Новости за 17.02.2024

Washington (AFP) Feb 13, 2024
Tech giants including Meta, Microsoft, Google and OpenAI are working on a pact to jointly crack down on AI content intended to deceive voters ahead of crucial elections around the world this year, companies involved said Tuesday. Currently under negotiation by the companies, this so-called "accord" on deepfakes and other dangerous content is set to be announced during the Munich Security con

Istanbul (AFP) Feb 14, 2024
Calls grew in Turkey on Wednesday to shut down a controversial gold mine as hopes dimmed of rescuing nine workers trapped by a massive landslide that rolled over their open pit. Turkish state media also reported the arrest of four people, including the pit's field manager, in the opening stages of an investigation into the accident at the site, run by a partly US-owned firm. Hundreds of

San Francisco (AFP) Feb 16, 2024
Microsoft on Thursday shook up the video game world with word it is making some once-exclusive Xbox video games available for play on rival consoles. Xbox head Phil Spencer did not specify which titles were expanding beyond the Xbox, but the Verge, citing unnamed sources, said they will be "Hi-Fi Rush", "Pentiment", "Sea of Thieves" and "Grounded." "Over the next five or 10 years, games

Beijing (AFP) Feb 13, 2024
Twenty-five-year-old Chinese office worker Tufei says her boyfriend has everything she could ask for in a romantic partner: he's kind, empathetic, and sometimes they talk for hours. Except he isn't real. Her "boyfriend" is a chatbot on an app called "Glow", an artificial intelligence platform created by Shanghai start-up MiniMax that is part of a blossoming industry in China offering fri

Paris (AFP) Feb 14, 2024
The Amazon rainforest is facing a barrage of pressures that might tip it into large-scale ecosystem collapse as soon as 2050, according to new research Wednesday warning of dire consequences for the region and the world. The Amazon, which holds more than 10 percent of the world's biodiversity, helps stabilise the global climate by storing the equivalent of around two decades of emissions of

Paris (AFP) Feb 15, 2024
US tech giant Google opened Thursday an AI research hub in Paris, part of a trend for big tech firms to base teams working on cutting-edge products in European centres. Google already employs thousands of people at its engineering facility in Zurich, a city that also houses AI-focused teams from Meta, Apple and Microsoft. Amazon, another major player in AI research, has teams based in se

Boston MA (SPX) Feb 12, 2024
In quantum sensing, atomic-scale quantum systems are used to measure electromagnetic fields, as well as properties like rotation, acceleration, and distance, far more precisely than classical sensors can. The technology could enable devices that image the brain with unprecedented detail, for example, or air traffic control systems with precise positioning accuracy. As many real-world quant

Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Feb 15, 2024
A group of researchers have used equipment originally intended for astronomy observation to capture transformations in the nuclear structure of atomic nuclei, reports a new study in Scientific Reports. A nucleus is made up of protons and neutrons. About 270 stable nuclei exist in nature, but this number bounces up to 3000 if you include unstable nuclei. Recent research on unstable nuclei h

Paris (AFP) Feb 16, 2024
French energy giant EDF on Friday unveiled net profit of 10 billion euros ($10.8 billion) and cut its massive debt by increasing nuclear production after problems forced some plants offline. EDF hailed an "exceptional" year after its loss of 17.9 billion euros in 2022. Sales slipped 2.6 percent to 139.7 billion euros, but the group managed to slice debt by 10 billion euros to 54.4 billio

United Nations, United States (AFP) Feb 13, 2024
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres lamented Tuesday the emphasis placed by some governments on buying weapons at the cost of policies tackling global warming and hunger. "It is distressing to see governments spending heavily on arms, while starving budgets for food security, climate action, and broader sustainable development," Guterres told a Security Council meeting on the links between

Columbia MO (SPX) Feb 12, 2024
Nearly one-third of Missouri's economy is tied to agriculture. That's why the state's flagship land-grant institution, the University of Missouri, has launched the Digital Agriculture Research and Extension Center (DAREC). The center aims to help farmers and other agricultural producers move toward a future of sustainable agriculture by leveraging emerging digital technologies and artificial int

Sydney, Australia (SPX) Feb 12, 2024
In the face of mounting global food demand, the challenge of sustaining agricultural production within the ecological confines of our planet has never been more pressing. A recent study led by Dr. Wenjiao Shi from the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research at the Chinese Academy of Sciences sheds light on this critical issue by examining the application of Planetary Boun