An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The state of Florida is seeking a temporary injunction to stop OpenAI from continuing to develop what it calls a "reckless, unacceptably risky product" without the deployment of "third-party approved safety guardrails." The new legal motion (PDF), filed Monday...
The current El Nino has already surpassed the highest Pacific temperature anomaly recorded in the modern era, reaching 3.05C above the 1991-2020 average months before its expected peak. The commonly used ONI measure is also on the verge of breaking the 2015 record. Forecasts cited by The Guardian suggest the event...
New research suggests Enceladus may be an especially promising place to search for extraterrestrial life: microbes similar to those found near Earth's hydrothermal vents survived in lab conditions designed to mimic the Saturnian moon's subsurface ocean. A separate study also found that material blasted from Enceladus'...
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: It is the bane of every fruit bowl: sliced banana that turns brown before it has reached the table. But such woes could soon be a thing of the past, with gene-edited bananas that keep their freshly peeled color now one step closer to reaching British shoppers...
Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Business Standard: China has expanded overseas travel restrictions for top AI professionals in private firms to include the families of key personnel, further tightening measures designed to prevent the outflow of critical know-how and information to the US...
AMD has agreed to acquire Fei-Fei Li's World Labs for about $8.2 billion in stock, making it the chipmaker's second-largest acquisition and giving it a major foothold in "world models" that simulate 3D environments for robotics and other physically grounded AI. CNBC reports: AI researchers expect world models will be...
TikTok has agreed to pay Alabama at least $100 million and adopt new restrictions for teenage users, including a two-hour daily limit, overnight access restrictions, stronger age verification, a ban on beauty filters, and an option for a non-personalized feed. The settlement could grow to as much as $300 million if...
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom's Hardware: NorthPoint Development wants to build a data center on 1,300 acres in the Pocono foothills, near Hazle Township, Pennsylvania. As well as seeking to charm the local government with various funding packages, it has proposed paying checks of $10,000 per household...
Meta has hired MongoDB CEO Chirantan "CJ" Desai to lead a new enterprise AI business aimed at turning Meta's models, agents and tools into products companies can deploy themselves. Reuters reports: Desai, a veteran technology executive, took over the role from Dev Ittycheria. MongoDB has appointed Ittycheria as...
wiredmikey shares a report from SecurityWeek: Nvidia on Monday announced the Open Agent Safety Platform, which combines open source software and a reference system design to keep AI agents within set boundaries from testing through deployment. The chipmaker explained that the platform pairs the open-source OpenShell...
Amazon is preparing to expand Prime Air drone deliveries into Australia and potentially other Asia-Pacific markets, with a new regulatory role tasked with securing the approvals needed to launch service there. The Register reports: "As Prime Air evaluates Australia and other countries, we are hiring a Head of...
Bill Gates said an AI "kill switch" alone would be insufficient to address the technology's risks. "The kill switch is, that's kind of a weird thing. It's not enough to have a kill switch," the Microsoft co-founder said in an interview that aired Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press." He said the more immediate concern is...
SpaceX's Starship reached orbit for the first time, successfully deploying 26 operational Starlink V3 satellites after overcoming an early Raptor 3 engine shutdown during ascent. "SpaceX plans to eventually deploy 100,000 upgraded Starlink V3s to expand the company's wireless satellite internet services," notes...
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: Walmart is aiming to assuage customers' fears about its new pricing technology as it rolls out digital price labels at its stores. In a statement posted on the company's website, Walmart's CEO John Furner vowed that the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer...
Are AI chatbots quietly shaping the perceptions of U.S. voters? Voters trying to educate themselves about candidates "are unknowingly being served partisan talking points in the guise of neutral news summaries," write two news researchers in Politico magazine: Leading AI chatbots cite partisan websites masquerading as...