By Michael S. Derby NEW YORK Some economists are challenging the view central to some Federal Reserve officials

The 2023 MLB Home Run Derby kicks off on Monday night. Pete Alonso has a chance at history, while Julio Rodriguez looks to take home the title in his home park.The MLB Home Run Derby bracket is loaded with some of the game's greatest stars. While the event itself serves as a glorified batti...

'Minecraft' is to launch downloadable content based on 'Dungeons and Dragons' in a "story-driven" release.

In the ‘Unfinished Fable of the Sparrows’, a group of small birds come up with a plan to capture an owl egg and raise the chick as their servant. “How easy life would be,” they say, if the owl could work for them, and they could live a life of leisure. Despite warnings from members of their flock that they should first figure out how to tame an owl before they raise one, the sparrows devote all their efforts to capturing an egg. This tale, as its title suggests, does not have an ending. Its author, Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom, deliberately left it open-ended as he believes that humanity is currently in the egg hunting phase when it comes to superhuman AI. In his seminal work on artificial intelligence, titled Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, the Oxford University professor posits that AI may well destroy us if we are not sufficiently prepared. Superintelligence, which he describes as an artificial intelligence that “greatly exceeds the cognitive performance of humans in virtually all domains of interest”, may be a lot closer than many realise, with AI experts and leading industry figures warning that it may be just a few years away. On Monday, the creator of ChatGPT echoed Professor Bostrom’s 2014 book by warning that the seemingly exponential progress of AI technology in recent years means that the imminent arrival of superintelligence is inevitable – and we need to start preparing for it before it’s too late. OpenAI boss Sam Altman, whose company’s AI chatbot is the fastest growing app in history, has previously described Professor Bostrom’s book as “the best thing I’ve seen on this topic”. Just a year after reading it, Mr Altman co-founded OpenAI alongside other similarly worried tech leaders like Elon Musk and Ilya Sutskever in order to better understand and mitigate against the risks of advanced artificial intelligence. Initially launched as a non-profit, OpenAI has since transformed into arguably the leading private AI firm – and potentially the closest to achieving superintelligence. Mr Altman believes superintelligence has the potential to not only offer us a life of leisure by doing all the majority of our labour, but also holds the key to curing diseases, eliminate suffering and transforming humanity into an interstellar species. Any attempts to block its progress, he wrote this week, would be “unintuitively risky” and would require “something like a global surveillance regime” that would be virtually impossible to implement. It is already difficult to understand what is going on inside the ‘mind’ of AI tools currently available, but once superintelligence is achieved, even its actions may become incomprehensible. It could make discoveries that we would be incapable of understanding, or take decisions that make no sense to us. The biological and evolutionary limitations of brains made of organic matter mean we may need some form of brain-computer interface in order to keep up. Being unable to compete with AI in this new technological era, Professor Bostrom warns, could see humanity replaced as the dominant lifeform on Earth. The superintelligence may then see us as superfluous to its own goals. If this happens, and some form of AI has figured out how to hijack all the utilities and technology we rely upon – or even the nuclear weapons we possess – then it would not take long for AI to wipe us off the face of the planet. A more benign, but similarly bleak, scenario is that the gulf in intelligence between us and the AI will mean it views us in the same way we view animals. In a 2015 conversation between Mr Musk and scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson, they theorised that AI will treat us like a pet labrador. “They’ll domesticate us,” Professor Tyson said. “They’ll keep the docile humans and get rid of the violent ones.” In an effort to prevent this outcome, Mr Musk has dedicated a portion of his immense fortune towards funding a brain chip startup called Neuralink. The device has already been tested on monkeys, allowing them to play video games with their minds, and the ultimate goal is to transform humans into a form of hybrid superintelligence. (Critics note that even if successful, the technology would similarly create a two-tiered society of the chipped, and the chipless.) Since cutting ties with OpenAI, the tech billionaire has issued several warnings about the imminent emergence of superintelligence. In March, he joined more than 1,000 researchers in calling for a moratorium on the development of powerful AI systems for at least six months. That time should then be spent researching AI safety measures, they wrote in an open letter, in order to avert disaster. It would take an improbable consensus of leading AI companies around the world, the majority of which are all profit-seeking, in order for any such pause to be impactful. And while OpenAI continues to spearhead the hunt for the owl’s egg, Mr Altman appears to have at least heeded the warnings from Professor Bostrom’s fable. In a 2016 interview with the New Yorker, he revealed that he is a doomsday prepper – specifically for an AI-driven apocalypse. “I try not to think about it too much, he said, revealing that he has “guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water [and] gas masks” stashed away in a hideout in rural California. Not that any of that will be much use to the rest of us. 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By Wayne Cole SYDNEY Asian shares hesitated on Wednesday as surprisingly upbeat U.S. economic news warred with global

Searing temperatures from Texas to Tokyo over the summer are the latest reminder of a growing headache for

Maria Ramos de Ruiz is currently serving her three-and-a-half year term at Springer Correctional Center

Workers at Amazon's warehouses in Germany's eastern city of Leipzig started a 48-hour strike on Monday to press

CRYSTAL LAKE, Ill.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 28, 2023--

India, the host nation of this year’s Group of 20 summit, has two official names

Formula One’s governing body has launched an investigation following another near-miss in the pit-lane at Sunday’s Miami Grand Prix. A week after Esteban Ocon almost collided with a cluster of individuals in Azerbaijan, footage has emerged of an official – understood to be a volunteer marshal – walking in front of Lando Norris as the British driver entered the pits in his McLaren. The incident on lap five of the 57-lap race was uploaded to the Sky Sports’ F1 website, but has since been removed. An FIA spokesperson told the PA news agency: “We are aware of the incident and looking into it with local organisers.” The alarming flashpoint followed an FIA review into pit-lane safety after Ocon said the sport narrowly avoided a “disaster” when he stopped for tyres on the final lap at the previous round in Baku. An on-board camera from the French driver’s car showed dozens of people – who had gathered at the entrance to the pit-lane with the race still ongoing – scrambling to get out of his way. Ahead of last weekend’s race in the United States, the FIA updated its rulebook to prevent “mechanics from moving from their garages to the parc ferme”, and “other personnel or VIPs from entering the pit lane, until the last car has taken the chequered flag”. The FIA warned that “any infringement will result in the removal of passes from the team(s) in question from subsequent events, and potential reporting of the infringing team(s) to the stewards”. Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live

Debt-saddled Chinese property giant Country Garden said Tuesday that it did not expect to meet all of its offshore payment obligations in time as...