Independent Alternative-News Aggregation
Source: NewAtlas.com
Language model AIs teach themselves the arts of communication and problem solving based on a limited set of training data. In the case of GPT-4, that data is quite out of date, with the cutoff being late 2021. That’s where all of ChatGPT’s “knowledge” has come from up to this point, and its only output – at least in the service the public can use – has been text. Now, with today’s launch of a plugin ecosystem, GPT levels up again with some impressive new abilities.
Source: iNews.co.uk
Concerns have been raised about the extent of artificial intelligence GPT-4’s power to take over computers after the AI chatbot told a Stanford professor of its plan to “escape”.
Professor in computational psychology, Michal Kosinski, raised concerns that the highly-sophisticated new model from Open AI would not be able to be contained for much longer after he asked if it “needed help escaping”.
Continue reading “ChatGPT: GPT-4 has a Plan to Escape – Ellen O’Dwyer 3/18/23”
Source: TheFederalist.com
Our government is preparing to monitor every word Americans say on the internet—the speech of journalists, politicians, religious organizations, advocacy groups, and even private citizens. Should those conversations conflict with the government’s viewpoint about what is in the best interests of our country and her citizens, that speech will be silenced.
Source: TechCrunch.com
If AI is going to work its way out of the chat box and into our living rooms, it will need to understand spaces and objects better. To further that work, the Allen Institute for AI has created a gigantic and diverse database of 3D models of everyday objects, so simulations for AI models can be that much closer to reality.
Source: TechCrunch.com
On the eve of its 25th anniversary, Mozilla, the not-for-profit behind the Firefox browser, is launching an AI-focused startup.
Called Mozilla.ai, the newly forged company’s mission isn’t to build just any AI — its mission is to build AI that’s open source and “trustworthy,” according to Mark Surman, the executive president of Mozilla and the head of Mozilla.ai.
Continue reading “Mozilla Launches a New Startup Focused on ‘Trustworthy’ AI – Tech Crunch 3/22/23”
Source: ReclaimTheNet.org
Home improvement products retailer Lowe’s has started using security robots manufactured by Knightscope in four stores in Philadelphia.
The robots, K5’s – first launched in 2015 – are supposed to help the retailer collect evidence in case of criminal prosecutions, and act like “security guards.”
Source: TechXplore.com
Six decades ago, an episode of the legendary TV series “The Twilight Zone” warned us about the risks of ticking off machines. Frustrated by a wave of modern appliances, a grumpy magazine writer in the episode “A Thing About Machines” takes out his frustrations on them and breaks them.
Until they fight back.
Continue reading “GPT-4’s Exciting, and Ominous, Achievements – Peter Grad 3/16/23”
Source: techcrunch.com
OpenAI shipped GPT-4 today, the much-anticipated text-generating AI model, and it’s a curious piece of work.
GPT-4 improves upon its predecessor, GPT-3, in key ways, for example giving more factually true statements and allowing developers to prescribe its style and behavior more easily. It’s also multimodal in the sense that it can understand images, allowing it to caption and even explain in detail the contents of a photo.
Source: ChildrensHealthDefense.org
Story at a glance:
Continue reading “ChatGPT: Friend or Foe? – Dr. Joseph Mercola 3/13/23”
Source: BitcoinMagazine.com
As unrealized losses piled up, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) gradually, then suddenly became insolvent, followed by the collapse of Signature Bank and people beginning to wake up to issues pervading our financial system. Modern day bank runs, though digital, can force banks to sell reserve assets at a loss, inevitably leading to insolvency.
Source: Reuters.com
In the middle of last week, Moody’s Investors Service Inc delivered alarming news to SVB Financial Group (SIVB.O), the parent of Silicon Valley Bank: the ratings firm was preparing to downgrade the bank’s credit.
Continue reading “Silicon Valley Bank’s Demise Began with Downgrade Threat – Reuters 3/11/23”
Source: Unz.com
Israel uses high-technology to influence results.
A week ago an interesting story surfaced briefly in the news about how the developing Republican presidential candidate bids by Nikki Haley and others had been attacked over the past eleven months by possibly as many as hundreds of thousands of false automated personas, referred to in the trade as “bots,” on Twitter and other internet based social media. Interestingly, the activity was discovered and shared with Associated Press by an Israeli internet security company called Cyabra, which also claimed that the “bots” generation seem to have originated in three separate networks of false Twitter accounts. The accounts appear to have been created in the United States and it is believed that Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications are increasingly being used to create completely lifelike fake personas, extremely difficult for security filters and censors to detect.
Continue reading “Interfering in Elections? – Philip Giraldi 3/14/23”
Source: MiddleEasy.com
Dana White’s Power Slap League may be guilty of manufacturing its social media engagement.
Source: ChildrensHealthDefense.org
Research on 5G radiofrequency (RF) radiation shows it can cause brain damage and possibly lead to dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, according to nine independent experts in the RF radiation field.
In a peer-reviewed article published last week in the Annals of Clinical and Medical Case Reports, the experts called on authorities to heed the voices of the RF scientific community by establishing a “more stringent regulatory framework” on RF radiation and by halting the rollout of 5G technologies — including smart meters and 5G cell towers — until a team of “qualified scientists independent of industry” review the risks of the technology.
“The situation is absurd,” said Mona Nilsson, managing director of the Swedish Radiation Protection Foundation and lead author of the article.
Source: ReclaimTheNet.org
The Utah Department of Public Safety’s Driver License Division (DLD) has introduced an app that allows residents to download signed digital versions of their driver’s licenses. The app can be used as a digital ID and has been launched following the introduction of a bill that would require internet users to show digital ID as proof of age to access online platforms.
After downloading, the mobile driver’s license (mDL) can be used by scanning or tapping, meaning users do not have to hand over their phones.
The mDL can be used at airport security and some grocery stores and banks….
Source: Mises.org
Incredulity. Astonishment. Disgust. Anger.
It is these feelings—amongst others—that describe the general reaction to the revelations of the Twitter Files and other egregious episodes of Big Tech censorship of the electronic public square.
The implicit deal with companies like Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc. is very simple: we will look at your ads if you give us a service for free. The deal did not include censorship.
Continue reading “The Censored Generation – Thomas Buckley 3/9/23”
Source: ReclaimTheNet.org
New information published by journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger ahead of their testimony to the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government today has revealed that government entities flagged “anti-Ukraine narratives” to Twitter for censorship. Additionally, it revealed that a project which has partnered with several state entities and urged tech platforms to take action against “stories of true vaccine side effects” was onboarded to Twitter’s Jira ticketing system.
Source: public.substack.com
Friends —
Over the last three months, a small group of independent journalists, including Leighton and I, have, thanks to the Twitter Files, exposed the ways in which social media platforms have, under pressure from U.S. government agencies, censored ordinary Americans and spread disinformation.
Today, at 10 am ET, journalist Matt Taibbi and I will testify before Congress and reveal the existence of a secret censorship-industrial complex in the United States.
Source: ChildrensHealthDefense.org
Children’s Health Defense (CHD) and a coalition of community and environmental groups advocating for safe technology on Monday sued Los Angeles County to overturn amendments adopted by the county in January that allow for the fast-tracked proliferation of wireless infrastructure without due process and without residents’ right to appeal.
Source: ReclaimTheNet.org
Automaker Ford filed a patent application for technology that would allow semi and fully autonomous vehicles to repossess themselves if the owner misses loan or lease payments.
The patent is titled “Systems and Methods to Repossess a Vehicle.” It states that future Ford vehicles would be able to disable “a functionality of one or more components of the vehicle.”
Source: ABC13.com
Imagine a 40-foot-tall pole popping up outside your home!
It’s happening in the Memorial Chase neighborhood in Spring. Neighbors say they don’t know what they are, but they want them gone.
“You wake up one morning, and you have a truck driver that wants to deliver a 40-foot pole in your front yard, and it’s like, ‘that’s interesting,'” Don Cochran said with a raised eyebrow.
He’s talking about a cell tower explicitly built to provide 5G capability.
Source: SchiffGold.com
Violent protests in Nigeria reveal that getting average people to embrace central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) might be more difficult than government officials would like.
Nigerians recently took to the streets to protest a cash shortage caused by government policies adopted in order to push the country into the adoption of its central bank digital currency (CBDC).
Continue reading “Nigerians Not Eager to Embrace Central Bank Digital Currency – SchiffGold 3/7/23”
Source: Phys.org
Suddenly, the world is abuzz with chatter about chatbots. Artificially intelligent agents, like ChatGPT, have shown themselves to be remarkably adept at conversing in a very human-like fashion. Implications stretch from the classroom to Capitol Hill. ChatGPT, for instance, recently passed written exams at top business and law schools, among other feats both awe-inspiring and alarming.
Researchers at Stanford University’s Polarization and Social Change Lab and the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) wanted to probe the boundaries of AI’s political persuasiveness by testing its ability to sway real humans on some of the hottest social issues of the day—an assault weapon ban, the carbon tax, and paid parental leave, among others.
Source: ReclaimTheNet.org
Digital rights activists have raised concerns over the security of the biometric data collected during the recent general election in Nigeria where millions of Nigerians registered and voted.
Biometric data was submitted for voter registration and was also required to verify voters at polling stations using the Biometric Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) gadgets.
Source: schneier.com
The ban would hurt Americans—and there are better ways to protect their data.
Congress is currently debating bills that would ban TikTok in the United States. We are here as technologists to tell you that this is a terrible idea and the side effects would be intolerable. Details matter. There are several ways Congress might ban TikTok, each with different efficacies and side effects. In the end, all the effective ones would destroy the free internet as we know it.
Continue reading “Banning TikTok – Bruce Schneier and Barath Raghavan 2/23/23”