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In a new report, the federal department charged with analyzing how efficiently US taxpayer dollars are spent, the Government Accountability Office, says NASA lacks transparency on the true costs of its Space Launch System rocket program.

Published on Thursday, the new report (see.pdf) examines the billions of dollars spent by NASA on the development of the massive rocket, which made a successful debut launch in late 2022 with the Artemis I mission. Surprisingly, as part of the reporting process, NASA officials admitted the rocket was too expensive to support its lunar exploration efforts as part of the Artemis program.

“Senior NASA officials told GAO that at current cost levels, the SLS program is unaffordable,” the new report states.

15 companies, ranging from Photoshop creator Adobe to ChatGPT maker OpenAI, have now taken the voluntary commitments.

Eight tech companies, including Salesforce and Nvidia, are signing on to the White House’s voluntary artificial intelligence pledge, joining a roster of prominent firms that have agreed to mitigate the risks of AI, as Washington policymakers continue to debate new regulation of the emerging technology.

Fifteen of the most influential companies in the United States have now taken the commitments, which include a promise to develop technology to identify AI-generated images and a vow to share data about safety with the government and academics.

Continue reading “Nvidia, Palantir and more companies join White House AI pledge” »

We’re going to be hearing a lot about various plans and positions on AI regulation in the coming weeks.

The US Congress is heading back into session, and they are hitting the ground running on AI. We’re going to be hearing a lot about various plans and positions on AI regulation in the coming weeks, kicking off with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s first AI Insight Forum on Wednesday. This and planned future forums will bring together some of the top people in AI to discuss the risks and opportunities posed by advances in this technology and how Congress might write legislation to address them.

This newsletter will break down what exactly these forums are and aren’t, and what might come… More.

As the Indian healthcare sector increasingly adopts robotic surgery, Dr. Mahendra Bhandari, the CEO of the US-based Vattikuti Foundation and a prominent advocate for robotic surgery, highlights the growing presence of various surgical robots from multiple vendors. He underscores the rising number of trained doctors and the commitment of both government and corporate hospitals to invest in surgical robots across the country.

The Vattikuti Foundation, founded by Indian American entrepreneur and philanthropist Raj Vattikuti, serves communities in Michigan, USA, and India. It initiated the Vattikuti Urology Institute at Henry Ford Health in Detroit, Michigan, in 1997 and has since evolved into an international organisation promoting excellence in robotic surgery through various avenues.

In an exclusive interview Dr. Jayati Dubey, DHN, speaks to Dr. Bhandari on the expanding scope of robotic surgery in India.

Under the proposal, developing face recognition and other “high risk” applications of AI would also require a government license. To obtain one, companies would have to test AI models for potential harm before deployment, disclose instances when things go wrong after launch, and allow audits of AI models by an independent third party.

The framework also proposes that companies should publicly disclose details of the training data used to create an AI model and that people harmed by AI get a right to bring the company that created it to court.

The senators’ suggestions could be influential in the days and weeks ahead as debates intensify in Washington over how to regulate AI. Early next week, Blumenthal and Hawley will oversee a Senate subcommittee hearing about how to meaningfully hold businesses and governments accountable when they deploy AI systems that cause people harm or violate their rights. Microsoft president Brad Smith and the chief scientist of chipmaker Nvidia, William Dally, are due to testify.

Schmidt has become an indispensable adviser to government, even as some of his investments have won federal contracts.

Eric Schmidt isn’t shy about his wealth and power: The former Google CEO recently won an auction for a superyacht seized from a Russian oligarch, he owns a big stake in a secretive and successful hedge fund and he spent $15 million for the Manhattan penthouse featured in Oliver Stone’s sequel to Wall Street.

He has also leveraged his $27 billion fortune to build a powerful influence machine in Washington that’s allowed him to shape public policy to reflect his worldview and benefit the industries in which he’s deeply invested — most recently, artificial intelligence. When senators meet next week to hear from tech executives and experts about how AI should be regulated, Schmidt will be at the table.

China-backed hackers stole a digital skeleton key allowing access to US government emails.

To recap, Microsoft disclosed in July that hackers it calls Storm-0558, which it believes are backed by China, “acquired” an email signing key that Microsoft uses to secure consumer email accounts like Outlook.com. The hackers used that digital skeleton key to break into both the personal and enterprise email accounts of government officials hosted by Microsoft. The hack is seen as a targeted espionage campaign aimed at snooping on the unclassified emails of U.S. government officials and diplomats, reportedly including U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns.

How the hackers obtained that consumer email signing key was a mystery — even to Microsoft — until this week when the technology giant belatedly laid out the five separate issues that led to the eventual leak of the key.

New details of the previously reported incident underscore how dependent the U.S. government has become on a company that once had to fight in court to become part of the Washington establishment.

A new facility will be able to produce battery capacity to power 130,000 homes on a daily basis using renewable energy.

Zinc halide batteries touted as a low-cost alternative to battery energy storage system (BESS) have received a significant boost in the US after the Department of Energy (DOE) offered a $400 million loan to help scale production and reduce manufacturing costs, a press release said. The offer will cover setting up of four production lines at battery maker Eos’ facility in Turtle Creek, Pennsylvania.

Lithium-ion batteries are a crucial component of our attempts to switch to a greener economy powered by renewable energy. Although the technology is ubiquitous these days and powers everyday devices like smartphones and even electric vehicles (EVs), it is still very expensive.