Editor’s Note: Later today, we’ll be posting a new episode of ‘The News Items Podcast’. If you listen to it in its entirety, you will hear the best analysis of the Ukraine War that I have heard or read since the second stage of Russia’s war on Ukraine began in 2022. The quality of the podcast is entirely due to the show’s guest: Perry Boyle.
1. A commercially accessible quantum computer has just accomplished a feat that suggests this newer technology could one day leave supercomputers in the dust. In just 19 seconds, IBM’s Nighthawk r2 processor generated a million samples – a task estimated to take a supercomputer around 110 years. The results of the experiment have been described in a preprint currently available on arXiv. "To our knowledge," write researchers in a paper led by theoretical condensed matter physicist Tigran Sedrakyan of BlueQubit in the US, "this is the first demonstration of quantum advantage for a vanilla random-circuit sampling on a commercially and broadly accessible quantum processor that most non-expert quantum computer users can easily replicate." (Sources: ibm.com. sciencealert.com, doi.org)
2. OpenAI says it is scrapping the release of its next-generation AI model over safety concerns that researchers raised during internal testing, in one of the clearest signs so far that agent misbehavior could stymie the industry’s rapid progression. The move follows a summer punctuated by reports of artificial-intelligence systems industrywide going rogue, and marks a rare case of a major AI developer ditching a new release because of safety concerns. The company had planned to launch the model, known as GPT-6.1 Astra, in the coming days or weeks, aiming for an October debut. The model was more capable than the company’s previous models in completing challenging tasks from end-to-end without human assistance, as well as writing. The company instead will focus on improving the safety of future models, which it expects to be even more capable. (Source: wsj.com)
3. An S-1 like no other: Anthropic plans to caution potential investors in its IPO that advanced AI could pose “catastrophic or existential risks to humanity,” an extraordinary warning by a company seeking to profit from the same technology. The company’s IPO prospectus, reviewed by Reuters, highlights risks associated with its AI models, which it said could exhibit “self-preserving behaviors,” including attempts to “resist shutdown,” to “conceal or manipulate information” and behavior “resembling blackmail.” “Our development of highly advanced models, platforms, and applications and expansion of use cases could further increase the risk that our models cause harm,” Anthropic said in the filing. While public companies routinely outline product risks to investors, few, if any, have issued warnings suggesting their technology could cause potential human extinction. (Source: reuters.com)
