A Japanese space start-up will attempt Tuesday to become the first private company to put a lander on the Moon. If all goes to plan, ispace’s Hakuto-R Mission 1 lander will start its descent towards the lunar surface at around 15:40 GMT. It will slow its orbit some 100 kilometers above the Moon, then adjust its speed and altitude to make a “soft landing” around an hour later. Success is far from guaranteed. In April 2019, Israeli organization SpaceIL watched their lander crash into the Moon’s surface. ispace has announced three alternative landing sites and could shift the lunar descent date to April 26, May 1 or May 3, depending on conditions. “What we have accomplished so far is already a great achievement, and we are already applying lessons learned from this flight to our future missions,” ispace founder and CEO Takeshi Hakamada said earlier this month. “The stage is set. I am looking forward to witnessing this historic day, marking the beginning of a new era of commercial lunar missions.” The lander, standing just over two meters tall and weighing 340 kilograms, has been in lunar orbit since last month. It was launched from Earth in December on one of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets after several delays. So far only the United States, Russia and China have managed to put a robot on the lunar surface, all through government-sponsored programs. However, Japan and the United States announced last year that they would cooperate on a plan to put a …
SpaceX Wins Approval to Add Fifth U.S. Rocket Launch Site
The U.S. Space Force said on Monday that Elon Musk’s SpaceX was granted approval to lease a second rocket launch complex at a military base in California, setting the space company up for its fifth launch site in the United States. Under the lease, SpaceX will launch its workhorse Falcon rockets from Space Launch Complex-6 at Vandenberg Space Force Base, a military launch site north of Los Angeles where the space company operates another launchpad. It has two others in Florida and its private Starbase site in south Texas. A Monday night Space Force statement said a letter of support for the decision was signed on Friday by Space Launch Delta 30 commander Col. Rob Long. The statement did not mention a duration for SpaceX’s lease. The new launch site, vacated last year by the Boeing-Lockheed joint venture United Launch Alliance, gives SpaceX more room to handle an increasingly busy launch schedule for commercial, government and internal satellite launches. Vandenberg Space Force Base allows for launches in a southern trajectory over the Pacific Ocean, which is often used for weather-monitoring, military or spy satellites that commonly rely on polar Earth orbits. SpaceX’s grant of Space Launch Complex-6 comes as rocket companies prepare to compete for the Pentagon’s Phase 3 National Security Space Launch program, a watershed military launch procurement effort expected to begin in the next year or so. …
UAE Spacecraft Takes Close-up Photos of Mars’ Little Moon
A spacecraft around Mars has sent back the most detailed photos yet of the red planet’s little moon. The United Arab Emirates’ Amal spacecraft flew within 100 kilometers (62 miles) of Deimos last month, and the close-up shots were released Monday. Amal — Arabic for Hope — got a two-for-one when Mars photobombed some of the images. It was the closest a spacecraft has been to Deimos in almost a half-century. The spacecraft also observed the little explored far side of the odd-shaped, cratered moon, just 15 kilometers by 12 kilometers by 12 kilometers (9 miles by 7 miles by 7 miles.) SEE ALSO: A related video by VOA’s Arash Arabasadi Mars’ other moon, Phobos, is almost double that size and better understood since it orbits much closer to Mars — just 6,000 kilometers (3,700 miles) away, the closest of any planet’s moon in our solar system. Deimos’ orbit around Mars stretches 23,000 kilometers (14,000 miles) out. That’s close to the inner part of the spacecraft’s orbit — “which is what made observing Deimos such a compelling idea,” said the mission’s lead scientist Hessa al-Matroushi. “Phobos has got most of the attention up until now — now it’s Deimos’ turn!” she added in an email. Al-Matroushi and other scientists with the UAE Space Agency said these new images indicate Deimos is not an asteroid that got captured in Mars’ orbit eons ago, the leading theory until now. Instead, they say the moon appears to be of Martian origin — perhaps from …
Severe Solar Storm Creates Dazzling Auroras Farther South
An intense solar storm has the northern lights gracing the skies farther south than usual. A blast of superhot material from the sun late last week hurled scorching gases known as plasma toward Earth at about 3 million kph, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Monday. Earth felt the brunt of the storm Sunday, according to NOAA, with forecasters warning operators of power plants and spacecraft of the potential for disruption. “I don’t want any expectations of these green curtains moving back and forth” so far south, said Bill Murtagh, program coordinator at the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado. Auroras were reported across parts of Europe and Asia. In the U.S., skygazers took in the sights from northern states such as Wisconsin and Washington, but also states farther south, including Colorado, California, New Mexico and even Arizona — mostly a reddish glow instead of the typical green shimmer. Although conditions have eased, auroras might still be visible as far south as South Dakota and Iowa late Monday and early Tuesday if skies are dark. The farther north, the better the chance of a show as the energized particles interact with the atmosphere closer to Earth, according to Murtagh. The farther south, the curvature of the Earth cuts off the possibility for the most dazzling scenes as the particles interact higher in the atmosphere. Murtagh said light pollution in Boulder prevented him from seeing the auroras Sunday night. But there could be more opportunities as the solar …
Scientists Develop Mobile Printer for mRNA Vaccine Patches
Scientists said Monday they have developed the first mobile printer that can produce thumbnail-sized patches able to deliver mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, hoping the tabletop device will help immunize people in remote regions. While many hurdles remain and the 3D printer is likely years away from becoming available, experts hailed the “exciting” finding. The device prints 2-centimeter-wide patches that each contain hundreds of tiny needles that administer a vaccine when pressed against the skin. These “microneedle patches” offer a range of advantages over traditional jabs in the arm, including that they can be self-administered, are relatively painless, could be more palatable to the vaccine-hesitant and can be stored at room temperature for long periods of time. The popular mRNA COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna need to be refrigerated, which has caused distribution complications — particularly in developing countries that have condemned the unequal distribution of doses during the pandemic. The new printer was tested with the Pfizer and Moderna jabs, according to a study in the journal Nature Biotechnology, but the goal of the international team of researchers behind it is for it to be adapted to whatever vaccines are needed. Robert Langer, co-founder of Moderna and one of the study’s authors, told AFP that he hoped the printer could be used for “the next COVID, or whatever crisis occurs.” Ana Jaklenec, a study author also from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the printer could be sent to areas such as refugee camps or remote villages to “quickly immunize …
Twitter Changes Stoke Russian, Chinese Propaganda Surge
Twitter accounts operated by authoritarian governments in Russia, China and Iran are benefiting from recent changes at the social media company, researchers said Monday, making it easier for them to attract new followers and broadcast propaganda and disinformation to a larger audience. The platform is no longer labeling state-controlled media and propaganda agencies, and will no longer prohibit their content from being automatically promoted or recommended to users. Together, the two changes, both made in recent weeks, have supercharged the Kremlin’s ability to use the U.S.-based platform to spread lies and misleading claims about its invasion of Ukraine, U.S. politics and other topics. Russian state media accounts are now earning 33% more views than they were just weeks ago, before the change was made, according to findings released Monday by Reset, a London-based non-profit that tracks authoritarian governments’ use of social media to spread propaganda. Reset’s findings were first reported by The Associated Press. The increase works out to more than 125,000 additional views per post. Those posts included ones suggesting the CIA had something to do with the September 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S., that Ukraine’s leaders are embezzling foreign aid to their country, and that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was justified because the U.S. was running clandestine biowarfare labs in the country. State media agencies operated by Iran and China have seen similar increases in engagement since Twitter quietly made the changes. The about-face from the platform is the latest development since billionaire Elon Musk purchased Twitter …
European Summit Seeks to Boost Wind Energy Production
Nine European countries held a summit on Monday aimed at scaling up wind power generation in the North Sea, spurred by the fallout from the war in Ukraine and the push for renewables. “We’ve seen over the past months what the impact is if you are too dependent on outsiders for the supply of energy,” said Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, who hosted the meeting in the coastal town of Ostend. The leaders of EU members France, Germany, Ireland, Denmark, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, along with European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, attended the summit. Norway and Britain also participated, with the latter represented by UK Energy Security Secretary Grant Shapps. In a joint op-ed published in Politico, the leaders of the nine nations emphasized the need to build more offshore wind turbines “to reach our climate goals, and to rid ourselves of Russian gas, ensuring a more secure and independent Europe.” Several leaders pointed to the need also to ensure security of offshore wind farms and their interconnectors, in the wake of recent reports of a Russian spy ship in the North Sea and last year’s sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea. De Croo said North Sea infrastructure, including turbines and undersea cables “are prone to sabotage or to espionage” and the topic was “an extremely important one” at the summit. The summit’s collective goal, stated by all the leaders, is to boost offshore wind power generation to 120 gigawatts by 2030 …
Writer, Adviser, Poet, Bot: How ChatGPT Could Transform Politics
The AI bot ChatGPT has passed exams, written poetry, and deployed in newsrooms, and now politicians are seeking it out — but experts are warning against rapid uptake of a tool also famous for fabricating “facts.” The chatbot, released last November by U.S. firm OpenAI, has quickly moved center stage in politics — particularly as a way of scoring points. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida recently took a direct hit from the bot when he answered some innocuous questions about health care reform from an opposition MP. Unbeknownst to the PM, his adversary had generated the questions with ChatGPT. He also generated answers that he claimed were “more sincere” than Kishida’s. The PM hit back that his own answers had been “more specific.” French trade union boss Sophie Binet was on-trend when she drily assessed a recent speech by President Emmanuel Macron as one that “could have been done by ChatGPT.” But the bot has also been used to write speeches and even help draft laws. “It’s useful to think of ChatGPT and generative AI in general as a cliche generator,” David Karpf of George Washington University in the U.S. said during a recent online panel. “Most of what we do in politics is also cliche generation.” ‘Limited added value’ Nowhere has the enthusiasm for grandstanding with ChatGPT been keener than in the United States. Last month, Congresswoman Nancy Mace gave a five-minute speech at a Senate committee enumerating potential uses and harms of AI — before delivering the punchline …
This Is World Vaccine Week
April 24 – April 30, is World Immunization Week. The theme of this year’s observance is “The Big Catch-Up.” The idea is for everyone, especially children, to catch up on the vaccinations they might have missed during the COVID outbreak. The ultimate goal of World Immunization Week, according the World Health Organization, is for more children, adults and their communities to be protected from vaccine-preventable diseases, like polio and measles. …
Air Pollution Kills 1,200 Children a Year, Says EU Agency
Air pollution still causes more than 1,200 premature deaths a year in under 18’s across Europe and increases the risk of chronic disease later in life, the EU environmental agency said Monday. Despite recent improvements, “the level of key air pollutants in many European countries remain stubbornly above World Health Organization” (WHO) guidelines, particularly in central-eastern Europe and Italy, said the EEA after a study in over 30 countries, including the 27 members of the European Union. The report did not cover the major industrial nations of Russia, Ukraine and the United Kingdom, suggesting the overall death tolls for the continent could be higher. The EEA announced last November that 238,000 people died prematurely because of air pollution in 2020 in the EU, plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey. “Air pollution causes over 1,200 premature deaths per year in people under the age of 18 in Europe and significantly increases the risk of disease later in life,” the agency said. The study was the agency’s first to focus specifically on children. “Although the number of premature deaths in this age group is low relative to the total for the European population estimated by EEA each year, deaths early in life represent a loss of future potential and come with a significant burden of chronic illness, both in childhood and later in life,” the agency said. It urged authorities to focus on improving air quality around schools and nurseries as well as sports facilities and mass transport hubs. “After birth, …
In US, Dying Patients Protest Looming Telehealth Crackdown
At age 93, struggling with the effects of a stroke, heart failure and recurrent cancer, Teri Sheridan was ready to end her life using New Jersey’s law that allows medically assisted suicide — but she was bedbound, too sick to travel. So last Nov. 17, surrounded by three of her children, Sheridan drank a lethal dose of drugs prescribed by a doctor she had never met in person, only online. She died within minutes. Soon, others who seek Sheridan’s final option may find it out of reach, the unintended result of a federal move to roll back online prescribing of potentially addictive drugs allowed during the COVID-19 pandemic. “How much should one person suffer?” said Sheridan’s daughter, Georgene White, 68. “She wanted to just go to sleep and not wake up.” Online prescribing rules for controlled drugs were relaxed three years ago under emergency waivers to ensure critical medications remained available during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has proposed a rule that would reinstate most previously longstanding requirements that doctors see patients in person before prescribing narcotic drugs such as Oxycontin, amphetamines such as Adderall, and a host of other potentially dangerous drugs. The aim is to reduce improper prescribing of these drugs by telehealth companies that boomed during the pandemic. Given the ongoing opioid epidemic, allowing continued broad use of telemedicine prescribing “would pose too great a risk to the public health and safety,” the proposed rule said. It also cracks down on how doctors …
US Transplant Surgeon Heads to Ukraine to Save Lives
An organ transplant surgeon from New York is planning a third trip to Ukraine, where he has been working with doctors to help patients caught up in Russia’s war on Ukraine. The surgeon, Dr. Robert Montgomery, is also working to raise money to buy medical equipment for a hospital in Lviv. Iryna Solomko has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. VOA footage by Pavlo Terekhov. …
US Invests in Alternative Solar Tech, More Solar for Renters
The Biden administration announced more than $80 million in funding Thursday in a push to produce more solar panels in the U.S., make solar energy available to more people, and pursue superior alternatives to the ubiquitous sparkly panels made with silicon. The initiative, spearheaded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and known as Community solar, encompasses a variety of arrangements where renters and people who don’t control their rooftops can still get their electricity from solar power. Two weeks ago, Vice President Kamala Harris announced what the administration said was the largest community solar effort ever in the United States. Now it is set to spend $52 million on 19 solar projects across a dozen states, including $10 million from the infrastructure law, as well as $30 million on technologies that will help integrate solar electricity into the grid. The DOE also selected 25 teams to participate in a $10 million competition designed to fast-track the efforts of solar developers working on community solar projects. The Inflation Reduction Act already offers incentives to build large solar generation projects, such as renewable energy tax credits. But Ali Zaidi, White House national climate adviser, said the new money focuses on meeting the nation’s climate goals in a way that benefits more communities. “It’s lifting up our workers and our communities. And that’s, I think, what really excites us about this work,” Zaidi said. “It’s a chance not just to tackle the climate crisis, but to bring economic opportunity to every zip …
Did the AI-Generated Drake Song Breach Copyright?
A viral AI-generated song imitating Drake and The Weeknd was pulled from streaming services this week, but did it breach copyright as claimed by record label Universal? Created by someone called @ghostwriter, Heart On My Sleeve racked up millions of listens before Universal Music Group asked for its removal from Spotify, Apple Music and other platforms. However, Andres Guadamuz, who teaches intellectual property law at Britain’s University of Sussex, is not convinced that the song breached copyright. As similar cases look set to multiply — with an uncanny AI replication of Liam Gallagher from Oasis causing buzz — he spoke to AFP about some of the issues being raised. Did the song breach copyright? The underlying music on Heart On My Sleeve was new, only the sound of the voice was familiar, “and you can’t copyright the sound of someone’s voice,” Guadamuz said. Perhaps the furor around AI impersonators may lead to copyright being expanded to include voice, rather than just melody, lyrics and other created elements, “but that would be problematic,” Guadamuz added. “What you’re protecting with copyright is the expression of an idea, and voice isn’t really that,” he said. He said Universal probably claimed copyright infringement because it is the simplest route to removing content, with established procedures in place with streaming platforms. Were other rights breached? An AI-generated impersonator may be breaching other laws. If an artist has a distinctive voice or image, this is potentially protected under “publicity rights” in the United States or similar …
US Supreme Court Upholds Abortion Pill Access for Now
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday preserved access to the abortion drug mifepristone while a lawsuit challenging the use of the drug plays out in lower courts. The high court issued a brief on Friday evening granting emergency requests from the Biden administration and the drug’s manufacturer, Danco Laboratories, to continue to allow women to access the drug. The ruling puts on hold a preliminary injunction from a federal judge in Texas, who earlier this month ordered restrictions on the abortion drug. Two justices on the nine-member court — conservatives Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito — dissented from the decision. The court had set a deadline for itself of midnight Friday to either approve the Biden administration’s request — to keep the drug available while the administration challenges a lower court ruling — or allow limited access to the drug to take effect. The lower court ruling in question was issued April 7 by a federal judge in Texas after a coalition of anti-abortion groups and doctors argued the U.S. drug regulator, the Food and Drug Administration, improperly approved mifepristone in 2000 and did not fully assess its risks and benefits. The ruling, which strictly limits availability of the drug, was appealed, and while an appeals court halted a portion of the ruling that would have invalidated the FDA approval, it left the limits on the drug’s availability in place. The case is expected to be further appealed and could eventually end up being decided by the Supreme Court. Friday’s …
US-China Competition in Tech Expands to AI Regulations
Competition between the U.S. and China in artificial intelligence has expanded into a race to design and implement comprehensive AI regulations. The efforts to come up with rules to ensure AI’s trustworthiness, safety and transparency come at a time when governments around the world are exploring the impact of the technology on national security and education. ChatGPT, a chatbot that mimics human conversation, has received massive attention since its debut in November. Its ability to give sophisticated answers to complex questions with a language fluency comparable to that of humans has caught the world by surprise. Yet its many flaws, including its ostensibly coherent responses laden with misleading information and apparent bias, have prompted tech leaders in the U.S. to sound the alarm. “What happens when something vastly smarter than the smartest person comes along in silicon form? It’s very difficult to predict what will happen in that circumstance,” said Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk in an interview with Fox News. He warned that artificial intelligence could lead to “civilization destruction” without regulations in place. Google CEO Sundar Pichai echoed that sentiment. “Over time there has to be regulation. There have to be consequences for creating deep fake videos which cause harm to society,” Pichai said in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” program. Jessica Brandt, policy director for the Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology Initiative at the Brookings Institution, told VOA Mandarin, “Business leaders understand that regulators will be watching this space closely, and they have an interest …
US Targeting China, Artificial Intelligence Threats
U.S. homeland security officials are launching what they describe as two urgent initiatives to combat growing threats from China and expanding dangers from ever more capable, and potentially malicious, artificial intelligence. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced Friday that his department was starting a “90-day sprint” to confront more frequent and intense efforts by China to hurt the United States, while separately establishing an artificial intelligence task force. “Beijing has the capability and the intent to undermine our interests at home and abroad and is leveraging every instrument of its national power to do so,” Mayorkas warned, addressing the threat from China during a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. The 90-day sprint will “assess how the threats posed by the PRC [People’s Republic of China] will evolve and how we can be best positioned to guard against future manifestations of this threat,” he said. “One critical area we will assess, for example, involves the defense of our critical infrastructure against PRC or PRC-sponsored attacks designed to disrupt or degrade provision of national critical functions, sow discord and panic, and prevent mobilization of U.S. military capabilities,” Mayorkas added. Other areas of focus for the sprint will include addressing ways to stop Chinese government exploitation of U.S. immigration and travel systems to spy on the U.S. government and private entities and to silence critics, and looking at ways to disrupt the global fentanyl supply chain. AI dangers Mayorkas also said the magnitude of the threat from artificial …
UN’s Weather Agency: 2022 Was Nasty, Deadly, Costly and Hot
Looking back at 2022’s weather with months of analysis, the World Meteorological Organization said last year really was as bad as it seemed when people were muddling through it. And about as bad as it gets — until more warming kicks in. Killer floods, droughts and heat waves hit around the world, costing many billions of dollars. Global ocean heat and acidity levels hit record highs and Antarctic sea ice and European Alps glaciers reached record low amounts, according to the United Nations’ climate agency’s State of Global Climate 2022 report released Friday. While levels have been higher before human civilization, global sea height and the amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide and methane in the air reached highest modern recorded amounts. The key glaciers that scientists use as a health check for the world shrank by more than 1.3 meters (51 inches) in just one year and for the first time in history no snow survived the summer melt season on Switzerland’s glaciers, the report said. Sea level is now rising at about double the rate it did in the 1990s, WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a news conference. Oceans can rise another half a meter to a meter (20 to 39 inches) by the end of century as more ice melts from ice sheets and glaciers and warmer water expands, he said. “Unfortunately these negative trends in weather patterns and all of these parameters may continue until the 2060s” despite efforts to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases because …
Twitter Drops Government-Funded Media Labels
Twitter has removed labels describing global media organizations as government-funded or state-affiliated, a move that comes after the Elon Musk-owned platform started stripping blue verification checkmarks from accounts that don’t pay a monthly fee. Among those no longer labeled was National Public Radio in the U.S., which announced last week that it would stop using Twitter after its main account was designated state-affiliated media, a term also used to identify media outlets controlled or heavily influenced by authoritarian governments, such as Russia and China. Twitter later changed the label to “government-funded media,” but NPR — which relies on the government for a tiny fraction of its funding — said it was still misleading. Canadian Broadcasting Corp. and Swedish public radio made similar decisions to quit tweeting. CBC’s government-funded label vanished Friday, along with the state-affiliated tags on media accounts including Sputnik and RT in Russia and Xinhua in China. Many of Twitter’s high-profile users on Thursday lost the blue checks that helped verify their identity and distinguish them from impostors. Twitter had about 300,000 verified users under the original blue-check system — many of them journalists, athletes and public figures. The checks used to mean the account was verified by Twitter to be who it says it is. High-profile users who lost their blue checks Thursday included Beyoncé, Pope Francis, Oprah Winfrey and former President Donald Trump. The costs of keeping the marks range from $8 a month for individual web users to a starting price of $1,000 monthly to …
Supreme Court Set To Decide on Abortion Pill Access
The Supreme Court is facing a self-imposed Friday night deadline to decide whether women’s access to a widely used abortion pill will stay unchanged or be restricted while a legal challenge to its Food and Drug Administration approval goes on. The justices are weighing arguments that allowing restrictions contained in lower-court rulings to take effect would severely disrupt the availability of the drug, mifepristone, which is used in the most common abortion method in the United States. It has repeatedly been found to be safe and effective, and has been used by more than 5 million women in the U.S. since the FDA approved it in 2000. The Supreme Court had initially said it would decide by Wednesday whether the restrictions could take effect while the case continues. A one-sentence order signed by Justice Samuel Alito on Wednesday gave the justices two additional days, without explanation. The justices are scheduled to meet for a private conference Friday, where they could talk about the issue. The additional time could be part of an effort to craft an order that has broad support among the justices. Or one or more justices might be writing a separate opinion, and asked for a couple of extra days. The challenge to mifepristone, brought by abortion foes, is the first abortion controversy to reach the nation’s highest court since its conservative majority overturned Roe v. Wade 10 months ago and allowed more than a dozen states to effectively ban abortion outright. In his majority opinion, Alito …
TikTok CEO Tries to Ease Critics’ Security Concerns
The CEO of TikTok tried to calm critics’ fears about the security of his company’s app during an appearance Thursday. Shou Chew was asked at a TED2023 Possibility conference if he could guarantee Beijing would not use the TikTok app, owned by the Chinese tech company ByteDance, to interfere in future U.S. elections. “I can say that we are building all the tools to prevent any of these actions from happening,” Chew said. “And I’m very confident that with an unprecedented amount of transparency that we’re giving on the platform, we can, how we can reduce this risk to as low as zero as possible.” Chew made the comments in Vancouver at the TED organization’s annual convention, where artificial intelligence and safeguards were discussed. U.S. lawmakers and officials are ratcheting up threats to ban TikTok, saying the Chinese-owned video-sharing app used by millions of Americans poses a threat to privacy and U.S. national security. U.S. lawmakers have grilled Chew over concerns the Chinese government could exploit the platform’s user data for espionage and influence operations in the United States. U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy tweeted in March, “It’s very concerning that the CEO of TikTok can’t be honest and admit what we already know to be true — China has access to TikTok user data.” U.S. Representative Michael McCaul, chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, was even more blunt in February, telling the committee, “Make no mistake, TikTok is a national security threat. … It’s a spy …
Good, Bad of Artificial Intelligence Discussed at TED Conference
While artificial intelligence, or AI, is not new, the speed at which the technology is developing and its implications for societies are, for many, a cause for wonder and alarm. ChatGPT recently garnered headlines for doing things like writing term papers for university students. Tom Graham and his company, Metaphysic.ai, have received attention for creating fake videos of actor Tom Cruise and re-creating Elvis Presley singing on an American talent show. Metaphysic was started to utilize artificial intelligence and create high-quality avatars of stars like Cruise or people from one’s own family or social circle. Graham, who appeared at this year’s TED Conference in Vancouver, which began Monday and runs through Friday, said talking with an artificially created younger self or departed loved one can have tremendous benefits for therapy. He added that the technology would allow actors to appear in movies without having to show up on set, or in ads with AI-generated sports stars. “So, the idea of them being able to create ads without having to turn up is – it’s a match made in heaven,” Graham said. “The advertisers get more content. The sports people never have to turn up because they don’t want to turn up. And everyone just gets paid the same.” Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy, a nonprofit organization that provides free teaching materials, sees AI as beneficial to education and a kind of one-on-one instruction: student and AI. His organization is using artificial intelligence to supplement traditional instruction and make it …
Biden Announces More Funds to Fight Climate Change
President Joe Biden announced plans Thursday to increase U.S. funding to help developing countries fight climate change and curb deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest. During a virtual meeting of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, Biden urged his counterparts to be ambitious in setting goals to reduce emissions and meet a target of limiting overall global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. “We’re at a moment of great peril but also great possibilities, serious possibilities. With the right commitment and follow-through from every nation … on this call, the goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees can stay within reach,” Biden said. The countries that take part in the forum account for about 80% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and global gross domestic product, according to the White House. Thursday’s meeting was the group’s fourth under Biden’s presidency. Biden announced a U.S. contribution of $1 billion to the Green Climate Fund, which finances projects on clean energy and climate change resilience in developing countries, doubling the overall U.S. contribution. “The impacts of climate change will be felt the most by those who have contributed the least to the problem, including developing nations,” Biden said. “As large economies and large emitters, we must step up and support these economies.” Biden also announced plans to request $500 million over five years to contribute to the Amazon Fund, which works to combat deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, and related activities. A senior administration official said Biden’s team would have to work …
Twitter Begins Removing Blue Checks From Users Who Don’t Pay
This time it’s for real. Many of Twitter’s high-profile users are losing the blue check marks that helped verify their identities and distinguish them from impostors on the Elon Musk-owned social media platform. After several false starts, Twitter began making good on its promise Thursday to remove the blue checks from accounts that don’t each pay a monthly fee to keep them. Twitter had about 300,000 verified users under the original blue-check system—many of them journalists, athletes and public figures. The checks began disappearing from these users’ profiles late morning Pacific time. High-profile users who lost their blue checks Thursday included Beyonce, Pope Francis and former President Donald Trump. The costs of keeping the marks range from $8 a month for individual web users to a starting price of $1,000 monthly to verify an organization, plus $50 monthly for each affiliate or employee account. Twitter does not verify the individual accounts to ensure the users are who they say they are, as was the case with the previous blue check doled out during the platform’s pre-Musk administration. Celebrity users, from basketball star LeBron James to “Star Trek’s” William Shatner, have balked at joining — although on Thursday, James’ blue check indicated that the account paid for verification. “Seinfeld” actor Jason Alexander pledged to leave the platform if Musk took his blue check away. ‘Anyone could be me’ “The way Twitter is going anyone could be me now. The verification system is an absolute mess,” Dionne Warwick tweeted Tuesday. She had …