Chappell Roan fans will soon be able to transform into the US pop star when playing the video game Fortnite. The singer has been announced by developers Epic as the latest icon for the game's next festival season, which kicks off on Thursday. As part of collaboration, players will be able to wear some of the singer's most iconic outfits and listen to some of her hit songs. The collaboration comes after Roan told BBC Radio 1 last year that she would love to feature in the game. During the interview with Radio 1 presenter Jack Saunders, the singer professed her love for the video game and asked the developers: Please give me a skin, please.

DeepMind's chief says he envisions Gemini as an operating system for physical robots. The company has hired Aaron Saunders to help make that a reality. Google DeepMind has hired the former Chief Technology Officer of Boston Dynamics as the company pushes deeper into robotics. Aaron Saunders, who is partly responsible for giving the world backflipping and dancing machines, joined as the VP of hardware engineering earlier this month. The hire is a key part of CEO Demis Hassabis' vision for Gemini to become a sort of robot operating system, similar to how Google supplies its Android software to an array of smartphone manufacturers.

This paper argues that the method of least squares has significant unfulfilled potential in modern machine learning, far beyond merely being a tool for fitting linear models. To release its potential, we derive custom gradients that transform the solver into a differentiable operator, like a neural network layer, enabling many diverse applications. Empirically, we demonstrate: (i) scalability by enforcing weight sparsity on a 50 million parameter model; (ii) imposing conservativeness constraints in score-based generative models; and (iii) hyperparameter tuning of Gaussian processes based on predictive performance. By doing this, our work represents the next iteration in developing differentiable linear-algebra tools and making them widely accessible to machine learning practitioners.

Artificial General Intelligence--machines that can learn and perform any cognitive task that a human can--has long been relegated to the realm of science fiction. But recent developments show that AGI is no longer a distant speculation; it's an impending reality that demands our immediate attention. On Sept. 17, during a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing titled "Oversight of AI: Insiders' Perspectives," whistleblowers from leading AI companies sounded the alarm on the rapid advancement toward AGI and the glaring lack of oversight. Helen Toner, a former board member of OpenAI and director of strategy at Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology, testified that, "The biggest disconnect that I see between AI insider perspectives and public perceptions of AI companies is when it comes to the idea of artificial general intelligence." She continued that leading AI companies such as OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic are "treating building AGI as an entirely serious goal."

OpenAI's plan to become a for-profit company could encourage the artificial intelligence startup to cut corners on safety, a whistleblower has said. William Saunders, a former research engineer at OpenAI, told the Guardian he was concerned by reports that the ChatGPT developer was preparing to change its corporate structure and would no longer be controlled by its non-profit board. Saunders, who flagged his concerns in testimony to the US Senate this month, said he was also concerned by reports that OpenAI's chief executive, Sam Altman, could hold a stake in the restructured business. "I'm most concerned about what this means for governance of safety decisions at OpenAI," he said. "If the non-profit board is no longer in control of these decisions and Sam Altman holds a significant equity stake, this creates more incentive to race and cut corners."

Apple has become the first big tech company to be charged with breaking the European Union's new digital markets rules, three days after the tech giant said it would not release artificial intelligence in the bloc due to regulation. On Monday, the European Commission said that Apple's App Store was preventing developers from communicating with their users and promoting offers to them directly, a practice known as anti-steering. "Our preliminary position is that Apple does not fully allow steering. Steering is key to ensure that app developers are less dependent on gatekeepers' app stores and for consumers to be aware of better offers," Margrethe Vestager, the EU's competition chief said in a statement. On X, the European commissioner for the internal market, Thierry Breton, gave a more damning assessment.

No one else is able to do that," says Jack Saunders, a researcher at the University of Bath, who was not involved in Synthesia's work. The full-body avatars he previewed are very good, he says, despite small errors such as hands "slicing" into each other at times. But "chances are you're not really going to be looking that close to notice it," Saunders says. Synthesia launched its first version of hyperrealistic AI avatars, also known as deepfakes, in April. These avatars use large language models to match expressions and tone of voice to the sentiment of spoken text.

Investors led by Microsoft pressured OpenAI to reinstate Altman, which it did within days, alongside vague promises to be more responsible. Then, last month, the company disbanded the internal group tasked with safety research, known as the "superalignment team." Some of the team's most prominent members publicly resigned, including its head, Jan Leike, who posted on X that "over the past years, safety culture and processes have taken a backseat to shiny products." Fortune reported that OpenAI did not provide anywhere near the resources it had initially, publicly promised for safety research. Saunders, who also worked on superalignment, said he resigned when he "lost hope a few months before Jan did."

This could be a costly interview for William Saunders. The former safety researcher resigned from OpenAI in February, and--like many other departing employees--signed a non-disparagement agreement in order to keep the right to sell his equity in the company. Although he says OpenAI has since told him that it does not intend to enforce the agreement, and has made similar public commitments, he is still taking a risk by speaking out. "By speaking to you I might never be able to access vested equity worth millions of dollars," he tells TIME. "But I think it's more important to have a public dialogue about what is happening at these AGI companies."

Robocalls are rampant, using AI and other tools to disrupt day-to-day life and scam Americans out of their money through impersonations of family members, phone providers and more. On October 24, the Senate Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Communications, Media, and Broadband heard the latest issue and solution floating around: AI. Currently, bad actors are using AI to steal people's voices and repurpose them in calls to loved ones -- often presenting a state of distress. This advancement goes beyond seemingly real calls from banks and credit card companies, providing a disturbing and jarring experience: not knowing if you're speaking to someone you know. The financial repercussions (not to mention potential mental distress) are tremendous. Senator Ben Ray Luján, chair of the subcommittee, estimates that individuals nationwide receive 1.5 billion to 3 billion scam calls monthly, defrauding Americans out of $39 billion in 2022.