Another Democrat, Representative Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts, gave a one-minute speech — written by a chatbot — calling for regulation of A.I.

Sergei Lavrov

emphasises the demands of poor countries: including for inclusive growth, climate finance, more “representative” multilateral institutions and progress on the UN’s sustainable development goals, which has been set back by the fallout from covid-19.

As the self-styled “voice of the global South”, it especially wants to emphasise the importance of powerful developing countries in that effort.

Whichever AI platform comes out top, you can’t go wrong selling picks and shovels in a gold rush.

The share price of Nvidia, which designs chips useful for AI applications, is up by 60% so far this year.

Getty Images, a repository of photographs, and individual artists have already filed lawsuits against AI art-generators such as Stable Diffusion. News organisations whose articles are plundered for information may do the same.

Generative-AI platforms may not enjoy the legal protection from liability that shields social media

This happened just as venture capitalists disappointed by the cryptocurrency crash and the empty metaverse were on the lookout for the next big thing.

A spreadsheet maintained by Pete Flint at NfX, a VC firm, now lists 539 generative-AI startups.

One catalogue, maintained by Ben Tossell, a British tech entrepreneur, and shared in a newsletter, has recently grown to include, among others, Ask Seneca (which answers questions based on the writings of the stoic philosopher), Pickaxe (which analyses your own documents), and Issac Editor (which helps students write academic papers).

As Mr Grimes points out, entrepreneurs who are pushing entirely new products are expected to distort reality without overinflating expectations. How they handle hype can help determine whether they can pull off this difficult balancing act.

But the flaws in the technology now attract as much attention.

over 100 new cryptocurrencies have been created that have ChatGPT in their name.

Some think of hype as a public good, vital in enabling new technologies to get going.

venture-capital funds are pouring money into AI startups; established firms are rushing to explain how they will use the technology to do everything from customer service to coding.

As excitement about the next big thing builds, people fall over themselves to get on board. A year and a half ago, the metaverse was the future. Companies appointed chief metaverse officers, and futurologists burbled about web 3.0. The idea has not gone away.

the historical connection between diplomacy and science in Eurasia is a necessary component in understanding the modern notion of science diplomacy beyond a European context and applied more globally both in terms of time and space.

Scientists and intellectuals routinely headed diplomatic embassies sent and received by the Mongol Empire.

All the notions we thought solid, all that made for stability in international relations, all that made for regularity in the economy . . . in a word, all that tended happily to limit the uncertainty of the morrow, all that gave nations and individuals some confidence in the morrow . . . all this seems badly compromised. Never has humanity combined so much power with so much disorder, so much knowledge with so much uncertainty.

Specifically, the organization should engage in active contingency planning on a host of dimensions that include data and networks, internet protocols, people, partnerships, repatriation of funds, and security.

the emergence of pivot geographies, such as India and Vietnam, as additional opportunities for investment amid “friendshoring.”

for an accelerated renewable-energy transition, whereby Europe can potentially lead the world.

gray rhinos are probable events with high impact

External perspectives may range from retaining a political risk advisory group that has an arm’s-length view; to scanning public source materials, such as the World Economic Forum’s Global Risk Report or govern­mental sources such as the US National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends and similar strategic assessments commissioned by EU institutions; to leveraging insights from academic, policy, media, and nonprofit arenas.

lookouts as an early-warning system and full-scale contingency plans for a core subset of geopolitical risks.

scenario planning is squarely back.

the consolidation of the West is taking place in an increasingly divided post-Western world. 

Rather than expecting them to support Western efforts to defend the fading post-cold war order, we need to be ready to partner with them in building a new one.

In our view, the West would be well advised to treat India, Turkiye, Brazil, and other comparable powers as new sovereign subjects of world history rather than as objects to be dragooned onto the right side of history.

President Lula speaks in favour of preserving his country’s neutrality vis-à-vis Ukraine and Russia, to avoid “any participation, even indirect,” even as he accepts that Russia “was wrong” to invade its neighbour.

today one’s major trade partners are not usually one’s security partners.

Our polling shows that many people in the West see the coming international order as the return of a cold war-type bipolarity between West and East, between democracy and authoritarianism. In this context, decision-makers in the US and the EU may feel inclined to view countries such as India and Turkiye as swing states that can be cajoled into siding with the West.

But the reality is that Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine confirmed the renewed centrality of American power to Europe – with billions of dollars spent maintaining the war effort, which has sustained unity across the Atlantic on sanctions and diplomatic positions towards Russia and given a new lease on life for Western-led institutions such as NATO and the G7.

Meanwhile, outside the West, citizens believe that fragmentation rather than polarisation will mark the next international order. Most people in major non-Western countries such as China, India, Turkiye, and Russia predict the West will soon be just one global pole among several. The West may still be the strongest party but it will not be hegemonic.

people in many non-Western countries appear to believe that the post-cold war era is finished.

people in different parts of the world have experienced and interpreted it in diverse ways.

The pursuit of science has helpeddiplomatic interactions and created conditions for cooper-ation and collaboration of ideas, knowledge and industry inEurasia in time and space

Home to a plethora of materials and metals, re-newable and non-renewable sources of energy, the countriesof Eurasia have benefitted from each other through inter-actions in knowledge production along with exchanges ofgoods and peoples which has been at the heart of progressthrough time and space

science informs, cultivatesand produces collaborations within and outside of socie-ties

offer examples of how scienceand scientists have played the role of diplomats and ne-gotiators since before European hegemony.

International or-ganisations and think tanks bring with them Euro-centricconcepts of development, economic and otherwise, and failto take into account the knowledge and technologies thatexist within Eurasia

Even in Soviettimes Central Asian countries remained connected withflexible borders, if any, and shared infrastructure whichfavoured interaction. It is only since the end of the Cold Warthat we have seen Eurasia, especially countries in CentralAsia, question and struggle with their place in the world

defines Resilience as‘the capacity torecover quickly from difficulties and with toughness’.

Magnetic Refrigeration

Multifunctional Composites

Computer Memories and Information Transport

Spin Nematics

he KyrgyzRepublic and Tajikistan, they have vast reserves of Rare-Earth minerals

So resilience is not the end-game, it is a kind of insurance policy.

Countries inCentral Asia, especially, are home to natural resources of thekind that are essential in future technologies, from metals tohydrocarbons

itsmillennia old intrinsic resilience capacity.

theirnatural wealth of vast materials and metals, needed to drivea new era of electronics, refrigeration and energy storageunderpin all other areas of technology can aid in sustainableglobal development.

the region of Eurasia was the dynamo of curiosity ledintellectual development, for example, Al-Khwarizmi’sdiscovery of Algorithm

Production is more oftenrooted in need, not in demand (!), while the need is cor-related to how the society is organised.

An economic understanding of produc-tion is limited, and limited largely to post-facto analysis ofthe production phenomenon and process.

de-contextualised economicanalysis

Silk Road(s) has been a place for manufacturing and hascontributed to scientific, artistic and cultural breakthroughsof global significance historically. However, the region andits peoples have been left out of current discussions of thisregion as a producer, of ideas and goods.

Thus, we see that the medieval ma-drassa system was a fantastic engine not only for attractingstudents from all over the world but also for extendingbenign political and cultural influences within and beyondthe region.

Al Beruni accompanied Mahmud of Ghazani onmilitary campaigns to India and on Mahmud’s behestdocumented not only India’s philosophy, culture and reli-gion, but also its technology,flora and fauna

Despite their multifaceted existence thesescholars perceived themselves foremost as academics andmediators of knowledge, as evident form a remark by AlBeruni, the 10th century scientist and chronicler:

Quite often these intel-lectual leaders had a wider network base than many of thecourtiers, as quite a few came from humble backgrounds.

AlKhwarizimi (AD 780),

top at ascribing the Persian identityto these thinkers.

histories of the Islamic World, the Persian Empire or theSoviet Union

Despitetheir stellar performance, high degree achievement and im-pact, academic traditions and institutions of Central Asiahave been largely misunderstood

seek to displacethe local educational practices with consequences broaderthan just in education itself

hold the purse strings, but are also responsible foreducational policy and its implementation.

making subtlerepresentation

multiple fingers on touchscreen displays like smartphones. The U.S. Patent and Trade

gnition will not be used, and personal data not recorded by new customer fr

EEE is calling for biometrics papers and two New York State universities are looking

ays it has signed two- to seven-year contracts with several U.S. states to support fingerprint c

Code of Practice on Disinformation: New Transparency Centre provides insights and data on online disinformation for the first time

OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 Per Hour to Make ChatGPT Less Toxic

Lastly, the war is driving Russia into the arms of China. In the Soviet era, China saw Russia as a threat. Now that the vast northern border is at peace, Mr Xi can shift military resources elsewhere. China also benefits from a like-minded ally at the UN, where it can take a back seat while Russia acts as a bully. And finally, notes Alexander Gabuev of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think-tank, Russia is a valuable source of commodities that are increasingly being supplied on Chinese terms.

Yet Mr Tokayev has felt no compunction about being courted by Mr Xi, who visited him just before a regional summit where Mr Putin was chided by both China and India.

Mr Menon sees Europe remaining a force in the global economy, but not becoming one in geopolitics.

The rest tend to see the war as a contest between autocrats and hypocrites.

Only a third of the world’s population lives in countries that have condemned the invasion and also imposed sanctions on Russia, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, our sister organisation.

Owing to this new vigour, Mr Pothier says, Europe, always an economic giant, is turning from a political dwarf into a more imposing presence in world affairs.

A view is emerging that NATO’s centre of gravity is shifting from France and Germany towards the east and north. European defence is increasingly being redefined in Poland and the Nordic countries, as well as in Ukraine.

By that he means that America still helps defend Europe through its nuclear deterrent and other high-tech capabilities, but leaves European armies to provide most of the conventional forces.

the need for America to focus on China

the Pentagon may conclude that the diminished state of Russia’s land forces means that America no longer needs a large standing army on European soil.

what role the United States will play in European security, whether NATO’s European members can credibly take responsibility for more of the region’s defence and what the allegiances of the rest of the world will be amid the biggest war in Europe since 1945.

On Tuesday the Supreme Court began hearing arguments in a case called Gonzalez v. Google, which questions whether tech giants can be held legally responsible for content promoted by their algorithms.

RT videos still spreading Ukraine disinformation on YouTube, report finds

herefore, not registered as being legally associated with any particular nationality.

that governments have taken a less active role in transnational communications infrastructure than in the activities of other strategic industries, such as energy and shipping, where states have traditionally been more heavily involved.

Not only do fibre‑optics transfer data five times faster than satellites but they do so at a vastly lower cost; after all it is rather easier to repair hardware in the English Channel than in orbit

Australia and New Zealand have both passed legislation to prevent interfering with or loitering around undersea cable infrastructure. Canberra also took precautions by installing its own cable to the Solomon Islands.

Russia and China, the continental superpowers that are most hostile to the west, are more controlling of their territorial internet and are less reliant on cables linked across oceans, so are not as vulnerable.

And as Vladimir Putin has long known, the single, physical point of failure in the system that can be overtly threatened is undersea cables.

These cables — which carry an estimated $10tn worth of financial transactions every day — come together at 10 or so international chokepoints, which are particularly vulnerable.

The Hindu religion does actually at least partially stem from the same root as the Greek one! It's an Indo-European religion being heavily influenced by a migration/invasion of Indo-Iranian or Aryan peope into Northern India. These are the people who wrote the Vedas. They were the eastern migration of the same peoples that in the west became the various Slavic peoples, the Norse, the Celts, the Italic peoples, the Hellenic Greeks and so on. The religions evolved very differently across the Norse, Celtic, Indian, Slavic and Greek and Roman strands but you also tended to find them re-combinjng in interesting ways later down the line with the Greek influence transforming Roman culture and religion, and influencing India through Alexander's conquests.41ReplyGive AwardShareReportSaveFollowShow

People (Getty Images, etc.) are suing generative AI companies (Stable Diffusion) saying that copyrighted data was used to train the profit-making ML models. Seems like a slam dunk, right?

a bot can create an account on any platform posing as a fellow human being, it can participate in discourse regarding any subject its AI is trained to focus on, it can like and subscribe to certain channels boosting their seeming appeal to humans and by extension their actual appeal, and it can come into r/philosophy and debate topics with humans.

Sometimes it’s only in the process of writing that you discover your original ideas.

Sometimes it’s only in the process of writing that you discover your original ideas.

The hours spent choosing the right word and rearranging sentences to better follow one another are what teach you how meaning is conveyed by prose.

If the output of ChatGPT isn’t good enough for GPT-4, we might take that as an indicator that it’s not good enough for us, either.

the more that text generated by large language models gets published on the Web, the more the Web becomes a blurrier version of itself.

the re-stating of information in different words.

there’s still the matter of blurriness

When we’re dealing with sequences of words, lossy compression looks smarter than lossless compression.

it creates the illusion that ChatGPT understands the material.

Is it possible that, in areas outside addition and subtraction, statistical regularities in text actually do correspond to genuine knowledge of the real world?

Large language models identify statistical regularities in text.

Hutter believes that better text compression will be instrumental in the creation of human-level artificial intelligence, in part because the greatest degree of compression can be achieved by understanding the text.

ChatGPT is so good at this form of interpolation that people find it entertaining: they’ve discovered a “blur” tool for paragraphs instead of photos, and are having a blast playing with it.

This is what ChatGPT does when it’s prompted to describe, say, losing a sock in the dryer using the style of the Declaration of Independence

it looks at the nearby pixels and calculates the average.

that significant portions of what it generates will be entirely fabricated.

It’s also a way to understand the “hallucinations,” or nonsensical answers to factual questions, to which large language models such as ChatGPT are all too prone.

But, because the approximation is presented in the form of grammatical text, which ChatGPT excels at creating, it’s usually acceptable.

Think of ChatGPT as a blurry JPEG of all the text on the Web.

Reading off of a teleprompter or script? No stress.You can adjust your video after recording and create natural eye contact with your audience.

Ransomware attacks surge against US manufacturing plants

Securing Identities for the Digital Supply ChainProtecting digital identities is a crucial element of digital supply chain security. Decentralized Identity: The Way ForwardDecentralized ledger technology helps emulate the trust between entities and enable individuals to use their identity securely. Mastering the Customer Experience ChallengeHow changing requirements for a deep consumer experience affect the Customer Identity (CIAM) Identity & The Future of Zero TrustWith identity playing a central role in Zero Trust, talking about where ZT is evolving and how to make it work. Identity Governance for a Modern WorldRedefining Authorization and Policy-Based Access Control for an agile approach to any Zero Trust architecture. Trends in (Mobile) AuthenticationCustomers struggle with the choice of authenticators beyond the smartphone. Identity for Web3 & MetaverseGlobal-scale decentralized systems need a decentralized IAM that can keep up with security challenges. Artificial Intelligence in Cybersecurity & Identity ManagementChanging the paradigm of identity security through AI. Cloud as a Security EnablerModern cloud security introduces additional complexity since traditional security models are no longer applicable. Navigating the IoT WorldMore companies are providing solutions to manage new IoT devices and to get control of legacy OT infrastructure.

In addition to the countries mentioned above, other credible co-guarantors include Turkey (which has skilfully mediated Russia-Ukraine talks); Austria, which is proud of its enduring neutrality; and Hungary, which holds this year’s presidency of the UN General Assembly and has repeatedly called for negotiations to end the war.

According to the IMF’s estimates of GDP at purchasing-power parity, the combined output of Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and South Africa ($51.7trn, or almost 32% of world output) in 2022 was larger than that of the G7 nations, America, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan.

These countries are neither Russia-haters nor Ukraine-haters. They neither want Russia to conquer Ukraine, nor the West to expand NATO eastward, which many see as a dangerous provocation not only to Russia but perhaps to other countries as well. Their opposition to NATO enlargement has sharpened as American hardliners have urged the alliance to take on China. Neutral countries were taken aback by the participation of Asia-Pacific leaders of Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand in a summit last year of supposedly “North Atlantic” countries.

Neutral nations including Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and South Africa have repeatedly called for a negotiated end to the conflict.

it includes the phased elimination of sanctions on Russia and an agreement by both Russia and the West to contribute to the rebuilding of war-torn areas.

Some compromises would need to be found regarding Crimea and the Donbas region, perhaps freezing and de-militarising those conflicts for a period of time

to make a peace agreement acceptable, credible and enforceable

Russian leaders believes that NATO would use any pause in fighting to expand Ukraine’s arsenal. They choose to fight now, rather than face a stronger foe later.

Ukraine and its Western allies have little chance of ousting Russia from Crimea and the Donbas region, while Russia has little chance of forcing Ukraine to surrender.

In a peace agreement, Ukraine would need to be assured of its sovereignty and security, while NATO would need to promise not to enlarge eastward.

Weil and Cioran left their writings. Mishima achieved not only literary greatness but also the spectacular, violent death that had been his erotic obsession throughout his adult life. Gandhi liberated India.

Emil Cioran

the likes of Vladimir Lenin and Maximilien Robespierre, whose utopian dreams were realised as nightmares.

“alarmingly imperfect behaviour” (mainly egotism and undue fixation with chastity).

Suffering was unequally shared, she thought, and much of it due to the power of the strong to abuse the weak.

offer “lessons in humility”.

Some failures are serious and some are trivial.

Failure may be “brutal and nasty and devastating”, Mr Bradatan writes, but it is also “essential to what we are as human beings”.

These have hobbled the trading of Russian oil in Geneva and frozen piles of oligarch cash stashed in Zurich. But populists have criticised even this as drifting away from non-alignment.

The Chinese and others have also made it clear to the Kremlin that they object to Russia using a nuclear weapon. In fact, Russia’s nuclear weapons are most effective when it doesn’t actually use them.

But I think it is very unlikely it would deploy a nuclear weapon of any type, even for Crimea.

If the West moves quickly, Ukraine could liberate Crimea by the end of August. If not, Crimea will remain a sanctuary for Russian supplies and weaponry.

It is home to the Black Sea Fleet, a launchpad for drones and other weapons, a logistics hub and a trading port for Russian merchant shipping. Because Crimea is decisive, and because it is becoming clearer that Ukrainian forces can liberate Crimea, Ukraine must not negotiate now. Russia would never agree to trade Crimea away.

And while Russia has it, Ukraine cannot rebuild its economy. That is because the Russians are able to interfere with activity in all of Ukraine’s ports from Crimea, disrupt shipping from places such as Odessa and block access to the Sea of Azov.

As recently as the summer of 2021, 41% of Ukrainians agreed with the notion that Ukraine and Russia were one people, according to one study. By the spring of last year, after Russia invaded, the number had plummeted to 8%.

Millions of Ukrainians continue to speak Russian without suffering discrimination. But local authorities in many parts of the country are changing street names and pulling down Russian and Soviet statues.

President Joe Biden hosted 12 Pacific leaders (including Mr Bainimarama) at the White House in September. They agreed to work together to build a region in which “democracy will be able to flourish”. America also pledged to provide an additional $810m in aid to the region.

Worse still for China, Mr Rabuka said that police officers from Australia and New Zealand could continue to work in Fiji because their political systems were similar to the Pacific-island country’s.

a timely rebuttal to those who would sacrifice the vital legacy of Western science—and the progress that comes with it—on the altar of cultural sensitivity or by retreating to the safety of metaphysical revelation.

“Its provisional nature and the underlying void do not make life meaningless; they make it more precious.”

He is eager to defend this anti-traditionalist tradition against both extreme relativists, who believe there is no truth outside a particular time and culture, and absolutists who believe there is only one incontrovertible truth.

Among the ancient Greeks, this capacity to assimilate a variety of traditions led not only to the birth of science, but of democracy—a translation of Anaximander’s irreverence for established ways of thinking into the realm of politics.

“Civilisations flourish when they mingle,” Mr Rovelli says. “They decline in isolation.”

For Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes, all citizens of Miletus, a Greek city on the western coast of Anatolia, doubt was a birthright.

by knowing what it is you do not know.

They replaced revelation with observation and faith and scripture with reason.

“The reliability of science is based not on certainty but on a radical lack of certainty.”

In the past Lula has used foreign policy as a tool to burnish his popularity at home, says Rubens Ricupero, who was Brazil’s ambassador in Washington in the 1990s. Lula is now planning to do one international trip a month; indeed, he is off to China in March. The trick might not work as well this time.

His administration has also signalled that it will support Brazil’s attempt to join the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries, once its environmental policy is back on track.

Lula also faces a tricky balancing act. Brazilian diplomacy is typically neutral. Governments of both the left and the right have tried to stay out of big disputes. During his first two terms Lula tried to expand Brazil’s global influence while remaining in America’s good books.

DARPA plans to select the best subsystems this summer, and hopes to have a prototype ready for testing in LEO before 2025. If all goes well, the network could then be extended to geosynchronous orbits. Allies, Dr Root reckons, might be invited to join. America’s adversaries will no doubt be watching closely.

He reckons that if they were used, the result would be as large as a pizza and consume 400W. His team are “trying to shrink the pizza size into a matchbox” using what they call “chiplets”, in lieu of bigger semiconductors.

Using a different wavelength, to prevent interference, the receiver will then fire a laser back along the same path to confirm the connection.

Mynaric, a firm based near Munich that is designing heads for Space Bacon, can adjust a laser’s trajectory by just 57.2 millionths of a degree. At a distance of 1,000km, this translates into a beam displacement of less than a metre.

Satellites in low Earth orbits (LEOs, those below an altitude of 2,000km, and the sort which Space Bacon will use to start with) travel at about 7.8km a second, often tumbling as they go. Connecting the optical heads on two of these will be an epic task

Individual satellites can download data only when in range of a terrestrial antenna belonging to their particular network

until a suitable ground antenna is within reach.

far higher data rates than radio waves.

hard to intercept and almost impossible to jam.

The plan is to fit as many newly launched satellites as possibly with laser transceivers that will be able to communicate with counterparts as far away as 5,000km.

The Space-Based Adaptive Communications Node (Space-BACN, or “Space Bacon”, to its friends) will, if successful, create a laser-enabled military internet in orbit around Earth by piggybacking on a number of satellites that would have been launched anyway.

Moroccan politicians castigate European ones, especially the French, for colonial meddling.

Morocco seems to be turning its back on what it calls “old Europe”. Instead, it is looking increasingly to Israel and America for its defence.

Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, was recently in Algeria and Libya to discuss investments in energy. Italy now depends on Algeria for 40% of its gas, up from 30% before the Ukrainian war. The share of Russian gas in Italy fell from 40% to 10%.

One way to get on the radar, she says, is to appoint tech types to the board, which helps spread the word. “Once you get into that circle a bit, people talk,” she adds. “They talk at their cocktail parties.”

“Sometimes it is easier to get these guys to give away $100m than $1m.”

to market itself as a “moonshot” project

“There is a blurring between entrepreneurship and philanthropy,” says Mr Soskis.

the venture-capital arm has made investments in the Atlantic, a magazine, and Stripe, a payments-processor.

Pierre Omidyar, eBay’s founder, and Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Steve Jobs, a former Apple boss, both use LLCs for their do-goodery.

Donors can get deductions on their tax bills, too.

Silicon Valley Community Foundation,

for donor-advised funds (DAFs),

He takes grant applications from anyone via a short online form.

The gifts were mostly given without conditions, with the charities trusted to make the best use of the money. Ms Scott has called her approach “seeding by ceding”.

by which offered the most charitable bang for each buck.

Tech has spent the past two decades disrupting everything from shopping to television. Charitable giving, it seems, is next.

26 of the 100 richest people in the world in 2022 made their money leading technology firms of various sorts, including seven of the top ten.

He told Founders Pledge he would like the cash to go to education and poverty relief in poor countries, then left its researchers to sort out the details.

MARSS, a defence startup based in Monaco, is sending its drone interceptors: their networked sensors detect incoming enemy drones and launch counter-attack drones from the ground that use artificial intelligence to identify, track and attack targets without human assistance.