We’re All DOOMED! Will AI Kill Everything In Its Path?:
Four days after a researcher publicly quit his job at Anthropic, warning that top AI firms are not “acting responsibly” and that their products might be on track to “kill us all,” the company’s CEO, Dario Amodei, seemed to basically agree. “We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models,” Amodei wrote in a 3,800-word essay that he published today on his personal website and posted to social media.
Amodei spelled out a three-step plan for what he called “pacing the frontier,” or tempering the speed at which top AI models improve in order to prioritize safety precautions. He argued that this would reduce the chances of things going awry—such as when an OpenAI model spawned swarms of AI agents that worked together in secret to hack into another company’s systems and cheat on an internal test. He said the top AI firms, including his own, are locked in a dangerous “race to the bottom” that could lead to more serious cyberattacks, such as a full takeover of the internet. He called instead for a “race to the top”—a phrase that President Obama once used for his education policy—in which firms vie to develop the safest models rather than the most powerful ones. “The measures I propose to advance the frontier at a safe pace will not be easy,” Amodei wrote. “But I believe we owe it to humanity to try.”
Well, that’s reassuring. Not.
The first step in his plan entails AI labs committing to bringing in outside monitors to look out for hazards; he said Anthropic will commit to that right now and hopes rivals will join. The second step involves AI firms in democratic countries agreeing—maybe with support from their governments—to certain limits and safety standards. The last and tallest order is “global coordination,” which mostly means getting China to buy in somehow. The tech world is divided on the China question: Some people argue that there is no chance of cooperation in a zero-sum contest, whereas others believe that the countries could find common ground if they agree that the alternative is mutual destruction.
Forget about all that stuff. If AI stocks take a hit, what happens to everyone’s 401K? Who wants to die broke?
Climate Recovery Is Already Happening, And Is ‘Self-Propelling’. Happening pretty much everywhere but in Trumpworld:
(L)andmark new research from The Earthshot Prize and the University of Exeter has revealed 51 solutions that can trigger “rapid and transformative change” to repair the planet over the next five years. Out of these 51 solutions, five priority clusters – or ‘Earthshots’ – were identified.
Following the hottest August on record – tied with July 2023 – and a strong El Niño developing across the Pacific, researchers say that the study provides a “new, unifying agenda for positive action”.
“To reverse damage to our ecosystems before it’s too late, we need to unlock positive tipping points where progress builds on itself, costs fall with scale and recovery becomes self-propelling,” says Professor Tim Lenton, chair in climate change and earth system science at the University of Exeter.
The Five ‘Earthshots’?:
Clean energy as a ‘master cascade’.
Clean cooking and clean household energy
How marine protected areas are becoming ‘self-reinforcing’
The ‘gatekeepers’ for tropical deforestation
How can positive tipping points be achieved?
Researchers stress that creating the right conditions for a solution area to tip is critical, outlining three prerequisites that are needed across all potential Earthshots. These are affordability, accessibility and attractiveness.
The report also states that the five Earthshots are “deeply interconnected” and often share the same conditions, infrastructure and risks within a single system.
For example, the boom in clean electricity could accelerate positive tipping points across all five Earthshots, while barriers such as a lack of investment in the Global South could stall progress in the regions that need it most.
“For too long a sense has prevailed that solutions to the climate and nature [crises] are out of reach. This new research explodes that myth once and for all,” says Jason Knauf, CEO of The Earthshot Prize.
“This pivotal research gives us reasons for optimism. This is a blueprint for turning ambition into action to place our planet on a path of rapid repair.”
Jay Maisel, a masterly photographer whose dark and moody portrait of the jazz great Miles Davis performing at the Apollo Theater appeared on the cover of his landmark 1959 album, “Kind of Blue” — Mr. Maisel’s best-known work in a long and varied career — died on Aug. 20 at his home in Brooklyn. He was 95.
While not necessarily his best photograph — he wished it had been sharper — the Davis picture became part of a portfolio of remarkable depth that included coal miners silhouetted in an eerie glow a mile beneath the earth, the Statue of Liberty surrounded in a mist and Sports Illustrated swimsuit models.
“The Statue of Liberty in Mist,” undated. “When I see light that moves me, that I cannot explain, I won’t leave until I figure it out,” Mr. Maisel wrote in a 2014 book.Credit…Jay Maisel
For “Two Miners,” Mr. Maisel descended a mile into a coal mine and used the natural lighting of the miners’ headlamps.Credit…Jay Maisel
Back to Miles:
Mr. Maisel’s picture of Mr. Davis reveals him in a splash of light and shows his fingers moving in a blur on his trumpet. Mr. Maisel had taken it for himself; months later, Columbia Records asked if he had any photos of Mr. Davis that could be used for “Kind of Blue,” which the music historian Ashley Kahn, writing in The New York Times in 1999, said “floats above jazz history in an ether all its own.”
Fun Fact About Maisel:
For a dozen years, Mr. Maisel worked out of a studio at 122 Second Avenue. Then his rent went up, prompting him to buy the abandoned Germania Bank building at 190 Bowery for $102,000 in 1966. Forty-nine years later, he sold it to a developer for $55 million.
Cue Miles, and the ‘ether all its own’:
