Entertainment news
Elon Musk reportedly planning to launch AI rival to ChatGPT maker – The Guardian
Elon Musk is reportedly planning to launch an artificial intelligence company to compete with OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, as Silicon Valley battles for dominance in the rapidly developing technology.
The billionaire boss of Tesla and Twitter is in the process of bringing together a team of AI researchers and engineers and is in talks with several investors about the project, according to
the Financial Times.
“A bunch of people are investing in it … it’s real and they are excited about it,” a person with knowledge of the talks told the newspaper, which cited Nevada business records showing that on 9 March Musk incorporated a company called X.AI of which he is the company’s sole director.
The move, which would mean him joining tech giants Microsoft, Google and Amazon and startups including OpenAI in the fast-changing generative AI space, appears to signal a rapid change of direction.Only a few weeks ago Musk
co-signed a letter in which he and more than 1,800 others demanded a six-month pause in AI research.It later emerged that some of the signatories were fake.
In company filings, Musk recently changed the name of Twitter to X Corp.The move was part of his plans to make an “everything app” branded “X”.
His business portfolio includes Twitter, Tesla, rocket maker SpaceX, neurotechnology research company Neuralink and his tunnelling project, The Boring Company.
On Friday, SpaceX was issued with a Starship launch licence, clearing the way for the first flight test of the new rocket, potentially on Monday.
For the new AI project, Musk has reportedly got thousands of high-powered GPU processors and is also said to have recruited engineers from leading AI labs, such as DeepMind.
Musk’s new startup is likely to enable him to attempt to compete with OpenAI, which Musk co-founded in 2015.
He left the board after three years, reportedly as a result of clashes with management, including over AI safety.
He tweeted in 2019: “Tesla was competing for some of the same people as OpenAI & I didn’t agree with some of what OpenAI team wanted to do.”
Soon after, it became a for-profit startup and secured a $1bn investment from Microsoft.It has since attracted growing criticism from Musk over the potential existential threats generative AI may pose.
He has said he is especially concerned about the capability of models such as GPT-4, the latest release by OpenAI, to spread false information and demonstrate political bias.
Musk and OpenAI did not immediately respond to the FT or the Guardian’s requests for comment.
Entertainment news
Mnangagwa settled gold smuggler’s debt with expensive watch? – Bulawayo24 News
Controversial gold dealer Ewan MacMillan says he has President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s gold-studded Rolex watch he claims he obtained from the incumbent’s unnamed son as compromise settlement of an outstanding debt.
MacMillan made the claims when he met undercover Al Jazeera journalists who had approached him sometime ago while posing as gangsters who were seeking his services to launder loads of cash in astounding scenes later reproduced in a four-part documentary aired by the Qatar-based news network.
During the meeting, MacMillan, also known as ‘Mr Gold’, notices one of the undercover journalists wearing a Rolex watch and takes the moment to brag about his own collection of Rolex watches.
In his expensive collection, he claims, was the Zimbabwean leader’s green face gold-studded President Rolex.
“My dad always used to say to me ‘you’ve always got to wear the best watch because everyone looks to see your watch’.
“I have the Submariner; I have the gold Submariner and I have two Presidents.
“And you won’t believe this.You won’t believe this (whispers), this is between us.
I have Mnangagwa’s gold-studded President Rolex because the son ran into debt and had to pay the debt off.So, he gave me the Rolex.
“I paid the debt off, and he said ‘please don’t tell my dad’.I’ve got the dad’s watch; it’s blue face with gold studs all around.So, I’ve all that in a safe,” brags MacMillan.
He does not mention the amount owed as debt.
However, MacMillan’s description of Mnangagwa’s Rolex fits the description of a Green Dial Fluted Bezel President Yellow Gold Watch valued at US$41,700.
During the meeting, MacMillan boasts about his close connection to the country’s most powerful man he claims has always rescued him whenever he got into difficulties trying to move gold and that includes cases he has clashed with central bank governor John Mangudya.
“The good news is whatever I told him (Mnangagwa), he did.When I was getting hurt, I said you’ve got to stop it here, here, here and he did it.
“Within two weeks, he fixed everything.
“You know Mangudya’s problem.
I said to him (Mnangagwa), Mangudya, I think he’s dirty.
“You need to find him out.ED went and fixed him,” says the bossy gold smuggler.
Despite being in a money-spinning gold smuggling syndicate, MacMillan admitted he felt it could be time to quit as he was now tired of paying corrupt politicians and senior government officials large sums of money in order to continue running the dicey operation.
However, despite his name being dropped severally by different culprits featured in the Al Jazeera episodes, Mnangagwa has refrained from making any public comment about the documentary.
Through information minister Monica Mutsvangwa, his government recently warned “boastful behavior and name dropping by some personalities featured in the documentary seeking personal gain and glory”.
Entertainment news
Too cramped? Too big? No name: Sydney’s newest art gallery weathers critique in its first months – The Guardian
From the window of his office, the Art Gallery of
New South Wales director, Michael Brand, looks out on the sprawling new $344m gallery he spent the past decade trying to build, shepherding it through backlash, budgets, a $100m philanthropy drive and a global pandemic.
But now the gallery – known widely as
Sydney Modern, though officially it still has not been named – has made it through its first summer.And Brand is feeling optimistic.
“Hundreds of thousands of visitors” have come through since it opened on 3 December, he says, although AGNSW wouldn’t provide a more specific number.He’s confident the expansion will raise annual attendance at AGNSW, which has averaged about 1.2 million in the past decade, to 2 million people – a figure floated pre-pandemic, drawn from the business case behind the project which is still confidential.
Walking into the gallery, designed by Japanese architects Sanaa, the overwhelming impression is one of light and space.
Guests have been struck by the major curatorial shake-up – where work from emerging Australian artists hangs alongside international superstars – and the wide glass windows, which often draw the eye from the art to the landscapes outside.But both choices have raised some critical eyebrows too, the space deemed by some cluttered, confused and, ultimately, a distraction from the art.
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The new hang acknowledges that Australian artists are now deeply enmeshed with the world, Brand says; that their work doesn’t exist in a vacuum.And as for all the windows: “This is Sydney.What should we be doing with this amazing site overlooking the harbour, adjacent to the Botanic Gardens? … Why would you build a big concrete box?”
Over the years, critics debated the project’s purpose, its harbourside location, and whether Brand’s laser focus on fundraising for the building had pulled resources from its curation and public programs.The former prime minister Paul Keating dismissed it as a “land grab” that was “about money, not art”, describing the proposed building as “a large entertainment and special events complex masquerading as an art gallery”.The gallery’s raucous opening nights and packed WorldPride event showed it is indeed a great place for a party.
But with the dust settling, Brand clearly feels vindicated by his gamble.“Both public and critical responses have been fantastic,” he says, pointing specifically to the
Washington Post critic Sebastian Smee’s verdict, which declared it a triumph that could be instructive to US galleries.The decision to spotlight the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art collection, long held in the basement of the original building, has been widely lauded, as has the unique underground gallery known as the Tank, built into a former second world war oil tank long hidden beneath the Domain.
The expansion means AGNSW can now be more ambitious with its exhibitions and secure the kinds of blockbuster shows it had been missing out on.
These instead have been going to the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, Brisbane’s Qagoma or the National Gallery of Victoria which, before the pandemic, saw almost double the number of visitors as AGNSW.“We got the building that we asked for, now we’ve got to do that,” Brand says.
But not everyone is convinced – notably two of Australia’s most high-profile art critics, John McDonald and Christopher Allen.Allen, in the Australian, questioned
whether the building was at all effective as an art gallery, likening its design, complete with large central escalators, to “a shopping mall”.McDonald, meanwhile, questioned its long-term viability: after the initial excitement, how will the gallery continue to draw large crowds? “This can only be done with exhibitions and public programs, but even this may not cover the running costs, which will require a massive injection of funds from the state government,” he wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald.
Judith White, a former president of the
Art Gallery Society and longtime critic of the Sydney Modern Project, echoes McDonald’s finance concerns.“The biggest issue is recurrent funding,” she says.Last September, NSW budget estimates revealed AGNSW’s operational funding from government had only increased from $39.5m to $41.8m in the year ahead of the opening.
Questioned during that estimates hearing by Labor’s John Graham, Brand described AGNSW as “a public-private partnership” and noted the government had ramped up its support over time, from $23.8m back in 2017.Graham, who is the state’s news arts minister, has since pledged to open up discussions about “long-term strategic investment” in the state’s arts sector.“For too long arts funding has been structured around short-term grants and funding splashes,” he told Guardian Australia.
For his part, Brand isn’t publicly lobbying for a funding boost.
“We’ve almost doubled the size of the building, but that doesn’t mean you need to double the size of the staff,” he says.The curatorial team has, however, expanded by 10 people since mid-2019, according to AGNSW.
Most of the exhibitions in the new building are set to run through to the end of this year, if not into 2024.In November though, almost a year after it opened, the gallery will host its first marquee show, a monographic exhibition of the French-American artist Louise Bourgeois.This will be one of the largest ever presentations of a female artist in Australia, AGNSW says, running across the 1,300-sq-metre major exhibition gallery and the Tank.
“We can do this show on a scale that would be impossible in [the original] building,” Brand says.
Before then there are a few loose ends: first, the name.The plan is to give both the new and the original buildings Indigenous names – if long-running community consultations, which have reportedly been vexed, can settle on a solution all parties are happy with.
Then there is the final of nine original commissions made by the gallery for the Sydney Modern Project: a striking 3,000-sq-metre living artwork by the Wiradjuri and Kamilaroi artist Jonathan Jones, which has been beset by delays.It’s understood debate over the piece has been tense, including the plan for Indigenous cultural burning practices at the site, which spans the space between AGNSW’s new gallery and the original building.
Brand’s office window looks down on to the half-built work.“I look at it every day,” he says, adding it’s now on track to be completed by mid-year.“There have been some robust discussions,” he admits.“But that wouldn’t be the first time in the art world.”
Entertainment news
‘Horizon Burning Shores’ launch trailer teases the franchise’s biggest boss fight – Yahoo News
Ahead of its April 19th release date, Sony and Guerrilla Games on Friday shared a new trailer for Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores.
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.
That battle is one of the reasons Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores won’t be available on PlayStation 4, even though you can play the original game on Sony’s
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