The Eiffel Tower was closed on Monday because of a strike by staff over the removal of female colleagues during a visit by a Hindu religious group, workers and management said. FRANCE 24's Monte Francis has more.

I was watching Oppenheimer in a packed theater on Tuesday, when a scene from Christopher Nolan's biopic made me draw a somber parallel with ChatGPT. I realized that we might not have the luxury of knowing when generative AI software becomes sentient. When a future ChatGPT variant, or a competitor, awakens, we might be completely unaware.

That's one of the worries across the world right now, that AI will lead to some sort of world-ending future. Or that it'll somehow lead to the extinction of the human race.

Before I go any further, I'll warn you that some Oppenheimer spoilers follow below. Stop reading here if you haven't yet seen the movie.

Continue reading...

The post Oppenheimer made me realize we can’t stop ChatGPT AI from becoming sentient appeared first on BGR.

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Oppenheimer made me realize we can’t stop ChatGPT AI from becoming sentient originally appeared on BGR.com on Thu, 27 Jul 2023 at 08:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

A Russian fighter jet fired flares and struck another U.S. drone over Syrian airspace on Wednesday, the White House said, in a continued string of harassing maneuvers that have ratcheted up tensions between the global powers.

It's the sixth reported incident this month, and the second in the past 24 hours, in which the United States has said Russian warplanes have flown dangerously close to American manned and unmanned aircraft, putting crews and the planes at risk and raising questions as to what the U.S. may need to do in response.

Two U.S. officials confirmed that the strike damaged the MQ-9 Reaper drone. The officials were not authorized to publicly discuss the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity.

"We’ve seen the reports, the early reports, of a second Russian fighter aircraft this week flying dangerously close to our drone" on a mission to counter Islamic State militants in Syria, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said. She did not provide other details, but said Russia's “close approach to and deployment of flares over U.S. drones during a routine mission” violates international norms.

In the incidents over the past two days, Russian warplanes have fired flares that struck U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drones. On Tuesday, the flares damaged a drone's propeller; on Wednesday, Russian-dropped flares hit a drone. In previous incidents, Russian jets have intercepted the U.S. planes at dangerously close distances, including one instance with a manned aircraft that the U.S. said put the lives of the four American crewmembers at risk.

Experts say Russia is likely conducting the harassing attacks to support Iran’s goal of ousting U.S. forces from Syria, with a senior U.S. defense official saying Iran wants to be able to more easily move lethal aid to Lebanese Hezbollah and threaten Israel. Russia relies on Iran's support for the Kremlin's war operations in Ukraine.

Toward that end, the U.S. has seen more cooperation, collaboration, planning and intelligence sharing, largely between mid-level Russian and Iranian Quds force leaders in Syria, according to the U.S. defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing military missions.

John Hardie, director of the Russia program for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the intercepts are part of a coordinated effort by Russia and Iran “to try to push the U.S. out of Syria, just kind of build pressure over time, in the hopes that Washington will eventually withdraw.”

But the intercepts raise questions as to how the U.S. will respond and whether the risk of a larger confrontation is increasing.

“It doesn’t seem like the Russians really want a direct, hot confrontation, but things that are sort of below that threshold, like messing with our drones, is right up their alley," Hardie said.

He suggested that one option may be similar to how the U.S. responded after a Black Sea incident near Crimea, where a Russian jet collided with a U.S. drone. The U.S. relocated its patrols to avoid getting into a direct conflict.

Both the U.S. and Russia are conducting missions in Syria. Russia backs the government of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad. The U.S. is working with the Kurdish-backed Syrian Democratic Forces in operations against IS extremists. The SDF is in a civil war with Assad.

In previous incidents over Syria, according to U.S. Air Forces Central:

—on Sunday, a Russian fighter aircraft flew “dangerously close” to a U.S. MQ-9 drone conducting a mission against IS militants and deployed flares from directly overhead. The aircraft were only a few meters apart. One of the flares struck the MQ-9, “severely damaging its propeller.”

—on July 16, a Russian Su-35 fighter jet forced an American twin-engine surveillance plane routinely used by special operations forces to fly through the Su-35's wake turbulence, which “reduced the crew’s ability to safely operate the aircraft and put the four crewmembers’ lives at risk.” The intercept of the manned MC-12 represented “a new level of unsafe and unprofessional actions by Russian aircraft operating in Syria.”

—on July 7, Russian aircraft flew what were 18 unprofessional close passes that caused three MQ-9s to react to avoid unsafe situations.

—on July 6, Russian aircraft dropped flares in front of MQ-9 drones conducting a counterterrorism mission and flew dangerously close.

—on July 5, Russian fighter jets harassed three MQ-9 drones by dropping multiple parachute flares in front of the drones, forcing the aircraft to conduct evasive maneuvers. Additionally, “one Russian pilot positioned their aircraft in front of an MQ-9 and engaged afterburner, thereby reducing the operator’s ability to safely operate the aircraft.”

Can't stop thinking mean thoughts about yourself? Researchers and psychologists share how to break the cycle.

(Image credit: Alexandr Dubynin/Getty Images)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: It's well known that weightlifting can strengthen our biceps and quads. Now, there's accumulating evidence that strengthening the muscles we use to breathe is beneficial too. New research shows that a daily dose of muscle training for the diaphragm and other breathing muscles helps promote heart health and reduces high blood pressure. "The muscles we use to breathe atrophy, just like the rest of our muscles tend to do as we get older," explains researcher Daniel Craighead, an integrative physiologist at the University of Colorado Boulder. To test what happens when these muscles are given a good workout, he and his colleagues recruited healthy volunteers ages 18 to 82 to try a daily five-minute technique using a resistance-breathing training device called PowerBreathe. The hand-held machine -- one of several on the market -- looks like an inhaler. When people breathe into it, the device provides resistance, making it harder to inhale. "We found that doing 30 breaths per day for six weeks lowers systolic blood pressure by about 9 millimeters of mercury," Craighead says. And those reductions are about what could be expected with conventional aerobic exercise, he says -- such as walking, running or cycling. A normal blood pressure reading is less than about 120/80 mmHg, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These days, some health care professionals diagnose patients with high blood pressure if their average reading is consistently 130/80 mmHg or higher, the CDC notes. The impact of a sustained 9 mmHg reduction in systolic blood pressure (the first number in the ratio) is significant, says Michael Joyner, a physician at the Mayo Clinic who studies how the nervous system regulates blood pressure. "That's the type of reduction you see with a blood pressure drug," Joyner says. Research has shown many common blood pressure medications lead to about a 9 mmHg reduction. The reductions are higher when people combine multiple medications, but a 10 mmHg reduction correlates with a 35% drop in the risk of stroke and a 25% drop in the risk of heart disease. So, how exactly does breath training lower blood pressure? Craighead points to the role of endothelial cells, which line our blood vessels and promote the production of nitric oxide -- a key compound that protects the heart. Nitric oxide helps widen our blood vessels, promoting good blood flow, which prevents the buildup of plaque in arteries. "What we found was that six weeks of IMST [inspiratory-muscle strength training] will increase endothelial function by about 45%," Craighead explains. [...] There may also be benefits for elite cyclists, runners and other endurance athletes, he says, citing data that six weeks of IMST increased aerobic exercise tolerance by 12% in middle-aged and older adults. "So we suspect that IMST consisting of only 30 breaths per day would be very helpful in endurance exercise events," Craighead says. It's a technique that athletes could add to their training regimens. Craighead, whose personal marathon best is 2 hours, 21 minutes, says he has incorporated IMST as part of his own training.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.