Category Archives: Deep Mind
How YouTube may help Google beat OpenAI in artificial intelligence war – Times of India
OpenAI
, the company that developed
chatbot, got an early lead in generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology. However, a report has now claimed that its probable toughest rival
is pretty much well equipped to compete with it, especially after it upgraded its
chatbot with a new machine-learning model post I/O 2023.
Google announced PaLM 2, its state-of-the-art language model with improved multilingual, reasoning and coding capabilities in May this year. The company has since been making regular updates in problem solving capabilities of its AI chatbot Bard.
Citing a person with knowledge of the situation, the report said that Googles researchers have been using YouTube to develop its next large-language model,
. It is to be noted that Google CEO Sundar Pichai talked about how Google brought together DeepMind and
to make Google DeepMind, which is using computational resources and building more capable systems, safely and responsibly.
Gemini was created from the ground up to be multimodal, highly efficient at tool and API integrations and built to enable future innovations, like memory and planning, he said, noting that it offers impressive multimodal capabilities not seen in prior models.
OpenAI reportedly trained its AI models on YouTube
YouTube as a data source is a hot property, and the report also claimed that OpenAI secretly used data from the platform to train some of its AI models, one person with direct knowledge of the effort was quoted as saying.
It is to be noted that YouTubes terms of service forbid using content for anything other than personal, non-commercial use. However, it is known that in the AI industry everyone is scraping the web constantly.
The development comes about two and half months after media reports said that Google used ChatGPT data to train Bard. It was also claimed that Google used data from OpenAIs ChatGPT, scraped from a website called ShareGPT, to train Bard.
The Pixel smartphone maker, however, denied saying Bard is not trained on any data from ShareGPT or ChatGPT.
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How YouTube may help Google beat OpenAI in artificial intelligence war - Times of India
6 Ways to Ease Flight and Turbulence Anxiety – The New York Times
On a recent flight to Chicago, Allison Levy said she was white-knuckling the armrest as the plane rumbled and shook for brief periods of time.
Ms. Levy, 47, who lives in Arlington, Va., started to take deep breaths and tried to reassure herself: Its like a bumpy road its not a big deal.
But, she added, if I knew the person next to me, Id definitely grip their thigh.
Airplane turbulence, which is usually caused by large changes in airflow in the Earths upper atmosphere, is generally a minor nuisance.
But this year alone, there have been multiple instances of severe turbulence on flights that have led to dozens of passenger injuries. And scientists have warned that we may have bumpier flights in the years ahead because of elevated carbon dioxide emissions that are warming the atmosphere, which can alter the speed and direction of the wind.
This is unwelcome news for everyone, especially those of us who are already scared of flying, like Ms. Levy.
Here are several ways to help calm your nerves if youre eager to travel but dreading potential turbulence.
Turbulence is not usually a cause for concern. Its far more common to encounter low to moderate turbulence than the severe kind that throws heavy drink carts into the air.
While pilots can ease most turbulence, it is still unavoidable or unexpected for some flights, but planes are designed to safely withstand the impacts, the Air Line Pilots Association, a prominent pilots union, said in a statement.
It may also help to know that, according to a 2020 study, it has never been safer to travel on a commercial airline.
Passenger injuries from turbulence are rare. In the 13 years spanning 2009 to 2022, for example, a total of 34 passengers were seriously injured because of turbulence, according to data from the Federal Aviation Administration. And the last turbulence-related death on a major airline happened more than 25 years ago, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a 2021 report.
Traveling by plane is much safer than traveling by car: The odds of dying during a commercial flight in the United States are too small to calculate, according to the National Safety Council. Meanwhile, the chances of dying in a motor vehicle crash are 1 in 93, the nonprofit advocacy group says.
It might be tempting to reach for an alcoholic beverage in the hopes of calming your nerves, but remember that what you eat and drink impacts your anxiety and how you are feeling, said Dr. Uma Naidoo, the director of nutritional and metabolic psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital and the author of This Is Your Brain on Food.
Too much alcohol is dehydrating and can also produce feelings of nausea. Thats a bad combination with turbulence, which can leave passengers queasy, too.
Staying hydrated, perhaps skipping the coffee or wine on the plane, can help create a sense of calm, Dr. Naidoo said.
If turbulence (or the mere thought of it) makes your heart race, taking steps to control your breathing can be a simple and powerful way to help soothe your body, Dr. Naidoo said. One example is 4-4-8 breathing: Take a breath in for four counts, hold your breath for four counts and then exhale for eight counts. Repeat.
As an alternative, you can also try belly breathing or controlled breathing.
With practice, they can become a normal part of your response to stress and anxiety, Dr. Naidoo said.
Some travelers might find it helpful to try exposure therapy, which involves gradually facing specific fears and anxieties until they feel less frightening.
Brenda K. Wiederhold, a psychologist in San Diego, regularly sees patients who have an intense fear of flying. For more than two decades, she has used both real-life scenarios and virtual reality to help expose patients to various scenarios like airplane turbulence.
Turbulence is akin to rolling waves, she tells her clients. You dont think, Oh my goodness, this boat is going to crash! she said. Instead, you think: There are waves today.
Other patients, including some with anxiety disorders, may benefit from medication like Xanax, but such a drug should be taken only under supervision of a doctor.
Strong turbulence can sometimes appear without warning, a phenomenon known as clear air turbulence. The Federal Aviation Administration advises passengers to wear their seatbelt at all times, not just when the seatbelt light is on, and to secure children under the age of 2 in an F.A.A.-approved car seat or restraint device to reduce the possibility of injuries during unexpected turbulence.
The biggest danger is not being secured, said Kristie Koerbel, who has worked as a flight attendant for 21 years. If you are seated with your seatbelt fastened, there is no reason to fear turbulence.
Where you sit can make a difference. Passengers in window seats are less likely to be struck by any projectile objects, suitcases falling out of overhead bins or ceiling tiles coming down, said Sara Nelson, the president of the largest flight attendant union. In addition, seats near the front and next to the wing will typically be less bumpy compared to the back of the aircraft. In severe turbulence, though, where youre sitting wont make a difference, Ms. Nelson said.
Think about what calms you in general and try to do some of those activities on the flight. For her trip to Chicago, Ms. Levy brought a sketchbook for doodling, her favorite music and some crossword puzzles. She also spoke to her doctor about taking a low dose of Xanax (though she isnt convinced that it helped).
Finally, keep an eye on the weather. Thunderstorms typically develop in the warmer months of spring, summer and fall, according to the National Weather Service, and can create turbulence. If you have the flexibility to postpone your flight, you might try for a day with clearer skies in the hopes of a smoother ride.
And remember, the plane is not going to take off if its not safe, Ms. Nelson said.
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6 Ways to Ease Flight and Turbulence Anxiety - The New York Times
How Could AI Destroy Humanity? – The New York Times
Last month, hundreds of well-known people in the world of artificial intelligence signed an open letter warning that A.I. could one day destroy humanity.
Mitigating the risk of extinction from A.I. should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks, such as pandemics and nuclear war, the one-sentence statement said.
The letter was the latest in a series of ominous warnings about A.I. that have been notably light on details. Todays A.I. systems cannot destroy humanity. Some of them can barely add and subtract. So why are the people who know the most about A.I. so worried?
One day, the tech industrys Cassandras say, companies, governments or independent researchers could deploy powerful A.I. systems to handle everything from business to warfare. Those systems could do things that we do not want them to do. And if humans tried to interfere or shut them down, they could resist or even replicate themselves so they could keep operating.
Todays systems are not anywhere close to posing an existential risk, said Yoshua Bengio, a professor and A.I. researcher at the University of Montreal. But in one, two, five years? There is too much uncertainty. That is the issue. We are not sure this wont pass some point where things get catastrophic.
The worriers have often used a simple metaphor. If you ask a machine to create as many paper clips as possible, they say, it could get carried away and transform everything including humanity into paper clip factories.
How does that tie into the real world or an imagined world not too many years in the future? Companies could give A.I. systems more and more autonomy and connect them to vital infrastructure, including power grids, stock markets and military weapons. From there, they could cause problems.
For many experts, this did not seem all that plausible until the last year or so, when companies like OpenAI demonstrated significant improvements in their technology. That showed what could be possible if A.I. continues to advance at such a rapid pace.
A.I. will steadily be delegated, and could as it becomes more autonomous usurp decision making and thinking from current humans and human-run institutions, said Anthony Aguirre, a cosmologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz and a founder of the Future of Life Institute, the organization behind one of two open letters.
At some point, it would become clear that the big machine that is running society and the economy is not really under human control, nor can it be turned off, any more than the S&P 500 could be shut down, he said.
Or so the theory goes. Other A.I. experts believe it is a ridiculous premise.
Hypothetical is such a polite way of phrasing what I think of the existential risk talk, said Oren Etzioni, the founding chief executive of the Allen Institute for AI, a research lab in Seattle.
Not quite. But researchers are transforming chatbots like ChatGPT into systems that can take actions based on the text they generate. A project called AutoGPT is the prime example.
The idea is to give the system goals like create a company or make some money. Then it will keep looking for ways of reaching that goal, particularly if it is connected to other internet services.
A system like AutoGPT can generate computer programs. If researchers give it access to a computer server, it could actually run those programs. In theory, this is a way for AutoGPT to do almost anything online retrieve information, use applications, create new applications, even improve itself.
Systems like AutoGPT do not work well right now. They tend to get stuck in endless loops. Researchers gave one system all the resources it needed to replicate itself. It couldnt do it.
In time, those limitations could be fixed.
People are actively trying to build systems that self-improve, said Connor Leahy, the founder of Conjecture, a company that says it wants to align A.I. technologies with human values. Currently, this doesnt work. But someday, it will. And we dont know when that day is.
Mr. Leahy argues that as researchers, companies and criminals give these systems goals like make some money, they could end up breaking into banking systems, fomenting revolution in a country where they hold oil futures or replicating themselves when someone tries to turn them off.
A.I. systems like ChatGPT are built on neural networks, mathematical systems that can learn skills by analyzing data.
Around 2018, companies like Google and OpenAI began building neural networks that learned from massive amounts of digital text culled from the internet. By pinpointing patterns in all this data, these systems learn to generate writing on their own, including news articles, poems, computer programs, even humanlike conversation. The result: chatbots like ChatGPT.
Because they learn from more data than even their creators can understand, these systems also exhibit unexpected behavior. Researchers recently showed that one system was able to hire a human online to defeat a Captcha test. When the human asked if it was a robot, the system lied and said it was a person with a visual impairment.
Some experts worry that as researchers make these systems more powerful, training them on ever larger amounts of data, they could learn more bad habits.
In the early 2000s, a young writer named Eliezer Yudkowsky began warning that A.I. could destroy humanity. His online posts spawned a community of believers. Called rationalists or effective altruists, this community became enormously influential in academia, government think tanks and the tech industry.
Mr. Yudkowsky and his writings played key roles in the creation of both OpenAI and DeepMind, an A.I. lab that Google acquired in 2014. And many from the community of EAs worked inside these labs. They believed that because they understood the dangers of A.I., they were in the best position to build it.
The two organizations that recently released open letters warning of the risks of A.I. the Center for A.I. Safety and the Future of Life Institute are closely tied to this movement.
The recent warnings have also come from research pioneers and industry leaders like Elon Musk, who has long warned about the risks. The latest letter was signed by Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI; and Demis Hassabis, who helped found DeepMind and now oversees a new A.I. lab that combines the top researchers from DeepMind and Google.
Other well-respected figures signed one or both of the warning letters, including Dr. Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton, who recently stepped down as an executive and researcher at Google. In 2018, they received the Turing Award, often called the Nobel Prize of computing, for their work on neural networks.
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How Could AI Destroy Humanity? - The New York Times
Benchmarking Robots with Dog-Inspired Barkour – IEEE Spectrum
Inspired by dog-agility courses, a team of scientists from Google DeepMind has developed a robot-agility course called Barkour to test the abilities of four-legged robots.
Since the 1970s, dogs have been trained to nimbly jump through hoops, scale inclines, and weave between poles in order to demonstrate agility. To take home ribbons at these competitions, dogs must have not only speed but keen reflexes and attention to detail. These courses also set a benchmark for how agility should be measured across breeds, which is something that Atil Iscena Google DeepMind scientist in Denversays is lacking in the world of four-legged robots.
Despite great developments in the past decade, including robots like MITs Mini Cheetah and Boston Dynamics Spot which have shown how animal-like robots movement can be, a lack of standardized tasks for these types of robots has made it difficult to compare their progress, Iscen says.
Quadruped Obstacle Course Provides New Robot Benchmarkyoutube
Unlike previous benchmarks developed for legged robots, Barkour contains a diverse set of obstacles that requires a combination of different types of behaviors such as precise walking, climbing, and jumping, Iscen says. Moreover, our timing-based metric to reward faster behavior encourages researchers to push the boundaries of speed while maintaining requirements for precision and diversity of motion.
For their reduced-size agility coursethe Barkour course was 25 meters squared instead of up to 743 square meters used for traditional coursesIscen and colleagues chose four obstacles from traditional dog-agility courses: a pause table, weave poles, climbing an A-frame, and a jump.
We picked these obstacles to put multiple axes of agility, including speed, acceleration, and balance, he said. It is also possible to customize the course further by extending it to contain other types of obstacles within a larger area.
As in dog-agility competitions, robots that enter this course are deducted points for failing or missing an obstacle, as well as for exceeding the courses time limit of roughly 11 seconds. To see how difficult their course was, the DeepMind team developed two different learning approaches to the course: a specialist approach that trained on each type of skill needed for the coursefor example, jumping or slope climbingand a generalist approach that trained by studying simulations run using the specialist approach.
After training four-legged robots in both of these different styles, the team released them onto the course and found that robots trained with the specialist approach slightly edged out those trained with the generalized approach. The specialists completed the course in about 25 seconds, while the generalists took closer to 27 seconds. However, robots trained with both approaches not only exceeded the course time limit but were also surpassed by two small dogsa Pomeranian/Chihuahua mix and a Dachshundthat completed the course in less than 10 seconds.
There is still a big gap in agility between robots and their animal counterparts, as demonstrated in this benchmark, the team wrote in their conclusion.
While the robots performance may have fallen short of expectations, the team writes that this is actually a positive because it means theres still room for growth and improvement. In the future, Iscen hopes that the easy reproducibility of the Barkour course will make it an attractive benchmark to be employed across the field.
We proactively considered reproducibility of the benchmark and kept the cost of materials and footprint to be low. We would love to see Barkour setups pop up in other labs.Atil Iscen, Google DeepMind
We proactively considered reproducibility of the benchmark and kept the cost of materials and footprint to be low, Iscen says. We would love to see Barkour setups pop up in other labs and we would be happy to share our lessons learned about building it, if other research teams interested in the work can reach out to us. We would like to see other labs adopting this benchmark so that the entire community can tackle this challenging problem together.
As for the DeepMind team, Iscen says theyre also interested in exploring another aspect of dog-agility courses in their future work: the role of human partners.
At the surface, (real) dog-agility competitions appear to be only about the dogs performance. However, a lot comes to the fleeting moments of communication between the dog and its handler, he explains. In this context, we are eager to explore human-robot interactions, such as how can a handler work with a legged robot to guide it swiftly through a new obstacle course.
A paper describing DeepMinds Barkour course was published on the arXiv preprint server in May.
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Benchmarking Robots with Dog-Inspired Barkour - IEEE Spectrum
The True Story Behind Apple TV+’s ‘The Crowded Room’ | Time – TIME
After a shooting takes place outside New York Citys Rockefeller Center, the investigation that follows unearths secrets buried deep inside the mind of the young man accused of the violent crime, Danny Sullivan (Tom Holland), in Apple TV+s new limited series The Crowded Room.
Set in 1979, the 10-episode psychological thriller is told through a series of interviews with a professor who is brought in to interrogate Danny, Rya Goodwin (Amanda Seyfried). The first three episodes of the show are set to premiere on June 9, with a new episode dropping every Friday through July 28.
Created by Akiva Goldsman, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of A Beautiful Mind, The Crowded Room is inspired by the true story documented in Daniel Keyes 1981 non-fiction novel The Minds of Billy Milligan. Keyes book chronicles the life and trial of Milligan, the first defendant to ever be found not guilty due to dissociative identity disorder (previously called multiple personality disorder).
While the series borrows from Milligans case, its not a straight adaptation of real-life events. For me, it was about really creating empathyto create a character that you would really ally with, Goldsman told Entertainment Weekly of Hollands role. That you would feel connected to and so his journey would become the audiences journey.
Heres what to know about the real man who inspired The Crowded Room.
Tom Holland in The Crowded Room
Apple TV+
In 1977, 22-year-old William Billy Stanley Milligan was arrested for the kidnapping, robbery, and rape of three women around the Ohio State University campus area. While undergoing a psychiatric evaluation following his arrest, Milligan insisted that a man named Ragen was responsible for the robberies while a woman named Adalana had committed the rapes.
By the time his case went to trial, doctors had determined that Ragen and Adalana were two of 10 alternate personalities that existed within Milligans mind as a result of severe physical and sexual abuse he had allegedly suffered at the hands of his stepfather, Chalmer Milligan, as a child. He was later diagnosed with an additional 14 identities.
In December 1978, Milligan was acquitted of his crimes by reason of insanity caused by dissociative identity disorder. The court decision was the first of its kind and remains controversial to this day. Netflix previously released a docuseries exploring Milligans life, Monsters Inside: The 24 Faces of Billy Milligan, in 2021.
After being found not guilty, Milligan was institutionalized in state-run psychiatric hospitals for several years. On July 4, 1986, he escaped from Central Ohio Psychiatric Hospital and relocated to Bellingham, Wash., under the alias Christopher Carr. He left Washington state a few months later after his roommate, whom he was suspected of murdering, disappeared. He was picked up by police in Florida soon after and returned to an Ohio psychiatric hospital.
Milligan was ultimately discharged from the hospital in 1988 after psychiatrists concluded that his many personalities had fused into one harmless one as a result of therapy and he was no longer a danger to society, He subsequently underwent outpatient mental treatment before being released from all state supervision in August 1991.
In 2014, he died of cancer at the age of 59 at a hospital in Columbus, Ohio.
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Write to Megan McCluskey at megan.mccluskey@time.com.
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The True Story Behind Apple TV+'s 'The Crowded Room' | Time - TIME
GA Drilling tests technology for cost-efficient deep geothermal drilling – Inceptive Mind
Geothermal energy is widely recognized as a clean, renewable, and dependable source of energy. However, its full potential is limited by the geographic distribution of high-temperature rocks near the surface.
GA Drilling, a Houston-based geothermal technology company, made a significant advance in deep geothermal drilling with the successful public demonstration of its innovative drilling tool, the ANCHORBIT.
The test, conducted in collaboration with Nabors Industries Ltd. at their technology center in Houston, displayed the tools ability to double drilling speed and extend the drillbit lifetime in hard and abrasive formations. These advances have the potential to significantly reduce the cost of deep geothermal drilling, remove financial barriers, and expand global access to geothermal energy.
The success of GA drilling in geothermal technology contributes to meeting decarbonization goals and offers a viable solution to retrofitting carbon-intensive coal power plants, reducing emissions, and strengthening energy independence from fossil fuels worldwide. GA Drilling is a pioneer in advanced drilling techniques using plasma and thermomechanical technologies.
ANCHORBIT is designed to enable deep drilling in high-temperature hard formations compared to drilling in shallow wells. The technology aims to penetrate crystalline rock at a depth of more than 5 km (3 miles) at high rates, harness hot water from the Earths crust to generate clean energy, and convert it into power.
ANCHORBIT is a specialized downhole walking system designed to improve stability and prevent vibrations during drilling operations in high-temperature, hard rock typically found in deep geothermal projects. By stabilizing the drillbit in the wellbore and allowing weight to be added to the bit, the ANCHORBIT can double the rate of penetration and extend the life of the drillbit. This is a significant improvement over current drilling methods that suffer from vibration, low penetration rates, and frequent bit changes in such challenging conditions.
ANCHORBITs cost-effectiveness integrates seamlessly with conventional rotary drilling techniques to make geothermal projects economically viable. The tool is also designed for use in conjunction with GA Drillings PLASMABIT technology, which further increases drilling capabilities in the geothermal industry. With ANCHORBIT, GA Drilling aims to improve drilling economics, accelerate commercialization, and enable large-scale deployment of geothermal projects.
Tomas Kristofic, Founder and CTO of GA Drilling, said, ANCHORBIT is an excellent mixture of existing technologies, spiced by unique innovations. As a result, it brings unparalleled enhancement in drilling performance and consistency to existing drilling technologies. It is a long-awaited leap on the path to the breakthrough technology enabler of a geothermal revolution.
By developing breakthrough technologies, the company is paving the way for accessing deep geothermal energy sources globally, providing terawatts of clean energy from unprecedented depths, and revolutionizing the geothermal industry.
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GA Drilling tests technology for cost-efficient deep geothermal drilling - Inceptive Mind
Moose breaks into Bradley International Airport property, euthanized by environment officials – FOX61 Hartford
WINDSOR LOCKS, Conn. A moose was euthanized by environment officials after it broke through the property of Bradley International Airporton Friday.
DEEP officials said that they received a report of a moose spotted near the airport. DEEP Environmental Conservation (EnCon) Police and Wildlife Division staff then went to the scene.
The moose was on the property in the vicinity of the airport and had breached an outer perimeter fence. Out of an abundance of caution, to protect the airport environment as well as vehicles on Route 20, EnCon Police and Wildlife Division made the decision to euthanize the moose.
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DEEP officials said that when moose are roaming in high-traffic areas such as airports and public roadways it can be a public safety concern and both DEEP and airport staff are authorized to euthanize a moose if deemed necessary.
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Moose breaks into Bradley International Airport property, euthanized by environment officials - FOX61 Hartford
Privacy class actions: claimant groups yet to find the right formula – Lexology
If Lloyd v. Google closed one door for data protection class actions, Prismall v. Google and DeepMind has left another faintly ajar. Whether a suitable claim exists that could fit the narrow gap is another matter.
The decision follows another recent case in which the court gave a wider interpretation to the test for a representative claim. The case law in this area will be closely watched as part of a wider trend in group actions, ranging from environmental mass tort claims to consumer claims and ClientEarth's climate change-related derivative action against Shell's directors, alongside a variety of data privacy claims.
Doctor-patient confidentiality
The dispute in this case related to a collaboration between DeepMind, the artificial intelligence laboratory owned by Google, and the Royal Free London NHS Foundation. The NHS Trust gave DeepMind access to a substantial amount of patient records, for the purpose of developing a clinical system to help the Trust's doctors identify and treat patients with acute kidney injuries.
Mr Prismall brought proceedings as a representative claimant on behalf of approximately 1.6 million people, under the tort of misuse of private information. The essence of that tort is that the defendant has wrongfully interfered with information to which the claimant had a reasonable expectation of privacy. In the present case, Mr Prismall alleged that Google and DeepMind had done so by obtaining and using their patient records for purposes other than their direct treatment.
Representative actions
To bring a claim under the representative action mechanism (CPR 19.6), a claimant needs to show that the proposed class of claimants has the '"same interest'". In the recent case of Commission Recovery v. Marks & Clerk, the court confirmed that this test could be satisfied even if there were some differences between the claimants' positions, so long as their interests were not in conflict.
In that case, there existed a common set of facts on which breach could be judged, and a ready method for quantifying damages without the need to assess individual circumstances. In other cases, the nature of the alleged breach and damages available will differ depending on the specific facts for each claimant. For a large class of relatively low- value claims, the need to consider each claimant separately can render the litigation uneconomic.
Lowest common denominator
This was at the heart of Lloyd v. Google, which was framed as a breach of data protection legislation rather than in the tort of misuse of private information but faced similar hurdles. In that case, the claimants attempted to pursue a claim based on the minimum harm that would have been done to a person who fell within the prospective class of claimants. The Supreme Court was prepared in principle to proceed on this '"lowest common denominator'" method, but found that on the facts, the minimum harm caused would fall below the threshold needed to establish an entitlement to damages.
The claimant also attempted to pursue the lowest common denominator method in Prismall, but although the facts and basis of claim were different, the claim failed for similar reasons. The judge found that a reasonable expectation of privacy did not arise in every instance involving patient records. There was a spectrum, with '"minor or anodyne'" material, particularly that already in the public domain (for example because the patient has tweeted about the injury sustained) falling below a required threshold of seriousness. Wrongful interference also depended on factors such as whether the records were being used for the treatment of the relevant patient.
Since the claim was advanced on a '"global irreducible basis'", the court had to consider each element of the tort at the lowest end of the spectrum: a patient who had only visited the hospital once, in relation to a condition that was not sensitive, with only limited information collected, which was in the public domain and was used to treat the patient. The judge found that this hypothetical patient would not have a reasonable expectation of privacy and their information would not have been wrongfully interfered with.
Dentons comment
In Lloyd v. Google and the cases that have followed, the courts have expressly allowed for the possibility of representative actions in claims such as this, including potentially on an opt-out basis. The claimant's dilemma is that the only way to avoid having to assess the facts for each individual is to proceed on a lowest common denominator basis. But as this case illustrates, this can leave a weak claim that is not enough to satisfy the requirements for a claim either for misuse of private information or for breach of data protection legislation. One solution could be to define the class of claimants more restrictively, but this would reduce the size of the potential claim (and payout for funders and claimant lawyers).
It remains to be seen whether and when a claim will be brought that can tread this tightrope and set a precedent for opt-out privacy or data breach claims. What is clear is that the case law and the industry for group claims are developing rapidly across a range of fields, representing a significant risk for corporates.
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Privacy class actions: claimant groups yet to find the right formula - Lexology
To the deepest hidden depths of the subconscious and beyond the … – 2000 AD
Void Runners is the new psychedelic sci-fi series from David Hine & Boo Cook that burst into the pages of 2000 AD Prog 2334. Its all about surreal space adventures, psychedelic cosmic fever dreams, spectacular alien worlds and even more bizarre alien beings.
In Void Runners, the hunt is on for the mythical Kalis Dust that allows the tyrannical Ankorites to rule over the network of planets and systems known as The Federation. Faced with supplies running low, the Ankorites and their ruthless foot soldiers, The Subjugators, call on notorious Void Runner Captain Alice Shikari to track down the pleroma the deep-space creatures that are the source of Kalis Dust.
But Shikaris no slave to the Federation and has visionary ideas of her own about spreading joy and enlightenment to the masses!
David Hines already described this one as a sci-fi version of Ken Keseys Magic Bus trip across the USA in the 1960s on the launch of the series, where the bus is a spaceship, crewed by Captain Shikari andherpiratical crew of Void Runners. And he went on to describe what to expect See fascistic cops who share one mind between three bodies, gigantic jellysquids who are also the oldest, wisest creatures in the cosmos, a battle with kamikaze space sharks and an actual vision of the ultimate meaning of the Universe. WARNING: Do not lick the pages!
And if that doesnt make you want to read the series, I dont know what will!
So, with something very special happening, time to chat to David about the world of Void Runners. Before we begin though, Boo sends his apologies right now hes knee deep in paint and pain with the looming deadlines for the final two Void Runners episodes. And Tharg well, Thargs hinted that it would be a very bad idea for the Cook droid to be leaving the drawing board to do an interview until those pages are done. Well, I say hinted, it was more an instruction and mutterings about no more rations until its all done!
But dont worry, if/when Tharg allows, well try to pin Boo down for a chat as well. But here, flying solo, is David Hine
David, we have a brand-new series from the pair of you that started in 2000 AD Prog 2334 Void Runners. Ive seen the first couple of issues and its looking rather fabulous.
So, first things first, whats Void Runners all about? Feel free to give us the elevator pitch version or the long version!
DAVID HINE: My elevator pitch is Moby Dick in space on acid. We didnt actually go with that one because, although it sounds cool, it wasnt really accurate. Its actually more like Dune meets Star Wars on shrooms. I hate elevator pitches.
Yep, but I do like Dune meets Star Wars on shrooms and after seeing the first couple of episodes I think that one works a treat!
How long is this first series going to be?
DH: Eight episodes of six pages in real-world terms, though time and space are relative and if you stare at some of Boos pages in the right state of mind they could be perceived as infinite.
Just from the first couple of episodes that Ive seen, were already in the realms of huge space operas here a Federation of planetary systems that have been discovered by humanity, now controlled by the evil Ankorites and their foot soldiers, the Subjugators.
DH: Yeah, the Ankorites are a corrupt form of the Christian anchorites, who retreated from the world, often walled up in a cell attached to a church, where they spent their lives contemplating the nature of God. Julian of Norwich was one of these. She wrote the oldest surviving works in the English language that are known to be written by a woman. Her Revelations of Divine Love are wonderful.
Our Ankorites are an example of how religious (and political) dogmas can create monstrous institutions. Their intentions may be pure but the conclusions they come to are flawed and have led them to rule the Federation with an iron fist.
Lovely bit of work on that first page by you both by the way, thats a great line from you David about inhabited by the many life forms that humans have encountered and, on occasion, interbred with. That coupled with Boos great little illo of the lined up races really does give us an immediate sense of both the scale of the thing, the fact that were a long, long way from Earth here, and the fact that humanity has done its usual thing.
DH: The Federation could be seen as a metaphor for Western Empire and colonization but its a bit more complex than that. This is so far in the future that humanity has interbred with many thousands of alien species, so what we think of as humanity barely exists in a pure form.
The conflict here is between those who want to impose order and maintain absolute control, and those who are endlessly curious and who want to pursue every possible life choice, no matter what the risk. Its stagnation against diversity. Order against chaos.
And then comes the introduction of the story driver here, the search for the Pleroma and their Kalis Dust, the thing giving the Ankorites their powers and control, and their use of the wonderful Captain Shikari, the heroine of the piece.
DH: Kalis Dust is a psychedelic substance that gives the user visions and allows a degree of telepathy, a union of minds. The Ankorites are like the priests of most religions in that they believe that they are the only ones capable of handling this kind of power. The Subjugators are warrior priests, who have access to a limited amount of the dust and form triumvirates, groups of three who share a single mind. Use of Kalis Dust by anyone else is punishable by death.
Thats where Captain Alice Shikari enters the picture. Shes a total DustHead who uses the drug for recreational purposes sensual delights, enhanced music appreciation, all the usual stuff. But the Dust has also enhanced her ability to track Pleroma, the magnificent beasts who roam the farthest reaches of the universe and are the only source for Kalis Dust. The Ankorites would love to execute Shikari but they are running out of supplies of the Dust and Shikari is their best bet to find more.
Obviously, Void Runners is a quest with Shikari playing the lead and venturing forth for the Ankorites to sniff out the dust for them, but Id imagine theres going to be a lot more to it than just a simple quest here?
DH: Shikaris own agenda is basically to party but it turns out that she has a greater destiny. That will be revealed as the story progresses. No more spoilers for now.
Hey, always better to have it unfold and enjoy it without spoilers!
Shikari adds that element of bumbling comedy and chaos to all this serious Federation-dominating stuff from the Ankorites.
DH: This is a cosmic version of Ken Keseys Merry Pranksters and their Magic Bus trip across the USA in the early sixties. I guess Shikari has elements of Neal Cassady (the driver of the original Magic Bus,) Alice in Wonderland, Lucille Ball, and definitely Captain Jack Sparrow. But there was no specific model for the character.
I had a very clear image of her in my mind as a smart, funny, charismatic, completely insane and unpredictable character and once I described her to Boo, he took her to the next level. Im overjoyed with the result.
With Void Runners, how did it all come about? Was it an idea from you or from Boo or more of a collaboration?
DH: Boo is the instigator. He literally came to me and asked me to come up with something mad and trippy for him to draw. I knew his work well. He painted the cover to the issue of Richard Starkings Elephantmen that I had written and drawn, and we had been following each other on Instagram so we were kind of peeking into one another minds and seeing some common ground.
I had the germ of an idea for an updated version of the Magic Bus Trip. I had developed some of those ideas for another publisher who had the weird idea that psychedelics were Too Sixties and gave my pitch the boot. Quite emphatically. Lucky for us Matt Smith is a much more broad-minded individual.
Yep, Thargs always been a happy home to a bit of psychedelic storytelling!
Im always fascinated by the beginnings of any strip, particularly the amount of worldbuilding and background that both writer and artist have to put into the idea before we even come to the first episode hitting the shelves.Presumably both you and Boo had many conversations and meetings to create the expansive worlds and the beings inhabiting them here?
DH: I made the trip to Bristol for the Lawless convention in 2022 specifically to meet up with Boo and talk over ideas. Since then its been emails, messenger and the occasional telepathic communication.
Boo did lots of sketches of the characters, the spaceships and various non-human creatures and those visuals influenced the way I wrote the characters. Moondog was always going to look like the real-world musician Moondog but the ships cook, Bartleby is straight out of Boos imagination and his personality developed from his deceptively brutal appearance. Same with the Subjugators their look is all Boo.
I gave Boo some guidelines on visual style but only in general terms. We talked about the way cephalopods create a chameleon camouflage effect through chromatophores, which are the cells in their skin that contain pigment, which changes colours rapidly and almost magically. Boo suggested giving Shikari a similar ability, though in her case the skin patterns reflect mood rather than provide camouflage. That ties in really well with the psychedelic scenes.
Hows the collaboration working between you?
DH: Its brilliant from my perspective. Boo gets what Im talking about and always ramps up the visuals by a couple of levels beyond what I imagined. Most importantly he gets my sense of humour and actually makes the visual gags very funny.
One of my favourite scenes involves Shikari and Moondog stripping down to their undies and wriggling through a Pleromas internal organs. Seeing those finished panels made me laugh out loud.
Alas, no image of that yet that particular bit of comedy is still to come in a future episode!
DH: The peak experience is when we see the visions triggered by Kalis Dust. They are really beautifully rendered and probably the most far-out art 2000 AD has published since Brendan McCarthys classic work on Judge Dredd.
Yes, theres definitely a lot of McCarthy influence in Boos work, although hes taken it to some wonderfully different places.
Apart from that Elephantman cover, is this the first time youve worked together?
DH: Yeah, that was only one image but I loved it and Boo very generously gave me the original art, so it made a lasting impact.
So far, in just the first 10 pages Ive seen I think youve done a perfect job of establishing it all. That first episode could easily have come off as exposition overload to get over all the information you needed to establish the series background. David, Im sure youll agree that what made that first episode flow so beautifully came from the way that Boo filled the pages of background and intro with incredible designs and artwork.
DH: There was a lot of information to get into the first few pages. The setting doesnt relate to anything else in 2000 AD, so we had to establish the nature of the Federation, its hierarchy, the concept of the psychedelic drug and the main characters.
It could have been confusing or overly detailed but it works because Boo constructs each page as a holistic design rather than just a series of panels. The art really is outstanding.
Oh, it really is a career-high from Boo here I reckon, and I know Im not the only one thinking that.
So, moving onto the artistic side of things David, youve already told us of how Boo came on board but what has he brought to the world of Void Runners that you initially saw in your head?
DH: Boo always goes the extra mile. He knows what Im after but he delivers a lot more. Going back to that first page of Part 1 [pictured above] I asked for a diverse bunch of alien creatures but I wasnt expecting such unique individuals. Each of the aliens is only a few centimetres high but they are all good enough to become developed characters. They each come with a ready-made backstory in their visual appearance.
Then there are little extra touches like the Furby-type character that is strategically placed on Page 5 to spare out blushes
There are loads of little touches like that, which are pleasant surprises and prove that Boo is totally invested in his work. Hes a visionary artist. Looking at these pages is the closest you can get to a psychedelic experience, without psychedelics.
What can we expect for the future of Void Runners? Where will you be taking us in this first series?
DH: To the deepest hidden depths of the subconscious and beyond the outer limits of space, where no sentient life-form has been before.
So, nothing too big then!
And have you already mapped out plans for future series? Should The Mighty One give you his blessing of course!
DH: I know where Shikari and her crew are going but I havent figured out all the stops along the way in any detail yet. I like to leave myself some surprises. This series is definitely a jumping-off point and I hope it will be just the first stage in an epic odyssey.
Now, to end with, as usual, what sort of things can we look forward to from you both after Void Runners? Obviously David you have more Dark Judges with Nick Percival to come. But what else can we expect, either from Tharg or elsewhere?
DH: I have several long-term projects at various stages and one massive project that is now completed but, frustratingly, wont be announced until July. The next big creator-owned one will be Beastly with Mark Stafford. Our fourth, our biggest and our best graphic novel collaboration.
And of course, Dave was too modest to tell you what the others were, so I shall he and Mark Stafford have made The Man Who Laughs (adapting Victor Hugos classic, SelfMadeHero, 2013), Lip Hook (SelfMadeHero, 2018), and The Bad, Bad Place (Soaring Penguin, 2019). All three are excellent and come highly recommended.
Thank you so much to David for sharing his time with us to talk Void Runners. It was every bit as enjoyable, informative, and out there as I was expecting after reading the first two episodes of the series. If youve already had the pleasure of getting your mind stretched out by the first episode, youll already know this ones a sure-fire hit!
Void Runners began in 2000 AD Prog 2334 and runs for eight episodes until Prog 2342, with a break for Regened Prog 2336. Its a psychedelic thrill ride that only the Galaxys Greatest can give you dont miss out on another great trip!
Before you leave though, be sure to check out Boo Cooks excellent Covers Uncovered for the first Void Runners cover to Prog 2334 its every bit as psychedelically great as youd expect! And remember Davids words Do not lick the pages! after all.
And finally, if youre loving Void Runners, dont delay, head out and buy those great Hine/Stafford books today!
See the article here:
To the deepest hidden depths of the subconscious and beyond the ... - 2000 AD
Falling funds and the rise of AI are top of the menu at London tech talks – The Guardian
Technology
Artificial intelligence will be the main talking point at the coming London Tech Week but investment and skills problems remain
Sat 10 Jun 2023 19.05 EDT
For some companies attending London Tech Week this Monday, just being there is an achievement. The sudden failure in March of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), a financial cornerstone for the UK and US tech industries, had left many British companies wondering how they were going to see out that month.
Ashley Ramrachia, chief executive of Academy, a tech company with headquarters in Manchester, said the first he knew of SVBs troubles was on Wednesday 8 March. By Thursday, Ramrachia and others were trying, unsuccessfully, to withdraw funds. By Friday, the Bank of England said it planned to put SVBs UK operation into insolvency and Ramrachia was one of 3,500 customers in Britain scrambling to deal with the consequences.
He says that overnight, from a previously comfortable funding position, he was forced to consider how to keep the company above water. We can just about make March payroll, he remembers thinking. How are we going to make April?
However, by the following Monday, the British government had helped broker a takeover of SVB UK by HSBC and a crisis was averted. Ramrachia, whose business helps companies train up workers from underrepresented groups (by gender, ethnicity or socioeconomic background) for technology roles, will now be attending tech week without worrying about paying wages.
Antony Walker, deputy chief executive of the trade association techUK, says Ramrachias predicament was not unique. If that rescue deal had failed, there would have been huge problems for quite a significant number of companies. There were companies that were looking at being unable to pay their bills on a Monday morning, Walker says.
So the UK tech sector goes into London Tech Week relatively unscathed, although the central issue for the event also raises existential problems for some: artificial intelligence (AI). Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer will give their views on AI this week, amid a shift in government stance to a more cautious footing on the technology.
Breakthroughs in generative AI technology that produces convincing text, images and voice from a human prompt have wowed the public, particularly with the ChatGPT chatbot, but they have also raised concerns that the field is simply developing too quickly.
Sunak announced last week that the UK would hold a global summit on AI safety in the autumn, signalling that he has heard those concerns.
I think AI will be the big one, says Walker, in terms of the hot topics at tech week, which runs until Friday. He says the regulatory framework will be discussed by attendees but also the impact on jobs in the sector, which he thinks will be positive.
We see AI in the short term very much as a productivity driver, he says. A lot of companies that invest in AI make good use of it. Itll help them grow, which could actually be positive from an employment perspective.
According to techUK, the sector adds 150bn to the British economy every year and employs 1.7 million people, including employees of US tech companies that have significant presences in the UK, such as Google and the Facebook owner Meta. There are also big UK players such as the chip designer Arm and Google-owned DeepMind, a world-leading AI company.
Even before the existential crisis that swamped SVB and the UK tech sector, there have been concerns about the long-term funding setup for the industry. Those frustrations have been summed up by Arm, which is owned by Japanese investment company SoftBank and has opted for a stock market listing in the US, reflecting the deeper and more tech-savvy pool of capital across the Atlantic.
The UK government has been urged to tweakregulations around pension and investment funds to help boost tech investment, but there is also what techUK calls a cultural issue in the British investment world, where institutional investors are not skilled up enough or willing enough to invest in high-growth sectors such as tech. As a consequence, companies could seek funding from the US and even move there.
Building skills, diversifying workforces as Ramcharias company tries to do and getting talent from abroad in a post-Brexit UK will also be discussed by attendees. If AI offers the ever-changing British tech sector a new direction, some of its fundamental problems remain the same.
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Falling funds and the rise of AI are top of the menu at London tech talks - The Guardian