"America's assumed place as the technological captain of the world is no longer the acceptable belief," Prakash told CNBC in a phone interview.
"That is the new status quo now, that the space between the U.S. and China has narrowed almost overnight — but it hasn't narrowed overnight, it's been years of progress," Prakash said.
"If there's one takeaway for the West, it's that their understanding of China is incredibly limited — and we don't know what's coming next," he added.
Meredith Whitaker, president of the Signal Foundation, said DeepSeek's development doesn't move the needle much for the industry as market momentum is still broadly in favor of larger AI models. The Signal Foundation is a nonprofit that supports the encrypted messaging app Signal.
"This is not something that's going to disrupt the concentration of power or the geopolitical balance at this stage," Whitaker told CNBC. "I think we have to keep our eye on the ball there and recognize that it's really this 'bigger is better' paradigm that is not reduced through efficiency gains historically, that is driving this concentration."
Beshear had said earlier Sunday that at least 1,000 people stranded by floods had to be rescued. President Donald Trump approved Kentucky's request for a disaster declaration, authorizing the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate relief efforts throughout the state.
Beshear said most of the deaths, including a mother and 7-year-old child, were caused by cars getting stuck in high water.
"So folks, stay off the roads right now and stay alive," he said.
Parts of Kentucky and Tennessee received up to 6 inches (15 centimeters) of rain, said Bob Oravec, a senior forecaster with the National Weather Service.
"Fortunately, most were one-car spin outs and there were no serious injuries," Michigan State Police said on X.
Authorities in Colorado reported eight people were killed in fatal vehicle crashes since Valentine’s Day and warned drivers to be cautious as the weather made driving more difficult. The causes of the fatal crashes weren’t immediately known.
Newsrooms, social media platforms, and search companies have historically struggled to deliver information to their audiences in a way that feels objective, accurate, and entertaining.
Now, AI chatbot providers are in the same delivery information business, but arguably with the hardest version of this problem yet: How do they automatically generate answers to any question?
Delivering information about controversial, real-time events is a constantly moving target, and it involves taking editorial stances, even if tech companies don’t like to admit it. Those stances are bound to upset someone, miss some group’s perspective, or give too much air to some political party.
Socrates asserts that virtue cannot be taught and Protagoras, disagreeing, responds in the following way:
“Once upon a time there were gods only, and no mortal creatures. But when the time came that these also should be created, the gods fashioned them out of earth and fire and various mixtures of both elements in the interior of the earth; and when they were about to bring them into the light of day, they ordered Prometheus and Epimetheus to equip them, and to distribute to them severally their proper qualities. Epimetheus said to Prometheus:
"Let me distribute, and you inspect." This was agreed, and Epimetheus made the distribution. There were some to whom he gave strength without swiftness, while he equipped the weaker with swiftness; some he armed, and others he left unarmed; and devised for the latter some other means of preservation, making some large, and having their size as a protection, and others small, whose nature was to fly in the air or burrow in the ground; this was to be their way of escape…
For example, when OpenAI commits to let ChatGPT represent all perspectives on controversial subjects — including conspiracy theories, racist or antisemitic movements, or geopolitical conflicts — that is inherently an editorial stance.
Some, including OpenAI co-founder John Schulman, argue that it’s the right stance for ChatGPT. The alternative — doing a cost-benefit analysis to determine whether an AI chatbot should answer a user’s question — could “give the platform too much moral authority,” Schulman notes in a post on X.
But OpenAI’s changes to its Model Spec suggest we may be entering a new era for what “AI safety” really means, in which allowing an AI model to answer anything and everything is considered more responsible than making decisions for users.
Ball says this is partially because AI models are just better now. OpenAI has made significant progress on AI model alignment; its latest reasoning models think about the company’s AI safety policy before answering. This allows AI models to give better answers for delicate questions.
As an interesting side effect, due to cultural cross-pollination between the Middle East and South Asia, Saba also works well with Indian-origin languages, per Mistral — especially South Indian-origin languages, such as Tamil and Malayalam.
The new model represents an interesting strategic move for the French AI giant, showing an increased focus on the Middle East. Mistral said it expects the model will help it gain traction among customers in the region.
As an off-the-shelf model, Mistral Saba could be used for conversational support or content generation in Arabic that sounds more natural and relevant. It can also be used as the basis for some fine-tuned models for internal use cases, the company said.
Olyn secures Beatles biopic for its ‘Shopify for filmmakers’
The recent Brian Epstein biopic “Midas Man,” a film about the manager of The Beatles, debuted not on a platform like Netflix or Amazon, but on a startup that bills itself as “Shopify for filmmakers.” So what, you might ask?
The answer is that the new platform, Olyn, claims to offer a new model for film and video distribution that leans on the power of social referrals to spread “à la carte” streaming content. Although any size of production — from Hollywood blockbuster downwards — can use the platform, the company claims it could be a game changer for the independent film industry, which tends to struggle against the marketing budgets of the bigger movies distributed on mainstream streaming platforms.
Jipa, Olyn’s CEO and co-founder, told TechCrunch that the company provides filmmakers with the equivalent of a full-blown streaming platform. “We provide all the tech that implies: from DRM, 4K streaming, casting, a full landing page that presents the film in the same way that it might appear on Netflix or Apple TV, plus all the other tools such as geo-targeting, analytics, and audience data. They promote their movie with PR, journalists, bloggers, film critics, etc,” she said, adding that a recommendation from someone you trust carries far more weight than a suggestion by an algorithm on a streaming platform.
Zeus feared that the entire race would be exterminated, and so he sent Hermes to them, bearing reverence and justice to be the ordering principles of cities and the bonds of friendship and conciliation. Hermes asked Zeus how he should impart justice and reverence among men: Should he distribute them as the arts are distributed; that is to say, to a favored few only, one skilled individual having enough of medicine or of any other art for many unskilled ones? "Shall this be the manner in which I am to distribute justice and reverence among men, or shall I give them to all?" "To all," said Zeus; "I should like them all to have a share; for cities cannot exist, if a few only share in the virtues, as in the arts…
Olyn also gives filmmakers analytics on viewership, such as which country the movie is doing well in, as well as minutes watched, and a database of users that have watched the movies. “Filmmakers can spend years making a film but don’t ever get to meet or own their audience at all. So we see this as a very powerful tool. It becomes an audience that you can directly address for your next movies and then grow from there,” said Jipa.
The question is, can Olyn compete with the convenience and scale of major streamers? While its model offers much higher revenue shares for filmmakers, it also means all the weight is placed on the shoulders of production teams to drive marketing and partnerships.
Prior to the Battle of Marathon the Athenians prayed to the gods to bring them victory in battle. They promised to sacrifice one goat for each Persian soldier slain in battle if they were victorious.
After the battle was won, the Athenians were very meticulous about counting the dead because they wanted to make sure to honor their promise. When the count was complete, the tally was 6,500 dead Persians against 192 Athenians killed. Shocked by the shear scale of their victory, the Athenians realized that they did not have 6,500 goats available so they decided to sacrifice 500 goats per year for thirteen years in order to meet their commitment to the gods.
“This [OpenEuroLLM] is really just a broader participation, but more focused on generative LLMs,” Hajič said. “So it’s not starting from zero in terms of data, expertise, tools, and compute experience. We have assembled people who know what they’re doing — we should be able to get up to speed quickly.”
Hajič said that he expects the first version(s) to be released by mid-2026, with the final iteration(s) arriving by the project’s conclusion in 2028. But those goals might still seem lofty when you consider that there isn’t much to poke at yet beyond a bare-bones GitHub profile.
What this translates to in terms of deliverables is still being ironed out, but it will likely mean a core multilingual LLM designed for general-purpose tasks where accuracy is paramount. And then also smaller “quantized” versions, perhaps for edge applications where efficiency and speed are more important.
“This is something we still have to make a detailed plan about,” Hajič said. “We want to have it as small but as high-quality as possible. We don’t want to release something which is half-baked, because from the European point-of-view this is high-stakes, with lots of money coming from the European Commission — public money.”
EuroLLM shares similar goals to its near-namesake: “To build an open source European Large Language Model that supports 24 Official European Languages, and a few other strategically important languages.”
Andre Martins, head of research at Unbabel, took to social media to highlight these similarities, noting that OpenEuroLLM is appropriating a name that already exists. “I hope the different communities collaborate openly, share their expertise, and don’t decide to reinvent the wheel every time a new project gets funded,” Martins wrote.
“You could say that OpenEuroLLM actually has quite a significant budget,” Sarlin said. “EuroHPC has invested billions in AI and compute infrastructure, and have committed billions more into expanding that in the coming few years.”
It’s also worth noting that the OpenEuroLLM project isn’t building toward a consumer- or enterprise-grade product. It’s purely about the models, and this is why Sarlin reckons the budget it has should be ample.
“The intent here isn’t to build a chatbot or an AI assistant — that would be a product initiative requiring a lot of effort, and that’s what ChatGPT did so well,” Sarlin said. “What we’re contributing is an open source foundation model that functions as the AI infrastructure for companies in Europe to build upon. We know what it takes to build models, it’s not something you need billions for.”
Since 2017, Sarlin has spearheaded AI lab Silo AI, which launched — in partnership with others, including the HPLT project — the family of Poro and Viking open models. These already support a handful of European languages, but the company is now readying the next iteration “Europa” models, which will cover all European languages.
Money likely originated from long-distance trade between strangers, suggests study
An archaeologist presented a new theory as to where money came from: external trade.
An archaeologist has developed a new, groundbreaking theory that debunks conventional beliefs about the origins of money: it emerged to conduct long-distance trade, first and foremost.
For over a century, scholars have debated what spawned the birth of money. Was it a means of increasing the efficiency of bartering, or did the state first instigate money as a unit of account?
Dr. Mikael Fauvelle integrated both theories into his new proposition, but he introduced a concept called the “trade theory of money.” As groups began to travel long distances, they needed a currency to be able to circulate goods, often with a language barrier.
“It is an exciting time to be working on the origins of money,” Dr. Fauvelle wrote in a recent study published in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory. New forms of digital currencies have sparked the imagination to debate about what money is and where it came from.
!summarize #doge #spending #fraud
"America's assumed place as the technological captain of the world is no longer the acceptable belief," Prakash told CNBC in a phone interview.
"That is the new status quo now, that the space between the U.S. and China has narrowed almost overnight — but it hasn't narrowed overnight, it's been years of progress," Prakash said.
"If there's one takeaway for the West, it's that their understanding of China is incredibly limited — and we don't know what's coming next," he added.
Meredith Whitaker, president of the Signal Foundation, said DeepSeek's development doesn't move the needle much for the industry as market momentum is still broadly in favor of larger AI models. The Signal Foundation is a nonprofit that supports the encrypted messaging app Signal.
"This is not something that's going to disrupt the concentration of power or the geopolitical balance at this stage," Whitaker told CNBC. "I think we have to keep our eye on the ball there and recognize that it's really this 'bigger is better' paradigm that is not reduced through efficiency gains historically, that is driving this concentration."
!summarize #russia #population #depopulation #peterzeihan
Beshear had said earlier Sunday that at least 1,000 people stranded by floods had to be rescued. President Donald Trump approved Kentucky's request for a disaster declaration, authorizing the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate relief efforts throughout the state.
Beshear said most of the deaths, including a mother and 7-year-old child, were caused by cars getting stuck in high water.
"So folks, stay off the roads right now and stay alive," he said.
Parts of Kentucky and Tennessee received up to 6 inches (15 centimeters) of rain, said Bob Oravec, a senior forecaster with the National Weather Service.
!summarize #china #debt #economy
"Fortunately, most were one-car spin outs and there were no serious injuries," Michigan State Police said on X.
Authorities in Colorado reported eight people were killed in fatal vehicle crashes since Valentine’s Day and warned drivers to be cautious as the weather made driving more difficult. The causes of the fatal crashes weren’t immediately known.
!summarize #weather #flood #south #unitedstates
!summarize #nba #allstarweekend #stephcurry
Newsrooms, social media platforms, and search companies have historically struggled to deliver information to their audiences in a way that feels objective, accurate, and entertaining.
Now, AI chatbot providers are in the same delivery information business, but arguably with the hardest version of this problem yet: How do they automatically generate answers to any question?
Delivering information about controversial, real-time events is a constantly moving target, and it involves taking editorial stances, even if tech companies don’t like to admit it. Those stances are bound to upset someone, miss some group’s perspective, or give too much air to some political party.
Socrates asserts that virtue cannot be taught and Protagoras, disagreeing, responds in the following way:
“Once upon a time there were gods only, and no mortal creatures. But when the time came that these also should be created, the gods fashioned them out of earth and fire and various mixtures of both elements in the interior of the earth; and when they were about to bring them into the light of day, they ordered Prometheus and Epimetheus to equip them, and to distribute to them severally their proper qualities. Epimetheus said to Prometheus:
"Let me distribute, and you inspect." This was agreed, and Epimetheus made the distribution. There were some to whom he gave strength without swiftness, while he equipped the weaker with swiftness; some he armed, and others he left unarmed; and devised for the latter some other means of preservation, making some large, and having their size as a protection, and others small, whose nature was to fly in the air or burrow in the ground; this was to be their way of escape…
For example, when OpenAI commits to let ChatGPT represent all perspectives on controversial subjects — including conspiracy theories, racist or antisemitic movements, or geopolitical conflicts — that is inherently an editorial stance.
Some, including OpenAI co-founder John Schulman, argue that it’s the right stance for ChatGPT. The alternative — doing a cost-benefit analysis to determine whether an AI chatbot should answer a user’s question — could “give the platform too much moral authority,” Schulman notes in a post on X.
!summarize #nba #allstarweekend #sports
But OpenAI’s changes to its Model Spec suggest we may be entering a new era for what “AI safety” really means, in which allowing an AI model to answer anything and everything is considered more responsible than making decisions for users.
Ball says this is partially because AI models are just better now. OpenAI has made significant progress on AI model alignment; its latest reasoning models think about the company’s AI safety policy before answering. This allows AI models to give better answers for delicate questions.
!summarize #ice #rikersisland #immigration
As an interesting side effect, due to cultural cross-pollination between the Middle East and South Asia, Saba also works well with Indian-origin languages, per Mistral — especially South Indian-origin languages, such as Tamil and Malayalam.
The new model represents an interesting strategic move for the French AI giant, showing an increased focus on the Middle East. Mistral said it expects the model will help it gain traction among customers in the region.
As an off-the-shelf model, Mistral Saba could be used for conversational support or content generation in Arabic that sounds more natural and relevant. It can also be used as the basis for some fine-tuned models for internal use cases, the company said.
!summarize #jonstewart #democrat #politics
Olyn secures Beatles biopic for its ‘Shopify for filmmakers’
The recent Brian Epstein biopic “Midas Man,” a film about the manager of The Beatles, debuted not on a platform like Netflix or Amazon, but on a startup that bills itself as “Shopify for filmmakers.” So what, you might ask?
The answer is that the new platform, Olyn, claims to offer a new model for film and video distribution that leans on the power of social referrals to spread “à la carte” streaming content. Although any size of production — from Hollywood blockbuster downwards — can use the platform, the company claims it could be a game changer for the independent film industry, which tends to struggle against the marketing budgets of the bigger movies distributed on mainstream streaming platforms.
Jipa, Olyn’s CEO and co-founder, told TechCrunch that the company provides filmmakers with the equivalent of a full-blown streaming platform. “We provide all the tech that implies: from DRM, 4K streaming, casting, a full landing page that presents the film in the same way that it might appear on Netflix or Apple TV, plus all the other tools such as geo-targeting, analytics, and audience data. They promote their movie with PR, journalists, bloggers, film critics, etc,” she said, adding that a recommendation from someone you trust carries far more weight than a suggestion by an algorithm on a streaming platform.
Zeus feared that the entire race would be exterminated, and so he sent Hermes to them, bearing reverence and justice to be the ordering principles of cities and the bonds of friendship and conciliation. Hermes asked Zeus how he should impart justice and reverence among men: Should he distribute them as the arts are distributed; that is to say, to a favored few only, one skilled individual having enough of medicine or of any other art for many unskilled ones? "Shall this be the manner in which I am to distribute justice and reverence among men, or shall I give them to all?" "To all," said Zeus; "I should like them all to have a share; for cities cannot exist, if a few only share in the virtues, as in the arts…
Olyn also gives filmmakers analytics on viewership, such as which country the movie is doing well in, as well as minutes watched, and a database of users that have watched the movies. “Filmmakers can spend years making a film but don’t ever get to meet or own their audience at all. So we see this as a very powerful tool. It becomes an audience that you can directly address for your next movies and then grow from there,” said Jipa.
The question is, can Olyn compete with the convenience and scale of major streamers? While its model offers much higher revenue shares for filmmakers, it also means all the weight is placed on the shoulders of production teams to drive marketing and partnerships.
!summarize #byd #sealion7 #review #ev
!summarize #byd #tesla #ev #china #automotive
Prior to the Battle of Marathon the Athenians prayed to the gods to bring them victory in battle. They promised to sacrifice one goat for each Persian soldier slain in battle if they were victorious.
After the battle was won, the Athenians were very meticulous about counting the dead because they wanted to make sure to honor their promise. When the count was complete, the tally was 6,500 dead Persians against 192 Athenians killed. Shocked by the shear scale of their victory, the Athenians realized that they did not have 6,500 goats available so they decided to sacrifice 500 goats per year for thirteen years in order to meet their commitment to the gods.
!summarize #relationships #dating #girlfriend
!summarize #china #ev #xpeng #australia
“This [OpenEuroLLM] is really just a broader participation, but more focused on generative LLMs,” Hajič said. “So it’s not starting from zero in terms of data, expertise, tools, and compute experience. We have assembled people who know what they’re doing — we should be able to get up to speed quickly.”
Hajič said that he expects the first version(s) to be released by mid-2026, with the final iteration(s) arriving by the project’s conclusion in 2028. But those goals might still seem lofty when you consider that there isn’t much to poke at yet beyond a bare-bones GitHub profile.
!summarize #Trump #victordavishanson #cabinet #Politics
!summarize #rump #cabinet #politics
What this translates to in terms of deliverables is still being ironed out, but it will likely mean a core multilingual LLM designed for general-purpose tasks where accuracy is paramount. And then also smaller “quantized” versions, perhaps for edge applications where efficiency and speed are more important.
“This is something we still have to make a detailed plan about,” Hajič said. “We want to have it as small but as high-quality as possible. We don’t want to release something which is half-baked, because from the European point-of-view this is high-stakes, with lots of money coming from the European Commission — public money.”
!summarize #disney #disneyplus #tos #entertainment
!summarize #proton #latticeqcd #physics #science
!summarize #blakelively #ryanreynolds #amberheard #hollywood
!summarize #unemployment #greatdepression #economy
!summarize #blakelively #ryanreynolds #taylorswift #hollywood #celebrities
EuroLLM shares similar goals to its near-namesake: “To build an open source European Large Language Model that supports 24 Official European Languages, and a few other strategically important languages.”
Andre Martins, head of research at Unbabel, took to social media to highlight these similarities, noting that OpenEuroLLM is appropriating a name that already exists. “I hope the different communities collaborate openly, share their expertise, and don’t decide to reinvent the wheel every time a new project gets funded,” Martins wrote.
!summarize #banks #economy #money
“You could say that OpenEuroLLM actually has quite a significant budget,” Sarlin said. “EuroHPC has invested billions in AI and compute infrastructure, and have committed billions more into expanding that in the coming few years.”
It’s also worth noting that the OpenEuroLLM project isn’t building toward a consumer- or enterprise-grade product. It’s purely about the models, and this is why Sarlin reckons the budget it has should be ample.
!summarize #rfkjr #hhs #trump #cabinet #media #bigpharma
“The intent here isn’t to build a chatbot or an AI assistant — that would be a product initiative requiring a lot of effort, and that’s what ChatGPT did so well,” Sarlin said. “What we’re contributing is an open source foundation model that functions as the AI infrastructure for companies in Europe to build upon. We know what it takes to build models, it’s not something you need billions for.”
Since 2017, Sarlin has spearheaded AI lab Silo AI, which launched — in partnership with others, including the HPLT project — the family of Poro and Viking open models. These already support a handful of European languages, but the company is now readying the next iteration “Europa” models, which will cover all European languages.
!summarize #Politics #ritapanahi #kamalaharris
!summarize #weather #winds #rain #flooding #deaths #unitedstates
!summarize #secretservice #clinton #hillary
!summarize #apple #appl #warning #stocks #economy
Money likely originated from long-distance trade between strangers, suggests study
An archaeologist presented a new theory as to where money came from: external trade.
An archaeologist has developed a new, groundbreaking theory that debunks conventional beliefs about the origins of money: it emerged to conduct long-distance trade, first and foremost.
For over a century, scholars have debated what spawned the birth of money. Was it a means of increasing the efficiency of bartering, or did the state first instigate money as a unit of account?
Dr. Mikael Fauvelle integrated both theories into his new proposition, but he introduced a concept called the “trade theory of money.” As groups began to travel long distances, they needed a currency to be able to circulate goods, often with a language barrier.
“It is an exciting time to be working on the origins of money,” Dr. Fauvelle wrote in a recent study published in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory. New forms of digital currencies have sparked the imagination to debate about what money is and where it came from.
!summarize #elonmusk #trump #rachelmaddow #msnbc #cablenews