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Zuckerberg signals Meta won’t open source all of its ‘superintelligence’ AI models

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared his vision on Wednesday for “personal superintelligence,” the idea that people should be able to use AI to achieve their personal goals. Smuggled into the letter is a signal that Meta is shifting how it plans to release AI models as it pursues “superintelligence.” “We believe the benefits of superintelligence should be shared with the world as broadly as possible,” wrote Zuckerberg. “That said, superintelligence will raise novel safety concerns. We’ll need to be

Mark Zuckerberg shares a confusing vision for AI 'superintelligence'

Mark Zuckerberg has spent the last several months and several billion dollars recruiting prominent AI researchers and executives for a new "superintelligence" team at Meta. Now, the Meta CEO has published a lengthy memo that attempts to lay out his big plan for using the company's vast resources to create "personal superintelligence." In the memo, which reads more like a manifesto than a strategic business plan, Zuckerberg explains that he's "extremely optimistic that superintelligence will hel

‘Predator: Badlands’ Came From a Desire to Do Something New, With a Dash of ‘Star Wars’

With Prey, director Dan Trachtenberg did something no one ever thought was possible. He took a beloved franchise, Predator, and flipped it on its head. By giving it a fresh perspective and a new timeline, he took something old and brought it into the now. For his follow-up, he wanted to do that again, but it was difficult. Everyone kind of just wanted Prey 2. “Sometimes when you make a sequel, it’s just part two of the cool thing, not a cool thing in and of itself,” Trachtenberg said recently a

Former NASA Boss Says We May Be Destroying America’s Only Shot at Space

One of the driving personalities behind the Hubble Space Telescope is sounding the alarm on president Donald Trump's disastrous space policy. That former NASA associate administrator for spaceflight is Joe Rothenberg, who warns that the agency's current predicament — mass layoffs and deferred resignations resulting in a loss of 20 percent of its workforce and a complete overhaul of agency culture — may already be too bad to fix. "What is happening at NASA has long term and potentially unrecove

Scientists Uncover Surprising Link Between Tides and Earth’s Biggest Icebergs

In 2021, researchers in Antarctica noticed giant cracks developing on the Brunt Ice Shelf, an enormous stretch of ice on the continent’s northwestern corner. Two years later, the fracture grew so large that a gigantic iceberg almost twice the size of New York City broke free in a process called calving, sending scientists scrambling to investigate the icy chunk, which they named iceberg A-81. A team of researchers affiliated with the British Antarctic Survey sought to understand the forces driv

It Sure Sounds Like ‘Alien Vs. Predator’ May Return In the Future

So over here we’ve got new Alien movies and a new Alien TV show. And over there we’ve got new Predator movies expanding that universe. Then, in the upcoming Predator movie, a prominent character is made by Weyland-Yutani, a company at the center of the original Alien film, which also plays a large role in the new Alien movies and TV shows. What the heck is going on here? Friday at San Diego Comic-Con offered fans a rare opportunity to hear from two of the people primarily responsible for major

Meta names OpenAI's Shengjia Zhao as chief scientist of AI Superintelligence Lab

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes a keynote speech during the Meta Connect annual event, at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Friday said Shengjia Zhao, the co-creator of OpenAI's ChatGPT, will serve as the chief scientist of Meta Superintelligence Labs. Zuckerberg has been on a multibillion-dollar artificial intelligence hiring blitz in recent weeks, highlighted by a $14 billion investment in Scale AI. In June, Zuckerberg announc

Mark Zuckerberg names ex-OpenAI employee chief scientist of new Meta AI lab

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes a keynote speech during the Meta Connect annual event, at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Friday said Shengjia Zhao, the co-creator of OpenAI's ChatGPT, will serve as the chief scientist of Meta Superintelligence Labs. Zuckerberg has been on a multibillion-dollar artificial intelligence hiring blitz in recent weeks, highlighted by a $14 billion investment in Scale AI. In June, Zuckerberg announc

Surfshark vs. CyberGhost: Which VPN should you get?

Allison Murray/ZDNET Surfshark and CyberGhost are consistently ranked among the top VPNs. They are high-value yet relatively affordable VPNs, which is why most users love them. Also: NordVPN vs Surfshark One unique thing about Surfshark is that there's no cap on the number of devices you can connect. It shares a lot with NordVPN, especially from a security point of view. But it's not as streaming-centered as CyberGhost. Also, I had minor but persistent server connection issues with the app, b

US nuclear weapons agency reportedly breached in Microsoft SharePoint attacks

is a senior editor and author of Notepad , who has been covering all things Microsoft, PC, and tech for over 20 years. Hours after Microsoft revealed hacking groups affiliated with the Chinese government have been exploiting a flaw in its SharePoint software, Bloomberg News reports that the National Nuclear Security Administration has also been breached in the attacks. A single source tells Bloomberg that the department, which provides the Navy with nuclear reactors for submarines, was caught

Meta Is Breaking OpenAI $100 Million at a Time

The artificial intelligence landscape, once characterized by collaborative innovation, has dramatically shifted into an all-out war for top talent. At the forefront of this aggressive new era stands Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta Platforms, orchestrating an unprecedented assault on rival OpenAI. This isn’t merely a recruitment drive; it’s a clear declaration of war, fueled by a staggering $300 million offer designed to dismantle the very core of its competitor. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that

Fiberglass-Free, Chemical-Free: Natural Fire Barriers for Mattresses

What do mattresses and a box of matches have in common? It's not just that they’re both rectangular—both can can be very flammable if you're not careful. Mattresses have historically posed a significant fire hazard, and they still can without careful attention to the materials used. In the US, an estimated 20,800 residential fires occurred due to mattresses and bedding igniting from flame exposure between 1996 and 1998, according to FEMA. At that time, fires involving mattresses and bedding wer

Mark Zuckerberg Is Expanding His Secretive Hawaii Compound. Part of It Sits Atop a Burial Ground

As a child, Julian Ako would visit his maternal great-grandfather’s home near Pilaa Beach in Kauai, Hawaii, where he and his family would gather edible fungi that grow on kukui trees and collect seaweed and fish from the reef. For about a decade, that land has belonged to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who is constructing a massive compound at an estimated cost that exceeds $300 million. WIRED can now reveal that Zuckerberg’s property is atop a burial site: Ako’s great-grandmother and her brother we

Angry Callers Accusing Real Customer Support Staff of Being AI

A penny for the thoughts of our thankless call center workers. Long have they had to endure indignant customers fuming at them for problems beyond their control. And now they must suffer accusations that call their very humanity in question, Bloomberg reports, as the proliferation of AI tech has many callers suspecting that the human they're speaking to is actually a chatbot. If these customer support personnel weren't treated like robots before, in other words, they are now — in a distressing

ServiceNow’s acquisition of Moveworks is reportedly being reviewed over antitrust concerns

In Brief ServiceNow’s acquisition of enterprise AI startup Moveworks is reportedly drawing regulatory scrutiny. The acquisition is currently under review for antitrust by the U.S. Justice Department, according to Bloomberg, which cited sources familiar with the matter. The probe began in June, Bloomberg reported, and both companies have since received a “second request” calling for additional information that has to be provided before the deal can move forward. ServiceNow announced it was acq

We Finally Know How Much Martin Shkreli’s Wu-Tang Album Cost

The saga of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, the one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album that Martin “pharma bro” Shkreli bought for approximately $2 million in 2015, continues. The album’s contents have always been a highly guarded secret, and it was seized by the U.S. government in 2018 after Shkreli was convicted of securities fraud. For years, it was reported that the government had sold the album directly to PleaserDAO, a crypto collective that specializes in NFTs. However, Bloomberg now reports that

RisingWave: An Open‑Source Stream‑Processing and Management Platform

🌊 Ride the Wave of Streaming Data. Docs | Benchmarks | Demos RisingWave is a stream processing and management platform designed to offer the simplest and most cost-effective way to process, analyze, and manage real-time event data — with built-in support for the Apache Iceberg™ open table format. It provides both a Postgres-compatible SQL interface and a DataFrame-style Python interface. RisingWave can ingest millions of events per second, continuously join and analyze live streams with histo

Meta investors settle $8bn lawsuit with Zuckerberg over Facebook privacy

Meta investors settle $8bn lawsuit with Zuckerberg over Facebook privacy Mark Zuckerberg has agreed to settle a multibillion dollar lawsuit with a group of shareholders over how top executives at Meta handled repeated privacy violations by Facebook. The shareholders were seeking $8bn (£6bn) in damages. It is unclear how much they agreed to settle for. The settlement was announced on Thursday by a lawyer for the shareholders, just before the trial was about to enter its second day in a Delawar

Mark Zuckerberg and other Meta bigwigs just agreed to a settlement in $8 billion suit

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, along with a group of current and former company directors and officers, just agreed to settle to end a trial that sought $8 billion in damages, according to a report by Reuters . Zuckerberg and the others will actually be paying out to Meta shareholders as a recompense for damages allegedly caused by allowing repeated violations of Facebook users' privacy. The parties have not disclosed the details of the settlement, but one would assume the payout was less than the $

Zuckerberg and Meta investors reach settlement in $8B privacy case

In Brief Mark Zuckerberg and other current and former Meta executives have settled a lawsuit filed by a group of shareholders. They were seeking $8 billion for the damage the executives caused the company by allowing repeated violations of Facebook users’ privacy in relation to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The parties did not disclose details of the settlement, according to Reuters. Facebook shareholders filed a lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg, former COO Sheryl Sandberg, and other execut

Roman dodecahedron: 12-sided object has baffled archaeologists for centuries

A dodecahedron was discovered in Lincoln in the U.K. in the summer of 2023. QUICK FACTS Name: Roman dodecahedron What it is: A 12-sided bronze object Where it is from: Northwestern provinces of the Roman Empire When it was made: Second to fourth centuries A.D. Roman dodecahedrons have baffled archaeologists since 1739, when the first example of the 12-sided bronze object was discovered in the English Midlands. For nearly three centuries, experts and hobbyists have put forth dozens of theories

Zuckerberg Is So Desperate for AI Power That He's Building Temporary Data Centers in Tents

In his increasingly desperate bid to keep up in the ongoing AI race, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is throwing out the rulebook in his quest to expand data center infrastructure as fast as possible. As SemiAnalysis first reported last week, Meta is "prioritizing speed above all else" by setting up "tents" to add additional capacity to its data center campuses. The prefabricated modules are designed from the ground up to get computing power online as fast as possible, underlining Meta's furious scra

Mark Zuckerberg Interview Derailed After His Audio Doesn’t Work

The debut episode of The Information’s video podcast suffered a serious setback this week after an interview with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had to be paused because the podcasters couldn’t get the interviewee’s audio to work. The Information, which routinely publishes scoops involving the tech industry, launched TITV this week—an Amazon-sponsored live video program that the outlet describes as “first in tech news and analysis from the people that break and shape the story.” A key part of the fi

Meta is reportedly using actual tents to build data centers

In Brief Meta and CEO Mark Zuckerberg are in a hurry to build their superintelligence tech. The company has been poaching AI researchers, while Zuckerberg announced on Monday that Meta is building a 5-gigawatt data center called Hyperion. The urgency is palpable. As SemiAnalysis reported last week and Business Insider noted, Meta is so eager to boost its computing power that it’s literally erecting tents for temporary data center capacity while its facilities are still under construction. The

Interview With Mark Zuckerberg Crashes and Burns as They Can't Get His Audio Working

Tech-focused business publication The Information drummed up plenty of excitement around a major guest gracing the first episode of its new YouTube show (which has the eyebrow-raising name TITV.) During today's kickoff installment, the show locked down none other than Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who sat down with The Information founder and journalist Jessica Lessin for a live interview. But it didn't take long for the Amazon-sponsored chat to grind to a halt. The tech mogul and Lessin's audio w

Meta CEO Zuckerberg says first AI data supercluster will come online in 2026

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday said he plans to invest "hundreds of billions of dollars" into artificial intelligence compute infrastructure, and that Meta plans to bring its first supercluster online next year. A supercluster is a large, complex computing network that's designed to train advanced AI models and handle their workloads. "Meta Superintelligence Labs will have industry-leading levels of compute and by far the greatest compute per researcher," Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook pos

A Century of Quantum Mechanics

Lieber Pauli... Read the translation of the letter sent by Werner Heisenberg to Wolfgang Pauli on 9 July 1925. The original letter is preserved in CERN’s Wolfgang Pauli Archive. (Copyright: Heisenberg Society) Dear Pauli, If you believe that I read your letter laughing mockingly, then you are gravely mistaken; quite the contrary – since Helgoland, my views on mechanics have become more radical with each passing day, and it is my firm conviction that Bohr’s theory of the hydrogen atom, in its pre

Second Variety, by Philip K. Dick (1953)

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Second Variety, by Philip Kindred Dick This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Second Variety Author: Philip Kindred Dick Illustrator: Alex Ebel Release Date: April 17, 2010 [EBook #32032] [Last updated: May 4, 2011] Language: English Character set encod

Meta reportedly closes deal to buy AI voice replicator PlayAI

Meta has finalized the agreement to purchase Play AI, a startup based in California providing users with an AI voice cloning tool, according to Bloomberg. The news organization says the "entire PlayAI team" is joining Meta next week, based on the internal memo it has seen. After joining the company, the team will be working under Johan Schalkwyk, who used to oversee speech AI research for Google and who was also a recent hire from another voice AI startup. PlayAI's tool can clone a user's voice

Tesla reportedly close to starting sales in India

In Brief Tesla is nearly ready to start selling its electric vehicles in India, according to Bloomberg News, after years of flirting with the idea. The company is about to open its first showroom in Mumbai and could start deliveries as early as August, according to the report. A few hours after Bloomberg published its report, Tesla created an account specifically for its Indian operation on CEO Elon Musk’s social media platform X. The account has one post so far: an illustration of the Mumbai