You know that horrifying story about the US Air Force doing am AI-drone drone simulation that repeatedly killed its operator as it considered the operator an impediment to its mission success? That was bullshit according to the Air Force, who said they've "not conducted any such AI-drone simulations and remain committed to ethical and responsible use of AI technology. It appears the colonel's comments were taken out of context and were meant to be anecdotal". With the colonel himself admitting that he "misspoke" in his presentation and that it was a "hypothetical thought experiment" based on "plausible scenarios and likely outcomes rather than an actual USAF real-world simulation".
Yet another Head of Trust & Safety has quit Twitter. This time it's "former diehard Elon Musk fan Ella Irwin", who hasn't said why she resigned, but the timing of the resignation comes after Musk overturned a moderation decision relating to a controversial anti-transgender "documentary" called What is a Woman that Twitter and The Daily Wire had some sort of deal for Twitter to broadcast. The moderation team "flagged it for instances of misgendering", but Elon overruled it and apologised, saying it "was a mistake by many people at Twitter". Hosting and promoting hateful documentaries is now part of Twitter's business model. Cool.
A report funded by ARENA and conducted by the UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures has found "Australians could use household electric water heaters to store as much energy as over 2 million home batteries". This would be enabled by "smart" electric water heaters that "can be switched on and off in response to changes in electricity supply and demand across the grid", soaking up off-peak/excess renewable energy like a battery, but to heat water instead. The report concludes that "replacing gas with electric water heating would not only help us get to net-zero emissions sooner, it would save us money". Full report is on the UTS website if you're keen to learn more.
If WW2-era cryptography interests you, then you'll enjoy Breaking The Code: Cyber Secrets Revealed, a new ABC doco is available to watch on iView. A big chunk of it centers on the "Garage Girls", a group of young Australian women enlisted during WW2 to decode encrypted Japanese messages, who "helped the Allies kill Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the head of the Japanese Navy who oversaw the attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941" and deciphered a cable from an "obviously horrified Japanese officer sent to Tokyo headquarters after the atomic bomb devastated Hiroshima in 1945". General MacArthur credited The Garage Girls with "shortening the war by two years".
Steve Wozniak, creator of Apple's first computer, sits by the new Apple IIgs in Cupertino, Calif., on Sept. 16, 1986. (AP Photo/Steve Castillo)
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