Meta is preparing to unveil a new AI research lab dedicated to pursuing "superintelligence," a hypothetical A.I. system that exceeds the powers of the human brain, as the tech giant jockeys to stay competitive in the technology race, New York Times reported Tuesday, citing four people with the knowledge of the company's plans. From the report: Meta has tapped Alexandr Wang, 28, the founder and chief executive of the A.I. start-up Scale AI, to join the new lab, the people said, and has been in talks to invest billions of dollars in his company as part of a deal that would also bring other Scale employees to the company. Meta has offered seven- to nine-figure compensation packages to dozens of researchers from leading A.I. companies such as OpenAI and Google, with some agreeing to join, according to the people. The new lab is part of a larger reorganization of Meta's A.I. efforts, the people said. The company, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has recently grappled with internal management struggles over the technology, as well as employee churn and several product releases that fell flat, two of the people said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Is your Netflix watch list looking a little dry this month? The streaming platform has a huge library of content to choose from, but we all struggle with browsing (and actually streaming) titles when we're overwhelmed by everything available.

Paramount+ has dropped a hefty amount of new content this year, including hit series returning with new seasons, and more are on the way. It’s exciting, I know. With so much in the mix, it’s easy to get overwhelmed when searching for something to watch. It’s also easy to lose sight of what’s relevant at the time of your search, and you want to be sure you're up-to-date on the latest seasons of your favorite shows.

OpenAI just published its annual report on malicious uses of AI.

By using AI as a force multiplier for our expert investigative teams, in the three months since our last report we’ve been able to detect, disrupt and expose abusive activity including social engineering, cyber espionage, deceptive employment schemes, covert influence operations and scams.

These operations originated in many parts of the world, acted in many different ways, and focused on many different targets. A significant number appeared to originate in China: Four of the 10 cases in this report, spanning social engineering, covert influence operations and cyber threats, likely had a Chinese origin. But we’ve disrupted abuses from many other countries too: this report includes case studies of a likely task scam from Cambodia, comment spamming apparently from the Philippines, covert influence attempts potentially linked with Russia and Iran, and deceptive employment schemes.

Reports like these give a brief window into the ways AI is being used by malicious actors around the world. I say “brief” because last year the models weren’t good enough for these sorts of things, and next year the threat actors will run their AI models locally—and we won’t have this kind of visibility.

Wall Street Journal article (also here). Slashdot thread.

submitted by /u/bendubberley_ to r/NatureIsFuckingLit [link] [comments]

The weekend is finally here! It's time to load up Netflix and enjoy a good binge-watch. But don't doomscroll through the menus trying to find something perfect—I've rounded up three shows that I enjoyed, all of which make for excellent weekend viewing.