Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur, launched his long-teased artificial intelligence startup xAI on Wednesday, unveiling a team comprised of engineers from the same big US technology firms that he hopes to challenge in his bid to build an alternative to ChatGPT.
The startup will be led by Musk, already the CEO of electric car maker Tesla, CEO of rocket launch company SpaceX and owner of Twitter, who has said on several occasions that the development of AI should be paused and that the sector needed regulation. Musk has repeatedly voiced concerns about AI’s potential for “civilizational destruction.”
In a Twitter Spaces event Wednesday evening, Musk explained his plan for building a safer AI. Rather than explicitly programming morality into its AI, xAI will seek to create a “maximally curious” AI, he said.
“If it tried to understand the true nature of the universe, that’s actually the best thing that I can come up with from an AI safety standpoint,” Musk said. “I think it is going to be pro-humanity from the standpoint that humanity is just much more interesting than not-humanity.”
Musk also predicted that superintelligence, or AI that is smarter than humans, will arrive in five or six years. Musk co-founded OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, in 2015, but stepped down from the company’s board in 2018.
Microsoft is an investor in OpenAI.
The website for xAI said it will hold a Twitter Spaces event on July 14.
The team at xAI includes Igor Babuschkin, a former engineer at Google’s DeepMind; Tony Wu, who worked at Google; Christian Szegedy, who was also a research scientist at Google; and Greg Yang, who was previously at Microsoft.
Musk in March registered a firm named X.AI Corp, incorporated in Nevada, according to a state filing. The firm lists Musk as the sole director and Jared Birchall, the managing director of Musk’s family office, as a secretary.
Musk had said in April that he would launch TruthGPT, or a maximum truth-seeking AI to rival Google’s Bard and Microsoft’s Bing AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe.
Generative AI caught the limelight with OpenAI’s launch of popular chatbot ChatGPT, which came in November last year, ahead of the launch of Bard and Bing AI.
Dan Hendrycks, who will advise the xAI team, is currently director of the Center for AI Safety and his work revolves around the risks of AI.
Musk’s new company is separate from X Corp, but will work closely with Twitter, Tesla and other companies, according to the website.
xAI said it is recruiting experienced engineers and researchers in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Elon Musk launches AI firm xAI as he looks to take on OpenAI
Elon Musk launches AI firm xAI as he looks to take on OpenAI
Washington Post cartoonist quits after paper rejects sketch of Bezos bowing to Trump
- Ann Telnaes said that she’s never before had a cartoon rejected because of its inherent messaging and that such a move is dangerous for a free press
- Wapo exec says the cartoon was rejected only to avoid repetition, because the paper had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon
A cartoonist has decided to quit her job at the Washington Post after an editor rejected her sketch of the newspaper’s owner and other media executives bowing before President-elect Donald Trump.
Ann Telnaes posted a message Friday on the online platform Substack saying that she drew a cartoon showing a group of media executives bowing before Trump while offering him bags of money, including Post owner and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Telnaes wrote that the cartoon was intended to criticize “billionaire tech and media chief executives who have been doing their best to curry favor with incoming President-elect Trump.” Several executives, Bezos among them, have been spotted at Trump’s Florida club Mar-a-Lago. She accused them of having lucrative government contracts and working to eliminate regulations.
Telnaes said that she’s never before had a cartoon rejected because of its inherent messaging and that such a move is dangerous for a free press.
“As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable,” Telnaes wrote. “For the first time, my editor prevented me from doing that critical job. So I have decided to leave the Post. I doubt my decision will cause much of a stir and that it will be dismissed because I’m just a cartoonist. But I will not stop holding truth to power through my cartooning, because as they say ‘Democracy dies in darkness.’”
The Association of American Editorial Cartoonists issued a statement Saturday accusing the Post of “political cowardice” and asking other cartoonists to post Telnaes’ sketch with the hashtag #StandWithAnn in a show of solidarity.
“Tyranny ends at pen point,” the association said. “It thrives in the dark, and the Washington Post simply closed its eyes and gave in like a punch-drunk boxer.”
The Post’s communications director, Liza Pluto, provided The Associated Press on Saturday with a statement from David Shipley, the newspaper’s editorial page editor. Shipley said in the statement that he disagrees with Telnaes’ “interpretation of events.”
He said he decided to nix the cartoon because the paper had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon and was set to publish another.
“Not every editorial judgment is a reflection of a malign force. ... The only bias was against repetition,” Shipley said.
Al-Qaeda has executed Yemeni journalist abducted 9 years ago, says media watchdog
- Mohamed Al-Maqri disappeared in the Arabian Peninsula while covering an anti-group protest in Al-Mukalla
LONDON: Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has executed Yemeni journalist Mohamed Al-Maqri after holding him captive for nine years, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported on Thursday.
Al-Maqri, a correspondent for the television channel Yemen Today, was abducted in 2015 while covering an anti-AQAP protest in Al-Mukalla, the capital of the southern governorate of Hadhramaut.
He was executed along with 10 other individuals after years of enforced disappearance.
“The killing of Mohamed Al-Maqri highlights the extreme dangers Yemeni journalists face while reporting from one of the world’s perilous conflict zones,” said Yeganeh Rezaian, CPJ’s interim MENA (Middle East and North Africa) program coordinator.
“Enforced disappearances continue to endanger their lives.”
Rezaian condemned the act and called for accountability, urging all factions in Yemen to abandon such “abhorrent practices.”
The Yemeni Journalists Syndicate also condemned the execution, saying it was working with “the relevant authorities to investigate the crime, prosecute the perpetrators, recover the journalist’s body, and deliver it to his family.”
Al-Maqri had been held incommunicado by AQAP since Oct. 12, 2015, following his abduction during the protest.
The group accused the individuals of “spying against the mujahedeen,” a label the group uses for its fighters.
His death underscores the increasing dangers for journalists operating in Yemen, where armed groups have targeted media professionals as part of broader efforts to suppress dissent and control narratives.
At least two other Yemeni journalists remain subjected to enforced disappearances, a practice characterized by abduction and the refusal to disclose a person’s fate or whereabouts.
Waheed Al-Sufi, the editor-in-chief of the independent newspaper Al-Arabiya, has been missing since April 2015 and is thought to be being held by the Houthi movement.
Naseh Shaker, who was last heard from on Nov. 19, 2024, is believed to be being held by the Southern Transitional Council, a secessionist organization in southern Yemen.
Yemen continues to rank among the deadliest countries for journalists, with armed conflict and factional violence leaving media workers vulnerable to abductions, disappearances, and killings.
Apple agrees to $95 million deal to settle Siri eavesdropping suit
- A class action lawsuit filed five years ago accused Siri of listening in on private conversations of people with iPhones, iPads, HomePods or other Apple devices enhanced with the digital assistant
SAN FRANCISCO, California: Apple has agreed to pay $95 million to settle a lawsuit accusing its digital assistant Siri of listening in on users’ private conversations.
The proposed settlement detailed in a court filing accessed on Thursday came with Apple holding firm that it did nothing wrong.
“Apple has at all times denied and continues to deny any and all alleged wrongdoing and liability,” the tech titan said in the proposed settlement, which requires a judge’s approval to be finalized.
A class action lawsuit filed five years ago accused Siri of listening in on private conversations of people with iPhones, iPads, HomePods or other Apple devices enhanced with the digital assistant.
The California-based tech giant has made user privacy a big part of its brand image, and one of the reasons it tightly controls its “ecosystem” of hardware and software.
Talk captured by “unintended Siri activation” were obtained by Apple and perhaps even shared with third parties, according to the suit.
A proposed settlement fund of $95 million would be used to pay no more than $20 per Siri device to US owners who had private conversations captured without permission, the settlement indicated.
The agreement also requires Apple to confirm it has deleted any overheard talk and make user choices clear when it comes to voice data gathered to improve Siri.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In 2023, Amazon agreed to pay more than $30 million to the US Federal Trade Commission to settle litigation accusing the company of violating privacy with its Ring doorbell cameras and Alexa digital assistant.
Blowback online to Jewish Chronicle article claiming Palestinian solidarity is antisemitic
- Newspaper faces criticism after writer Melanie Phillips suggests advocating for Palestinian rights fosters ‘deranged and murderous Jew-hatred’
- One social media user wrote: ‘Your exploitation of antisemitism is seriously disturbing. But why would Zionists care that they endanger Jews by merging their identity with Israel?’
LONDON: British newspaper The Jewish Chronicle is facing intense criticism over an article in which the writer equated support for the Palestinian cause with antisemitism.
The piece was written by British commentator Melanie Phillips and published on Tuesday with the headline “If you support the Palestinian cause in any form, you’re facilitating Jew-hate.” It was subsequently edited and the headline changed to “The Truth of the Palestinian cause,” without any editorial note of the changes.
In her article, Phillips suggested that advocating for Palestinian rights fosters “deranged and murderous Jew-hatred.”
She wrote: “Jew-hatred has not only been normalized. It’s been rebranded as social justice because support for Palestinianism, which seeks to write the Jews out of their country, their history and the world, is what now passes for a moral sense among swathes of the public, the entire intelligentsia and even — heaven help us — many Jews.”
Phillips continues: “Let’s not hear any protests that you were once a member of Habonim or have a holiday home in Herzliya … If you support the Palestinian Arab cause today, you are facilitating deranged and murderous Jew-hatred. Own it.”
The article was widely condemned on social media.
The user Torah Jews wrote in a message posted on X: “Your exploitation of antisemitism is seriously disturbing. But why would Zionists care that they endanger Jews by merging their identity with Israel?”
Miqdaad Versi, a spokesperson for the Muslim Council of Britain, wrote that even after the “secret” edits to the article, Phillips’ words “remain disgusting.” He added: “Always good to see the cranks at The Jewish Chronicle show their true colours.”
Some critics accused the newspaper of promoting “Israeli propaganda.” Others warned that such rhetoric undermines efforts to combat true antisemitism by conflating it with solidarity for the Palestinian people.
Political commentator Owen Jones said: “Melanie Phillips is explicitly stating what Israel’s cheerleaders have long been pushing for. They want to redefine antisemitism as ‘any form of solidarity with Palestinians,’ rather than the very dangerous hatred of Jewish people that it is.”
This is not the first time the writer and the newspaper have caused controversy. Phillips has long argued that solidarity with Palestinians should be considered antisemitic, and she has denied the existence of Islamophobia.
In September, The Jewish Chronicle was criticized after it emerged that one of its writers had fabricated details in several high-profile stories. The revelations prompted a mass exodus of staff, with departing employees complaining of poor editorial standards under the present management.
Malaysia grants WeChat, TikTok licenses to operate under new law
- Telegram and Meta are pursuing licenses, while X and Google have yet to apply, officials confirm
- The licensing requirement stems from new legislation targeting the surge in cybercrime
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s communications regulator said it granted Tencent’s WeChat and ByteDance’s TikTok licenses to operate in the country under a new social media law, but that some other platforms had not applied.
The law, aimed at tackling rising cybercrime, requires social media platforms and messaging services with more than 8 million users in Malaysia to obtain a license or face legal action. It came into effect on Jan. 1.
In a statement on Wednesday, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission said messaging platform Telegram was in the final stages of obtaining its license, while Meta Platforms, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, had begun the licensing process.
The regulator said X had not submitted an application because the platform said its local user base did not reach the 8 million threshold. The regulator said it was reviewing the validity of X’s claim.
Alphabet’s Google, which operates video platform YouTube, had also not applied for a license after raising concerns about the video sharing features of YouTube and its classification under the licensing law, the regulator said. It did not state the concerns or how they relate to the law but said YouTube must adhere.
“Platform providers found to be in violation of licensing requirements may be subject to investigation and regulatory actions,” the regulator said.
Malaysia reported a sharp increase in harmful social media content in early 2024 and urged social media firms, including Meta and short video platform TikTok, to step up monitoring of their platforms.
Malaysian authorities deem online gambling, scams, child pornography and grooming, cyberbullying and content related to race, religion and royalty as harmful.
The companies do not publish the number of users per country on their platforms.
According to independent data provider World Population Review, WeChat has 12 million users in Malaysia.
Advisory firm Kepios said YouTube had about 24.1 million users in Malaysia in early 2024, TikTok 28.68 million users aged 18 and above, Facebook 22.35 million users, and X had 5.71 million.
