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Low Adoption Of Technology At Ports Hindering Improved Productivity – Akutah
In North Maharashtra, Mahayuti settles score of Lok Sabha election
‘Survive to ’25’ mentality could extend a bit longer for Boulder Valley office market1 2 Ranchi: Congress, a part of the INDIA bloc in Jharkhand, has consolidated its position in the state while BJP, which ran an aggressively polarized campaign, suffered a major loss, both as part of NDA and individually too. Beating all political pundits' prediction of being a weak cog in INDIA bloc's wheel in Jharkhand, the grand old party repeated its 2019 performance by bagging 16 out of 30 seats it contested this time. In contrast, the BJP, contesting 68 seats as part of the NDA, secured 21 seats—a decline of four seats compared to its individual tally in 2019. The saffron camp also suffered a debacle on tribal-dominated seats despite its attempt to foray into the adivasi belt, citing ‘Bangladeshi infiltration plank'. In 2019 assembly polls, BJP won two tribal seats but five years down the line, its tribal outreach continued to fail as it could win only one seat (Seraikela) this time. On the contrary, Congress managed to win six tribal seats. Also, despite losing some of its sitting seats such as Jamshepdur West, Jarmuni and Jharia, it managed to clinch new seats such as Bokaro, Chatterpur and Kanke to make up for the losses. Except Bokaro, it, however, couldn't make any impact in urban pockets which continue to remain BJP's fortress. Maharashtra Jharkhand Maharashtra Alliance View i Party View Seats: 288 Results Majority: 145 BJP+ 229 MVA 47 OTH 12 Results : 288 / 288 BJP+ WON Jharkhand Alliance View i Party View Seats: 81 Results Majority: 41 INDIA 56 NDA 24 OTH 1 Results : 81 / 81 INDIA WON Source: PValue Newly elected Lohardaga MLA and outgoing finance minister Rameshwar Oraon said, "We fought on development agenda compared to negative politics by BJP. Our coalition govt in last five years faced several challenges starting from Covid-19 to political turmoil, but we remained steady, focused on welfare measures to serve the people. Some of the schemes like free electricity, Maiyan Samman Scheme, universal pension scheme gave both Congress and INDIA bloc a decisive verdict this time." BJP's working president Ravindra Kumar Rai on the other hand said the verdict was contrary to their expectations but they would continue to work as a strong opposition. He said, "Now that the verdict is out, we humbly accept it. We will continue to raise people's voice in next five years with more vigour to ensure the promises made by INDIA bloc is fulfilled. We will continue to fight both inside the assembly and on the streets for people's cause."Suchir Balaji, a former OpenAI engineer and whistleblower who helped train the artificial intelligence systems behind ChatGPT and later said he believed those practices violated copyright law, has died, according to his parents and San Francisco officials. He was 26. Balaji worked at OpenAI for nearly four years before quitting in August. He was well-regarded by colleagues at the San Francisco company, where a co-founder this week called him one of OpenAI's strongest contributors who was essential to developing some of its products. “We are devastated to learn of this incredibly sad news and our hearts go out to Suchir’s loved ones during this difficult time,” said a statement from OpenAI. Balaji was found dead in his San Francisco apartment on Nov. 26 in what police said “appeared to be a suicide. No evidence of foul play was found during the initial investigation.” The city's chief medical examiner's office confirmed the manner of death to be suicide. His parents Poornima Ramarao and Balaji Ramamurthy said they are still seeking answers, describing their son as a “happy, smart and brave young man” who loved to hike and recently returned from a trip with friends. Balaji grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and first arrived at the fledgling AI research lab for a 2018 summer internship while studying computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. He returned a few years later to work at OpenAI, where one of his first projects, called WebGPT, helped pave the way for ChatGPT. “Suchir’s contributions to this project were essential, and it wouldn’t have succeeded without him,” said OpenAI co-founder John Schulman in a social media post memorializing Balaji. Schulman, who recruited Balaji to his team, said what made him such an exceptional engineer and scientist was his attention to detail and ability to notice subtle bugs or logical errors. “He had a knack for finding simple solutions and writing elegant code that worked,” Schulman wrote. “He’d think through the details of things carefully and rigorously.” Balaji later shifted to organizing the huge datasets of online writings and other media used to train GPT-4, the fourth generation of OpenAI's flagship large language model and a basis for the company's famous chatbot. It was that work that eventually caused Balaji to question the technology he helped build, especially after newspapers, novelists and others began suing OpenAI and other AI companies for copyright infringement. He first raised his concerns with The New York Times, which reported them in an October profile of Balaji . He later told The Associated Press he would “try to testify” in the strongest copyright infringement cases and considered a lawsuit brought by The New York Times last year to be the “most serious.” Times lawyers named him in a Nov. 18 court filing as someone who might have “unique and relevant documents” supporting allegations of OpenAI's willful copyright infringement. His records were also sought by lawyers in a separate case brought by book authors including the comedian Sarah Silverman, according to a court filing. “It doesn’t feel right to be training on people’s data and then competing with them in the marketplace,” Balaji told the AP in late October. “I don’t think you should be able to do that. I don’t think you are able to do that legally.” He told the AP that he gradually grew more disillusioned with OpenAI, especially after the internal turmoil that led its board of directors to fire and then rehire CEO Sam Altman last year. Balaji said he was broadly concerned about how its commercial products were rolling out, including their propensity for spouting false information known as hallucinations. But of the “bag of issues” he was concerned about, he said he was focusing on copyright as the one it was “actually possible to do something about.” He acknowledged that it was an unpopular opinion within the AI research community, which is accustomed to pulling data from the internet, but said “they will have to change and it’s a matter of time.” He had not been deposed and it’s unclear to what extent his revelations will be admitted as evidence in any legal cases after his death. He also published a personal blog post with his opinions about the topic. Schulman, who resigned from OpenAI in August, said he and Balaji coincidentally left on the same day and celebrated with fellow colleagues that night with dinner and drinks at a San Francisco bar. Another of Balaji’s mentors, co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, had left OpenAI several months earlier , which Balaji saw as another impetus to leave. Schulman said Balaji had told him earlier this year of his plans to leave OpenAI and that Balaji didn't think that better-than-human AI known as artificial general intelligence “was right around the corner, like the rest of the company seemed to believe.” The younger engineer expressed interest in getting a doctorate and exploring “some more off-the-beaten path ideas about how to build intelligence,” Schulman said. Balaji's family said a memorial is being planned for later this month at the India Community Center in Milpitas, California, not far from his hometown of Cupertino. —————- EDITOR’S NOTE — This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988. —————-- The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement allowing OpenAI access to part of the AP’s text archives.
Vikings right guard Dalton Risner says he’ll continue to get better at new positionBy Matt O’brien | Ap Technology Writer CLONDALKIN, Ireland—Dozens of massive data centers humming at the outskirts of Dublin are consuming more electricity than all of the urban homes in Ireland and starting to wear out the warm welcome that brought them here. Now, a country that made itself a computing factory for Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and TikTok is wondering whether it was all worth it as tech giants look around the world to build even more data centers to fuel the next wave of artificial intelligence. Fears of rolling blackouts led Ireland’s grid operator to halt new data centers near Dublin until 2028. These huge buildings and their powerful computers last year consumed 21 percent of the nation’s electricity, according to official records. No other country has reported a higher burden to the International Energy Agency. Not only that, but Ireland is still heavily reliant on burning fossil fuels to generate electricity, despite a growing number of wind farms sprouting across the countryside. Further data center expansion threatens Ireland’s goals to sharply cut planet-warming emissions. Ireland is a “microcosm of what many countries could be facing over the next decade, particularly with the growth of AI,” said energy researcher Paul Deane of University College Cork. Twenty-six-year-old activist Darragh Adelaide lives in a working-class Dublin suburb just across a busy motorway from Grange Castle Business Park, one of Ireland’s biggest data center clusters. It could get even bigger were Adelaide not a thorn in the side of Google’s expansion plans. “It’s kind of an outrageous number of data centers,” Adelaide said. “People have started to make the connection between the amount of electricity they’re using and electricity prices going up.” Ireland has attracted global tech companies since the “Celtic Tiger” boom at the turn of the 21st century. Tax incentives, a highly skilled, English-speaking workforce and the country’s membership in the European Union have all contributed to making the tech sector a central part of the Irish economy. The island is also a node for undersea cables that extend to the US, Britain, Iceland and mainland Europe. Nearly all of the data centers sit on the edge of Dublin, where their proximity to the capital city facilitates online financial transactions and other activities that require fast connections. Data center computers run hot, but compared to other parts of the world, Ireland’s cool temperatures make it easier to keep them from overheating without drawing in as much water. Still, buildings that for years went mostly unnoticed have attracted unwanted attention as their power demands surged while Irish householders pay some of Europe’s highest electricity bills. Ireland’s Environmental Protection Agency has also flagged concerns about nitrogen oxide pollution from data centers’ on-site generators—typically gas or diesel turbines—affecting areas near Dublin. A crackdown began in 2021, spurred by projections that data centers are on pace to take up one third of Ireland’s electricity in this decade. Regulators declared that Dublin had hit its limits and could no longer plug more data centers into its grid. The government urged tech companies to look outside the capital and find ways to supply their own power. “What’s happening in Ireland is the politics of basically what happens when you build too many of these things,” said University College Dublin researcher Patrick Brodie. “Even though people have recognized for a while that data centers are energy hogs, there hasn’t really been so many of these moments where, effectively, Ireland issued a red alert.” Adelaide was a child when Microsoft opened Grange Castle’s first data center in 2009, but enormous complexes built by Amazon, Google, Microsoft and other companies have since expanded around the ruined castle that anchors the business park. They have their own modern fortifications of high fences, surveillance cameras and guardhouses, and don’t display their corporate logos. In June, Adelaide’s campaign against data centers helped get him elected to a seat on the South Dublin County Council for the leftist People Not Profits Party. The council soon after rejected Google’s plan to build another data center. Google appealed the decision in September. “It was only going to employ around 50 people,” Adelaide said. “It would have been a massive cost to the local area and to Ireland in general with very little benefit, which is kind of how the tax haven system works.” The backlash from Dublin-area local planning authorities—combined with stricter, if sometimes contradictory, guidance from the national government—has frustrated data center developers. One fully built data center from Texas-based Digital Realty is sitting idle at Grange Castle while it awaits permission to connect to the electricity grid. The company sells space within its data centers for clients such as banks, e-mail providers and social media platforms. It says it lacks a grid connection despite contracting for enough renewable energy to power all of its Irish data centers. “When we look at artificial intelligence, when we look at new technologies coming along the line, the basic requirement for all of those is power infrastructure,” said Dermot Lahey, who directs Digital Realty’s data center implementation in Ireland, speaking inside a cavernous empty data hall. Ireland has all the elements to make it a “great home for AI expansion,” he said. “What’s preventing us from being able to leverage that is the fact that the power constraints that we have, or the power moratorium that we have, is greatly impacting our ability to provide space for customers,” Lahey said. Once colder weather sets in, the smoky fragrance of fireplaces burning briquettes of peat lingers over County Offaly, just over an hour’s drive west of Dublin in a region known as the Midlands. It’s places like this where some data center developers, thwarted by Dublin’s constraints, now see opportunity. A report commissioned by County Offaly’s government pitches the bog-dotted region as a place to “create thousands of green jobs” and rival “Dublin, Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam and Paris in being an anchor for data centers powered by renewable energy.” Farmer and conservationist Brian Sheridan, 83, is doubtful. He’s seen this region transformed once before, from a vast wetland known as the Bog of Allen to barren pockets of brownfields as people cut away trenches of dense peat soil, or turf – first with spades and later with tractors at an industrial scale to create homegrown fuel. “The bog started disappearing and it wasn’t being replaced,” said Sheridan, walking along a boardwalk over carpets of moss and sedges in the now-protected Clara Bog Nature Reserve. Decades of rapid extraction fostered Ireland’s energy independence and employed scores of workers in turf-cutting, briquette factories and power plants. But it also polluted the air and devastated a delicate environment. Bogs that naturally trapped large amounts of carbon dioxide were stripped down to the bedrock, contributing to global warming. When burned, peat is dirtier than coal. Ireland has largely banned the sale of peat and shuttered the last remaining peat-fired power plants. But the state-supported company at the helm of peat extraction, Bord na Móna, still controls vast tracts of former bogland. It has refashioned itself as a renewable energy provider, laying down wind turbines and solar farms and partnering with Amazon to build a data center near the village of Rhode. Bord na Móna declined multiple interview requests about its plans, and some residents feel left in the dark. “Bord na Móna, as far as I’m concerned, are a law unto themselves,” Sheridan said. “Now that the turf-cutting is all finished, they should be gone. But it’s still the same Bord Na Móna and they won’t answer questions.” Amazon declined to talk about specific projects and has repeatedly signaled it may shift its new data center investments away from Ireland. But an executive said the company is still working closely with the Irish government and characterized Ireland’s challenges as mostly about transmission—building the infrastructure to get new clean energy where it needs to go. “Ireland has tremendous opportunity for additional renewable energy,” said Kevin Miller, Amazon Web Services’ vice president of global data centers. “However, they also need quite a bit more capacity on the grid to tap into that generation.” A tech-driven race is on to harness the region’s wind. Backed by a power purchase agreement with Microsoft, the Norwegian wind energy company Statkraft is building nine towering wind turbines in remote former boglands along County Offaly’s eastern edge. Statkraft’s managing director for Ireland, Kevin O’Donovan, said data centers are actually helping to accelerate Ireland’s clean energy transition. “For a lot of the mainland European countries, demand is going down and that’s actually leading to a challenge to roll out renewables,” O’Donovan said. “Whereas in Ireland we have demand that’s increasing because the country is growing economically and obviously a part of that is the data center growth.” On the other side of Offaly, a group of residents who live along the Lemanaghan Bog near the site of a 7th-century monastery are skeptical of such claims. They are opposed to what a proposed Bord Na Móna wind farm will do to its cultural heritage and ecology. KK Kenny took his concerns to Dublin this fall in a meeting with the country’s taoiseach, or prime minister, Simon Harris. Kenny wants to see the bog preserved for biodiversity. He’d be happy to see data center developers follow through with their pledge to look to other European countries. “They say, oh, they’re going to pull out,” Kenny said. “That would be a great thing. We can’t sustain them.” Some neighbors of Amazon’s proposed data center in Rhode are more open to the idea. One village resident already commutes all the way to Dublin to work at a data center. Another is hoping it will employ people who’d want to buy new homes. “We’re all for change,” said Gerard Whelan. “I’ll get work because I build houses. It’s a domino effect.” At a village pub, the Rhode Inn, Whelan points to a photograph of the old peat-burning power plant where his father worked the control room. Its cooling towers loomed over the village before their demolition two decades ago. Another nearby plant only stopped burning peat a year ago. What happens next for Ireland’s data centers could depend in part on the new national government coming into power early next year. Data centers were not a top issue for Irish voters who showed up to the polls on November 29. But analysts expect the two center-right parties forming a new coalition government to face industry pressure to ease limits on data center expansion. Ossian Smyth, an outgoing minister of state for the Irish government whose Green Party lost nearly all its parliamentary seats, said it would be a mistake to slow down Ireland’s climate commitments. But he also sees the limits on data center growth set by his outgoing government as having resolved most people’s concerns. What other countries can learn from Ireland’s experience, he added, is to carefully manage the effect of data centers on the stability of the electricity system—and make sure their benefits are much more than income or foreign investment. “Don’t see them as a necessary evil or something that you just have to put up with because it makes money and it gets taxes,” Smyth said.Amazon invests another $4 bn in AI firm Anthropic
The ( ) share price has been well and truly sold off in 2024. Since the start of the year, the miner's shares have lost almost 65% of their value. Could things be better in 2025 and could the company's shares make a stellar comeback? Let's find out. Will the Liontown share price make a stellar comeback? The team at Bell Potter sees potential for a huge comeback in 2025, especially given its belief that the lithium market is heading to a deficit in the near future. But before we get into that, let's hear what the broker is saying about this week's shipments update. It said: LTR has announced that its largest spodumene concentrate cargo, and the first to offtake and funding partner LG Energy Solution, is scheduled to depart from the Port of Geraldton today. We calculate that the ~33kwmt shipment (11kwmt going to LGES) takes LTR's total spodumene concentrate sales to almost 90kwmt (82kdmt). With 53kdmt produced over three months to 31 October 2024, the latest sales required production over the following 5 weeks of around 30kdmt and suggests the Kathleen Valley ramp-up is going well. In light of the above, Bell Potter believes the company is on course to deliver on expectations in the first half. It adds: LTR's guidance implies 1H FY25 production of 90- 110kdmt (SC6 equivalent); latest performance and the likelihood of a further shipment before the end of December 2024 suggests that this target is within reach. Back to the comeback As mentioned above, Bell Potter thinks the Liontown share price could make a huge comeback as the lithium market tightens. Commenting on the market, it said: We calculate that recent supply curtailments from Australian producers (including LTR) have deferred around 50kt of Lithium Carbonate Equivalent from the market (around 4% of 2024 supply). On our supply-demand modelling, the cuts result in a smaller market surplus in 2025 and brings forward our estimate of a market deficit to 2026 (previously 2027). Quarter to date SC6 prices have averaged around US$800/t CFR. As a result, this morning the broker has retained its speculative buy rating and $1.40 price target on its shares. Based on the current Liontown share price of 60 cents, this implies potential upside of 133% for investors over the next 12 months. It concludes: LTR's 100% owned Kathleen Valley lithium project remains highly strategic in terms of scale, long project life and location in a tier-one mining jurisdiction. LTR has offtake contracts with top-tier EV and battery OEMs. Under our modelled assumptions, we expect that LTR is fully funded to free cash flow. LTR is an asset development company; our Speculative risk rating recognises this higher level of risk.President Anura Kumara Dissanayake undertook his first official State visit abroad after being elected President in September and travelled to India from December 15 to17 at the invitation of Indian President Droupadi Murmu. The world witnessed the grand welcome extended to President Anura Kumara Dissanayake by Indian state officials, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. President Dissanayake was accorded a 21-gun salute and a ceremonial guard of honour by the Indian armed forces. The public witnessed the camaraderie between the two leaders, both of whom come from humble backgrounds, highlighting their shared vibrancy and common values. As expected, the Opposition quickly seized the opportunity to raise suspicions, flocking to media platforms to cast doubts over the visit. They alleged secrecy and hinted at undisclosed deals, accusing the National People’s Power Government of striking covert agreements with India. The Sunday Observer spoke to Foreign Affairs, Foreign Employment and Tourism Minister Vijitha Herath at his ministry office last Thursday to discuss the outcome of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s visit to India. Minister Herath accompanied President Dissanayake during the visit. Here are excerpts from the interview: Q: How significant was President Dissanayake’s visit to India for Sri Lanka? A: The visit marked several milestones in strengthening economic and political ties between the two nations. Two key Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) were signed. The first involves providing two-week training courses for 1,500 Sri Lankan civil administrators at the Indian National Centre for Good Governance over the next five years. The second aims to avoid double taxation, which will benefit Sri Lanka by facilitating smoother financial activities. Discussions were also held to enhance cooperation in the power and energy sector. These talks addressed the technical and administrative aspects of various projects to ensure their viability and sustainable implementation. Q: Are these projects State-led or involve private sector collaboration? A: Both approaches are being considered. For instance, one key proposal is a wind power generation project in Sri Lanka to harness kinetic wind energy for electricity. The power generated would be exported to India and other BIMSTEC nations. This project has been agreed to in principle, with further discussions to finalise the details. We also agreed to expedite the solar energy project in Sampur, a joint venture between an Indian company and the Ceylon Electricity Board, which had been initiated by the previous Government. Regarding the Colombo Port’s Eastern Jetty, we reaffirmed a previous agreement with India’s Adani Group, with India pledging full support to move the project forward. Q: There are claims that the Government agreed to implement the Economic and Technology Cooperation Agreement (ETCA). Is this true? A: No, that is false. While discussions about ETCA have been ongoing for some time, we only agreed to continue the dialogue. No final agreement was reached regarding that. Q: What about allegations of constructing a bridge from Rameswaram to Thalaimannar? A: That proposal was initiated by the previous Government. During this visit, no agreement was signed to build such a bridge. Q: Has the Government agreed to hand over oil tanks in Trincomalee to India? A: The Indian Oil Company (IOC) already operates 15 tanks in Trincomalee under a previous agreement. Sri Lanka retains 24 tanks, while the remaining 61 tanks are to be jointly operated by both countries. These are existing agreements and no new deals were signed during the visit. Q: The Opposition says that laying an oil pipeline connecting India and Sri Lanka poses a threat to national security. What is your response? A: The Governments of India, Sri Lanka and the United Arab Emirates are currently discussing a proposal to build a multi-product pipeline from India to Sri Lanka to ensure a reliable and affordable energy supply. No final agreement was reached during the President’s visit; the project remains at the proposal stage. We also made it explicitly clear to the Indian Government that Sri Lanka’s oceanic territory and land would never be allowed to pose a threat to India or the security of the region. Q: Were there any agreements on developing the tourism industry? A: Yes, we agreed to expand pilgrimage tourism. Many Sri Lankans travel to India to visit Buddhist shrines, while Indian Hindus visit sites in Sri Lanka. Both sides saw the potential for further development in this area. Q: Were any defence-related agreements signed? A: No military agreements were signed. However, we requested equal social security benefits for Sri Lankans working in India, similar to what Indian workers in Sri Lanka receive. We asked India to waive visa fees for Sri Lankans as we do not charge Indians for visas. Q: Were there discussions on the illegal fishing issue in Sri Lankan waters? A: Yes, discussions are ongoing between the Fisheries Ministries and Societies of both countries. Bottom trawling which is banned in both nations, remains a concern. Despite financial incentives from the Indian Government for their fishers not to cross into Sri Lankan waters, violations persist. All parties agreed to find a permanent solution to this issue. Q: It had been reported that an MP from Jaffna, Gajendra Kumar Ponnambalam had urged the Indian Government to pressure Sri Lanka into establishing a federal system. Did this have any impact on discussions? A: Not at all. We made it clear to the Indian Government that the Tamil people in the North, East and Central highlands had expressed their confidence in us through their votes. We have ensured the security and well-being of all ethnic groups—Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim. We assured them that, with the approval of all citizens we would address these concerns comprehensively through a new Constitution. The Indian Government was satisfied with our position. Q: Were there any agreements to sell local dairy industries such as MILCO and NLDB, to India’s Amul? A: Absolutely not. No agreements were made to sell local dairy industries. However, we did express interest in learning from Amul’s cooperative model to strengthen Sri Lanka’s dairy sector. This is about adopting a proven structure for development, not selling our assets. Frankly, some people, bankrupt in political credibility fabricate baseless criticisms when they find nothing substantial to attack this Government. But let me assure you, such empty rhetoric will not shake this administration. We maintain strong and principled relations with India and we will never compromise the territorial integrity and sovereignty of our country. Nor will we allow anyone else to do so. In fact, we are focused on strengthening foreign relations with all nations—China, the United States, Russia, North Korea, Cuba, South Korea, Japan, and others. Instead of aligning ourselves with a select group of countries, we aim to maintain equal and balanced friendships across the globe. This approach reflects a modernist perspective, going beyond the traditional non-aligned policy. Q: Did Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi pressure the Sri Lankan delegation to hold the Provincial Council elections without delay, as reported by some Tamil and Sinhala media? A: Absolutely not. During the joint statement made by our President and Prime Minister Modi, the Prime Minister in his speech said that he had learned about the Government’s plans to hold Provincial Council elections. He said that it was a positive development. Claims that Prime Minister Modi pressured us to hold any election are complete falsehoods. Q: There are claims that Sri Lanka had failed to join BRICS because it was rejected. Is this true? A: Absolutely not. We formally requested membership in BRICS, and friendly countries, including India, assured us of their support. However, BRICS has not yet decided to expand its membership beyond the current main member nations. The notion that Sri Lanka was rejected is baseless and misrepresented by certain sections of the media. What actually happened is that BRICS decided not to recruit new members at this stage. Q: Is Sri Lanka exploring any other connections with BRICS-related institutions? A: Yes, we are in discussions with the New Development Bank (NDB), established by BRICS nations—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. We have received positive responses regarding potential collaboration. However, further negotiations with the Central Bank are needed to finalise an agreement. This relationship has the potential to bring significant financial benefits to Sri Lanka in the future. Pic by Shan Rambukwella
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NYT Strands today — hints, spangram and answers for game #266 (Sunday, November 24 2024)‘We drew because of me’ - Kounde takes blame after Barca heldJimmy Carter, nation’s 39th president who became influential human rights advocate, diesSuchir Balaji, a former OpenAI engineer and whistleblower who helped train the artificial intelligence systems behind ChatGPT and later said he believed those practices violated copyright law, has died, according to his parents and San Francisco officials. He was 26. Balaji worked at OpenAI for nearly four years before quitting in August. He was well-regarded by colleagues at the San Francisco company, where a co-founder this week called him one of OpenAI's strongest contributors who was essential to developing some of its products. “We are devastated to learn of this incredibly sad news and our hearts go out to Suchir’s loved ones during this difficult time,” said a statement from OpenAI. Balaji was found dead in his San Francisco apartment on Nov. 26 in what police said “appeared to be a suicide. No evidence of foul play was found during the initial investigation.” The city's chief medical examiner's office confirmed the manner of death to be suicide. His parents Poornima Ramarao and Balaji Ramamurthy said they are still seeking answers, describing their son as a “happy, smart and brave young man” who loved to hike and recently returned from a trip with friends. Balaji grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and first arrived at the fledgling AI research lab for a 2018 summer internship while studying computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. He returned a few years later to work at OpenAI, where one of his first projects, called WebGPT, helped pave the way for ChatGPT. “Suchir’s contributions to this project were essential, and it wouldn’t have succeeded without him,” said OpenAI co-founder John Schulman in a social media post memorializing Balaji. Schulman, who recruited Balaji to his team, said what made him such an exceptional engineer and scientist was his attention to detail and ability to notice subtle bugs or logical errors. “He had a knack for finding simple solutions and writing elegant code that worked,” Schulman wrote. “He’d think through the details of things carefully and rigorously.” Balaji later shifted to organizing the huge datasets of online writings and other media used to train GPT-4, the fourth generation of OpenAI's flagship large language model and a basis for the company's famous chatbot. It was that work that eventually caused Balaji to question the technology he helped build, especially after newspapers, novelists and others began suing OpenAI and other AI companies for copyright infringement. He first raised his concerns with The New York Times, which reported them in an October profile of Balaji . He later told The Associated Press he would “try to testify” in the strongest copyright infringement cases and considered a lawsuit brought by The New York Times last year to be the “most serious.” Times lawyers named him in a Nov. 18 court filing as someone who might have “unique and relevant documents” supporting allegations of OpenAI's willful copyright infringement. His records were also sought by lawyers in a separate case brought by book authors including the comedian Sarah Silverman, according to a court filing. “It doesn’t feel right to be training on people’s data and then competing with them in the marketplace,” Balaji told the AP in late October. “I don’t think you should be able to do that. I don’t think you are able to do that legally.” He told the AP that he gradually grew more disillusioned with OpenAI, especially after the internal turmoil that led its board of directors to fire and then rehire CEO Sam Altman last year. Balaji said he was broadly concerned about how its commercial products were rolling out, including their propensity for spouting false information known as hallucinations. But of the “bag of issues” he was concerned about, he said he was focusing on copyright as the one it was “actually possible to do something about.” He acknowledged that it was an unpopular opinion within the AI research community, which is accustomed to pulling data from the internet, but said “they will have to change and it’s a matter of time.” He had not been deposed and it’s unclear to what extent his revelations will be admitted as evidence in any legal cases after his death. He also published a personal blog post with his opinions about the topic. Schulman, who resigned from OpenAI in August, said he and Balaji coincidentally left on the same day and celebrated with fellow colleagues that night with dinner and drinks at a San Francisco bar. Another of Balaji’s mentors, co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, had left OpenAI several months earlier , which Balaji saw as another impetus to leave. Schulman said Balaji had told him earlier this year of his plans to leave OpenAI and that Balaji didn't think that better-than-human AI known as artificial general intelligence “was right around the corner, like the rest of the company seemed to believe.” The younger engineer expressed interest in getting a doctorate and exploring “some more off-the-beaten path ideas about how to build intelligence,” Schulman said. Balaji's family said a memorial is being planned for later this month at the India Community Center in Milpitas, California, not far from his hometown of Cupertino. —————- EDITOR’S NOTE — This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988. —————-- The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement allowing OpenAI access to part of the AP’s text archives.
NoneAllof anthropologist Julie Peteet’s previous books have focused on Palestine and Palestinian refugees, but her newest volume examines a phenomenon common throughout the Mediterranean region: the hamman, often referred to, though misleadingly, as the Turkish bath. Regardless of the topic, Peteet’s research is always on-the-spot and hands-on, whereby direct observation is contextualized by historical and cultural background. In this case, she visited a large number of the baths she writes about. Countering the common misconception that the hamman began in the Roman or Ottoman era, Peteet instead traces its origins back to the Bronze Age (3600-1200 BC). “In short, the hamman is the product of a long pan-Mediterranean history marked by transformations, exchanges, declines, and revivals... Casting aside a center-periphery model of cultural flows allows us to see things in motion, moving in multiple, often not easy to disentangle, directions, interacting and inflecting one another. A cultural politics of mobility is at work here.” (p. 23) Peteet categorises the baths she examines according to multiple criteria: From private baths for rulers and public ones built to display imperial power, to modest neighbourhood baths and modern spas. Despite its paucity of historical urban baths, Jordan figures prominantly in the book by virtue of the early Umayyad Qasr ‘Amra, famous for its stunning frescoes, and other castles in the Eastern desert, as well as Al Fudayn in Mafraq, and Jerash’s Roman baths. Most of these exhibit a melding of Greco-Roman and Byzantine influence, typical of an emerging Islamic style. (Syria, which is replete with historical baths, is unfortunately only mentioned fleetingly, as it was plagued by conflict at the time of Peteet’s research, as were Iraq and Yemen.) At the other end of the spectrum are the numerous, modern “Turkish baths” built as part of the Ottoman revival and the growing tourist and wellness industry, with several of Amman’s new luxury hammans being mentioned. Yet, despite whether hammans were designed to fulfill the locals’ cleanliness needs or to attract tourists, they have much in common. “Across the Mediterranean from Morocco to Turkey, the bathing ritual has remained remarkably similar over the centuries... the sequencing of the body through space, the tools used to clean the body, notions of the aesthetically clean body, and graduations in temperatures.” (p. 28) Alongside the history, architecture, rituals, and sensory appeal of the hamman, Peteet also explores its social and socialising functions, and thechanging attitudes of different generations and genders towards public baths.While indulging in a bath, she interviewed the work force, both managers and employees, in a number of establishments. Moulding all these different aspects into a smooth and informative narrative, Peteet makes the connection between personal experience and the movement of history. “In the hammam, we indulge in self-care, a self-care that is thousands of years old. Bathing structures have remained a sensorium throughout the ages... [where] we can imagine other worlds, other times, other people, and other ways of socialising.” (p. 330)
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