DIRS.INFO The most relevant business & tech news

☆ Richard Branson and Oppenheimer's grandson urge action to stop AI and climate 'catastrophe'
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-15 | by ( Ryan Browne | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Richard Branson believes the environmental costs of space travel will "come down even further." Dozens of high-profile figures in business and politics are calling on world leaders to address the existential risks of artificial intelligence and the climate crisis. Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, along with former United Nations General Secretary Ban Ki-moon, and Charles Oppenheimer — the grandson of American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer — signed an open letter urging action against the escalating dangers of the climate crisis, pandemics, nuclear weapons, and ungoverned AI. Signatories called for urgent multilateral action, including through financing the transition away from fossil fuels, signing an equitable pandemic treaty, restarting nuclear arms talks, and building global governance needed to make AI a force for good. The letter was released on Thursday by The Elders, a nongovernmental organization that was launched by former South African President Nelson Mandela and Branson to address global human rights issues and advocate for world peace.

Persons: Richard Branson, Ban, Charles Oppenheimer —, J, Robert Oppenheimer —, Nelson Mandela, Branson, MIT cosmologist Max Tegmark, Jaan Tallinn Organizations: Virgin Group, United Nations, Elders, South, Life Institute, MIT, Skype

☆ Anduril founder Palmer Luckey says the ChatGPT buzz is making politicians more interested in AI-powered weapons
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-09 | by ( Lakshmi Varanasi | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Palmer Luckey told Breaking Defense the ChatGPT hype is making politicians interested in AI weapons. While Luckey may be best known as the founder of Oculus, in 2017 he created a defense tech startup called Anduril Industries. In a recent interview with Breaking Defense, Luckey said "ChatGPT has probably been more helpful to Anduril with customers and politicians than any technology in the last 10 years." Luckey, who referred to Anduril as an "AI company," clarified to Breaking Defense that ChatGPT wasn't actually powering Anduril's products. It builds military technology including drones, surveillance towers, and underwater vehicles powered by its AI software system, Lattice.

Persons: Palmer Luckey, Luckey, he's, that's, Palmer, ChatGPT, you'll, futher, Anduril, Andreessen Horowitz, Lockheed Martin, Trump, we've Organizations: Breaking Defense, Capitol, Pentagon, Service, Anduril Industries, Defense, Blue Force Technologies, TechCrunch, Founders Fund, Boeing, Lockheed, Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, CNBC, Special, Command, US Customs, Protection, Jaan, Skype, Cambridge Centre, Life Locations: Wall, Silicon, Jaan Tallinn

☆ An AI weapons race may create a world where everyone stays inside out of fear of being 'chased down by swarms of slaughterbots,' warns founding Skype engineer
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-18 | by ( Kylie Kirschner | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Jaan Tallinn helped build Skype and is the founder of the Future of Life Institute. He recently warned of the risks of an AI arms race, describing theoretical anonymous "slaughterbots." As AI technology develops, Tallinn is especially afraid of the implications that military use might have for the future of AI. When contacted by Insider, the Future of Life Institute told Insider it agreed with Tallinn's remarks on his fears of weaponized AI. Now AI researchers, tech moguls, celebrities, and regular people alike are worried.

Persons: Jaan, Al Jazeera, Tallinn's, Elon Musk, Christopher Nolan, Steve Wozniak, Emad Mostaque, Musk, Insider's Kali Hays, — Organizations: Skype, Life Institute, Jaan, Al, Cambridge Centre, Elon, Apple Locations: Jaan Tallinn, Estonian, Tallinn

☆ Inside the White-Hot Center of A.I. Doomerism
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-11 | by ( Kevin Roose | More About Kevin Roose | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

labs and safety research organizations contain some trace of effective altruism’s influence, and many count believers among their staff members. Some Anthropic staff members use E.A.-inflected jargon — talking about concepts like “x-risk” and memes like the A.I. (Just one example: Ms. Amodei is married to Holden Karnofsky, the co-chief executive of Open Philanthropy, an E.A. Open Philanthropy, in turn, gets most of its funding from Mr. Moskovitz, who also invested personally in Anthropic.) safety was genuine, in part because its leaders had sounded the alarm about the technology for so long.

Persons: E.A.s, Dustin Moskovitz, Jaan, Anthropic, Sam Bankman, Fried, Bankman, Amodei, Shoggoth, Holden Karnofsky, Luke Muehlhauser, Moskovitz Organizations: Facebook, Skype, Open Locations: E.A, Jaan Tallinn, Anthropic

Share Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailWhat happened to Skype? At its height, Skype – a telecommunications app founded by Scandinavian entrepreneurs Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, and Estonian engineers Ahti Heinla, Priit Kasesalu, Jaan Tallinn and Toivo Annus – had 560 million registered users. In 2005, just two years after its launch, the app was acquired by eBay. Microsoft then acquired Skype in 2011 for $8.5 billion. Now that Microsoft has rival Teams, the future of Skype is uncertain.

Persons: Niklas Zennström, Janus Friis, Ahti Heinla, Priit Kasesalu, Jaan Tallinn, Toivo Annus –, what's Organizations: Skype, eBay, Microsoft, CNBC Locations: Toivo, Silver

☆ The rise and fall of Skype
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-02 | by ( Jordan Novet | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

The voice, video and messaging app became a hit in the 2000s by letting people talk with friends and family members without paying long-distance fees. Microsoft has promoted Skype in Outlook and Windows and even enriched the app with its Bing generative artificial intelligence chatbot. In March 2020, Microsoft said Skype had 40 million daily active users, a number that's since slipped to 36 million, according to a spokesperson. "Skype will remain a great option for people who love it and want to connect via messaging, audio and video calling, and Bing Chat," a Microsoft spokesperson wrote in an email. Watch CNBC's digital video above to learn more about the growth and struggles of 20-year-old Skype.

Persons: Jim Gaynor, Jaan Tallinn, it's, It's, Bing Organizations: Skype, eBay, Silver Lake, Microsoft, CNBC

☆ Elon Musk and other tech leaders call for pause on 'dangerous race' to make A.I. as advanced as humans
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-29 | by ( Ryan Browne | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Elon Musk and dozens of other technology leaders have called on AI labs to pause the development of systems that can compete with human-level intelligence. "Contemporary AI systems are now becoming human-competitive at general tasks, and we must ask ourselves: Should we let machines flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth?" The Future of Life Institute is a nonprofit organization based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that campaigns for the responsible and ethical development of artificial intelligence. The institute has previously gotten the likes of Musk and Google-owned AI lab DeepMind to promise never to develop lethal autonomous weapons systems. The institute said it was calling on all AI labs to "immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4."

☆ This Y Combinator-backed startup uses robots to clean wind turbines. Check out the 12-slide pitch deck Aerones used to raise $30 million.
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-16 | by ( Tasmin Lockwood | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

A startup developing robots to clean and inspect wind turbines has just secured $30 million. We asked the company's CEO to walk us through the 12-slide pitch deck he used to raise the cash. A Y Combinator-backed startup developing robots to clean and inspect wind turbines has just secured $30 million. Latvian company Aerones has developed service robots to clean, inspect, and repair wind turbines. Wind turbines have a typical lifespan of 20 years, but better maintenance and efficiency could prolong this.

☆ Billionaires like Elon Musk want to save civilization by having tons of genetically superior kids. Inside the movement to take 'control of human evolution.'
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-17 | by ( Julia Black | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +40 min

"We are the Underground Railroad of 'Gattaca' babies and people who want to do genetic stuff with their kids," Malcolm told me. Ellison, meanwhile, who has two children in their 30s, has reportedly resumed having kids — with his 31-year-old girlfriend. "The person of this subculture really sees the pathway to immortality as being through having children," Simone said. The person of this subculture really sees the pathway to immortality as being through having children. Before she met Malcolm, Simone was convinced she wanted to live her life single and child-free.

☆ 'If it blows up, it's cool': The far-out philosophy that explains why Elon Musk won't let a few baby sea turtles stop SpaceX's quest to get to Mars
▼ + stars: | 2022-04-05 | by ( Adam Rogers | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +25 min

In the case of Elon Musk v. Charismatic Megafauna, the agency intends to publish its final report in late April. Musk went on: "Either explicitly or implicitly some people seem to think that humans are a blight on the Earth's surface. Musk is talking about existential risk, the idea that something — an asteroid, a rogue artificial intelligence — might kill every human on Earth. And if you assume that future human minds will "mainly be implemented in computational hardware instead of biological neuronal wetware," as Bostrom does, you end up with a mind-boggling 1054 human lives. Musk has made the defense of "future life" his mission.

Search resuls for: "Jaan Tallinn"

10 mentions found