Lifeboat Foundation

“Small nuclear reactors can provide the power capability necessary for space exploration missions of interest to the Federal government,” the Energy Department wrote in the notice published Friday.

The Energy Department, NASA and Battelle Energy Alliance, the U.S. contractor that manages the Idaho National Laboratory, plan to hold a government-industry webcast technical meeting in August concerning expectations for the program.

The plan has two phases. The first is developing a reactor design. The second is building a test reactor, a second reactor be sent to the moon, and developing a flight system and lander that can transport the reactor to the moon. The goal is to have a reactor, flight system and lander ready to go by the end of 2026.

Khamenei said Tehran expects Beghdad to follow through on expelling American forces, claiming their presence “begets insecurity.” He added that while the U.S. seeks to undermine Iran-Iraq ties, Washington “should not be feared at all because it cannot do a damn thing.”

Iraqis have also demanded the departure of U.S. forces from the country, and in December—alongside Iranian-backed militias—stormed and ransacked the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.

After Soleimani’s death, Iraqi lawmakers backed a non-binding resolution calling on the government to expel U.S. troops from the country, though the vote was boycotted by most Sunni and Kurdish politicians.

Do you agree?

CAMBRIDGE, July 14, 2020 — Photo taken on July 14, 2020 shows a view of the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge of Massachusetts, the United States. The U.S. government has rescinded a new rule that could have denied international students their stay in the country if they only attend online courses in the coming fall semester, a federal judge in Boston, Massachusetts said Tuesday. (Photo by Fan Lin/Xinhua via Getty) (Xinhua/ via Getty Images)

The U.S. will pay Pfizer and biotech firm BioNTech $1.95 billion to produce and deliver 100 million doses of their Covid-19 vaccine if it proves safe and effective, the companies announced Wednesday.

It was the largest such deal between the government and companies racing to develop a coronavirus vaccine.

Under the agreement, the U.S. can acquire 500 million additional doses, the Department of Health and Human Services said. Germany-based BioNTech and Pfizer are jointly developing four potential vaccines.

Warming temperatures mean that Australia will likely continue to suffer from massive bushfires. To reduce future damage, the government must act.

British Health Minister Matt Hancock said that the government would not recommend that office workers wear face masks while at work.

“We will not be recommending masks in the office,” Hancock told Sky News on Wednesday.

Nearly a dozen Indian states have imposed a partial lockdown in high-risk areas after spikes in coronavirus cases, with the country’s infections topping 900,000 just three days after crossing the 800,000 mark.

Scott Morrison will unveil $748m in new cyber security initiatives, with the planned reallocation of resources from within the defence portfolio rising to $1.35bn over a decade once the government unveils a new cyber security strategy in coming months.

Resources reallocated from defence portfolio are planned to rise to $1.35bn over a decade with 500 new jobs created.

Say something Eric Klien.

Given the increasing proliferation of AI, I recently carried out a systematic review of AI-driven regulatory gaps. My review sampled the academic literature on AI in the hard and social sciences and found fifty existing or future regulatory gaps caused by this technology’s applications and methods in the United States. Drawing on an adapted version of Lyria Bennett-Moses’s framework, I then characterized each regulatory gap according to one of four categories: novelty, obsolescence, targeting, and uncertainty.

Significantly, of the regulatory gaps identified, only 12 percent represent novel challenges that compel government action through the creation or adaptation of regulation. By contrast, another 20 percent of the gaps are cases in which AI has made or will make regulations obsolete. A quarter of the gaps are problems of targeting, in which regulations are either inappropriately applied to AI or miss cases in which they should be applied. The largest group of regulatory gaps are ones of uncertainty in which a new technology is difficult to classify, causing a lack of clarity about the application of existing regulations.

Continue reading “Can existing laws cope with the AI revolution?” »

China announced in 2017 its ambition to become the world leader in artificial intelligence (AI) by 2030. While the US still leads in absolute terms, China appears to be making more rapid progress than either the US or the EU, and central and local government spending on AI in China is estimated to be in the tens of billions of dollars.

The move has led — at least in the West — to warnings of a global AI arms race and concerns about the growing reach of China’s authoritarian surveillance state. But treating China as a “villain” in this way is both overly simplistic and potentially costly. While there are undoubtedly aspects of the Chinese government’s approach to AI that are highly concerning and rightly should be condemned, it’s important that this does not cloud all analysis of China’s AI innovation.

The world needs to engage seriously with China’s AI development and take a closer look at what’s really going on. The story is complex and it’s important to highlight where China is making promising advances in useful AI applications and to challenge common misconceptions, as well as to caution against problematic uses.