Category: Silicon Valley

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 India or any of its state agencies had purchased Pegasus spyware for surveillance.
…

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.
…

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 programmer decided to “train an AI model on over 1,000 human farts so it would learn to create realistic fart sounds.”

Like any other tool, AI is subject to its users’ intentions and can be used to deceive, misinform or hurt people – something that billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk stressed on the sidelines of the London summit, where he said he sees AI as “one of the biggest threats” to society. He called for a “third-party referee.”

Earlier this year, Musk was among the more than 33,000 people to sign an open letter calling on AI labs “to immediately pause for at least six months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.”

“Here we are, for the first time, really in human history, with something that’s going to be far more intelligent than us,” said Musk, who is looking at creating his own generative AI program. “So it’s not clear to me we can actually control such a thing. But I think we can aspire to guide it in a direction that’s beneficial to humanity. But I do think it’s one of the existential risks that we face and it’s potentially the most pressing one.”

This is also something industry leaders like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have told U.S. lawmakers in testimony before congressional committees earlier this year.

“My worst fears are that we cause significant – we, the field, the technology, the industry – cause significant harm to the world. I think that could happen in a lot of different ways,” he told lawmakers at a Senate Judiciary Committee on May 16.

That’s because, said Jessica Brandt, policy director for the AI and Emerging Technology Initiative at the Brookings Institution, while “AI has been used to do pretty remarkable things” – especially in the field of scientific research – it is limited by its creators.

“It’s not necessarily doing something that humans don’t know how to do, but it’s making discoveries that humans would be unlikely to be able to make in any meaningful timeframe, because they can just perform so many calculations so quickly,” she told VOA on Zoom.

And, she said, “AI is not objective, or all-knowing. There’s been plenty of studies showing that AI is really only as good as the data that the model is trained on and that the data can have or reflect human bias. This is one of the major concerns.”

Or, as AI Now Executive Director Amba Kak said earlier this year in a magazine interview about AI systems: “The issue is not that they’re omnipotent. It is that they’re janky now. They’re being gamed. They’re being misused. They’re inaccurate. They’re spreading disinformation.”

Analysts say these government and tech officials don’t need a one-size-fits-all solution, but rather an alignment of values – and critically, human oversight and moral use.

“It’s OK to have multiple different approaches, and then also, where possible, coordinate to ensure that democratic values take root in the systems that govern technology globally,” Brandt said.

Industry leaders tend to agree, with Mira Murati, Open AI’s chief technology officer, saying: “AI systems are becoming a part of everyday life. The key is to ensure that these machines are aligned with human intentions and values.”

Analysts watching regulation say the U.S. is unlikely to come up with one, coherent solution for the problems posed by AI.

“The most likely outcome for the United States is a bottom-up patchwork quilt of executive branch actions,” said Bill Whyman, a senior adviser in the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Unlike Europe, the United States is not likely to pass a broad national AI law over the next few years. Successful legislation is likely focused on less controversial and targeted measures like funding AI research and AI child safety.”
…

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.
…

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, or 40 percent of Sudan’s population, are facing hunger. Estimates show 4.6 million children, pregnant and nursing mothers are malnourished; 3.4 million children under five are acutely malnourished; and 700,000 children are suffering from severe acute malnutrition, which can lead to death. 

“I have seen two or three children put on the same bed for treatment for acute severe malnutrition because of the high number of cases,” Abid said. “And all these children because of malnutrition are susceptible for infection.” 

Since September 26, Sudan has declared outbreaks of cholera in Gedaref, Khartoum and South Kordofan states, with suspected cases reported from Al Jazirah and Kassal states. 

“And there is a possibility of further expansion because of the quality of water supply, because of the sanitation and because of displacement,” Abid said. “We are expecting that we may see more states affected, more people affected.” 

As of last week, the WHO reports 1,962 suspected cholera cases with 30 lab-confirmed cases and 72 associated deaths. It estimates more than 3.1 million people are at risk of cholera until the end of December.

The World Health Organization has stockpiled drugs and essential supplies for the treatment of cholera patients. It has deployed 14 rapid response teams into the affected areas, strengthened the country’s surveillance and early warning systems, and is getting ready to receive oral cholera vaccines for a campaign in Gedaref state.

More than six months have passed since the start of the crisis in Sudan. While efforts to contain some of the worst impacts of the disaster are critical, they are not enough. 

Martin Griffiths, under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, says only peace will stem the humanitarian tragedy that continues to unfold unabated in the country. 

In a statement over the weekend, he welcomed the resumption of peace talks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, saying they couldn’t have started soon enough. 

“Thousands of people have been killed or injured. … Aid workers are hamstrung by fighting, insecurity, and red tape, making the operating environment in Sudan extremely challenging,” he said.

“We need the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces to break the bureaucratic logjam. We need them to fully adhere to international humanitarian law and to secure safe, sustained and unhindered access to people in need,” he said. 
…

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 who signed a statement earlier this year raising the alarm about the perils that AI poses to humanity. 

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and executives from U.S. artificial intelligence companies such as Anthropic and influential computer scientists like Yoshua Bengio, one of the “godfathers” of AI, are also expected. 

The meeting is being held at Bletchley Park, a former top secret base for World War II codebreakers that’s seen as a birthplace of modern computing. 

One of Sunak’s major goals is to get delegates to agree on a first-ever communique about the nature of AI risks. He said the technology brings new opportunities but warns about frontier AI’s threat to humanity, because it could be used to create biological weapons or be exploited by terrorists to sow fear and destruction. 

Only governments, not companies, can keep people safe from AI’s dangers, Sunak said last week. However, in the same speech, he also urged against rushing to regulate AI technology, saying it needs to be fully understood first. 

In contrast, Harris will stress the need to address the here and now, including “societal harms that are already happening such as bias, discrimination and the proliferation of misinformation.” 

Harris plans to stress that the Biden administration is “committed to hold companies accountable, on behalf of the people, in a way that does not stifle innovation,” including through legislation. 

“As history has shown in the absence of regulation and strong government oversight, some technology companies choose to prioritize profit over: The wellbeing of their customers; the security of our communities; and the stability of our democracies,” she plans to say. 

She’ll point to President Biden’s executive order this week, setting out AI safeguards, as evidence the U.S. is leading by example in developing rules for artificial intelligence that work in the public interest. Among measures she will announce is an AI Safety Institute, run through the Department of Commerce, to help set the rules for “safe and trusted AI.” 

Harris also will encourage other countries to sign up to a U.S.-backed pledge to stick to “responsible and ethical” use of AI for military aims. 

A White House official gave details of Harris’s speech, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss her remarks in advance. 
…

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 codebreakers cracked Nazi Germany’s “Enigma” code.

‘Talking shop’

While the potential of AI raises many hopes, particularly for medicine, its development is seen as largely unchecked.

In his speech, Sunak stressed the need for countries to develop “a shared understanding of the risks that we face.”

But lawyer and investigator Cori Crider, a campaigner for “fair” technology, warned that the summit could be “a bit of a talking shop.

“If he were serious about safety, Rishi Sunak needed to roll deep and bring all of the U.K. majors and regulators in tow and he hasn’t,” she told a press conference in San Francisco.

“Where is the labor regulator looking at whether jobs are being made unsafe or redundant? Where’s the data protection regulator?” she asked.

Having faced criticism for only looking at the risks of AI, the U.K. Wednesday pledged $46 million to fund AI projects around the world, starting in Africa.

Ahead of the meeting, the G7 powers agreed on Monday on a non-binding “code of conduct” for companies developing the most advanced AI systems.

The White House announced its own plan to set safety standards for the deployment of AI that will require companies to submit certain systems to government review.

And in Rome, ministers from Italy, Germany and France called for an “innovation-friendly approach” to regulating AI in Europe, as they urged more investment to challenge the U.S. and China.

China will be present, but it is unclear at what level.

News website Politico reported London invited President Xi Jinping, to signify its eagerness for a senior representative.

Beijing’s invitation has raised eyebrows amid heightened tensions with Western nations and accusations of technological espionage. 

 
…

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 media terms such as “deinfluencing” or “de-influencing,” meaning to “warn followers to avoid certain commercial products.” were also on the Collins list.

This summer’s Ashes series between England and Australia had many people talking about a style of cricket dubbed “Bazball,” according to Collins.

The term refers to New Zealand cricketer and coach Brendon McCullum, known as Baz, who advocates a philosophy of relaxed minds, aggressive tactics and positive energy.

The word “permacrisis,” defined as “an extended period of instability and insecurity” was the Collins word of the year in 2022.

In 2020, it was “lockdown.” In 2016, it was “Brexi.t”

 
…

Thousands of meters beneath the Pacific Ocean lie vast deposits of the metals needed for the shift to renewable energy. Mining companies are ready to scoop up this sunken treasure strewn across an area more than half the size of the continental United States. But not much is known about the ecosystem deep beneath the ocean and what impacts mining these rocks might have. VOA’s Steve Baragona has more.
…

A top U.N. agency is warning that if calls for a cease-fire in Gaza are not heeded, causalities will continue to mount, putting children in the densely populated Palestinian enclave at even greater risk.

“Gaza has become a graveyard for thousands of children,” said James Elder, UNICEF spokesperson, Tuesday. “It is a living hell for everyone else.”

The Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry says that more than 8,300 Palestinians in Gaza, including at least 3,457 children, have been killed since Israel began a punishing bombing campaign following the horrific massacre of its civilians by Hamas militants October 7.

“From the earliest days of the unprecedented hostilities in the Gaza Strip, UNICEF has been forthright on the need for an immediate humanitarian cease-fire, for the aid to flow and for children abducted to be released,” he said. “Like many others, we have pleaded for the killing of children to stop.”

While Washington has thrown its support behind Israel, it has also called for the protection of civilians and pushed for the opening of humanitarian aid into Gaza as the Israeli military expands its ground campaign aiming to uproot Hamas, which is a U.S.-designated terrorist group.

Since Israel partially lifted its blockade of Gaza on October 21, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, says 143 trucks carrying food, water, and medical supplies have entered Gaza through the Rafah Crossing with Egypt.

“Before this escalation, there were 500 trucks on average going in every working day. So about 22 days per month,” said Jens Laerke, OCHA spokesperson.

“The equivalent of 50 trucks of that daily average of 500 was fuel,” he said.

OCHA says that none of the trucks entering Gaza now contain fuel, which is needed to produce electricity at Gaza’s only power plant, to back up hospital generators, keep water desalination plants running, and prevent Gaza’s few remaining bakeries from shutting down.

“Fuel is not just a luxury commodity for fancy cars to drive around,” said Christian Lindmeier, spokesperson for the World Health Organization. “It is vital for the water supply. It is vital for the ambulances, for the hospitals to operate and many other instances to make life in Gaza a little bit lighter in this ongoing humanitarian catastrophe.”

Israel refuses to allow fuel to enter Gaza because it classifies diesel as a “dual use” good that can be used by Hamas for military purposes. It also argues that Hamas has stockpiled large quantities of fuel which it is hoarding for military use.

It also insists that no cease-fire is possible while it is engaged in an existential struggle against an organization that is committed to the killing of Jews and the destruction of Israel.

“Children are absolutely dying because there are situations where they do not have the medical supplies, the medical care they need … who have been impacted by the bombardments and should have had their lives saved,” said Elder.

“Without humanitarian access, the deaths from the attacks could be the tip of the iceberg,” he said, warning that deaths will increase substantially if hospitals continue to be deprived of the medicine they need, “if incubators start to fail, and hospitals go dark for lack of electricity.”

The WHO says 130 premature infants are dependent on incubators, 61 percent of whom are in the northern part of Gaza, where Israeli bombardment is most intense. It says 50,000 women are pregnant, with an average of 180 births a day, and 350,000 people with non-communicable diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer, need urgent medical care.

“None of this can happen without medical supplies, without electricity,” said Lindmeier. “This is an imminent public health catastrophe that looms with mass displacement, with overcrowding, with damage to water and sanitation infrastructure.”

Elder said UNICEF has sent 25 trucks across the border into Gaza since October 21. He said eight trucks, which arrived in Gaza Monday, were carrying water, hygiene and medical supplies, but no fuel.

“There is a lot of frustration and anger from agencies because we have so, so many trucks at that border, so many containers full and unable to get into Gaza.

“We know that even if we cannot get that cease-fire that we have so desperately been calling for from day one, that at least we must get these people the basics that any humans deserve — water, medicines.”

“Agencies are getting some in, UNICEF is getting some in,” he said. “But it remains a drop. It remains unacceptable.”
…

With White House funding to put more electric cars on the road, some states are using the money to build out their part of a fast-charging EV network. Deana Mitchell has the story.
…

In a little more than five years – sometime in early 2029 – the world will likely be unable to stay below the internationally agreed temperature limit for global warming if it continues to burn fossil fuels at its current rate, a new study says.

The study moves three years closer the date when the world will eventually hit a critical climate threshold, which is an increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since the 1800s.

Beyond that temperature increase, the risks of catastrophes increase, as the world will likely lose most of its coral reefs, a key ice sheet could kick into irreversible melt, and water shortages, heat waves and death from extreme weather dramatically increase, according to an earlier United Nations scientific report.

Hitting that threshold will happen sooner than initially calculated because the world has made progress in cleaning up a different type of air pollution — tiny smoky particles called aerosols. Aerosols slightly cool the planet and mask the effects of burning coal, oil and natural gas, the study’s lead author said. Put another way, while cleaning up aerosol pollution is a good thing, that success means slightly faster rises in temperatures.

The study in Monday’s journal Nature Climate Change calculates what’s referred to as the remaining “carbon budget,” which is how much fossil fuels the world can burn and still have a 50% chance of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times. That is the threshold set by the 2015 Paris agreement.

The last 10 years are already on average 1.14 degrees Celsius (2.05 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than the 19th century. Last year was 1.26 degrees Celsius (2.27 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer and this year is likely to blow past that, according to scientists.

The new study set the carbon budget at 250 billion metric tons. The world is burning a little more than 40 billion metric tons a year (and still rising), leaving six years left. But that six years started in January 2023, the study said, so that’s now only five years and a couple months away.

“It’s not that the fight against climate change will be lost after six years, but I think probably if we’re not already on a strong downward trajectory, it’ll be too late to fight for that 1.5 degree limit,” said study lead author Robin Lamboll, an Imperial College of London climate scientist.

A 2021 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report gave a budget of 500 billion metric tons pointed to a mid 2032 date for locking in 1.5 degrees, Lamboll said. An update by many IPCC authors this June came up with a carbon budget the same as Lamboll’s team, but Lamboll’s analysis is more detailed, said IPCC report co-chair and climate scientist Valerie Masson-Delmotte.

The biggest change from the 2021 report to this year’s studies is that new research show bigger reductions in aerosol emissions — which come from wildfires, sea salt spray, volcanoes and burning fossil fuels — that lead to sooty air that cools the planet a tad, covering up the bigger greenhouse gas effect. As the world cleans up its carbon-emitting emissions it is simultaneously reducing the cooling aerosols too and the study takes that more into account, as do changes to computer simulations, Lamboll said.

Even though the carbon budget looks to run out early in the year 2029, that doesn’t mean the world will instantly hit 1.5 degrees warmer than pre-industrial times. The actual temperature change could happen a bit earlier or as much as a decade or two later, but it will happen once the budget runs out, Lamboll said.

People should not misinterpret running out of the budget for 1.5 degrees as the only time left to stop global warming, the authors said. Their study said the carbon budget with a 50% chance to keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) is 1220 billion metric tons, which is about 30 years.

“We don’t want this to be interpreted as six years to save the planet,” study co-author Christopher Smith, a University of Leeds climate scientist, said. “If we are able to limit warming to 1.6 degrees or 1.65 degrees or 1.7 degrees, that’s a lot better than 2 degrees. We still need to fight for every tenth of a degree.”

Climate scientist Bill Hare of Climate Action Tracker, which monitors national efforts to reduce carbon emissions, said “breaching the 1.5 degree limit does not push the world over a cliff at that point, but it is very much an inflection point in increasing risk of catastrophic changes.”

As they head into climate negotiations in Dubai next month, world leaders still say “the 1.5-degree limit is achievable.” Lamboll said limiting warming to 1.5 degrees is technically possible, but politically is challenging and unlikely.

“We have got to the stage where the 1.5C carbon budget is so small that it’s almost losing meaning,” said climate scientist Glen Peters of the Norwegian CICERO climate institute, who wasn’t part of the research. “If your face is about to slam in the wall at 100 miles per hour, it is sort of irrelevant if your nose is currently 1 millimeter or 2 millimeters from the wall. … We are still heading in the wrong direction at 100 mph.”

People “shouldn’t worry — they should act,” said climate scientist Piers Forster of the University of Leeds, who wasn’t part of Lamboll’s team. Acting as fast as possible “can halve the rate of warming this decade.”

 
…

President Joe Biden on Monday signed a wide-ranging executive order on artificial intelligence, covering topics as varied as national security, consumer privacy, civil rights and commercial competition. The administration heralded the order as taking “vital steps forward in the U.S.’s approach on safe, secure, and trustworthy AI.”

The order directs departments and agencies across the U.S. federal government to develop policies aimed at placing guardrails alongside an industry that is developing newer and more powerful systems at a pace rate that has many concerned it will outstrip effective regulation.

“To realize the promise of AI and avoid the risk, we need to govern this technology,” Biden said during a signing ceremony at the White House. The order, he added, is “the most significant action any government anywhere in the world has ever taken on AI safety, security and trust.” 

‘Red teaming’ for security 

One of the marquee requirements of the new order is that it will require companies developing advanced artificial intelligence systems to conduct rigorous testing of their products to ensure that bad actors cannot use them for nefarious purposes. The process, known as red teaming, will assess, among other things, “AI systems threats to critical infrastructure, as well as chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and cybersecurity risks.” 

The National Institute of Standards and Technology will set the standards for such testing, and AI companies will be required to report their results to the federal government prior to releasing new products to the public. The Departments of Homeland Security and Energy will be closely involved in the assessment of threats to vital infrastructure. 

To counter the threat that AI will enable the creation and dissemination of false and misleading information, including computer-generated images and “deep fake” videos, the Commerce Department will develop guidance for the creation of standards that will allow computer-generated content to be easily identified, a process commonly called “watermarking.” 

The order directs the White House chief of staff and the National Security Council to develop a set of guidelines for the responsible and ethical use of AI systems by the U.S. national defense and intelligence agencies.

Privacy and civil rights

The order proposes a number of steps meant to increase Americans’ privacy protections when AI systems access information about them. That includes supporting the development of privacy-protecting technologies such as cryptography and creating rules for how government agencies handle data containing citizens’ personally identifiable information.

However, the order also notes that the United States is currently in need of legislation that codifies the kinds of data privacy protections that Americans are entitled to. Currently, the U.S. lags far behind Europe in the development of such rules, and the order calls on Congress to “pass bipartisan data privacy legislation to protect all Americans, especially kids.”

The order recognizes that the algorithms that enable AI to process information and answer users’ questions can themselves be biased in ways that disadvantage members of minority groups and others often subject to discrimination. It therefore calls for the creation of rules and best practices addressing the use of AI in a variety of areas, including the criminal justice system, health care system and housing market.

The order covers several other areas, promising action on protecting Americans whose jobs may be affected by the adoption of AI technology; maintaining the United States’ market leadership in the creation of AI systems; and assuring that the federal government develops and follows rules for its own adoption of AI systems.

Open questions

Experts say that despite the broad sweep of the executive order, much remains unclear about how the Biden administration will approach the regulations of AI in practice.

Benjamin Boudreaux, a policy researcher at the RAND Corporation, told VOA that while it is clear the administration is “trying to really wrap their arms around the full suite of AI challenges and risks,” much work remains to be done.

“The devil is in the details here about what funding and resources go to executive branch agencies to actually enact many of these recommendations, and just what models a lot of the norms and recommendations suggested here will apply to,” Boudreaux said.

International leadership

Looking internationally, the order says the administration will work to take the lead in developing “an effort to establish robust international frameworks for harnessing AI’s benefits and managing its risks and ensuring safety.”

James A. Lewis, senior vice president and director of the strategic technologies program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told VOA that the executive order does a good job of laying out where the U.S. stands on many important issues related to the global development of AI.

“It hits all the right issues,” Lewis said. “It’s not groundbreaking in a lot of places, but it puts down the marker for companies and other countries as to how the U.S. is going to approach AI.”

That’s important, Lewis said, because the U.S. is likely to play a leading role in the development of the international rules and norms that grow up around the technology.

“Like it or not — and certainly some countries don’t like it — we are the leaders in AI,” Lewis said. “There’s a benefit to being the place where the technology is made when it comes to making the rules, and the U.S. can take advantage of that.”

‘Fighting the last war’ 

Not all experts are certain the Biden administration’s focus is on the real threats that AI might present to consumers and citizens. 

Louis Rosenberg, a 30-year veteran of AI development and the CEO of American tech firm Unanimous AI, told VOA he is concerned the administration may be “fighting the last war.”

“I think it’s great that they’re making a bold statement that this is a very important issue,” Rosenberg said. “It definitely shows that the administration is taking it seriously and that they want to protect the public from AI.”

However, he said, when it comes to consumer protection, the administration seems focused on how AI might be used to advance existing threats to consumers, like fake images and videos and convincing misinformation — things that already exist today.

“When it comes to regulating technology, the government has a track record of underestimating what’s new about the technology,” he said.

Rosenberg said he is more concerned about the new ways in which AI might be used to influence people. For example, he noted that AI systems are being built to interact with people conversationally.

“Very soon, we’re not going to be typing in requests into Google. We’re going to be talking to an interactive AI bot,” Rosenberg said. “AI systems are going to be really effective at persuading, manipulating, potentially even coercing people conversationally on behalf of whomever is directing that AI. This is the new and different threat that did not exist before AI.” 
…

Elon Musk has said that corrections to posts on X would no longer be eligible for payment as the social network comes under mounting criticism as becoming a conduit for misinformation.

In the year since taking over Twitter, now rebranded as X, Musk has gutted content moderation, restored accounts of previously banned extremists, and allowed users to purchase account verification, helping them profit from viral — but often inaccurate — posts.

Musk has instead promoted Community Notes, in which X users police the platform, as a tool to combat misinformation. 

But on Sunday, Musk tweeted a modification in how Community Notes works.

“Making a slight change to creator monetization: Any posts that are corrected by @CommunityNotes become ineligible for revenue share,” he wrote.  

“The idea is to maximize the incentive for accuracy over sensationalism,” he added. 

X pays content creators whose work generates lots of views a share of advertising revenue. 

Musk warned against using corrections to make X users ineligible for receiving payouts.

“Worth ‘noting’ that any attempts to weaponize @CommunityNotes to demonetize people will be immediately obvious, because all code and data is open source,” he posted.

Musk’s announcement follows the unveiling Friday of a $16-a-month subscription plan that users who pay more get the biggest boost for their replies. Earlier this year it unveiled an $8-a-month plan to get a “verified” account.

A recent study by the disinformation monitoring group NewsGuard found that verified, paying subscribers were the big spreaders of misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war. 

“Nearly three-fourths of the most viral posts on X advancing misinformation about the Israel-Hamas War are being pushed by ‘verified’ X accounts,” the group said.

It said the 250 most-engaged posts that promoted one of 10 prominent false or unsubstantiated narratives related to the war were viewed more than 100 million times globally in just one week. 

NewsGuard said 186 of those posts were made from verified accounts and only 79 had been fact-checked by Community Notes. 

Verified accounts “turned out to be a boon for bad actors sharing misinformation,” said NewsGuard.

“For less than the cost of a movie ticket, they have gained the added credibility associated with the once-prestigious blue checkmark and enabling them to reach a larger audience on the platform,” it said.

While the organization said it found misinformation spreading widely on other social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Telegram, it added that it found false narratives about the Israel-Hamas war tend to go viral on X before spreading elsewhere. 
…

The US-based National Kidney Foundation says that each year, kidney disease kills millions of people worldwide because they don’t have access to affordable or available care. This problem of cost and access to care is also seen in Ghana, where kidney-related cases are on the rise in the Northern region’s Tamale Teaching Hospital. Alhassan Abdul Washeed reports. Camera: Eyor Zamani
…

State and local health departments across the U.S found out in June they’d be losing the final two years of a $1 billion investment to strengthen the ranks of people who track and try to prevent sexually transmitted diseases — especially the rapid increase of syphilis cases.

The fallout was quick.

Nevada, which saw a 44 percentage-point jump in congenital syphilis from 2021 to 2022, was supposed to get more than $10 million to bolster its STD program budget. Instead, the state’s STD prevention budget fell by more than 75%, reducing its capacity to respond to syphilis, according to Dawn Cribb at the Nevada Division of Public and Behavioral Health.

Several states told The Associated Press the loss of funding is affecting efforts to expand their disease intervention workforce. These are people who do contact tracing and outreach and are key in stopping the spread of syphilis, which reached a low point in the U.S. in 2000 but has increased almost every year since. In 2021, there were 176,713 cases — up 31% from the prior year.

“It was devastating, really, because we had worked so hard to shore up our workforce and also implement new activities,” said Sam Burgess, the STD/HIV program director for the Louisiana Department of Health.

His state was slated to receive more than $14 million overall, but instead got $8.6 million to stretch until January 2026. “And we’re still scrambling to try to figure out how we can plug some of those funding gaps,” he said.

While men who have sex with men are disproportionately impacted by syphilis, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and health officials across the country also point to the increase in pregnant women who are passing syphilis to their babies. It can cause serious health issues for infants, including blindness and bone damage, or lead to stillbirths. In 2021, there were 77.9 cases of congenital syphilis per 100,000 live births.

Disease intervention specialists often link infected mothers and their partners with care for syphilis, which has mild symptoms for adults, like fever and sores. Doing so in a timely manner can prevent congenital syphilis. The specialists also can help pregnant patients find prenatal care.

“When you have a mother who didn’t know (she had syphilis), it can be very emotional trying to explain … it could have been prevented if we could have caught it before,” said Deneshun Graves, a public health investigator with the Houston Health Department.

The Houston Health Department is in the midst of what it calls a “rapid community outreach response” because syphilis cases increased by 128% among women from 2019 to 2022, and congenital syphilis cases went from 16 in 2019 to 151 in 2021.

Its STD/HIV bureau was set to receive a total of $10.7 million from the federal grant but will end up with about 75% of that.

The department has used the money to hire disease intervention specialists and epidemiologists — including Graves. But Lupita Thornton, a public health investigator manager, said she could use “double of everything,” and had planned to bring down the caseload for her investigators by hiring even more people.

It would help Graves, who deals with more than 70 cases at a time.

“You got people that don’t want to go in and get treatment. You have people that don’t want to answer the phone, so you got to continue to call,” Graves said.

Mississippi is also seeing an increase in congenital syphilis cases, which a recently published study showed rose tenfold between 2016 and 2022. Health officials said a combination of funding shortages and poor access to prenatal care compounds their ability to stop the spread of syphilis.

The Mississippi State Department of Health was supposed to get more than $9 million in federal grant money over five years to expand its disease intervention workforce. Agency head Dr. Dan Edney said one of his top priorities now is finding money from other parts of the state’s health budget.

Arizona has the highest rate of congenital syphilis in the nation: 232.3 cases per 100,000 live births. The federal money helped the state Department of Health Services clear out a backlog of several thousand non-syphilis STD investigations that had been stalled for years, said Rebecca Scranton, the deputy bureau chief of infectious disease and services.

“We were finally at the point where we were able to breathe again,” Scranton said, “and start really kind of tackling it.”
…

Mouse embryos have been grown on the International Space Station and developed normally in the first study indicating it could be possible for humans to reproduce in space, a group of Japanese scientists said.

The researchers, including Teruhiko Wakayama, professor of University of Yamanashi’s Advanced Biotechnology Centre, and a team from the Japan Aerospace Space Agency (JAXA), sent frozen mouse embryos on board a rocket to the ISS in August 2021.

Astronauts thawed the early-stage embryos using a special device designed for this purpose and grew them on the station for four days.

“The embryos cultured under microgravity conditions developed” normally into blastocysts, cells that develop into the foetus and placenta, the scientists said.

The experiment “clearly demonstrated that gravity had no significant effect,” the researchers said in a study that was published online in the scientific journal iScience on Saturday.

They also said there were no significant changes in condition of the DNA and genes, after they analysed the blastocysts that were sent back to their laboratories on Earth.

This is “the first-ever study that shows mammals may be able to thrive in space,” University of Yamanashi and national research institute Riken said in a joint statement on Saturday.

It is “the world’s first experiment that cultured early-stage mammalian embryos under complete microgravity of ISS,” the statement said.

“In the future, it will be necessary to transplant the blastocysts that were cultured in ISS’s microgravity into mice to see if mice can give birth” to confirm that the blastocysts are normal, it added.

Such research could be important for future space exploration and colonisation missions.

Under its Artemis programme, NASA plans to send humans back to the Moon in order to learn how to live there long-term to help prepare a trip to Mars, sometime towards the end of the 2030s.

 
…

Runners undeterred by thick smog engulfing the Chinese capital ran the Beijing Marathon maskless on Sunday, many wearing shorts in one of the warmest Octobers on record.

Despite a greyish brown smog settling, some 30,000 marathoners set off at 7:30 a.m. (2330 GMT) from Tiananmen Square on the route through four districts of the Chinese capital over 42.195 km (26.2 miles).

Beijing was the second most-polluted major city in the world on Sunday, according to Swiss air-quality technology firm IQAir.

In the Haidian district on Beijing’s outskirts, the sky looked dreary, but hikers and visitors showed up at the Fragrant Hills Park where many go to enjoy autumn foliage, according to a Reuters witness.

China’s national forecaster advised the public to wear masks, warning on Sunday morning that air quality was reaching moderate or severe pollution.

Smog and fog will blanket parts of China for the next few days, reducing visibility and affecting travel in northeastern, northern, central and some eastern provinces, the National Meteorological Center said on Sunday.

Beijing’s observatory cautioned in the evening that visibility in most areas of the city will drop to less than 1 km (0.62 mile) overnight.

The smoggy weather is expected to gradually weaken and dissipate from Friday, but not before heavy fog forecast to cover parts of Jiangsu, Anhui and Sichuan provinces over the next three days could reduce visibility to less than 200 meters (650 feet), the forecaster said.

Steel production hubs in Tangshan, Handan and other cities in the northern province of Hebei launched emergency responses on Friday after heavy air pollution forecasts. The notices did not indicate when the controls would be lifted.

The smog adds unusually warm October weather, due to significantly weaker cold air currents from the north as the polar vortex that sends cold air southward was situated further north recently, experts said.

Beijing’s high on Sunday was 19 C (66 F), according to the national weather bureau.

Parts of China, including in the north and northeast, have been experiencing temperatures 2 to 4 degrees Celsius (4-7 Fahrenheit) higher than normal the past 10 days.

“At present, a total of 237 national meteorological stations have broken historically highest temperatures in late October, which is still a relatively rare situation,” meteorological bureau’s chief forecaster Fang Chong was quoted by state media as saying.

Weak cold air currents were forecast to last the rest of the month before beginning to cool in early November.

While the smog was expected to clear up in less than a week, the backdrop of hazy weather resembled that of Beijing’s annual race almost a decade ago. In 2014 then-Premier Li Keqiang, who died on Friday, declared “war” on pollution and many marathoners donned masks for protection.

 
…