Nasa are celebrating the first birthday of the James Webb Space Telescope by releasing extraordinary images of stars 'being born'. In the images, which almost look surreal, rainbow bursts with tiny twinkles can be seen. "The darkest areas are the densest, where thick dust cocoons still-forming protostars", the space giants say. "These occur when a star first bursts through its natal envelope of cosmic dust, shooting out a pair of opposing jets into space like a newborn first stretching her arms out into the world." Click here to sign up for our newsletters

Britain’s public finances are more vulnerable to shocks than other major economies, the Treasury’s fiscal watchdog said, as

China has loosened some of the guardrails it proposed for ChatGPT-style services months ago, as it acknowledges the

VICTORIA, Seychelles--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 13, 2023--

Elon Musk has launched a new AI company that aims to “understand reality” and unlock the secrets of the universe. The formation of xAI brings together researchers from leading artificial intelligence firms, including Google’s DeepMind, OpenAI and Microsoft Research, who collectively have contributed to major advances in AI in recent years. Announcing the launch on Twitter on Wednesday, Mr Musk gave further details about what he hoped to achieve with his latest venture. “I often wonder where consciousness starts, as we progress from one cell to ~35 trillion cells,” Mr Musk wrote. “If the Standard Model is correct, then quarks and leptons become ‘conscious’ no later than ~13.8B years from start, assuming there are no sentient aliens. Btw, where are the aliens!?” Mr Musk has warned for months about AI’s potential for “civilizational destruction,” arguing that a race among companies such as Google and Microsoft to develop the technology should be halted to allow time for drafting regulation for the sector. The reason for the launch of xAI is “to understand the true nature of the universe,” said Mr Musk, who also co-founded OpenAI but later left the startup credited with sparking the generative AI frenzy through its launch of the ChatGPT chatbot. Dan Hendrycks, who serves as the director of the Center for AI Safety, a nonprofit that aims to reduce the risks posed by the technology, will be an adviser to xAI. The startup’s team includes several former engineers and scientists from Alphabet-owned Google, Microsoft and OpenAI. “We have worked on and led the development of some of the largest breakthroughs in the field including AlphaStar ... GPT-3.5, and GPT-4,” the startup said on its website. The company, which is looking for experienced engineers and researchers to join its team as technical staff in the Bay Area, will hold a Twitter Spaces event on 14 July. Mr Musk’s startup will work closely with his other companies including Twitter and Tesla, according to the website. Tesla shares showed little reaction to the news and were trading 1.5 per cent higher, a sign that investors were not worried the startup will be a potential distraction for Mr Musk. The billionaire 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. Mr Musk has previously warned of the existential risk posed by advanced AI, claiming that it is one of the most serious threats to the future of humanity. Earlier this year, he joined more than 1,000 tech leaders and researchers in signing an open letter urging a moratorium on the development of powerful AI. Additional reporting from agencies Read More ChatGPT creator says AI ‘superintelligence’ is impossible to stop xAI: Everything we know about Elon Musk’s new AI company Elon Musk posts series of explicit tweets about Mark Zuckerberg Twitter gets strange endorsement from Taliban over rival Threads

Extreme heat from a high-pressure system named Cerberus — after the three-headed hound from Dante’s inferno — is

Twitter introduced tweet-reading rate limits to address extreme levels of data scraping, Elon Musk reaffirmed on Thursday, in

Tension between the crypto and banking sectors bubbled anew when Coinbase Global Inc.’s chief executive started a Twitter

Alphabet Inc.’s Google released its Bard chatbot to users in the European Union and Brazil, and said the

HCL Technologies Ltd. is acquiring a German automotive engineering services company for $280 million to push beyond IT

The United Arab Emirates will focus on bolstering global efforts to mitigate carbon emissions and make funds available

Tesla and SpaceX boss Elon Musk now has a new artificial intelligence startup xAI, years after he left ChatGPT-owner OpenAI. The Twitter owner announced the “formation” of the new firm on Wednesday in a tweet, sharing that its goals are “to understand reality”. He did not reveal any more details about the company’s plans and the firms website also doesn’t say much other than that its aims are “to understand the true nature of the universe”. The startup, however, noted it is a separate entity from “X Corp” – the new name of the company formerly known as Twitter. However, the company mentions in its website that it would work closely with X Corp, Tesla, and firms owned by Mr Musk as well as other companies “to make progress towards our mission.” While xAI does not reveal a lot on its website about its “mission”, the new company’s sole Twitter post hints it would look into the “most fundamental unanswered questions” of the universe. The company’s website also reveals the names of its employees, led by Mr Musk and listing Dan Hendrycks – the director of the Centre for AI Safety – as an advisor. Employees listed with the company are all men, and people who have “previously worked at DeepMind, OpenAI, Google Research, Microsoft Research, Tesla, and the University of Toronto.” “Collectively we contributed some of the most widely used methods in the field,” xAI mentions in its website. “We have worked on and led the development of some of the largest breakthroughs in the field including AlphaStar, AlphaCode, Inception, Minerva, GPT-3.5, and GPT-4,” the company noted about its employees. Mr Musk’s new venture also comes as companies including Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and even smaller firms and competitors in other countries like China continue to invest heavily in AI technology. The multibillionaire had previously co-founded OpenAI in 2015 but left the firm in 2018 to avoid conflicts of interest with Tesla which had its own AI operations for the vehicles’ autopilot mode. Following the launch of the now popular ChatGPT AI chatbot by OpenAI, the Tesla titan had also hinted in interviews that he was planning to start his own new artificial intelligence firm. In April, he told former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that he planned to develop “TruthGPT,” which he called a “maximum truth-seeking AI”. This was followed by an xAI statement calling for the world to prioritise reducing AI’s dangers, signed by prominent members of the tech industry, and Mr Musk also reportedly acquired thousands of GPU processors from Nvidia seemingly to run a large language model like ChatGPT. The xAI team is planning to host a Twitter Spaces discussion on Friday – one in which listeners can “meet the team and ask us questions,” according to the startup’s website. Read More Elon Musk posts series of explicit tweets about Mark Zuckerberg Twitter gets strange endorsement from Taliban over rival Threads Tucker Carlson’s Twitter show is haemorrhaging viewers, reports says Mark Zuckerberg trains with UFC champions amid rumours of Elon Musk fight Threads: Elon Musk posts series of explicit tweets about Mark Zuckerberg Twitter traffic ‘tanking’ after record-breaking Threads launch