing titles developed by some of the most influential game development studios in the world. Our studios are responsible for developing 2K's portfolio of world-class games across multiple platforms. Our portfolio of titles is expanding due to our global strategic plan, building, and acquiring exciting studios whose content continues to inspire all of us! 2K publishes titles in today's most popular gaming genres, including sports, shooters, action, role-playing, strategy, casual, and family entertainment. Our team of engineers, marketers, artists, writers, data scientists, producers, problem solvers, and doers, are the professional publishing stewards of our growing library of critically acclaimed franchises such as NBA 2K, BioShock, Borderlands, Mafia, Sid Meier's Civilization, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, WWE 2K, and XCOM. At 2K, we pride ourselves on creating an inclusive work environment, which means encouraging our teams to Come as You Are and do your best work!

Founded in 2005, 2K Games is a global video game company, publishing titles developed by some of the most influential game development studios in the world. Our studios are responsible for developing 2K's portfolio of world-class games across multiple platforms. Our portfolio of titles is expanding due to our global strategic plan, building, and acquiring exciting studios whose content continues to inspire all of us! 2K publishes titles in today's most popular gaming genres, including sports, shooters, action, role-playing, strategy, casual, and family entertainment. Our team of engineers, marketers, artists, writers, data scientists, producers, problem solvers, and doers, are the professional publishing stewards of our growing library of critically acclaimed franchises such as NBA 2K, BioShock, Borderlands, Mafia, Sid Meier's Civilization, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, WWE 2K, and XCOM. At 2K, we pride ourselves on creating an inclusive work environment, which means encouraging our teams to Come as You Are and do your best work!

Woven Planet is building the safest mobility in the world. A subsidiary of Toyota, Woven Planet innovates and invests in new technologies, software, and business models that transform how we live, work and move. With a focus on automated driving, smart cities, robotics and more, we build on Toyota's legacy of trust and safety to deliver mobility solutions for all. For nearly a century, Toyota has been delivering products and services that improve lives. Automation that originated to increase the efficiency of daily activities has evolved into the safe, reliable, connected automobiles we enjoy and depend on today.

Woven Planet is a software-first subsidiary of Toyota whose vision is to create safe mobility of people, goods, and information that everyone can enjoy and trust. Level 5, part of Woven Planet, is developing self-driving technology using a state-of-the-art machine-learned approach. Our goal is to deliver advanced and self-driving capabilities to personally-owned and mobility-as-a-service vehicles to improve transportation on a global scale. As part of Woven Planet, Level 5 has the backing of one of the world's largest automakers and the opportunity for near-term product impact and revenue -- a combination rarely seen in the AV industry. Level 5 is looking for doers and creative problem solvers to join us in improving mobility for everyone with self-driving technology.