Flower or power? Campaigners fear lithium mine could kill rare plant

AFP
May 22, 2024

A Tiehm's buckwheat plant starts to bud in its native habitat in the Silver Peak Range in Esmeralda County, Nevada beside Rhyolite Ridge, the site of a proposed lithium mine - Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP JUSTIN SULLIVAN

Romain FONSEGRIVES

Delicate pink buds sway in the desert breeze, pregnant with yellow pompoms whose explosion will carpet the dusty corner of Nevada that is the only place on Earth where they exist.

Under their roots lie vast reserves of lithium, vital for the rechargeable electric car batteries that will reduce planet-heating pollution.

But campaigners fear the extraction of the precious metal could destroy the flower’s tiny habitat.

“This mine is going to cause extinction,” says Patrick Donnelly, an environmentalist who works at the Center for Biological Diversity, a non-governmental organization.

“They somehow claim that they’re not harming the (plant). But can you imagine if someone built an open-pit mine 200 feet from your house? Wouldn’t that affect your life profoundly?”

The plant in question is Tiehm’s buckwheat.

There are only around 20,000 known specimens, growing in a few very specific places on a total surface area equivalent to around five soccer fields.

In 2022, the wildflower was classified as endangered by US federal authorities, with mining cited as a major threat to its survival.

The plant and the lithium reserve on which it grows embody one of the key challenges and contradictions of the global climate struggle: how much damage can we inflict on the natural world as we seek to halt or reverse the problems we have already created?

– ‘Coexist’ –

Bernard Rowe, boss of Australian miner Ioneer, which holds the mineral rights to the area, says the lithium produced at Rhyolite Ridge “will be sufficient to provide batteries for about 370,000 vehicles” a year.

“We’ll do that year-on-year for 26 years,” he said.

Those nearly 10 million vehicles will go a long way towards meeting the goal President Joe Biden has set of cutting down the nation’s fleet of gas-guzzlers as a way to slash US production of planet-warming pollutants.

So-called zero-emission cars make up around 7.5 percent of new vehicle sales in the United States today — more than double the percentage just a few years earlier.

In California, the figure is more than 20 percent.

And while expansion in the sector has slowed, the category remains the fastest-growing, according to Kelley Blue Book.

And it’s not only in the United States: Global demand for lithium will increase five to seven times by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency.

The difficulty for US manufacturers is that much of the world’s lithium supply is dominated by strategic rival China, as well as Australia and Chile.

“The United States has very, very little domestic production,” said Rowe.

“So it’s important to develop a domestic supply chain to allow for that energy transition, and Rhyolite Ridge will be an integral part of that.”

Ioneer’s plans show that over the years the mine is in operation — it is projected to start producing lithium in late 2027 — around a fifth of the plant’s habitat will be directly affected.

But the company, which has spent $2.5 million researching the plant, says mining will not affect its survival; it is already growing well in greenhouses and biologists think it can be replanted.

“We’re very confident that the mine and Tiehm’s buckwheat can coexist,” Rowe said.

– ‘Greenwashing’ –

Donnelly counters that Ioneer is “basically greenwashing extinction.”

“They’re saying. ‘We’re going to save this plant,’ when actually they are going to send it to its doom,” he said.

Under the company’s plans, the strip mine will use hundreds of trucks, which Donnelly says will raise clouds of dust that will affect photosynthesis and harm the insects that pollinate the plants.

Ioneer says it has already planned mitigation methods, like dust curtains, and keeping the roads wet.

Still, Donnelly says, why not just move the mine? But Rowe counters that it’s not as simple as just digging somewhere else.

Ioneer has invested $170 million since 2016 to demonstrate the feasibility of this site, which it believes is one of the best around.

“Many of these other deposits haven’t had that amount of work, so they’re not viable alternatives to a project like this,” he said.

The US Department of Energy has offered Ioneer a $700 million loan for the project, if the Bureau of Land Management signs off on an operating permit.

Donnelly insists the issue is not just the future of one obscure wildflower, but rather just one example of large-scale biodiversity loss that is threatening millions of plants and animals.

“If we solve the climate crisis, but we drive everything extinct while we do it, we’re still going to lose our world,” he said.

UN to vote on declaring Srebrenica genocide memorial day


AFP
May 23, 2024


A memorial wall at the Srebrenica-Potocari memorial cemetery commemorates the July 11, 1995 massacre - Copyright AFP ELVIS BARUKCIC
Amelie Bottollier-Depois with Mina Pejakovic in Belgrade

The UN General Assembly will vote Thursday on establishing an annual day of remembrance for the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, despite furious opposition from Bosnian Serbs and Serbia.

The resolution written by Germany and Rwanda — countries synonymous with 20th century genocides — would make July 11 International Day of Remembrance of the Srebrenica Genocide.

Serbia’s government says an attempt is underway to blame Serbians in general and President Aleksandar Vucic said he would be at the United Nations to “fight with all my strength and heart” in opposition to the initiative.

Serbian Foreign Minister Marko Djuric promised to “protect our country and our people from a long-term stigma.”

Bosnian Serb forces captured Srebrenica — a UN-protected enclave at the time — on July 11, 1995, a few months before the end of Bosnia’s bloody civil war, which saw approximately 100,000 people killed.

In the following days, Bosnian Serb forces killed around 8,000 Muslim men and teenagers — a crime described as a genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Court of Justice.

The incident is considered the worst single atrocity in Europe since World War II.

In addition to establishing the memorial day, the draft resolution condemns “any denial” of the genocide and urges UN member countries to “preserve the established facts.”

In a letter from Germany and Rwanda to the rest of the United Nations, the vote was described as a “crucial opportunity to unite in honoring the victims and acknowledging the pivotal role played by international courts.”

– Threat to peace, security –

However, there has been a furious response from Serbia and the Bosnian Serb leadership.

In an attempt to defuse tensions, the authors of the draft resolution added — at Montenegro’s request — that culpability for the genocide is “individualized and cannot be attributed to any ethnic, religious or other group or community as a whole.”

That has not been enough for Belgrade.

In a letter sent Sunday to all UN delegations, Serbian charge d’affaires Sasa Mart warned that raising “historically sensitive topics serves only to deepen division and may bring additional instability to the Balkans.”

Russia’s UN ambassador, Vasily Nebenzia, called the draft text “provocative” and a “threat to peace and security.”

According to Nebenzia, the resolution seeks to “erase” what he called the “shameful evidence” of NATO bombing of the former Yugoslavia in 1995 and 1999 by “pinning all the blame on the Serbs.”

Milorad Dodik, political leader in the Bosnian Serb entity — where thousands of people demonstrated this April against the draft resolution — said the Srebrenica genocide had been a “sham.”

The European Union has responded strongly, with foreign affairs spokesman Peter Stano saying “there cannot be any denial” and “anyone trying to put it in doubt has no place in Europe.”

For relatives of the victims of the genocide, the UN debate is an important moment in their quest for peace.

“Those who led their people into this position (of genocide denial) must accept the truth, so that we can all find peace and move on with our lives,” said Kada Hotic, 79-year-old co-director of an association of Srebrenica mothers, who lost her son, husband and two brothers.

The resolution is “of the highest importance for spreading the truth,” said Denis Becirovic, the Bosnian member of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s tripartite presidency.

Finland’s wizards making food out of thin air

AFP
May 23, 2024

Lab-grown meat, eggs and milk have made headlines in recent years

 - Copyright AFP/File Alex Wroblewski

Anna KORKMAN

At a factory in Finland, the “farmers of the future” are making a new food protein by feeding a microbe air and electricity, proving that protein can be produced without traditional agriculture.

Livestock farming is one of the main culprits in greenhouse gas emissions, the primary cause of global warming.

Cellular agriculture, where food or nutrients are grown from cell cultures, is increasingly seen as a green alternative to animal agriculture.

Lab-grown meat, eggs and milk have made headlines in recent years, with scientists using animal cell cultures — a process some have criticised as unnatural, highly processed, energy-consuming and costly.

But at Solar Foods’ recently opened factory outside Helsinki, scientists are using new technology to grow protein out of cells using air and electricity.

By feeding a microbe with carbon dioxide, hydrogen and some minerals, and powering the process with electricity from renewable sources, the company has managed to create a protein-rich powder that can be used as a milk and egg substitute.

“We can source our main feedstock for the microbe from the air,” Solar Foods chief executive Pasi Vainikka told AFP, as he gave a tour of the company’s new facilities near Helsinki.

“We have started the production of the world’s most sustainable protein.”

Founded by Vainikka and Juha-Pekka Pitkanen in 2017, Solar Foods launched the “world’s first factory growing food out of thin air” in April.

“Much of the animal-like protein of today can actually be produced through cellular agriculture and we can let agricultural land re-wild and thereby build carbon stock,” Vainikka said, referring to the process whereby forests and soil absorb and store carbon.

One kilo of the new protein, dubbed “solein”, emits 130 times less greenhouse gases than the same amount of protein produced by beef production in the European Union, a 2021 scientific study claimed.

Vainikka navigates his way through the factory’s laboratory and into the control room, where a dozen people at computer screens monitor the production process.

“These are our future farmers,” Vainikka said.

– Part of the solution –

Transforming food production and consumption is at the heart of combating the climate crisis and preventing biodiversity loss, according to Emilia Nordlund, head of industrial biotechnology and food research at the VTT Technical Research Centre.

Yet current projections show the consumption of meat is expected to increase in coming years.

“Industrial food production, especially livestock production, is one of the biggest causes of greenhouse gas emissions (and) the biggest cause of biodiversity loss, eutrophication and freshwater usage,” she said.

New food production technologies can help cut emissions and “decentralise and diversify food production”, Nordlund said.

“However, at the same time, we must improve the existing food production methods to make them more sustainable and resilient,” she added.

Fermentation technology used to produce different nutrients, such as proteins, has been around for decades.

But the field has expanded significantly in recent years with new technological solutions and research projects emerging worldwide.

– Slow progess –

Some of the most active start-up hubs focusing on cellular agriculture are in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands and Israel, Nordlund said.

“We are in a crucial phase as we will see which start-ups will survive,” she said, adding that stalling bureaucracy was slowing cellular agriculture’s take-off in the EU.

Dressed in protective gear to prevent bacteria contamination in the factory, Vainikka showed off a giant steel tank in a shiny production hall.

“This is a fermenter holding 20,000 litres,” he said, explaining that the microbe multiplies inside the tank as it gets fed the greenhouse gas.

Liquid containing the microbes is continuously extracted from the tank to be processed into the yellowish protein-rich powder with a flavour described as “nutty” and “creamy”.

“The fermenter produces the same amount of protein per day as 300 milking cows or 50,000 laying hens,” Vainikka said.

That equals “five million meals’ worth of protein per year”.

For now, the main purpose of the small Finnish plant employing around 40 people is to “prove that the technology scales”, so it can attract the necessary investments pending European regulatory approval.

While the protein has been cleared for sale in Singapore where some restaurants have used it to make ice cream, it is still awaiting classification as a food product in the EU and the United States.

To have any real impact, the aim is to “build an industrial plant 100 times the size of this one”, Vainikka said.

\

WiFi, drones and sharp blades on Japan’s whaling mothership

END WHALING FOR WHALE SUSHI

AFP
May 23, 2024

A crew member shows a large knife for cutting up whales on Japan's new whaling mothership, the Kangei Maru - Copyright AFP Yuichi YAMAZAKI
Simon STURDEE, Harumi OZAWA

In whale-motif jacket, shirt and tie plus a whale-shaped hat, Hideki Tokoro shows off Japan’s new whaling “mothership”, the Kangei Maru — slicing blades, butchery deck, freezers and all.

“(Whales) eat up marine creatures that should feed other fish. They also compete against humans,” said Tokoro, the president of whaling firm Kyodo Senpaku, touting an industry argument long rejected by conservationists.

“So we need to cull some whales and keep the balance of the ecosystem… It’s our job, our mission, to protect the rich ocean for the future,” he added while speaking with reporters invited to tour the Kangei Maru after it had docked in Tokyo.

The 9,300-tonne vessel set off this week from western Japan, bigger, better and more modern than its recently retired predecessor, with individual cabins for crew members, WiFi and drones to spot its quarry.

The whales will be harpooned by a smaller vessel and then brought, dead, to the Kangei Maru where a powerful winch can haul carcasses weighing up to 70 tonnes up a ramp and onto a lower deck around 40 metres (130 feet) long.

Once inside workers will butcher the whales using 30-centimetre (foot-long) blades attached to wooden staffs, discarding around half the animals’ total weight as waste.

“Be careful, they are very sharp,” Tokoro said, as a crew member unwrapped one such steel blade to show off.

The rest of the whale is processed, packaged and stored in 40 freezer containers, each with a capacity of 15 tonnes, ready to be transported around Japan once the ship returns to port.


– ‘Scientific’ –


Activists aggressively pursued the Kangei Maru’s predecessor when prior to 2019 Japan hunted whales in the Antarctic and North Pacific for “scientific” purposes.

That year Japan quit the International Whaling Commission and nowadays conducts commercial whaling, but only in its own waters, and on what it calls a sustainable scale.

Japan has a quota this year of around 350 Bryde’s, minke and sei whales, species which the government says are “abundant”.

The Bryde’s and common minke are listed as being of “least concern” on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List, but globally the sei is “endangered”.

Japan also wants to resume hunting fin whales, the world’s second-biggest animal after the blue whale. Fin whales are listed as “vulnerable” by the IUCN.

Tokyo argues that eating whale is part of Japanese culture and an issue of “food security” in the resource-poor country which imports large amounts of animal meat.

But consumption of whale has fallen to around 1,000 or 2,000 tonnes per year compared to around 200 times that in the 1960s.

“Japan has advanced bogus arguments about food security to justify its whaling for decades, even as its public has turned up its nose to whale meat,” said Patrick Ramage from the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

Conservationists have also long refuted Japan’s arguments that whales compete with humans for marine resources, saying that in fact the mammals improve the health of the ocean and therefore fish stocks.

Also they “have a unique role to play in global carbon dioxide capture and storage, acting like giant swimming tropical rainforests absorbing harmful CO2”, said Nicola Beynon from the Humane Society International Australia.

EU hits Oreo maker Mondelez with 337.5 mn euro antitrust fine

AFP
May 23, 2024

Aside from Oreo, Mondelez also owns Philadelphia cream cheese, Ritz crackers and Tuc salty biscuits - Copyright AFP Yuichi YAMAZAKI

The EU on Thursday slapped a 337.5 million euro ($366 million) fine on Mondelez, the US confectioner behind major brands including Toblerone and Oreo, for forcing consumers to pay more by restricting cross-border sales.

Mondelez, formerly called Kraft, is one of the world’s largest producers of chocolate, biscuits and coffee, with revenue of $36 billion last year.

The EU fined Mondelez “because they have been restricting the cross border trade of chocolate, biscuits and coffee products within the European Union,” the EU’s competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, said.

“This harmed consumers, who ended up paying more for chocolate, biscuits and coffee,” she told reporters in Brussels.

“This case is about price of groceries. It’s a key concern to European citizens and even more obvious in times of very high inflation, where many are in a cost-of-living crisis,” she added.

The penalty is the EU’s ninth-largest antitrust fine and comes at a time when food costs are a major concern for European households.

Businesses have come under scrutiny for posting higher profits despite soaring inflation following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, but that has since slowed down.

The free movement of goods is one of the key pillars of the EU’s single market.

Mondelez brands also include Philadelphia cream cheese, Ritz crackers and Tuc salty biscuits as well as chocolate brands Cadbury, Cote d’Or and Milka.

The EU’s probe dates back to January 2021 but the suspicions had led the bloc’s investigators to carry out raids in Mondelez offices across Europe in November 2019.

The European Commission, the EU’s powerful antitrust regulator, said Mondelez “abused its dominant position” in breach of the bloc’s rules by restricting sales to other EU countries with lower prices.

For example, the commission accused Mondelez of withdrawing chocolate bars in the Netherlands to prevent their resale in Belgium where they were sold at higher prices.


– ‘Isolated incidents’ –


The EU said Mondelez limited traders’ ability to resell products and ordered them to apply higher prices for exports compared to domestic sales between 2012 and 2019.

According to the commission, between 2015 and 2019, Mondelez also refused to supply a trader in Germany to avoid the resale of chocolate in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria and Romania, “where prices were higher”.

Vestager said within the EU, prices for the same product can vary significantly, by 10 to 40 percent depending on the country.

The issue is of grave concern to EU leaders.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, in a weekend letter to European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, urged the EU to take on multinationals and railed against different costs for branded essential consumer goods across member states.

Vestager stressed the importance of traders’ ability to buy goods in other countries where they are cheaper.

“It increases competition, lowers prices and increases consumer choice,” she added.

Mondelez responded by saying the fine related to “historical, isolated incidents, most of which ceased or were remedied well in advance of the commission’s investigation”.

“Many of these incidents were related to business dealings with brokers, which are typically conducted via sporadic and often one-off sales and a limited number of small-scale distributors developing new business in EU markets in which Mondelez is not present or doesn’t market the respective product,” it added in a statement.

The giant last year put aside 300 million euros in anticipation of the fine.

“No further measures to finance the fine will be necessary,” it said.

With little to buy, Cubans abroad send home food, not money

END THE U$ EMBARGO

AFP
May 23, 2024

Maria Paez unpacks a box of food items sent from her children in Miami to Havana - Copyright AFP ROBERTO SCHMIDT
Rigoberto DIAZ, with Gerard MARTINEZ in Miami

Maria Paez feels relieved after receiving a package of food items including eggs, ham, and yogurt from her children in Miami — bought online and shipped to Havana.

These days, with a severe economic crisis and food shortages, Cubans abroad increasingly prefer to send care packages to family back home, rather than cash transfers.

“Receiving these types of products is a relief for us” and, “in terms of spending money, the savings are substantial,” Paez, a 59-year-old mathematics graduate told AFP.

“Receiving eggs is very important” because “it is a guaranteed breakfast,” added Paez, who has lived alone with her husband since their two children emigrated to the United States.

In total, she received 18 products, a lifeline in Cuba which is facing its worst economic crisis in three decades, with shortages of food, medicine and fuel.

After several years of double-digit inflation, a carton of 30 eggs now costs 3,300 pesos ($27,50) on the communist island, where the average salary is 4,800 pesos.

Cuba’s bleak economic circumstances have pushed some five percent of the population to flee in recent years.

Online stores offering the delivery of essential products to Cuba have flourished as demand rises.

Most are based in the United States — home to two million Cubans — but they have also cropped up in Mexico, Canada, and Spain.

Every day dozens of delivery vans and private vehicles can be seen on the streets of Cuba distributing packages of food items that are in short supply, or whose prices have skyrocketed since the government authorized private-owned stores in 2021.

– They ‘don’t want money’ –



At one such delivery service in the US city of Hialeah, near Miami, which has a large Cuban population, Luis Manuel Mendez, 59, told AFP he sends food, medicine and school supplies to the two children he left behind when he emigrated a year-and-a-half ago.

“Things in Cuba are very expensive,” so “it is much more feasible to buy it here and send it,” said Mendez.

His children “don’t want money, what they want is for me to send them basic necessities.”

Nearby, there is a constant stream of people carrying bags to another agency which coordinates the sending of food packages to Cuba.

Maribel Ruiz, 62, said she helps out an aunt and cousins back home.

“The problem is that you send the money, but there is nothing to buy in the stores there. You have to send them packages of medicine, food, clothes, everything.”

Cuba has been battling sky-high inflation and shortages since the pandemic — which hit tourism hard — plus a tightening of US sanctions in 2021, combined with structural weaknesses in the economy.

According to the Havana Consulting Group, based in Miami, remittances from the United States to Cuba reached a record $3.7 billion in 2019, becoming the country’s second source of income after the export of medical services, and above tourism.

Cuban economist Emilio Morales, who chairs the consultancy, said this figure has since dropped “from $2 billion in 2022 to $1,9 billion in 2023.”

Morales said emigrants also increasingly prefer “to invest large sums of money in getting their families” out of the country or pay online companies to send packages to their door.

French media progress against X in legal battle over payments

By AFP
May 23, 2024

X has argued the platform is not subject to the neighbouring rights law 

- Copyright AFP Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV

A Paris court ruled Thursday that X needed to provide French media with information about how much money it makes from publishing their content as part of a legal battle over rights payments.

A dozen media outlets including Le Monde, Le Figaro and AFP are seeking payment of so-called neighbouring rights. The EU created in 2019 the form of copyright that allows print media to demand compensation for using their content.

The ruling orders X to act within two months to provide the media organisations with data including the number of views of their information, the number of clicks on the content, as well as data about reader engagement such as retweets, likes and sharing.

X was required to inform the media about the revenue generated in France by X from this information, according to a copy of the ruling.

X was also ordered to describe how its algorithms lead it to publishing the media content.

The information, which must remain confidential, is necessary for a “transparent evaluation” of the amount the media consider due for publication of their content under neighbouring rights legislation, said the ruling.

The judge handed down the ruling under an accelerated procedure and the media outlets will need to return to court for a ruling forcing X to pay.

But AFP’s chief executive Fabrice Fries hailed the ruling as a “decisive step” in getting the new right honoured in practice as it recognises that X is subject to the law.

“The ruling confirms that X/Twitter is subject to neighbouring rights for the media and it forces the platform to provide information required by the law to determine the payments” due to media outlets, he wrote on X.

– France as a test case –

Last year the media outlets, which also include the Huffington Post and Les Echos-Le Parisien, filed a suit after X refused to negotiate. A hearing was held on March 4 after mediation efforts failed.

AFP’s lawyer Julien Guinot-Delery called the ruling unprecedented. “X’s obstruction can no longer continue.”

X’s lawyers declined to immediately comment on the ruling.

But during the March hearing X’s lawyer argued the platform is not subject to the neighbouring rights law, which resulted from an EU directive, as it is users that post content on the platform.

France has been a test case for the EU rules on neighbouring rights and after initial resistance Google and Facebook both agreed to pay some French media for articles shown in web searches.

Despite making payments to media Google was recently fined 250 million euros ($270 million) for not negotiating in good faith with news publishers and failing to respect some of the promises it had made

AI relies on mass surveillance, warns Signal boss


By AFP
May 23, 2024


Meredith Whittaker said concerns about surveillance and those about AI were 'two framings of the same thing'

 - Copyright AFP/File Mazen Mahdi

Daxia ROJAS

The AI tools that crunch numbers, generate text and videos and find patterns in data rely on mass surveillance and exercise concerning control over our lives, the boss of encrypted messaging app Signal told AFP on Thursday.

Pushing back against the unquestioning enthusiasm at VivaTech in Paris, Europe’s top startup conference where industry players vaunt the merits of their products, Meredith Whittaker said concerns about surveillance and those about AI were “two framings of the same thing”.

“The AI technologies we’re talking about today are reliant on mass surveillance,” she said.

“They require huge amounts of data that are the derivatives of this mass surveillance business model that grew out of the 90s in the US, and has become the economic engine of the tech industry.”

Whittaker, who spent years working for Google before helping to organise a staff walkout in 2018 over working conditions, established the AI Now Institute at New York University in 2017.

She now campaigns for privacy and rails against the business models built on the extraction of personal data.

And she is clear that she has no confidence that the AI industry is developing in the right direction.

– Power imbalances –

AI systems have a hunger for data to input but they produce vast amounts of data too.

Even if it is incorrect, she said, this output “has power to classify, order and direct our lives in ways that we should be equally concerned about”.

And she pointed to the power imbalances created by an industry controlled by “a handful of surveillance giants” that are “largely unaccountable”.

“Most of us are not the users of AI,” she said.

“Most of us are subjected to its use by our employers, by law enforcement, by governments, by whoever it is.

“They have their own goals but they may not be goals that benefit us or benefit society.”

She said a striking example was the way AI firms liked to say that they were helping to find solutions to the climate crisis.

In fact, she said, they were taking money from fossil fuel companies and their technology was being used to find new resources to extract.

“Because, of course, where is the revenue? It’s not in saving the climate,” she said.

“It is in massive contracts with BP, with Exxon, with other large oil and gas companies.”

Ultimately she argued that Europeans should not be thinking in terms of competing with bigger American AI firms.

Another option could be “to reimagine tech that can serve more democratic and more rights-preserving or pluralistic societies”.

OpenAI says AI is 'safe enough' as scandals raise concerns

Seattle (AFP) – OpenAI CEO Sam Altman defended his company's AI technology as safe for widespread use, as concerns mount over potential risks and lack of proper safeguards for ChatGPT-style AI systems.

Issued on: 21/05/2024 

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman insisted that OpenAI had put in 'a huge amount of work' to ensure the safety of its models © Jason Redmond / AFP

Altman's remarks came at a Microsoft event in Seattle, where he spoke to developers just as a new controversy erupted over an OpenAI AI voice that closely resembled that of the actress Scarlett Johansson.

The CEO, who rose to global prominence after OpenAI released ChatGPT in 2022, is also grappling with questions about the safety of the company's AI following the departure of the team responsible for mitigating long-term AI risks.

"My biggest piece of advice is this is a special time and take advantage of it," Altman told the audience of developers seeking to build new products using OpenAI's technology.

"This is not the time to delay what you're planning to do or wait for the next thing," he added.

OpenAI is a close partner of Microsoft and provides the foundational technology, primarily the GPT-4 large language model, for building AI tools.

Microsoft has jumped on the AI bandwagon, pushing out new products and urging users to embrace generative AI's capabilities.

"We kind of take for granted" that GPT-4, while "far from perfect...is generally considered robust enough and safe enough for a wide variety of uses," Altman said.

Altman insisted that OpenAI had put in "a huge amount of work" to ensure the safety of its models.

"When you take a medicine, you want to know what's going to be safe, and with our model, you want to know it's going to be robust to behave the way you want it to," he added.

However, questions about OpenAI's commitment to safety resurfaced last week when the company dissolved its "superalignment" group, a team dedicated to mitigating the long-term dangers of AI.

In announcing his departure, team co-leader Jan Leike criticized OpenAI for prioritizing "shiny new products" over safety in a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter).

"Over the past few months, my team has been sailing against the wind," Leike said.

"These problems are quite hard to get right, and I am concerned we aren't on a trajectory to get there."

This controversy was swiftly followed by a public statement from Johansson, who expressed outrage over a voice used by OpenAI's ChatGPT that sounded similar to her voice in the 2013 film "Her."

The voice in question, called "Sky," was featured last week in the release of OpenAI's more human-like GPT-4o model.

In a short statement on Tuesday, Altman apologized to Johansson but insisted the voice was not based on hers.

© 2024 AFP

Massive landslide hits Papua New Guinea, many feared dead


By AFP
May 24, 2024

People gather at the site of a massive landslide in Papua New Guinea's Enga province on Friday - Copyright AFP STR

A massive landslide struck six villages in Papua New Guinea’s highlands Friday, local officials said, with many homes believed to be buried and scores of villagers feared dead.

The disaster hit a remote part of Enga province at around 3:00 am local time, when many villagers were at home asleep.

Provincial governor Peter Ipatas told AFP that “there has been a big landslide causing loss of life and property” amid unconfirmed reports that hundreds may be buried.

He later said that “more than six villages” had been hit, describing the scene as an “unprecedented natural disaster” that had caused “substantial damages”.

A rapid response team of medics, military, police and UN agencies have been dispatched to the area to assess the damage and help the wounded.

Images from the scene showed a vast bite of rock and soil cleaved from densely vegetated Mount Mungalo.

The slide left a wide scar of car-size boulders, felled trees and dirt that stretched down far toward the valley floor.

The remains of many corrugated tin shelters could be seen at the foot of rubble.

Dozens of local men and women scrambled over the piles of rock and soil, digging, crying out, listening for survivors or scanning the scene in disbelief.

– Houses buried –

Some became instant rescuers, donning wellington boots, strapping on head torches, picking up machetes and long-handled axes to help clear the rubble.

As they moved around, children carried on their mother’s backs could be heard crying.

“The landslide hit around three last night and it looks like more than 100 houses got buried,” Vincent Pyati, president of the local Community Development Association, told AFP.

“It is not yet known how many people were in those houses. The number of victims is unknown.”

Nickson Pakea, president of the nearby Porgera Chamber of Commerce and Industry said there are fears that up to 300 people may have been in the village at the time, a number that could not be confirmed.

Papua New Guinea’s National Disaster Management Office did not immediately give a toll.

Aid agencies including the Papua New Guinea Red Cross and CARE said they were on standby and working to find out more.

Red Cross PNG interim secretary general Janet Philemon told AFP the landslide location was remote and that it could take up to two days for emergency services or aid to reach the area.

The Red Cross estimates the number of injured or dead could be between 100 and 500. But Philemon said she was “trying to get a clearer picture of what the situation is.”

The agency was on standby to offer first aid, blankets and non-food items to those affected.

“There is no indication of an earthquake or anything that may have triggered (this event). It is a gold mining area and people may have been gold mining on that mountain,” she said.

Otherwise, the landslide may have been caused by heavy rain, Philemon suggested.

Sitting just south of the equator, the area gets frequent heavy rains.

This year has seen intense rainfall and flooding.

In March, at least 23 people were killed by a landslide in a nearby province.

The Australian government said it was “making enquiries with local authorities to determine whether any Australians have been affected.”

“The Australian Government offers its sympathies to those affected by landslides in Papua New Guinea.”

burs-lec-arb/djw/cwl

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

How stores use TikTok to sell 

e-cigarettes to children

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS USA

A new paper in Nicotine and Tobacco Research, published by Oxford University Press, shows that advertising and sales of vaping products is common on TikTok, the video sharing platform popular among teenagers. Users pushing these items often use hashtags like #puffbundles to disguise vaping products by including things like lip gloss and candy in the packages for sale.

Despite smoking rates reaching an all-time low in the United States, public health professionals are concerned about adolescent use of electronic cigarettes. In 2023 some 4.7 million (17%) middle school and high school students reported using e-cigarettes. Public health advocates are concerned that adolescents are at risk of becoming addicted to nicotine through these products and may transition to combustible cigarettes. Although several countries have raised the minimum legal sales age of e-cigarettes to 21, rates of youth and young adult e-cigarette use remain high worldwide, creating speculation about how young adults manage to purchase vaping products.

Social media may play a key component. In 2023 63% of people between 13 and 17 reported using TikTok, the popular is a short-form video hosting service. This study sought to examine TikTok content regarding the sale and distribution of e-cigarettes.

In September 2023 researchers here scraped 475 English language TikTok videos posted between July 1, 2022 and August 31, 2023 using a TikTok application programming interface. The investigators identified popular hashtags related to e-cigarettes, including #puffbarss, #geekbar, #elfbar. They then narrowed the hashtags to those specific to online sales of e-cigarettes (hashtags included #discreetshipping, #puffbundle, #hiddennic).

Overall, the researchers found that 50.4% of the videos studies advertised popular vaping brands and 45% included cannabis products. Some 28.6% of products advertised were described as “bundled,” 8.7% indicated that the products were “hidden,” and 6% specified international shipping was possible. Videos directed customers to other social media platforms—most often (57.5%) Instagram—to use services including Telegram to purchase electronic nicotine products.

The study indicated that vendors, either individuals or businesses, often evade local, state, or national legal restrictions on sales and advertising of vaping products to minors by creating what TikTok uses tag as #puffbundles or #vapebundles. These bundles often include other innocuous products (including candy, fake eyelashes, and lip gloss), so the packages do not appear to be vaping products at all. This explains young adults are purchasing e-cigarettes despite minimum legal sales age and flavor restriction laws.

Among videos posted about selling vaping products on TikTok, almost half (45.2%) advertised that they did not require age verification of the buyer. No video indicated customers needed to provide identification for purchase or acceptance of the mailed package of vaping products.

“Parents should be aware that children may be receiving e-cigarette products through the mail. These self-proclaimed small businesses are targeting youth by advertising that they don’t check for identification,” said the paper’s lead author, Page Dobbs. “If your child receives a bundle of candy or beauty products in the mail, check inside the packaging or inside the scrunchie with a zipper. Also, policymakers and enforcement agencies should be aware that these products are being shipped internationally, meaning people are circumventing tobacco laws in multiple countries.”

The paper, “#Discreetshipping: Selling E-cigarettes on TikTok,” is available (on May 23rd) at https://doi.org/10.1093/ntr/ntae081.

To request a copy of the study, please contact:
Daniel Luzer 
daniel.luzer@oup.com

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JOURNAL

Nicotine & Tobacco Research

DOI

10.1093/ntr/ntae081 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Content analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Discreetshipping: Selling E-cigarettes on TikTok

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

23-May-2024