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30-year-old Abhijeet Dipke is the founder and face of India's Gen Z “cockroach” protests.
The movement was born out of anger over repeated examination paper leaks, and quickly became India's biggest student mobilisation in years.
The BBC’s Yogita Limaye sat down with him to speak about what his unofficial party is planning next.
Last summer, there was a female one-two for the first time in the gruelling Montane Summer Spine Race from Derbyshire to Scotland. Rachel Entrekin set a new course record and became the first woman to win the Cocodona 250 in Arizona in May, while last month Sophie Woods smashed the overall record by six days to complete the Via Alpina.
It appears female runners are no longer just taking part in ultra-endurance events, they are competing with their male counterparts, breaking records and in some cases, winning races outright.
All of this has prompted suggestions that they are perhaps better suited to these kinds of challenges.
But is there any scientific proof? Do women really have any physiological or psychological advantages in endurance exercise (anything that takes more than six hours)? And if so, could we see more of these records fall in the future?
In running distances up to the marathon, there is on average a 10-12% performance gap between males and females.
Men are generally stronger and built with a bigger aerobic engine.
But as the distance increases, those physical advantages appear to become less relevant and the gap starts to narrow.
The "gender pace gap" diminishes to 0.25% in 100-mile races, according to a study of more than 20 years of amateur ultra-race data conducted by RunRepeat, in collaboration with the International Association of Ultrarunners,
Anything further than 195 miles and women have the potential to be faster.
So why might this be the case?
For Professor Andy Jones, an expert in endurance performance at the University of Exeter, there are three potential physiological explanations why women could perform better over longer distances or durations.
Fat metabolism – women have higher fat stores and burn it more efficiently, giving them a steady energy source for longer.
Muscles – women have more oxygen-efficient muscle fibres, known as "slow twitch", that are better suited for endurance activities.
Fatigue resistance – women retain more strength over hours of endurance exercise.
However, Jones, who played a key role in Eliud Kipchoge's sub two-hour marathon challenge in 2019, is keen to point out that the science in this area is "behind".
"There isn't as much hard evidence as there would be for shorter distances, which have been studied for a long time in quite some detail," he adds.
That is a view shared by Dr Richard Burden, co-lead of female athlete health and performance at the UK Sports Institute, who feels a lot more information needs to be gathered before conclusions can be made.
"At the moment we are speculating … there are definitely some physiological adaptations that you see more in women than men that are favourable for ultra-type events. But those need to be better established and more studies would need to be done."
- Author: Sarah Dawkins, BBC
Elena Rybakina demonstrated why she is the best women's player in the world by beating two-time defending champion Aryna Sabalenka to win her first US Open title..
Kazakhstan's Rybakina already knew she would be the new world number one after Saturday's final regardless of the result, and she celebrated with a 6-4 5-7 6-2 victory over the player she will replace.
Rybakina was the more composed of the two throughout as she claimed the third Grand Slam title of her career, having triumphed at Wimbledon in 2022 and the Australian Open earlier this year.
Sabalenka hoped to soften the blow of losing the top ranking by winning a third consecutive US Open title - but looked fraught in a tense performance.
Rybakina and Sabalenka have developed a strong rivalry built not only on their outstanding talent but their contrasting personalities.
And Rybakina's ice-cool composure - the direct opposite of the Belarusian's combustible nature - was a key difference as she took control at Flushing Meadows.
"I was coming here for the last 10 years and it was never successful. I'm falling in love with New York more and more," Rybakina, 27, said.
Rybakina was unable to walk for several days after injuring her ankle in the Cincinnati Open quarter-finals, putting her chances of competing here in serious jeopardy.
"Some magic is happening. I was unlucky with injury and just going day by day," Rybakina told Sky Sports.
"We didn't know how it was going to be so I'm super happy and still can't believe it."
For Sabalenka's it was her fifth defeat from nine majors final and provides further weight to the argument that she has underachieved at the biggest tournaments given her dominance on the WTA Tour.
"The last thing I want to do right now is give a speech but I will try my best," an emotional Sabalenka told the 24,000 crowd on Arthur Ashe Stadium.
"I wish I could have performed a little bit better, but I guess next year."
- Author: Jonathan Jurejko, BBC
It was a familiar story for the Premier League's top scorers.
Chelsea's entertaining 2-2 draw with Hull on Saturday means the Blues have now found the net 10 times this season - but they have also conceded two or more goals in each of their opening four league matches for the first time in 11 years.
Only Crystal Palace and Ipswich Town have conceded more than Chelsea's nine goals in the top flight so far this season.
The issue predates manager Xabi Alonso's arrival. Chelsea are now without a clean sheet in 20 league matches stretching back to January, their longest such run for 65 years.
Alonso still appears to be experimenting. This week alone, he changed shape in three successive matches - from the defeat at Arsenal to the 6-3 Carabao Cup win over Leeds in midweek and again against Hull.
Yet it was Hull who looked more likely to find a winner. No wonder there was a subdued mood at Stamford Bridge.
Alonso summed up the feeling afterwards, saying his side needed to be "competing better" and avoid being "soft" in duels.
"We had one or two good chances to get the winner, but you're still open. Not happy. We can do better. We got what we deserved," said Alonso.
Asked about Chelsea's defensive issues, former defender and BBC pundit Ashley Williams said: "Chelsea are all over the place in transitions. When they lose the ball, they are wide open. The goals they conceded are just basic errors.
"Both individually and as a defensive unit, they are so far off it and are shipping goals. They are not going to achieve what they want this season defending like that."
- Author: Nizaar Kinsella, BBC
Duke and Duchess of Sussex were apparently given little notice before message was sent to the media.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex were “surprised” at being given little notice of a formal letter sent to government departments and the military on behalf of King Charles reiterating their status as non-working royals.
Harry and Meghan, who returned to the UK from the US two weeks ago, had insufficient time to clarify any points before details were issued to the media, it is understood.
It was revealed to the media at 3.06pm on Monday. It is understood the contents were shared with Harry and Meghan’s team almost an hour before at 1.59pm, who sent a response back to Buckingham Palace at 2.19pm asking whether the guidance had already gone out, in the hope of letting the couple know before the media, and for the team to have the chance to clarify one or two points.
Harry was in a meeting and could not be contacted until 3.09pm. The Sussexes’ team received confirmation at 3.11pm it had already been sent to the media.
The letter says questions from official and state organisations about the courtesies extended to the couple, “and particularly where recourse to public funds may be required”, should be directed to Buckingham Palace, adding: “Any operational security issues should continue to be directed to the relevant police authorities.”
The couple’s children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, are expected to be starting school in the UK near to the family’s reported countryside retreat.
- Author: Caroline Davies, The Guardian
OpenAI says it has found a solution to a decades-old advanced maths problem in a matter of hours using a new artificial intelligence (AI) model and thousands of AI bots.
The ChatGPT-maker said on Tuesday that by focusing a group of roughly 10,000 AI agents, or AI bots that undertake tasks somewhat autonomously, it solved a notoriously difficult maths problem in just 88 hours.
The problem was part of the Navier-Stokes equations, which concern how fluids move. For 90 years important aspects of the problems have lacked a proof, the argument underlying a correct math equation.
OpenAI called the solution which it found a "milestone" and evidence that AI tools are improving quickly.
OpenAI's solution has yet to be verified independently or publicly accepted by The Clay Mathematics Institute, a maths organisation based in the US which runs the Millennium Prize that offers big money to the first to solve certain mathematical conundrums.
But the company's claim has already sparked a backlash.
Tristan Buckmaster, a mathematics professor at New York University, said on Tuesday that he and Levent Alpöge, a mathematician working for OpenAI rival Anthropic, had also been working on solving the problem.
The duo had been using OpenAI's tool Codex in their work. But Buckmaster said that on 3 September, he found out that "information about our progress had been passed to OpenAI".
- Author: Kali Hays, BBC
Three cheers for students starting college! They’ve heard doubts about whether it’s worthwhile; they’ve heard Silicon Valley’s claim that A.I. can feed them all the information (and misinformation) they could possibly want; they know college is expensive. Yet right around now, thousands and thousands of them are starting their undergraduate careers with enthusiasm.
Colleges and universities, like almost all institutions, have suffered from a decline in trust, but that isn’t stopping families from New Orleans to Appleton and from Berkeley to Tuscaloosa from gathering their financial and emotional resources to launch their young people toward a memorable educational experience. Parents will cry; kids will check one another out.
The Trump administration has softened its tone for the moment. Last month, the secretary of education took a break from dismantling her department to issue a national call to action, asking college and university leaders to “advance American security interests, deliver academic programs that meet urgent work force needs, and contribute materially to the nation’s prosperity.” Laudable goals to be sure, and nothing to be neutral about, despite the call’s insistence elsewhere on institutional neutrality. But these are not the goals of students.
A significant percentage of first-year students are entering community college, and many of them will be looking for classes that prepare them for jobs in the near term. Nursing, information technology, the electrical trades and education will appeal to many, but the most popular areas of study are in the liberal arts. That’s no surprise because the liberal arts prepares students to pivot in many directions given shifting labor force needs.
And those shifts will be significant. Artificial intelligence is reshaping how tasks are completed almost everywhere. That’s why students at community colleges, like their counterparts at four-year schools, hope to learn to use large language model tools and develop the human capacities for discernment, for making sense of when and how to use the powerful research and analytic powers of A.I. The students are learning specific skills, to be sure, but they are also learning how to add human value to work in a marketplace infatuated with the wonders of automation.
Despite the pressures of a perilous job market, students often use the first semester for exploration. Course catalogs will include titles that baffle recent high school graduates and lead to head-scratching moments for parents and pundits. But this is nothing new. Some schools provide a core curriculum, and despite oft-repeated stories of far-left professors pouring woke doctrine down the throats of naïve youngsters, the writings of Plato, Machiavelli and Mary Shelley remain among the most assigned college readings in America.
Students in my humanities course this fall will begin with Confucius, Aristotle and Aquinas. Very few of my undergrads will major in philosophy, but almost all, I expect, will approach the material with energetic curiosity. They always do. Why? Because they are taking the opportunity to discover who they are as readers, as conversation partners, as people. They are figuring out what kind of work they find fulfilling, what they love to do.
That said, it is essential that students also learn how to get better at the work they’ve signed up for. Discovering one’s passion is not enough. Through vigorous practice, students should learn to work harder and better, so they can go further than they’d thought possible. If they use A.I. to avoid having to work hard, they’ll learn little.
Grade inflation, too, is pernicious, because it signals to young people that they’ve already mastered a task when they’ve really just begun to get the hang of it. Teachers must get over their fear of alienating students by setting high standards, and undergraduates must come to understand that they can do much better than they’ve already done. And they need to learn without undue dependence on technology.
I’ve been teaching college students for over 40 years, and one of the great pleasures for me at the beginning of the school year is seeing students develop friendships in their new surroundings. It may happen in a science lab or on a sports team, or through a discussion begun in class and carried over into the dining hall or the dorm. Every year I meet alumni in ripe old age who are still buddies with (or even married to) people they got to know in the first weeks of school. I’m convinced that there is something about young folks opening themselves to new possibilities in college that sets a durable foundation for long-lasting relationships.
Yes, college is less affordable than it should be; yes, there’s still a long way to go in improving intellectual diversity and pluralism on campus.
Today’s students are trying to work out what it means to be decent humans in a world growing more heated, hostile and, sometimes, heartless. We should cheer them on, for their sake and ours.
- Author: Michael S. Roth, The New York Times
A top safety researcher at Anthropic has warned AI is advancing so quickly he believes there is a greater than 10% chance it "could kill all humans" within the next decade.
Evan Hubinger said in a post on X the risk from the models which currently exist was "low" but he was "worried" the technology might develop and improve itself soon to the point where it posed an existential risk to humanity.
He did not spell out how he thought AI systems could in future result in humans being wiped out.
But his comments are the latest in a series of increasingly stark warnings about AI, with the debate shifting from whether it truly poses a risk to how big that risk is.
Hubinger's intervention was in response to another post on X from Jacob Coxon, an AI researcher who has just quit Anthropic and previously worked at OpenAI.
"Neither company is acting responsibly," he wrote.
"These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionise any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources."
- Author: Tom Gerken, BBC
AI-powered smart glasses are rapidly moving from science fiction into everyday life.
Meta has already sold millions of pairs, with supporters claiming they could become the next major computing platform, helping people make calls, translate languages, identify objects and navigate the world hands-free.
Privacy campaigners warn they could enable covert surveillance and lawsuits have raised concerns about consent and data collection, and some venues have banned them altogether.
Some critics have labelled them "spy glasses" and "pervert glasses".
So are smart glasses a new surveillance threat? Or are we in danger of demonising a technology with the potential to benefit millions?
Joining the discussion are AI ethicist Dr Stephanie Hare, Silkie Carlo from Big Brother Watch, and consumer tech expert Ben Hatton from CCS Insight.
We also hear from women concerned about the impact of Meta's smart glasses in a BBC News report.
Isar Aerospace plans rapid expansion amid race to capitalise on expanding satellite-launch market.
A German startup has launched the first commercial rocket to reach orbit from continental Europe, a milestone for Europe’s efforts to secure independent access to space.
Isar Aerospace said on Sunday that it would rapidly expand satellite deployments after the first orbital launch of its uncrewed Spectrum rocket from Arctic Norway, marking a breakthrough for a region where several countries are seeking a foothold in the fast-growing market for satellite launches.
“Launch capability is right now the biggest bottleneck in the entire industry,” Isar’s co-founder and chief executive, Daniel Metzler, told reporters.
Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, hailed Saturday’s launch in a statement, calling it “the beginning of a new era”.
Global players in the satellite launch market include Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which launches from the US, and the French firm ArianeGroup, a joint venture between Airbus and Safran that uses a spaceport in French Guiana, South America,
SOLVING the killing of Skeleton 150 ? That would be a very long shot. Today, Stirling Castle is a tourist site nestled in the hills of Scotland, but in 1304 it was a war zone.
That's when the English captured the castle during a siege. Now researchers believe that one of the skeletons from this battle might be the first confirmed victim of the war catapult called the trebuchet.
The extensive injuries to this smashed skeleton, called Skeleton 150 by archaeologists, suggested to researchers that the bones were most likely broken by the high-force impact of a trebuchet projectile.
'' I was piecing all of these things together and then asking, '' Well, what's happening in medieval Stirling that could explain this? ' '' said Dr. Jo Buckberry, a biologist at the University of Bradford in England.
'' The obvious answer is the use of trebuchets.''
The skeleton was excavated in 1997, when Historic Environment Scotland was refurbishing the palace. Skeleton 150, alongside several others were found under the floor of the castle's royal chapel.
This burial place suggested that those conducting the funerals were unable to access typical burial places outside the castle walls. This indicated the bones might date to the 1304 battle, after which English took control of Stirling.
Using X-rays and microscopy, Dr. Buckberry and her colleague, Dr. Patrick Randolph-Quinney, a biological anthropologist in Sweden, discovered that Skeleton 150 had complex, zigzag-patterned fractures, similar to those seen in modern victims injured in car accidents.
The only explanation that seemed to fit all the injuries was one of blunt-force trauma from an extremely heavy projectile.
Researchers suggest that this projectile, launched from the strongest of the medieval war catapults, the trebuchet, might have hit skeleton 150 - most likely a defender of the castle in his 20s or early 30s - from behind, as he ran for cover.
!WOW! thanks K.R. Callaway.
BEIJING : History reimagined - frame by frame. ' Light Chaser Animation ' transforms China's celebrated Three Kingdoms Era into an animated epic.
China's long and eventful history has inspired generations of novels, operas, films and television dramas, but historical epics have traditionally been dominated by live-action productions.
With the release of '' Three Kingdoms : The Beginning '' the Light Chaser Animation is taking a different path, using animation to revisit one of the country's most celebrated historical eras while reflecting the growing confidence of domestic studios in tackling ambitious historical subjects.
The film, which opened just recently, re-imagined the Three Kingdoms period [220-280], one of the most significant chapters in Chinese history.
Broad historical and literary narratives of the era begin in the closing decades of the Eastern Han Dynasty [25-220], when warfare, political intrigue and personal ambition reshaped the country.
The turmoil produced numerous legendary figures whose stories have remained deeply embedded in Chinese cultural memory and continue to resonate across East Asia.
For centuries, the power struggles and rivalries of the period have inspired historical accounts, novels, operas, games, films and television productions.
Rather than retelling familiar events alone, '' Three Kingdoms : The Beginning " focus on the early lives of two men whose rivalry would leave a lasting mark on history.
Cao Cao, a fiery junior official from a modest family background, and Yuan Shao, heir to one of the most influential aristocratic clans of the time.
Producer Song Yivi said the film deliberately portrays its central characters before they become legends. It explores how courage, determination and ambition shaped their journeys.
The story, Song said, how these historical figures faced uncertainty, made decisive choices during critical moments and gradually became the personalities remembered throughout history.
!WOW! thanks Agencies.
The singer and musician wants to write the great American novel, but first she's publishing a children's book, '' Lil Lizzo Meets Sasha B. Flootin '' : I wanted to inspire young people to fall in love with music. ''
.- Describe your ideal reading experience.
On a plane. Night flight. Blanket on. Good music.
.- Do you prefer books that reach you emotionally, or intellectually?
I used to prefer emotional fiction. Now I read more about self-improvement.
.- What kind of reader were you as a child?
Insatiable. I would consume entire books in a single day.
.- Which childhood books and authors stick with you most?
'' Where the Red Fern Grows '' was the first book I loved. I also read a lot of fantasy novels, like '' Lord of the Rings '' and '' Wayfarer Redemption.''
.- What's the best book you've ever received as a gift?
Recently, '' The Molecule of More '' and '' The Autobiography of a Yogi, '' '' The Molecule of More '' is about the dopaminergic reactions that our brain has and the way we respond to the reward system in our brains.
It's helped me understand my brain chemistry. I have a very analytical mind, and the book has helped me understand why I react and respond the way I do.
'' The Autobiography of a Yogi '' is about Paramahansa Yogananda's life. It inspires me to dream big.
.- What books are you embarrassed not to have read yet?
There's a lot of Ram Dass and Dolores Cannon that I haven't read.
.- What book is a guaranteed pick-me-up?
'' The Alchemist.'' It's such a simple story about how you can take control of your life, and I think it's an obligatory first read if you are getting into spirituality or self-help. That's where you start.
.- What's your favorite fictional hero or heroine?
Sailor Moon. I used to read the manga. She's one of the most powerful anime characters in the universe, but her weapon is love.
Watching her at a young age destroy her enemies and destroy negativity and bad energy with love, and her best friends, was super inspiring.
I feel like I do the same thing as an adult : I fight evil with love.
This Publishing continues to Part [2].
!WOW! thanks The New York Times and Scott Heller.
' WIKIPEDIA is in peril '. So it is battling for the internet's soul. This largest online stockpile of free knowledge pins hope on an ex-diplomat.
In a world where trust in truth is crumbling, the grande dame of collective online fact-gathering is under threat on every front.
Elon Musk, at the fore, is singing accusations of political bias and anti semitism and has even questioned the site's nonprofit status.
Artificial intelligence is raiding the encyclopedia's resources and draining attention. Repressive governments have hauled its volunteer editors into penal colonies.
In Wikipedia's 25-year-history, it has never had to fight this hard.
The organization that supports the site, the Wikipedia Foundation, is increasing its lobbying budget and advertising in Times Square in New York City.
It is charging companies like Google and Meta that gobble up the encyclopedia's 65 million articles and throttling access to certain web scrapers.
And its expanding its human rights team to better protect volunteers against rising harassment, surveillance and retaliation.
For an organization that holds neutrality as its cardinal rule, it is a lot of conflict, requiring Wikipedia to go on the offensive - diplomatically, of course.
!WOW! thanks Tiffany Hsu.
England captain Harry Kane scored his 55th Champions League goal and Michael Olise struck twice as Bayern Munich began their campaign by comfortably beating Bodo/Glimt.
Vincent Kompany's side will be looking to improve on last season, when they reached the semi-finals.
They made the ideal start to the league phase with this victory against Norwegians Bodo/Glimt, who put up stubborn resistance in the first half but were then overwhelmed.
Jamal Musiala - making his first start of the season after collapsing twice in a four-day period in August due to a neurological dysfunction - struck early in the second period when Kane's shot deflected kindly for him.
It may have given Bayern the lead but the goal meant even more to Musiala given his struggles, with the German saying after the match: "The feeling I had today is a feeling I haven't had for a while."
- Author: Gary Rose, BBC
.- CHINA'S BeiDou Navigation Satellite System completes in-orbit upgrade.
The BeiDou navigation Satellite System [BDS] has wrapped up an in-orbit upgrade to provide higher quality services.
.- US to vet social media of foreign journalists applying for a visa.
The US State Department will vet the social media accounts of foreign journalists applying for a visa to work in the US, according to a media report.
.- META ordered to pay $567 million in New Mexico
A New Mexico court ordered Meta to pay $567 million into a teen mental health fund after finding the company is to blame for harming children's wellbeing.
.- HACKERS targeted US private equity, other firms including Blackstone.
Ransom-seeking hackers who use phone calls to compromise their victims targeted dozens of prominent US financial institutions.
!WOW! thanks The Express Tribune.
“A protocol is a recipe,” said Jonathan Livny, a senior research scientist at the Broad Institute who has collaborated with Transfyr. “You can give somebody a recipe, and it’s not going to make them a great chef.”
Like apprentice chefs, scientists spend years in training, shadowing experts, asking questions and trying out procedures for themselves.
To make an experiment work, they may have to make thousands of minor decisions over the course of a day. A tube needs to be shaken — let it whir on a vibrating platform, or just flick it back and forth by hand?
“The really good people sometimes don’t know why they’re that good,” Dr. Livny said. “They don’t remember the 20 times they did something another way and it failed. They’ve blocked all that sadness out.”
In the 1960s, the Hungarian chemist and philosopher Michael Polyani gave this mysterious expertise a name: tacit knowledge. “We know more than we can tell,” he liked to say.
Scientists have generally come to agree with Polanyi that tacit knowledge is an essential part of research. But it can also slow down progress.
In theory, science moves forward as researchers build on previous work. When a new study comes out, other scientists will attempt to replicate the work. If the original result was correct, a replication ought to produce the same results.
Surprisingly often, it doesn’t. And tacit knowledge is part of the problem. Scientists can’t know exactly how to replicate a study simply by reading about it.
Renee Wegrzyn, a co-founder of Transfyr, became keenly aware of this gap while doing research as a postdoctoral researcher. She jotted down records of her experiments on proteins in a lab notebook, but it captured only a fraction of her efforts.
When Dr. Wegrzyn published her results, she had to distill her records even further. “I did a postdoc that was three years long, and then it got summed up in a three-page paper,” she said.
Missing from those notes and reports were all the little decisions Dr. Wegrzyn had made while performing her research.
“All of those details could matter, but we just don’t know if they matter,” said Brian Nosek, an expert on replication at the University of Virginia who is not involved in Transfyr.
When a replicated study fails to produce the original results, that may mean the original study was wrong. Or maybe it was right, and the replicating scientists made an unwitting blunder. It can be hard for teams of scientists to agree on what happened.
In 1993, for example, the psychologist Frances Rauscher and her colleagues reported that people who listen to Mozart get a temporary boost on reasoning tests. The buzz around the so-called Mozart effect led other researchers to run experiments of their own.
Many of them couldn’t find any significant benefit, but Dr. Rauscher brushed off these failures. The other scientists didn’t find the Mozart effect because they weren’t good enough at running experiments, she said — they were not good scientific chefs.
The search for the Mozart effect went on for years. In the end, other scientists found little evidence that it exists.
Conflicts like these led some scientists to search for new ways to communicate tacit knowledge. In 2006, the biologist Moshe Pritsker created a journal called JoVE, which published videos of scientists carrying out complex experiments.
In 2014, the biologist Lenny Teytelman created a place where scientists could share their protocols and talk about them. Researchers use the website, called Protocols.io, to help train new members of their labs when the seasoned scientists with magic hands have moved on.
With Transfyr, Dr. Wegrzyn and Ms. Wagner are building a system that can slurp up enormous amounts of data about what happens in a lab, in the form of video, audio and sensor logs from lab equipment. Transfyr even tracks the source of supplies, down to the lot numbers of glove boxes.
(Why? “Maybe there’s a fume coming off the glove that is changing your experiment,” Ms. Wagner said.)
Dr. Nosek said that this new approach might reveal some secrets about why experiments succeed or fail. “What I really like about them is they’re going gangbusters into trying to unpack every detail,” he said. “It makes a lot of sense to go all in, and then figure out what actually matters.”
- Author: Carl Zimmer, The New York Times
AN approach of sharing advanced technology may pay off for Beijing. The U.S. does not yet have a Chinese model that surpasses America's but just recently brought a model that may come close, Kimi K3 from the Chinese company Moonshot A.I.
And so far Beijing is treating Kimi K3 like all its prior models : It is going to be open-source for maximum adoption, without any American style fretting over risks and guardrails and export controls.
This decision should make the U.S. a little more confident that Beijing's overall approach is sincere.
It suggests that the Chinese don't just reject the utopian and dystopian scenarios common in Silicon Valley, where past some threshold the power of artificial intelligence totally remakes the world.
They may not even be especially '' risk-pilled, '' in the sense of worrying about the kinds of perils that today's A.I. models might already create - through the power to hack and bring down complex systems, the power to help terrorists create bioweapons, the uncertain risks of rogue A.I. behaviour and more.
!WOW! thanks The New York Times.
Thousands of Kenyans made a living writing essays for overseas students. With A.I., the work has dried up, a warning for online gig work that has been a global lifeline.
Teresios Bundi once symbolized the strange, life-changing opportunities the internet provided.
Hailing from a farming village in Kenya, Mr. Bundi moved to the capital, Nairobi, in 2011 to be the first in his family to attend university. There, a friend suggested he try a new online job: writing essays for cheating overseas college students.
His first assignment was a two-page essay on the health benefits of the Garcinia cambogia. It was a fruit he had never heard of, and an essay written for a student he didn’t know anything about. He earned $7 for three hours of work.
“That was a lifeline for me, I needed the money,” Mr. Bundi, now 34, said in an interview in Nairobi. He added: “I could not sleep that night. I was ready to burn the midnight oil.”
Mr. Bundi estimates he wrote more than 2,500 essays over the next 12 years, sometimes three a day. He balanced completing his public health degree with helping faraway students studying engineering, medicine and computer science to finish theirs. Some students gave him their school login information so he could keep up with their assignments.
Mr. Bundi didn’t know it then, but he was in the boom era of internet gig work. Newly wired to the global internet and hungry for jobs, well-educated youths from places like Kenya, the Philippines and India found opportunities in the crevices of the digital economy. They could make money online doing unglamorous tasks that others further up the economic ladder did not want to do.
Then A.I arrived, and the good times ended.
In 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT. At colleges worldwide, students made a simple calculation that has become more pronounced today: Why pay a freelancer in Kenya when ChatGPT could do the job?
Essay work began to thin. Rates fell, and assignments dwindled. Before long, the industry shrank to almost nothing. “I never would have expected A.I. could do this,” Mr. Bundi said.
His fate is shared by others who had found a foothold in the global online gig economy. Kenyans also transcribed meetings through the freelance platforms Upwork and Fiverr. They flagged Facebook posts to help the platform decide what could stay up. One after another, those opportunities have withered.
As technologists, economists and policymakers worldwide debate the future of A.I., Kenya’s experience shows how the technology is already dismantling some lower rungs of the global labor market.
“It’s not just going to be Kenya — it’s going to be everywhere we see a big transformation,” said Mark Graham, an Oxford University professor who has studied the global gig economy. “A.I. has come in and taken big chunks of these labor markets.”
Mr. Bundi said he had regrets. When he graduated from college in 2015, he bypassed a public health career to start an online essay-writing business, charging $40 to $70 per paper. Assignments came in through digital platforms, and he divvied up work between himself and students he hired. He rented a house near a university and filled it with desks, fast internet and mattresses. Students worked between classes and slept when too exhausted to write.
Mr. Bundi said he had made at least five times as much as he could earn in public health. He sent money to his parents, coffee farmers who had taken out a loan to buy him a laptop for college.
- Author: Adam Satariano and Paul Mozur, The New York Times
'' A JOBS BOOM - THANKS TO A.I. '' In an Indian city - workers find one aspect of tech that still needs a human touch. Evidence of A.I. boom often looks like the squat, windowless data centers that house acre after acre of hardware.
KARUR - INDIA : But near the southern tip of India, the city of Karur is teeming with signs of A.I.'s ascendency in human form.
Hundreds of tech lab workers clog the streets on coffee breaks late on any given weekday afternoon -men and women in their 20s, corporate ID cards dangling from lanyards around their necks.
Others work afew hours a weekend from home, supplementing their income by strapping iPhones to their heads and pressing record while they chop-vegetables or make the bed.
They work in a fast-growing field of A.I. called data annotation, which - for the moment, at least - requires a human touch.
As the sentient backstop for artificial intelligence, data annotators help fix bugs and find blind spots in A.I. models, improving and refining the programs that steer your car, automate an assembly line and track inventory.
The work can be rote and less complex than what engineers train for in college, requiring hours in front of a screen to examine the video frame by frame.
But as A.I. capabilities change how companies design and produce products - making the jobs coding disappear for college graduates.
Data annotation is showing how countries like India, with entry level job shortages and large youth populations, are adapting.
Aiswarya Palaniswany, a 25-year-old with a master's degree in data analytics, found a job last year with the Karur-based Objectways Technologies, a data annotation firm whose clients are mainly American companies using A.I. in their products. Objectways employs 2,600 people - 300 of whom were hired in the last month.
'' There will always be data. There will always be information,'' Ms. Palaniswamy said, sounding confident she had found a job that would be resilient at a time when A.I. has automated jobs like payroll and data entry that workers in India used to fill.
She and her co-workers watch footage from products in the rapidly expanding physical A.I. space, including self-driving cars and humanoid robots, and note in each frame how well the A.I. model is performing its task.
Objectways' skilled entry-level office jobs pay around $210 to $260 a month - a comfortable salary in a small Indian city like Karur, with around 40,000 people.
The unskilled work of recording yourself at home pays $2.50 an hour for usable footage and is done on a freelance basis.
In India, finding steady employment for a rapidly growing population of young adults - some 2 million Indians turn 18 each month - is particularly pressing for Prime Minister Narandra Modi and his governing Bharatiya Janata Party.
The Honour and Swerving of the Latest Global Operational Research on A.I., Jobs, Future, Students and Youth, continues. !WOW! thanks Jeremy W. Peters and Hari Kumar.
With most respectful dedication to the Leaders, Parents, Students, Professors and Teachers of Asia, India and then the world.
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