India’s cybersecurity agency is investigating complaints of mobile phone hacking by senior opposition politicians who reported receiving warning messages from Apple, Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said. Vaishnaw was quoted in the Indian Express newspaper as saying Thursday that CERT-In, the computer emergency response team based in New Delhi, had started the probe, adding that “Apple confirmed it has received the notice for investigation.” A political aide to Vaishnaw and two officials in the federal home ministry told Reuters that all the cyber security concerns raised by the politicians were being scrutinized. There was no immediate comment from Apple about the investigation. This week, Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government of trying to hack into opposition politicians’ mobile phones after some lawmakers shared screenshots on social media of a notification quoting the iPhone manufacturer as saying: “Apple believes you are being targeted by state-sponsored attackers who are trying to remotely compromise the iPhone associated with your Apple ID.” A senior minister from Modi’s government also said he had received the same notification on his phone. Apple said it did not attribute the threat notifications to “any specific state-sponsored attacker,” adding that “it’s possible that some Apple threat notifications may be false alarms, or that some attacks are not detected.” In 2021, India was rocked by reports that the government had used Israeli-made Pegasus spyware to snoop on scores of journalists, activists and politicians, including Gandhi. The government has declined to reply to questions about whether …
US Pushes for Global Protections for Threats Posed by AI
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris says leaders have “a moral, ethical and societal duty” to protect humans from dangers posed by artificial intelligence, and is pushing for a global road map during an AI summit in London. Analysts agree and say one element needs to be constant: human oversight. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from Washington. …
US Pushes for Global Protections Against Threats Posed by AI
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris said Wednesday that leaders have “a moral, ethical and societal duty” to protect people from the dangers posed by artificial intelligence, as she leads the Biden administration’s push for a global AI roadmap. Analysts, in commending the effort, say human oversight is crucial to preventing the weaponization or misuse of this technology, which has applications in everything from military intelligence to medical diagnosis to making art. “To provide order and stability in the midst of global technological change, I firmly believe that we must be guided by a common set of understandings among nations,” Harris said. “And that is why the United States will continue to work with our allies and partners to apply existing international rules and norms to AI, and work to create new rules and norms.” Harris also announced the founding of the government’s AI Safety Institute and released draft policy guidance on the government’s use of AI and a declaration of its responsible military applications. Just days earlier, President Joe Biden – who described AI as “the most consequential technology of our time” – signed an executive order establishing new standards, including requiring that major AI developers report their safety test results and other critical information to the U.S. government. AI is increasingly used for a wide range of applications. For example: on Wednesday, the Defense Intelligence Agency announced that its AI-enabled military intelligence database will soon achieve “initial operational capability.” And perhaps on the opposite end of the spectrum, some …
British PM Rishi Sunak Hosts AI Summit in London
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is bringing together government officials, academics and tech moguls from around the world for a two-day AI Safety Summit Wednesday and Thursday at Bletchley Park, the once top-secret headquarters of World War II-era codebreakers. The inaugural symposium is a moment for key players in global affairs to spar over the future of frontier AI, specifically whether the technology represents a danger to humanity and what can be done to mitigate that potential threat. Frontier AI is a broad term for general-purpose systems that can operate on the very cutting-edge of today’s software. The 100-person guest list includes Elon Musk, the richest man on earth; Sam Altman, the brain behind ChatGPT; and a host of prominent professors and researchers. World leaders are among those in attendance, including U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris; China’s Vice Minister of Science and Technology Wu Zhaohui; U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres; and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. China, a frontrunner in AI development, has a key role in the forum as Sunak attempts to position himself as a middleman between East and West. The decision to invite China was met with mixed reactions at home in the British Parliament and abroad. Jane Hartley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom, made clear that the White House had no part in bringing China to the table. “This is the U.K. invitation, this is not the U.S.,” Hartley told Reuters. “When the U.K. government was talking to us, we said it’s your …
Electric Vehicles Hit the Roads in Malawi
Drivers in Malawi are getting an opportunity to purchase electric vehicles through a local startup company. The handful of buyers so far say they no longer have to struggle daily to get fuel at pump stations. Lameck Masina reports from Blantyre. …
Disease Outbreaks Rise in Sudan as Health System Breaks Down
The World Health Organization warns that disease outbreaks, malnutrition and non-communicable diseases are rising in war-torn Sudan, with devastating consequences for millions of people forced to flee their homes in the face of escalating violence. Since conflict erupted April 15, more than 4.6 million people have become newly displaced inside Sudan. The number, added to the more than three million who already were displaced within the country before the current conflict, makes Sudan home to the world’s largest internally displaced crisis. “The health system in Sudan is stretched to breaking point as capacities decline in the face of mounting needs,” said Ni’ma Saeed Abid, WHO representative in Sudan, speaking Tuesday in Port Sudan. “Access to health care continues to be limited due to insecurity, displacement, and shortages of medicines and medical supplies, placing millions of Sudanese at risk of severe illness or death from preventable and treatable causes,” he said. The WHO says that 70 to 80 percent of health facilities are “non-functional in conflict hotspots.” It has verified 60 attacks against health care and personnel, leading to 34 deaths and 38 injuries. “Conflict and the consequent massive displacement have driven the population further into a state of widespread malnutrition, with the lives of children hanging in the balance,” said Abid. “Cholera, measles, dengue and malaria are circulating in several states. And a combination of any of these diseases with malnutrition can be lethal,” he warned. According to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) estimates, 20.3 million people, …
UK Summit Aims to Tackle Thorny Issues Around Cutting-Edge AI Risks
Digital officials, tech company bosses and researchers are converging Wednesday at a former codebreaking spy base near London to discuss and better understand the extreme risks posed by cutting-edge artificial intelligence. The two-day summit focuses on so-called frontier AI — the latest and most powerful systems that take the technology right up to its limits, but could come with as-yet-unknown dangers. They’re underpinned by foundation models, which power chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard and are trained on vast pools of information scraped from the internet. Some 100 people from 28 countries are expected to attend Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s two-day AI Safety Summit, though the British government has refused to disclose the guest list. The event is a labor of love for Sunak, a tech-loving former banker who wants the U.K. to be a hub for computing innovation and has framed the summit as the start of a global conversation about the safe development of AI. But Vice President Kamala Harris is due to steal the focus on Wednesday with a separate speech in London setting out the U.S. administration’s more hands-on approach. She’s due to attend the summit on Thursday alongside government officials from more than two dozen countries including Canada, France, Germany, India, Japan, Saudi Arabia — and China, invited over the protests of some members of Sunak’s governing Conservative Party. Tesla CEO Elon Musk is also scheduled to discuss AI with Sunak in a livestreamed conversation on Thursday night. The tech billionaire was among those …
Indonesian Court Jails CEO, Three Others, over Deadly Cough Syrup
An Indonesian court sentenced to jail on Wednesday the chief executive and three other officials of a company whose cough syrup has been linked to the death of more than 200 children, for violating drug safety laws, the company’s lawyer said. The Indonesian company, Afi Farma, was accused of producing cough syrups containing excess amounts of toxic material and prosecutors charged the four officials for “consciously” not testing the ingredients, despite having the means and responsibility to do so, according to a charge sheet. The company’s lawyer, Reza Wendra Prayogo, said they denied negligence and the company was considering whether to appeal. The officials, including CEO Arief Prasetya Harahap, were sentenced to two years in prison by a court in the town of Kediri, in East Java province, where the company is based. Prosecutors, who had sought up to nine years in prison for the accused, said that Afi Farma did not test the ingredients sent by its supplier and instead relied on certificates provided by them regarding product quality and safety. Reza told Reuters in October that Indonesia’s drug regulator, BPOM, did not require drugmakers to do rigorous testing of ingredients. The case comes as efforts grow worldwide to tighten oversight of drug supply chains after a wave of poisonings linked to contaminated cough syrups that killed dozens of children in countries such as Gambia and Uzbekistan. …
UK Kicks Off World’s First AI Safety Summit
The world’s first major summit on artificial intelligence (AI) safety opens in Britain Wednesday, with political and tech leaders set to discuss possible responses to the society-changing technology. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will all attend the two-day conference, which will focus on growing fears about the implications of so-called frontier AI. The release of the latest models has offered a glimpse into the potential of AI, but has also prompted concerns around issues ranging from job losses to cyber-attacks and the control that humans actually have over the systems. Sunak, whose government initiated the gathering, said in a speech last week that his “ultimate goal” was “to work towards a more international approach to safety where we collaborate with partners to ensure AI systems are safe before they are released. “We will push hard to agree the first ever international statement about the nature of these risks,” he added, drawing comparisons to the approach taken to climate change. But London has reportedly had to scale back its ambitions around ideas such as launching a new regulatory body amid a perceived lack of enthusiasm. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is one of the only world leaders, and only one from the G7, attending the conference. Elon Musk is due to appear, but it is not clear yet whether he will be physically at the summit in Bletchley Park, north of London, where top British …
‘AI’ Named Collins Word of the Year
The abbreviation of artificial intelligence (AI) has been named the Collins Word of the Year for 2023, the dictionary publisher said on Tuesday. Lexicographers at Collins Dictionary said use of the term had “accelerated” and that it had become the dominant conversation of 2023. “We know that AI has been a big focus this year in the way that it has developed and has quickly become as ubiquitous and embedded in our lives as email, streaming or any other once futuristic, now everyday technology,” Collins managing director Alex Beecroft said. Collins said its wordsmiths analyzed the Collins Corpus, a database that contains more than 20 billion words with written material from websites, newspapers, magazines and books published around the world. It also draws on spoken material from radio, TV and everyday conversations, while new data is fed into the Corpus every month, to help the Collins dictionary editors identify new words and meanings from the moment they are first used. “Use of the word as monitored through our Collins Corpus is always interesting and there was no question that this has also been the talking point of 2023,” Beecroft said. Other words on Collins list include “nepo baby,” which has become a popular phrase to describe the children of celebrities who have succeeded in industries similar to those of their parents. “Greedflation,” meaning companies making profits during the cost-of-living crisis, and “Ulez,” the ultra-low emission zone that penalizes drivers of the most polluting cars in London, were also mentioned. Social …