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Slashdot Asks: How Do You Protest AI Development?

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: On a side street outside the headquarters of the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology in the center of London on Monday, 20 or so protesters are getting their chants in order. "What do we want? Safe AI! When do we want it?" The protesters hesitate. "Later?" someone offers. The group of mostly young men huddle for a moment before breaking into a new chant. "What do we want? Pause AI! When do we want it? Now!" These protesters are part of Pause AI, a group of activists petitioning for companies to pause development of large AI models which they fear could pose a risk to the future of humanity. Other PauseAI protests are taking place across the globe: In San Francisco, New York, Berlin, Rome, Ottawa, and ahandful of other cities. Their aim is to grab the attention of voters and politicians ahead of the AI Seoul Summit -- a follow-up to the AI Safety Summit held in the UK in November 2023. But the loosely organized group of protesters itself is still figuring out exactly the best way to communicate its message. "The Summit didn't actually lead to meaningful regulations," says Joep Meindertsma, the founder of PauseAI. The attendees at the conference agreed to the "Bletchley Declaration," but that agreement doesn't mean much, Meindertsma says. "It's only a small first step, and what we need are binding international treaties." [...] There is also the question of how PauseAI should achieve its aims. On the group's Discord, some members discussed the idea of staging sit-ins at the headquarters of AI developers. OpenAI, in particular, has become a focal point of AI protests. In February, Pause AI protests gathered in front of OpenAI'sSan Francisco offices, after the company changed its usage policies to remove a ban on military and warfare applications for its products. Would it be too disruptive if protests staged sit-ins or chained themselves to the doors of AI developers, one member of the Discord asked. "Probably not. We do what we have to, in the end, for a future with humanity, while we still can." [...] Director of Pause AI US, Holly Elmore, wants the movement to be a "broad church" that includes artists, writers, and copyright owners whose livelihoods are put at risk from AI systems that can mimic creative works. "I'm a utilitarian. I'm thinking about the consequences ultimately, but the injustice that really drives me to do this kind of activism is the lack of consent" from companies producing AI models, she says. "We don't have to choose which AI harm is the most important when we're talking about pausing as a solution. Pause is the only solution that addresses all of them." [Joseph Miller, the organizer of PauseAI's protest in London] echoed this point. He says he's spoken to artists whose livelihoods have been impacted by the growth of AI art generators. "These are problems that are real today, and are signs of much more dangerous things to come." One of the London protesters, Gideon Futerman, has a stack of leaflets he's attempting to hand out to civil servants leaving the building opposite. He has been protesting with the group since last year. "The idea of a pause being possible has really taken root since then," he says. According to Wired, the leaders of Pause AI said they were not considering sit-ins or encampments near AI offices at this time. "Our tactics and our methods are actually very moderate," says Elmore. "I want to be the moderate base for a lot of organizations in this space. I'm sure we would never condone violence. I also want Pause AI to go further than that and just be very trustworthy." Meindertsma agrees, saying that more disruptive action isn't justified at the moment. "I truly hope that we don't need to take other actions. I don't expect that we'll need to. I don't feel like I'm the type of person to lead a movement that isn't completely legal." Slashdotters, what is the most effective way to protest AI development? Is the AI genie out of the bottle? Curious to hear your thoughts

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Intel Aurora Supercomputer Breaks Exascale Barrier

Josh Norem reports via ExtremeTech: At the recent International supercomputing conference called ISC 2024, Intel's newest Aurora supercomputer installed at Argonne National Laboratory raised a few eyebrows by finally surpassing the exascale barrier. Before this, only AMD's Frontier system had been able to achieve this level of performance. Intel also achieved what it says is the world's best performance for AI at 10.61 "AI exaflops." Intel reported the news on its blog, stating Aurora was now officially the fastest supercomputer for AI in the world. It shares the distinction in collaboration with Argonne National Laboratory and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), which both built and houses the system in its current state, which Intel says was at 87% functionality for the recent tests. In the all-important Linpack (HPL) test, the Aurora computer hit 1.012 exaflops, meaning it has almost doubled the performance on tap since its initial "partial run" in late 2023, where it hit just 585.34 petaflops. The company then said it expected to cross the exascale barrier with Aurora eventually, and now it has. Intel says for the ISC 2024 tests, Aurora was operating with 9,234 nodes. The company notes it ranked second overall in LINPACK, meaning it's still unable to dethrone AMD's Frontier system, which is also an HPE supercomputer. AMD's Frontier was the first supercomputer to break the exascale barrier in June 2022. Frontier sits at around 1.2 exaflops in Linpack, so Intel is knocking on its door but still has a way to go before it can topple it. However, Intel says Aurora came in first in the Linpack-mixed benchmark, reportedly highlighting its unparalleled AI performance. Intel's Aurora supercomputer uses the company's latest CPU and GPU hardware, with 21,248 Sapphire Rapids Xeon CPUs and 63,744 Ponte Vecchio GPUs. When it's fully operational later this year, Intel believes the system will eventually be capable of crossing the 2-exaflop barrier.

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ChatGPT Is Getting a Mac App

OpenAI has launched an official macOS app for ChatGPT, with a Windows version coming "later this year." "Both free and paid users will be able to access the new app, but it will only be available to ChatGPT Plus users starting today before a broader rollout in 'the coming weeks,'" reports The Verge. From the report: In the demo shown by OpenAI, users could open the ChatGPT desktop app in a small window, alongside another program. They asked ChatGPT questions about what's on their screen -- whether by typing or saying it. ChatGPT could then respond based on what it "sees." OpenAI says users can ask ChatGPT a question by using the Option + Space keyboard shortcut, as well as take and discuss screenshots within the app. Further reading: OpenAI Launches New Free Model GPT-4o

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Biden Admin Shells Out $120 Million To Return Chip Startup To US Ownership

Brandon Vigliarolo reports via The Register: Not everything in the semiconductor industry is about shearing off every last nanometer, which is why the Biden administration is splashing out CHIPS Act funding to those pursuing less cutting edge processor production. Case in point, today's announcement that Bloomington, Minnesota-based Polar Semiconductor could be getting up to $120 million in CHIPS funds to double production capacity over the next two years, along with a possible buyout to return the business to U.S. hands. Polar, which manufactures semiconductors used primarily for the energy industry and electric vehicles, will use the funds to double its production capacity of sensor and power chips and upgrade its manufacturing kit, as well as adding 160 jobs to boot. Along with expanding production, the U.S. Department of Commerce said the funding would trigger additional private capital investment to "transform Polar from a majority foreign-owned in-house manufacturer to a majority U.S.-owned commercial foundry, expanding opportunities for U.S. chip designers to innovate and produce technologies domestically." In other words - sure it'll expand the output, but the real win is another majority U.S.-owned foundry for the White House to tout. According to its website, Polar is currently owned by Korean conglomerate SK Group and serves as the primary fab and engineering center for Japanese firm Sanken Electric. Not exactly companies in countries with poor U.S. relations - but overseas owners, nonetheless. "This proposed investment in Polar will crowd in private capital, which will help make Polar a U.S.-based, independent foundry," said U.S. Commerce secretary Gina Raimondo. "They will be able to expand their customer base and create a stable domestic supply of critical chips, made in America's heartland."

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IBM Open-Sources Its Granite AI Models

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: IBM managed the open sourcing of Granite code by using pretraining data from publicly available datasets, such as GitHub Code Clean, Starcoder data, public code repositories, and GitHub issues. In short, IBM has gone to great lengths to avoid copyright or legal issues. The Granite Code Base models are trained on 3- to 4-terabyte tokens of code data and natural language code-related datasets. All these models are licensed under the Apache 2.0 license for research and commercial use. It's that last word -- commercial -- that stopped the other major LLMs from being open-sourced. No one else wanted to share their LLM goodies. But, as IBM Research chief scientist Ruchir Puri said, "We are transforming the generative AI landscape for software by releasing the highest performing, cost-efficient code LLMs, empowering the open community to innovate without restrictions." Without restrictions, perhaps, but not without specific applications in mind. The Granite models, as IBM ecosystem general manager Kate Woolley said last year, are not "about trying to be everything to everybody. This is not about writing poems about your dog. This is about curated models that can be tuned and are very targeted for the business use cases we want the enterprise to use. Specifically, they're for programming." These decoder-only models, trained on code from 116 programming languages, range from 3 to 34 billion parameters. They support many developer uses, from complex application modernization to on-device memory-constrained tasks. IBM has already used these LLMs internally in IBM Watsonx Code Assistant (WCA) products, such as WCA for Ansible Lightspeed for IT Automation and WCA for IBM Z for modernizing COBOL applications. Not everyone can afford Watsonx, but now, anyone can work with the Granite LLMs using IBM and Red Hat's InstructLab.

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Melinda Gates To Resign From Gates Foundation

Melinda French Gates announced today she is stepping down from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, three years after announcing her separation from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. With her departure as co-chair, the foundation will change its name to Gates Foundation and Bill Gates will be its sole chairperson, said CEO Mark Suzman. NBC News reports: In a statement posted on her Instagram account, she said that as part of her agreement to step down from the foundation, she will retain $12.5 billion that she plans to put toward her ongoing work supporting women and families. "This is not a decision I came to lightly," French Gates wrote. "I am immensely proud of the foundation that Bill and I built together and of the extraordinary work it is doing to address inequities around the world." In a separate statement, Bill Gates said, "I am sorry to see Melinda leave, but I am sure she will have a huge impact in her future philanthropic work." Now worth $75.2 billion, the Gates Foundation has over the course of its three-decade lifespan made $77.6 billion worth of grant payments, making it one of the largest donor organizations in the world, with a focus on health and developmental goals. It is one of the largest contributors to the World Health Organization, and played a key role in efforts to address the Covid pandemic. "After a difficult few years watching women's rights rolled back in the U.S. and around the world, she wants to use this next chapter to focus specifically on altering that trajectory," Suzman said of French Gates. "I want to reassure you that the millions of people our work serves and the thousands of partners we work alongside can continue to count on the foundation. The foundation today is stronger than it has ever been." "I know we all wish Melinda the best in her next chapter," he added, noting that French Gates "will not be bringing any of the foundation's work with her when she leaves."

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AI Hitting Labour Forces Like a 'Tsunami', IMF Chief Says

AI is hitting the global labour market "like a tsunami" International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said on Monday. AI is likely to impact 60% of jobs in advanced economies and 40% of jobs around the world in the next two years, Georgieva told an event in Zurich. From a report: "We have very little time to get people ready for it, businesses ready for it," she told the event organised by the Swiss Institute of International Studies, associated to the University of Zurich. "It could bring tremendous increase in productivity if we manage it well, but it can also lead to more misinformation and, of course, more inequality in our society."

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Apple and Google Introduce Alerts for Unwanted Bluetooth Tracking

Apple and Google have launched a new industry standard called "Detecting Unwanted Location Trackers" to combat the misuse of Bluetooth trackers for stalking. Starting Monday, iPhone and Android users will receive alerts when an unknown Bluetooth device is detected moving with them. The move comes after numerous cases of trackers like Apple's AirTags being used for malicious purposes. Several Bluetooth tag companies have committed to making their future products compatible with the new standard. Apple and Google said they will continue collaborating with the Internet Engineering Task Force to further develop this technology and address the issue of unwanted tracking.

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'Roaring Kitty' Trader Returns, Causing GameStop Shares To Jump More Than 70%

GameStop shares surged over 72% on Monday after Keith Gill, also known as "Roaring Kitty," returned to social media following a three-year hiatus. Gill gained notoriety for his role in the 2020 meme stock frenzy, where he encouraged amateur investors to buy GameStop shares, significantly driving up the stock price and challenging hedge funds. From a report: He resurfaced on X, Sunday night, with an image of a sketched man leaning forward in a chair, marking the end of a roughly three-year hiatus. He followed that post with several others featuring various comeback-themed videos featuring movie clips and charged music. GameStop had experienced declining sales amid an industrywide pivot from game cartridges to video game streaming and digital downloads, but with the help from meme stock investors, last March the company turned its first profit in two years. Before then, the company had posted seven straight quarterly losses. This January, GameStop reported its first annual profit since 2018. Roaring Kitty's post helped bump GameStop's share price to $28.25 on Monday. GameStop's all-time high stock price is $120.75 in January 2021.

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First Person To Receive a Genetically Modified Pig Kidney Transplant Dies

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBS News: Richard "Rick" Slayman, the first human to receive a genetically modified pig kidney transplant, has died almost two months after the procedure. Slayman, who had end-stage kidney disease, underwent the transplant in March at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston at age 62. The hospital said in a statement on Saturday that there was "no indication" that his death was the result of the transplant. The transplant surgeon had said he hoped the transplant would function for at least two years. "The Mass General transplant team is deeply saddened at the sudden passing of Mr. Rick Slayman," read the hospital statement. "Mr. Slayman will forever be seen as a beacon of hope to countless transplant patients worldwide and we are deeply grateful for his trust and willingness to advance the field of xenotransplantation." The surgery was a milestone for the field of xenotransplantation -- the transplant of organs from one species to another -- as a way to alleviate the organ shortage for people who need transplants. The effort to genetically modify animal organs is in hopes that the human body will not reject the foreign tissue. NPR notes that there are more than 100,000 people in the U.S. on the waitlist for organs.

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Microsoft Places Uses AI To Find the Best Time For Your Next Office Day

An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft is attempting to solve the hassle of coordinating with colleagues on when everyone will be in the office. It's a problem that emerged with the increase in hybrid and flexible work after the recent covid-19 pandemic, with workers spending less time in the office. Microsoft Places is an AI-powered app that goes into preview today and should help businesses that rely on Outlook and Microsoft Teams to better coordinate in-office time together. "When employees get to the office, they don't want to be greeted by a sea of empty desks -- they want face-time with their manager and the coworkers they collaborate with most frequently," says Microsoft's corporate vice president of AI at work, Jared Spataro, in a blog post. "With Places, you can more easily coordinate across coworkers and spaces in the office."

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Meta Explores AI-Assisted Earphones With Cameras

An anonymous reader shares a report: Meta Platforms is exploring developing AI-powered earphones with cameras, which the company hopes could be used to identify objects and translate foreign languages, according to three current employees. Meta's work on a new AI device comes as several tech companies look to develop AI wearables, and after Meta added an AI assistant to its Ray-Ban smart glasses. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has seen several possible designs for the device but has not been satisfied with them, one of the employees said. It's unclear if the final design will be in-ear earbuds or over-the-ear headphones. Internally, the project goes by the name Camerabuds. The timeline is also unclear. Company leaders had expected a design to be approved in the first quarter, one of the people said. But employees have identified multiple potential problems with the project, including that long hair may cover the cameras on the earbuds. Also, putting a camera and batteries into tiny devices could make the earbuds bulky and risk making them uncomfortably hot. Attaching discreet cameras to a wearable device may also raise privacy concerns, as Google learned with Google Glass.

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Microsoft is Finally Changing Word's Annoying Default Paste Behavior

An anonymous reader shares a report: The default pasting behavior of Microsoft Word is a nightmare, and has been forever. If you want to add a text or image using the standard option, you can easily mess up the entire formatting in the text if a completely different font suddenly appears. After many years of complaints, Microsoft is finally listening to user feedback and changing the default behavior when pasting in Word. From now on, the source's formatting will no longer be automatically retained. Instead, "Merge formatting" will be the new default for everyone, as Microsoft explained in a blog post this week. This means that after the update, newly pasted text will take on the font size, font type, and color of the text written in Word. However, special features such as lists or italicized elements will be retained. If you want these elements to be automatically adapted to the Word text, you must select the option "Keep text only."

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OpenAI Launches New Free Model GPT-4o

OpenAI unveiled its latest foundation model, GPT-4o, and a ChatGPT desktop app at its Spring Updates event on Monday. GPT-4o, which will be available to all free users, boasts the ability to reason across voice, text, and vision, according to OpenAI's chief technology officer Mira Murati. The model can respond in real-time, detect emotion, and adjust its voice accordingly. Developers will have access to GPT-4o through OpenAI's API at half the price and twice the speed of its predecessor, GPT-4 Turbo. Further reading: VentureBeat.

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Solar Storm Knocks Out Farmers' Tractor GPS Systems During Peak Planting Season

mspohr shares a report: The solar storm that brought the aurora borealis to large parts of the United States this weekend also broke critical GPS and precision farming functionality in tractors and agricultural equipment during a critical point of the planting season, 404 Media has learned. These outages caused many farmers to fully stop their planting operations for the moment. One chain of John Deere dealerships warned farmers that the accuracy of some of the systems used by tractors are "extremely compromised," and that farmers who planted crops during periods of inaccuracy are going to face problems when they go to harvest, according to text messages obtained by 404 Media and an update posted by the dealership. The outages highlight how vulnerable modern tractors are to satellite disruptions, which experts have been warning about for years. "All the tractors are sitting at the ends of the field right now shut down because of the solar storm," Kevin Kenney, a farmer in Nebraska, told me. "No GPS. We're right in the middle of corn planting. I'll bet the commodity markets spike Monday." Specifically, some GPS systems were temporarily knocked offline. This caused intermittent connections and accuracy problems with "Real-Time Kinematic" (RTK) systems, which connect to John Deere "StarFire" receivers that are in modern tractors and agricultural equipment. RTK systems use GPS plus a stream of constantly-updating "correction" data from a fixed point on the ground to achieve centimeter-level positional accuracy for planting crops, tilling fields, spraying fertilizer and herbicide, etc.

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US Kicks Off AI Safety Talks With China

The United States is heading to Geneva this week to start a series of diplomatic talks with the Chinese government about artificial intelligence safety and risk standards. From a report: The U.S. and China are in tight competition to dominate the AI market, both in the private sector and within their own governments. However, the two world powers have yet to agree on what it means to safely use the technologies they're developing. The United States and China will meet in Switzerland on Tuesday, senior administration officials told reporters during a briefing Friday. Officials from the White House and State Department will lead the U.S. delegation in the talks, while China will bring a delegation co-led by its Ministry of Foreign Affairs and National Development and Reform Commission. The talks will primarily focus on AI risk and safety "with an emphasis on advanced systems," one official said. Officials from the U.S. and China also plan to discuss the work they're doing in their own countries domestically to address AI risks.

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Google Bringing Project Starline's 'Magic Window' Experience To Real Video Calls

Google announced on Monday that it is preparing to bring its experimental Project Starline videoconferencing technology to the market. The company is collaborating with HP to integrate the system, which creates 3D projections of participants, into existing platforms like Google Meet and Zoom. The move aims to make the technology more accessible for offices and conference rooms, potentially transforming the way people communicate and collaborate remotely.

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Microsoft Set To Face EU Competition Charges Over Teams Software

The European Commission is set to issue new antitrust charges [non-paywalled link] against Microsoft over concerns that the tech giant is undermining competitors to its videoconferencing app Teams, according to FT. The move comes after Microsoft offered concessions last month, including a global plan to unbundle Teams from other software such as Office, in an attempt to avoid regulatory action. The EU officials remain concerned that the company's efforts do not sufficiently ensure fairness in the market, the newspaper said. Rivals worry that Microsoft will make Teams run more compatibly with its own software compared to competitor apps, and that the lack of data portability makes it difficult for existing Teams users to switch to alternatives. The case, which originated from a formal complaint submitted by Slack (now owned by Salesforce) in 2020, is now escalating with the Commission's impending formal charge sheet against Microsoft.

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How Microsoft Employees Pressured the Company Over Its Oil Industry Ties

The non-profit environmental site Grist reports on "an internal, employee-led effort to raise ethical concerns about Microsoft's work helping oil and gas producers boost their profits by providing them with cloud computing resources and AI software tools." There's been some disappointments — but also some successes, starting with the founding of an internal sustainability group within Microsoft that grew to nearly 10,000 employees: Former Microsoft employees and sources familiar with tech industry advocacy say that, broadly speaking, employee pressure has had an enormous impact on sustainability at Microsoft, encouraging it to announce industry-leading climate goals in 2020 and support key federal climate policies. But convincing the world's most valuable company to forgo lucrative oil industry contracts proved far more difficult... Over the past seven years, Microsoft has announced dozens of new deals with oil and gas producers and oil field services companies, many explicitly aimed at unlocking new reserves, increasing production, and driving up oil industry profits... As concerns over the company's fossil fuel work mounted, Microsoft was gearing up to make a big sustainability announcement. In January 2020, the company pledged to become "carbon negative" by 2030, meaning that in 10 years, the tech giant would pull more carbon out of the air than it emitted on an annual basis... For nearly two years, employees watched and waited. Following its carbon negative announcement, Microsoft quickly expanded its internal carbon tax, which charges the company's business groups a fee for the carbon they emit via electricity use, employee travel, and more. It also invested in new technologies like direct air capture and purchased carbon removal contracts from dozens of projects worldwide. But Microsoft's work with the oil industry continued unabated, with the company announcing a slew of new partnerships in 2020 and 2021 aimed at cutting fossil fuel producers' costs and boosting production. The last straw for one technical account manager was a 2023 LinkedIn post by a Microsoft technical architect about the company's work on oil and gas industry automation. The post said Microsoft's cloud service was "unlocking previously inaccessible reserves" for the fossil fuel industry, promising that with Microsoft's Azure service, "the future of oil and gas exploration and production is brighter than ever." The technical account manager resigned from the position they'd held for nearly a decade, citing the blog post in a resignation letter which accused Microsoft of "extending the age of fossil fuels, and enabling untold emissions." Thanks to Slashdot reader joshuark for sharing the news.

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