collapse

Once an EV darling thought to revolutionize EV production with its concept of micro-factories that crank out delivery vans for the likes of Uber and UPS, UK startup Arrival is in a desperate search for funding after being delisted from Nasdaq this week. Nasdaq suspended trading of Arrival shares this week, followed by a formal delisting, Reuters reports. The action is the result of Arrival being late in posting financial results and failing to file a remediation plan and hold an annual shareholder…

On 19 August 1989, some 20,000 people gathered in a field near the Hungarian city of Sopron, close to the border with Austria, for an outdoor party. “A brass band boomed across the field. Goulash cooked in giant pots over open flames; beer and wine were there for the taking. People danced around a bonfire.” The festival, jointly organised by several Hungarian opposition parties, was billed as a pan-European picnic, a celebration of brotherhood between nations. The revellers included a large contingent of refugees from the…

At a time when we have become bleakly accustomed to political capital being made of militarising borders and building walls, it is a timely corrective to read a book devoted to the romance of the alternative. The Picnic re-examines events in Hungary in 1989 that precipitated the collapse of Soviet power in central Europe. In particular, it recreates, through intimate personal histories and eyewitness recollection, the ways in which one idealistic, grassroots protest – the staging of a summer party in a field near the…

In the year since ChatGPT was released to the public, researchers and experts have warned that the ease with which content can be created using generative AI tools could poison the well, creating a vicious circle where those tools produce content that is then used to train other AI models. That so-called “model collapse”—which would hollow out any “knowledge” accrued by the chatbots—appears to have come true.Last week, X user Jax Winterbourne posted a screenshot showing that Grok, the large language model chatbot…

December 11, 20234min readWhatever fantasies we may have had about the nonprofit structure of OpenAI have been eviscerated. While it remains a nonprofit, it’s proven entirely beholden to ruthless capitalismBy Ed ZitronSam Altman, seen here at APEC Leader's Week in San Francisco, California, was fired briefly as CEO of OpenAI in Nov. 2023. On November 17 Sam Altman was fired as CEO of OpenAI, arguably the most prominent privately held tech company, famed for pioneering ChatGPT and sparking the current AI boom, as well as…

A recent study led by glaciologist Benjamin Wallis has revealed the alarming instability of the Antarctic’s Cadman Glacier, which rapidly lost significant ice due to ocean warming. This highlights the urgent need for extensive ocean monitoring and raises concerns about other glaciers potentially facing similar rapid changes. The image above depicts the mountainous and icy coastline of the Antarctic Peninsula. Credit: Professor Anna Hogg Scientists have found that even seemingly stable glaciers in the Antarctic can…

This conceptual model of the loss of resilience in aging societies shows that, with time, resilient societies become fragile where even moderate perturbations may drive self-perpetuating change towards another state. Credit: Authors: "The vulnerability of aging states: A survival analysis across premodern societies," PNAS (November 20, 2023). Scheffer, M. et. al. Societies and political structures, like the humans they serve,…

The deadly 2015 Mariana dam failure was one of the worst environmental disasters in Brazilian history, leaving hundreds of residents in the district of Bento Rodrigues displaced. Showing the tidal waves of muddy water engulfing countless houses, the harrowing mobile phone footage that opens this intimate documentary witnesses the sheer scale and horrors of the catastrophic event. The destruction left in its wake, however, is not only material but also psychological.Staying close to charismatic local Marlon, Aline Lata and…

As the calendar turned to December 2022, the Pac-12 Conference was in a precarious position. Six months after USC and UCLA announced they were joining the Big Ten and the Pac-12 began its media rights negotiations early in response, the 10 remaining schools did not have a new TV deal in place. Worse than that, the Big 12 jumped the Pac-12 in line with ESPN and Fox, agreeing in October 2022 to extend its current deal through 2030-31. But Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff was working on another way to save the…

Greg Brockman says that ChatGPT's voice narration feature is now available to all free users  —  Ex-OpenAI president Greg Brockman — who, as far as we're aware, isn't currently employed at OpenAI in any capacity — is posting updates about OpenAI products on X, including one today … Greg Brockman says that ChatGPT's voice narration feature is now available to all free users  —  Ex-OpenAI president Greg Brockman — who, as far as we're aware, isn't currently employed at OpenAI in any capacity — is posting updates about…