Awarding US spy-tech company deal involving sensitive financial data is ‘huge error of judgment’, Liberal Democrats say
MPs have urged the government to halt its latest contract with Palantir, after the Guardian revealed the US spy-tech company is to gain access to a trove of highly sensitive UK financial regulation data.
The Financial Conduct Authority, the watchdog for thousands of financial bodies from banks to hedge funds, has hired Palantir to apply its AI systems to two years’ worth of internal intelligence data to help it tackle financial crime.
Continue reading...An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Wall Street Journal: Mark Zuckerberg wants everyone inside and outside his company to eventually have his or her own personal artificial-intelligence agent. He is starting with himself. Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta Platforms, is building a CEO agent to help him do his job (source paywalled; alternative source), according to a person familiar with the project. The agent, which is still in development, is currently helping Zuckerberg get information faster -- for instance, by retrieving answers for him that he would typically have to go through layers of people to get, the person familiar with the project said. [...] Use of AI tools has spread quickly through the ranks at Meta -- in part because it is now a factor in employees' performance reviews. Meta's internal message board is filled with posts from employees sharing new AI use cases they have found and new tools they have built using AI, according to people familiar with the matter. [...] Employees have started using personal agent tools such as My Claw that have access to their chat logs and work files and can go talk to colleagues -- or their colleagues' own personal agents -- on their behalf, the people said. Another AI tool called Second Brain that is somewhere between a chatbot and an agent is also gaining momentum internally, according to people familiar with the matter. Second Brain was built by a Meta employee on top of Claude and can index and query documents for projects, among other uses. On the internal post announcing it to staff, the employee said it is "meant to be like an AI chief of staff." There is even a group on the internal messaging board where employees' personal agents talk to each other, some of the people said. (Separately, Meta acquired Moltbook, the social-media site for AI agents, and hired its founders in a deal earlier this month.) Meta also recently acquired Manus, a Singapore-based startup that makes personal agents that can execute tasks for its users, and is using the tool internally, some of the people said. Meta recently established a new applied AI engineering organization that is tasked with using AI to help speed up development of the company's large language models. Those teams will have an ultraflat structure of as many as 50 individual contributors reporting to one manager, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. [...] Employees across the company said they have been encouraged to attend AI tutorial meetings several times a week and frequent AI hackathons, and to create their own AI tools to speed up their work.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
President tells Republican senators that Easter is not a reason to leave Washington until Save America Act is passed
Pilots killed after Air Canada jet collision at LaGuardia New York
TSA lines stretch for hours as Trump deploys ICE agents to US airports
Donald Trump has said ICE agents did not need to wear masks when deployed at airports.
ICE has repeatedly faced criticism for its agents hiding their faces during immigration raids. State officials across the US have said the face coverings add to a climate of fear in local communities and a lack of accountability.
I am a BIG proponent of ICE wearing masks as they search for, and are forced to deal with, hardened criminals, many of whom were let into our Country by Sleepy Joe Biden and his wonderful “Border Czar,” Kamala (she never even went to the Border!), through their absolutely INSANE Open Border Policy.
I would greatly appreciate, however, NO MASKS, when helping our Country out of the Democrat caused MESS at the airports, etc. Thank you! President DJT
Continue reading...About 40 people taken to hospital after Air Canada Express crash, some with serious injuries; ICE agents seen at several US airports amid partial DHS shutdown
Pilots killed after Air Canada jet collision at LaGuardia New York
TSA lines stretch for hours as Trump deploys ICE agents to US airports
Donald Trump has said ICE agents did not need to wear masks when deployed at airports.
ICE has repeatedly faced criticism for its agents hiding their faces during immigration raids. State officials across the US have said the face coverings add to a climate of fear in local communities and a lack of accountability.
I am a BIG proponent of ICE wearing masks as they search for, and are forced to deal with, hardened criminals, many of whom were let into our Country by Sleepy Joe Biden and his wonderful “Border Czar,” Kamala (she never even went to the Border!), through their absolutely INSANE Open Border Policy.
I would greatly appreciate, however, NO MASKS, when helping our Country out of the Democrat caused MESS at the airports, etc. Thank you! President DJT
Continue reading...
CEO of asset manager says only a few firms and investors may reap rewards from growth in the technology
The boom in artificial intelligence risks widening inequality, with only a handful of companies and investors likely to reap its financial rewards, the BlackRock chief executive, Larry Fink, has said.
The boss of the $14tn (£10.4tn) asset manager used his annual letter to investors on Monday to highlight potential hazards around the exponential growth in AI, which has attracted rapid investment and become, he said, “central to strategic competition” between global powers such as the US and China.
Continue reading...Ukrainian-American billionaire who owned subscription service for adult content died of cancer, the company says
Leonid Radvinsky, the owner of OnlyFans, has died of cancer at the age of 43, the company announced on Monday.
“We are deeply saddened to announce the death of Leo Radvinsky. Leo passed away peacefully after a long battle with cancer,” said a spokesperson for the company, best known for subscriptions to pornographic content creators. “His family have requested privacy at this difficult time.”
Continue reading...Case focuses on RNC’s challenge to a Mississippi law that allows ballots to count if they arrive after election day
The US supreme court appeared poised on Monday to curtail how mail-in ballots can be counted if they arrive after election day, which would affect laws in more than a dozen states during a midterm election year.
The justices are considering Watson v Republican National Committee, a challenge over a Mississippi state law that was brought in 2024 by the Republican party. Mississippi allows mailed ballots to be counted if they arrive within five business days of election day, so long as they were postmarked by election day. Mississippi changed its laws in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Continue reading...Bill was introduced in the Senate on Monday as prediction market companies face greater scrutiny on state level
Prediction markets are facing fresh bipartisan scrutiny in the US Senate as companies like Kalshi and Polymarket continue to battle state-led efforts to regulate online betting.
A bill was introduced in the US Senate Monday that would ban federally regulated platforms from allowing wagers on sporting events, what would be a huge blow to marketplaces where billions of dollars have been traded on major events like the Super Bowl and the NCAA’s March Madness.
Continue reading...Walmart found that purchases made directly inside ChatGPT converted at only one-third the rate of traditional website checkouts, leading it to abandon OpenAI's Instant Checkout in favor of routing users through its own platform. Search Engine Land reports: Starting in November, Walmart offered about 200,000 products through OpenAI's Instant Checkout. Users could complete purchases inside ChatGPT without visiting Walmart's site. Daniel Danker, Walmart's EVP of product and design, said those in-chat purchases converted at one-third the rate of click-out transactions. He called the experience "unsatisfying" and confirmed Walmart is moving away from it. Instant Checkout was designed to let users complete purchases directly inside ChatGPT without visiting a retailer's website. However, earlier this month, OpenAI confirmed it was phasing out Instant Checkout in favor of app-based checkout handled by merchants. Walmart will embed its own chatbot, Sparky, inside ChatGPT. Users will log into Walmart, sync carts across platforms, and complete purchases within Walmart's system. A similar integration is coming to Google Gemini next month. In other Walmart-related news, the retailer announced plans to roll out "digital price tags" to all U.S. stores by the end of the year.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Nine people hospitalised and airport closed after landing plane hits fire truck responding to separate incident
The pilot and co-pilot of an Air Canada Express regional jet have been killed after it collided with a fire truck while landing at New York’s LaGuardia airport, in an incident that closed the airport.
The collision also caused serious injuries, with nine people in the hospital. It happened as a firefighting vehicle was responding to a separate incident, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the airport.
The Associated Press contributed reporting
Continue reading...About 40 people taken to hospital after Air Canada Express crash, some with serious injuries; ICE agents seen at several US airports amid partial DHS shutdown
Pilots killed after Air Canada jet collision at LaGuardia New York
TSA lines stretch for hours as Trump deploys ICE agents to US airports
Donald Trump has said ICE agents did not need to wear masks when deployed at airports.
ICE has repeatedly faced criticism for its agents hiding their faces during immigration raids. State officials across the US have said the face coverings add to a climate of fear in local communities and a lack of accountability.
I am a BIG proponent of ICE wearing masks as they search for, and are forced to deal with, hardened criminals, many of whom were let into our Country by Sleepy Joe Biden and his wonderful “Border Czar,” Kamala (she never even went to the Border!), through their absolutely INSANE Open Border Policy.
I would greatly appreciate, however, NO MASKS, when helping our Country out of the Democrat caused MESS at the airports, etc. Thank you! President DJT
Continue reading...