Tag Archives: Artificial Intelligence

World Economic Forum: Top Stories – Sept 2, 2023

World Economic Forum (September 2, 2023) – This week’s top stories of the week include:

0:15 India lands a spacecraft on the moon – India made history by landing a spacecraft on the Moon’s south pole for the first time. The mission, called Chandrayaan-3, is designed to search for water ice on the Moon. The data and images collected by the lander and rover will help scientists to better understand the Moon’s water resources and the future of Moon exploration.

1:11 These are the results of an 85 year study on happiness – The Harvard Study of Adult Development is the world’s longest-running happiness study. It launched in 1938, following 724 men from teenagehood to old age. Later, the study incorporated their spouses and 1,300 of their descendants. Participants answer regular questions about their health, habits, income and relationships as well as their hopes, joys, disappointments and regrets.

2:43 GPUs are powering the AI revolution – The H100 is a graphics processing unit (GPU) chip manufactured by Nvidia. It is the most powerful GPU chip on the market and is designed specifically for artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The H100 is in high demand due to its powerful performance and its ability to accelerate AI applications.

4:50 Britain builds its first women-only apartment building – It will offer 102 flats at affordable rates for women facing abuse or social disadvantage. The block will stand in Ealing, West London. The flats will be designed specifically for women with features such as lower kitchen counters and ventilation for menopausal women experiencing hot flushes. Only single women can take a tenancy. Men can live there too but only if they’re in a relationship with a tenant. Transgender women will be allowed but nobody with a history of violence against women.

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The World Economic Forum is the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation. The Forum engages the foremost political, business, cultural and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas. We believe that progress happens by bringing together people from all walks of life who have the drive and the influence to make positive change.

Preview: Foreign Policy Magazine – Fall 2023

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Foreign Policy Magazine – Fall 2023: The new issue features The G-7 Becomes a Power Player – Russia’s war and China’s rise are turning a talking shop into a fledgling alliance of democracies; Vivek Ramaswamy’s Foreign Policies Raise Eyebrows in Washington – The GOP’s rising star offers up a grab bag of ideas cribbed from Eminem to Richard Nixon and more…

The G-7 Becomes a Power Player

Foreign Policy – the Global Magazine of News and Ideas

Russia’s war and China’s rise are turning a talking shop into a fledgling alliance of democracies.

By G. John Ikenberry, a professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University.

Time and again over the last century, the United States and the other liberal democracies in Europe, East Asia, and elsewhere have found themselves on the same side in grand struggles over the terms of the world order. This political grouping has been given various names: the West, the free world, the trilateral world, the community of democracies. In one sense, it is a geopolitical formation, uniting North America, Europe, and Japan, among others. It is an artifact of the Cold War and U.S. hegemony, anchored in NATO and Washington’s East Asian alliances.

Vivek Ramaswamy’s Foreign Policies Raise Eyebrows in Washington

Vivek Ramaswamy's Foreign Policies Raise Eyebrows in Washington – DNyuz

The GOP’s rising star offers up a grab bag of ideas cribbed from Eminem to Richard Nixon.

By Jack Detsch

End American dependence on Taiwan’s semiconductor factories. Declare economic independence from China. Give India an AUKUS-like submarine deal. And stage a dramatic visit to Moscow to broker a deal to end Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. 

Research Preview: Science Magazine – Sept 1, 2023

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Science Magazine – September 1, 2023: The cover features a drone photograph, taken near the town of Kahramanmaraş, of the surface rupture produced by the first mainshock of the 2023 Turkey earthquake sequence shows agricultural fields offset by the fault slip.

The future of ocean health

Human and environmental health are inextricably linked. Yet ocean ecosystem health is declining because of anthropogenic pollution, overexploitation, and the effects of global climate change. These problems affect billions of people dependent on oceans for their lives, livelihoods, and cultural practices. The importance of ocean health is recognized by scientists, managers, policy-makers, nongovernmental organizations, and stakeholders including fishers, recreationalists, and cultural practitioners. So why are the oceans still degrading?

Previews: The Economist Magazine – Sept 2, 2023

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The Economist Magazine (September 2, 2023): This week’s issue features AI voted: How artificial intelligence will affect the elections of 2024; How paranoid nationalism corrupts; How to stop a three-way nuclear arms-race, and more…

How artificial intelligence will affect the elections of 2024

Disinformation will become easier to produce, but it matters less than you might think

Politics is supposed to be about persuasion; but it has always been stalked by propaganda. Campaigners dissemble, exaggerate and fib. They transmit lies, ranging from bald-faced to white, through whatever means are available. Anti-vaccine conspiracies were once propagated through pamphlets instead of podcasts. A century before covid-19, anti-maskers in the era of Spanish flu waged a disinformation campaign. They sent fake messages from the surgeon-general via telegram (the wires, not the smartphone app). Because people are not angels, elections have never been free from falsehoods and mistaken beliefs.

How paranoid nationalism corrupts

Cynical leaders are scaremongering to win and abuse power

People seek strength and solace in their tribe, their faith or their nation. And you can see why. If they feel empathy for their fellow citizens, they are more likely to pull together for the common good. In the 19th and 20th centuries love of country spurred people to seek their freedom from imperial capitals in distant countries. Today Ukrainians are making heroic sacrifices to defend their homeland against Russian invaders.

Research Preview: Nature Magazine – August 31, 2023

Volume 620 Issue 7976

nature Magazine – August 31, 2023 issue: In this week’s issue, AI pilot beats human champions in aerial contest – Artificial intelligence has taken on and beaten human competitors in many games, including chess, StarCraft and Gran Turismo. 

India’s Moon landing is a stellar achievement — and a win for science

A mother along with her daughter arrives to watch landing of Chandrayaan-3's Vikram lander on Moon.

When Chandrayaan-3 touched down, India pulled off a huge win for its own space programme and for international efforts to understand the Moon.

It’s hard to land on the Moon and keep your spacecraft intact. Just days ago, Russia’s Luna-25 mission crashed, dashing hopes for the country’s first trip to the Moon since 1976, when it was part of the Soviet Union. In April, a private Japanese effort also crash-landed on the lunar surface. That is one of the reasons the successful landing of the Chandrayaan-3 mission by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is so special.

The causes of wildfires are clear. How they burn through communities is not

Events in Hawaii show how much we have to learn about wildfire spread — but simple research steps can help to build resilience.

An aerial photo from August 10 shows destroyed buildings burned to the ground due to wildfires in western Maui, Hawaii.

Driven by drought, high winds and extreme heat, fires in recent years have caused destruction and losses on a scale bigger than anyone is used to. The average annual global cost of wildfires is around US$50 billion, the World Economic Forum said in January. And by the end of the century, climate change might make catastrophic conflagrations 50% more common, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. Given the surge in urban development in and near forested areas, something has to be done to protect communities. As Maui’s experience shows, little is in place.

Research Preview: Science Magazine – August 25, 2023

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Science Magazine – August 25, 2023: This image depicts whole chromosomes, some with structural abnormalities that might be found in cancer. The idea that cancer cells have aneuploidy—abnormal numbers of chromosomes and chromosome portions—has been known for decades. 

If AI becomes conscious, how will we know?

Scientists and philosophers are proposing a checklist based on theories of human consciousness

0s and 1s making up the outline of a head

In 2021, Google engineer Blake Lemoine made headlines—and got himself fired—when he claimed that LaMDA, the chatbot he’d been testing, was sentient. Artificial intelligence (AI) systems, especially so-called large language models such as LaMDA and ChatGPT, can certainly seem conscious. But they’re trained on vast amounts of text to imitate human responses. So how can we really know?

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Preview: MIT Technology Review – September 2023

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MIT Technology Review – September/October 2023: ‘The Ethics issue’ features Experimental Drugs – Who should get them?; Eric Schmidt on transforming science; When AI goes to war, and more…

Who gets to decide who receives experimental medical treatments?

a bottle of pills with a "fast forward" icon on the label

For many patients, pushing for access to unproven treatments is their best chance of survival. And that’s worth the risk.

Opinion: Germany Falters In EU, China’s Bitter Youth, Language Lessens With AI

‘Editor’s Picks’ Podcast (August 21, 2023) Three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week,  is Germany once again the sick man of Europe? Also, China’s disillusioned youth  (10:50) and why AI could make it less necessary to learn foreign languages (17:35).

Views: Microsoft, OpenAI And The Coming ‘AI Wars’

Bloomberg Originals (August 17, 2023) – On this episode of The Circuit, Emily Chang sits down with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to hear how AI is shaking up the competition for search. Nadella argues that this new wave of technology is as big as the web browser or the iPhone.

Chang also speaks with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to discuss his company (which has some help from Microsoft), its ambitions and the latest on ChatGPT.

Politics: The Guardian Weekly – August 18, 2023

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The Guardian Weekly (August 18, 2023) – This issue features ‘Back to the office: Is the work from home revolution over?’; Bangladesh’s ‘lost children’; AI does architecture; Pathfinders – In Ukraine minefields and more…

‘Never again’: is Britain finally ready to return to the office?

Posed photo of a woman sitting alone in a large open plan office

With even the big internet firms warning staff they need to show up more often, is working from home over? Or have the attitudes and expectations of employees changed for ever?

‘My mother spent her life trying to find me’: the children who say they were wrongly taken for adoption

Portrait of Bibi Hasenaar

For years, Bibi Hasenaar felt rejected because she was adopted aged four. Then she saw a photo that described her as missing – and began to uncover an astonishing dark history