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- Helicopter Crashes in Los Angeles County, Killing 3
The authorities did not immediately confirm who was operating the helicopter or how many people were aboard. One person was taken to a hospital, the Los Angeles Fire Department said. [TheTopNews] Read More.4 days ago - Trump, the Supreme Court and the Postal Service: A History of Mail VotingThe mail system took on new prominence during the Civil War by enabling soldiers to vote from afar. On Monday, the Supreme Court blocked President Trump’s effort to give it a new role in elections. [TheTopNews] Read More.5 days ago
- The Only Thing Capable of Uniting Bernie and Bannon
If there was any question over whether the concept of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” is still operative in Washington’s hyper-partisan political environment, the answer may be found in the budding coalition of progressives and MAGA-friendly activists who have united in recent days to speak out against artificial intelligence. Which is how Senator Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon found themselves speaking on the same stage today.With warnings that the technology could cause mass economic displacement and even human extinction, political figures who once wanted nothing to do with one another are suddenly joining forces, scrambling the political landscape just weeks before the midterm elections. The odd couples, who would have been hard to fathom just weeks ago, are also reshaping the legislative agenda. Republican Senators Ted Cruz and John Thune have teamed up with Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar on an AI-safety bill; progressive Senator Richard Blumenthal joined forces with conservative Senator Josh Hawley to push a bill requiring AI companies to obtain approval from the Department of Energy before deploying new systems.Nearly a decade ago, Sanders urged then-President-Elect Trump to reverse his decision to hire Bannon, a pugilistic architect of the MAGA movement, and called him “a racist individual.” Last year, Bannon called Sanders a “pussy” for not going after Hillary Clinton hard enough in 2016. But the two were able to put all of that aside today to deliver the same message: If AI has the potential to wipe out humanity, Americans should have a say in how it operates. [Read: Trump’s see-no-evil AI policy]“If the lives of every man, woman, and child are going to be fundamentally changed by this technology, then the people of this country must make the decisions about AI, and not just a handful of oligarchs,” Sanders said at the all-day “Pro-Human Assembly.” Bannon sounded pretty much exactly the same. “The American citizens are not going to be supplicants to the oligarchs anymore,” the MAGA strategist said in what easily could have been a continuation of the Vermont socialist’s remarks. “We can’t do it.”Standing decidedly outside of this spirit of cross-party cooperation is Trump, who has downplayed warnings about AI’s risks and called the concerns over the rapidly advancing technology a “hoax.” Trump made a surprise appearance at an AI-friendly event yesterday by placing a phone call to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and making clear that he does not believe the doomsday… [TheTopNews] Read More.5 days ago - Podcast Movement: A Photo montage
RAIN’s Kurt Hanson attends the Sounds Profitable Business Summit — a podcast industry event — in NYC, and sends back a portfolio of photos with informative captions. We present a selection. [TheTopNews] Read More.5 days ago - An Existential Crisis in MathIn late July, one of the world’s most famous mathematicians issued a warning to his field. Math is entering a “turbulent period,” the UCLA professor Terence Tao said in front of a packed lecture hall at the International Congress of Mathematicians. AI is getting so good at math, he said, that it’s causing a “crisis in our mathematical values and practices.”Earlier in the same week that Tao gave his talk at math’s most prestigious conference, a researcher at Anthropic had used Claude to disprove an 87-year-old math conjecture. Still, when I asked mathematicians at the conference about their experiences with AI, most hadn’t thought deeply about the topic. Many seemed a little surprised that a journalist was asking them about it at all.Now mathematicians are paying attention. Last week, OpenAI announced that its bots had cracked the Navier–Stokes problem, one of the seven Millennium Prize problems regarded as among the grandest challenges in the field. Navier–Stokes has stumped mathematicians since the 1930s: “It’s a career-killing problem—you can spend all your career doing it and never get the solution,” David Dritschel, a mathematician at the University of St. Andrews, told me. OpenAI said its swarm of 10,000 AI agents solved the problem in less than four days.In the math world, the initial shock over OpenAI’s result has morphed into something of an existential reckoning for the discipline. Although OpenAI was able to solve the Navier–Stokes problem only by pulling from nearly a century’s worth of human efforts, academics are realizing just how much power the AI industry now has over math. “We’re seeing how swiftly an entire field can be ravaged by AI,” Max Weinreich, a math professor at CUNY Baruch, told me.OpenAI’s breakthrough is as notable as how it was achieved. The night before OpenAI announced its solution, the NYU mathematician Tristan Buckmaster released a statement alleging that he had been scooped by OpenAI. With the heavy assistance of AI tools, Buckmaster and his collaborator, Levent Alpöge (who works at Anthropic), had made major progress toward solving the Navier–Stokes problem. Buckmaster implied that OpenAI might have copied their approach by accessing his messages with OpenAI’s agents. “Almost nobody else I know of was working on it,” he wrote.In an announcement the next day, OpenAI said that it had tasked its AI systems to work on all of the Millennium Problems after hearing rumors that Anthropic had solved two of them.… [TheTopNews] Read More.5 days ago
- Oil Prices Surge as Expanding Middle East War Squeezes Global Crude Supplies
Global oil prices are facing renewed upward pressure as widening conflict in the Middle East disrupts crude supplies and threatens some of the world’s most important energy transportation routes. The instability is creating additional uncertainty for businesses and consumers, including trucking companies already dealing with elevated diesel costs. The conflict involving the United States and Iran has significantly disrupted normal oil movements through the region. The Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important energy corridors, remains a major concern because a substantial portion of global petroleum supplies traditionally moves through the waterway. Pressure on energy markets has increased further as instability spreads to other parts of the Middle East. Iran-backed Houthi forces have expanded their activities around Yemen and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, another critical shipping route connecting the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden. The developments have raised concerns about the availability of secure export routes for major Middle Eastern oil producers. The growing supply concerns have pushed crude prices sharply higher. Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, recently moved above $100 per barrel, while West Texas Intermediate also approached triple-digit levels. Brent settled at $101.21 per barrel on September 9, while U.S. benchmark crude finished at $96.05. Energy markets have remained highly volatile throughout the conflict. Prices have repeatedly risen or fallen in response to military developments, shipping activity, infrastructure disruptions, and signs of possible diplomatic negotiations. This uncertainty has made it difficult for businesses to predict where fuel expenses could move next. Saudi Arabia and other major producers are also facing logistical challenges as instability affects multiple shipping corridors. Disruptions involving pipelines and maritime routes can limit the amount of crude reaching international markets even when producers have oil available for export. For the U.S. trucking industry, the effects extend beyond crude markets. Higher oil prices can eventually translate into higher diesel fuel costs, increasing one of the largest operating expenses for motor carriers. U.S. diesel prices were recently averaging around $5.94 per gallon, while gasoline averaged approximately $4.22. Owner-operators and smaller fleets can be particularly vulnerable to sudden fuel increases because they often have fewer opportunities to negotiate bulk purchasing agreements or hedge fuel expenses. Larger fleets may rely on fuel programs and surcharges to offset part of the increase, but prolonged high prices can still pressure operating margins. Higher transportation costs can also spread throughout the economy. Trucks move food, retail… [TheTopNews] Read More.5 days ago
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