Fact Check: Iconic Pic Captures Joan Baez and Jimi Hendrix Smoking a Bong in 1968?

Alex Kasprak
Thu, 31 August 2023

Betterman / Getty Images

Claim:

A photo authentically shows Joan Baez holding a bong and smoking marijuana with Jimi Hendrix.

Rating:

Rating: Fake


Since as early as 2013, a photo of Joan Baez and Jimi Hendrix apparently smoking marijuana and sharing a bong repeatedly goes viral on various social media platforms:


This picture has been manipulated. The original photo, taken in August 1968, contains no bong:


The caption provided by Getty Images explains the context behind the photograph, which occurred during a relief concert for refugees of the Biafra-Nigeria Civil War:

Folk singer Joan Baez and rock singer Jimi Hendrix chat between acts at a Biafran Relief Benefit show at a place in Manhattan called Steve Paul's Scene. Both Miss Baez and Hendrix performed free of charge and Hendrix contributed $500 cash to the fund. The benefit was to raise food and money for refugees of the Biafra-Nigeria Civil War.

It is unlikely that Baez would be photographed smoking marijuana, as she has publicly stated her distaste for drugs. In discussing her short-lived relationship with Bob Dylan with Rolling Stone Magazine, for example, Baez referenced her lack of interest in drugs:

By 1965, though, Dylan's desire to move toward rock and his waning interest in protest songs helped drive them apart. Baez thinks her distaste for drugs distanced her from Dylan in the Sixties and later, during their reunion on the 1975–76 Rolling Thunder Revue. "I was the only one who didn't do drugs," she says of those shows. "It was the same as that trip to England," she adds, referring to the 1965 Dylan tour documented in Don't Look Back. "I couldn't connect with what their brains were doing."

In a 2021 interview with CBS, Baez said that she did "zero" drugs during her heyday as a musician in the 60s, though she has, periodically, tried marijuana more recently. "I try periodically because people say it's a great way to relax or whatever," she said. "It doesn't work for me."

Because the image is photoshopped to add a bong and marijuana smoke that were not there in the original photo, we rate it Fake.

Sources:

alihamzah23023. "Joan Baez & Jimi Hendrix Sharing a Bong before a Performance, Early 1970." R/OldSchoolCool, 7 Apr. 2016, www.reddit.com/r/OldSchoolCool/comments/4dpoo4/joan_baez_jimi_hendrix_sharing_a_bong_before_a/.

Browne, David. "Joan Baez's Fighting Side: The Life and Times of a Secret Badass." Rolling Stone, 5 Apr. 2017, https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/joan-baezs-fighting-side-the-life-and-times-of-a-secret-badass-129051/.

"CBS Mornings on TikTok." TikTok, https://www.tiktok.com/@cbsmornings/video/6969232037899275526?lang=en. Accessed 31 Aug. 2023.

"Folk Singer Joan Baez and Rock Singer Jimi Hendrix Chat between Acts..." Getty Images, https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/folk-singer-joan-baez-and-rock-singer-jimi-hendrix-chat-news-photo/515448732. Accessed 31 Aug. 2023.

insanepuma. "Hits from the Bong with Jimi Hendrix and Joan Baez." R/OldCoolSchool, 24 Feb. 2017, www.reddit.com/r/OldCoolSchool/comments/5vxope/hits_from_the_bong_with_jimi_hendrix_and_joan_baez/.

https://www.instagram.com/p/iMxB20P_RD/?hl=af. Accessed 31 Aug. 2023.

Conscription is resurging across Europe. Is that a good thing?

Joshua Askew
Thu, 31 August 2023 


Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 shocked Europe into taking a long hard look at its defences.

With peace in the region no longer a given, many Western capitals began asking if conscription was a solution to their security fears, at times igniting firey debate.

Lithuania in August announced plans to extend its draft, joining Denmark, while German and British politicians have suggested reviving compulsory military service.


But is conscription the right approach to Russian aggression? What impacts could its revival have on Europe? Will it prove counterproductive or help defend the region?

“Europe’s armed forces, particularly those on the border with Russia, now realise they don't have enough manpower,” said Vincenzo Bove, professor of political science at Warwick University, who specialises in conscription. "They clearly see conscription as a solution to that."

“Whether this is a good idea in terms of deterring a potential Russian invasion, we’re not really sure,” he continued, suggesting there was a lack of evidence about the effectiveness of conscript armies compared to regular forces.

Owing to the complexity of modern warfare, Bove questioned if conscripts could be properly trained to use the advanced equipment or tactics employed today in the short time available.

FILE - Oleg flies a drone while testing it on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, on June 8, 2022. - Natacha Pisarenko/Copyright 2022 The AP. All rights reserved

"Just look at what is happening now in Russia with conscripts… They're not highly motivated. Young men are being forced to work. The majority of them would rather be doing something else."

A former Wagner mercenary in July told Euronews that while he served in Ukraine one of his main duties was to ensure Russian conscripts - “barely 21-years-old” - would not run away, as they were so reluctant to fight.
Canon fodder?

Besides economic concerns about the inefficiency of compulsory military service – with massive numbers of people prevented from doing something where they could be more productive – Bove raised ethical concerns about sending civilians into battle with little experience.

Having served in the Italian Navy for 15 years, he said: “Three years isn't enough to teach the basics of warfare… even using basic weapons requires a lot of training.”

“Some countries are talking about three-month programmes… that’s nothing. They won't even learn how to salute,” Bove added in jest.

Tucked on Russia’s border via the small enclave of Kaliningrad, Lithuania recently began drafting reforms to its conscription system, which could see people living and studying abroad called up.

One option in the proposals is to enlist recruits voluntarily for one-month training sessions every summer for three years. They would in theory then be ready for battle.

Along with Lithuania, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Latvia, Austria, Greece and Estonia currently have some form of compulsory military service, alongside warring parties Ukraine and Russia.

FILE - A Leopard 2 tank is seen in action at the Bundeswehr tank battalion 203 at the Field Marshal Rommel Barracks in Augustdorf, Germany, Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2023. - Martin Meissner/Copyright 2023 The AP. All rights reserved.

Still, others were supportive of conscription - with caveats.

Critical of “performative acts" where “every man and woman is herded into military service", Elisabeth Braw at the American Enterprise Institute told Euronews selective systems can “work really well".

The defence analyst pointed to the “incredibly successful” example of Norway, where citizens are called up en masse, but only a certain percentage are chosen for training.

“The army gets the best and the brightest, and on top of that service is an asset on a conscript's CV," she explained, with passing selection a mark of prestige.

In 2015, Norway became the first European country to introduce compulsory military service for both men and women. It still retains a professional military, providing the bedrock of its defence.

Braw offered a note of caution about conscription, however.

“Troops must be equipped with meaningful skills. It has to be time well spent," she said. "The Kremlin isn't going to be frightened by a conscript model that's not thought through, with young men and women sitting idle in barracks."

Some skills often cited by advocates are social and survival skills, functioning under pressure, stress tolerance, functioning in crisis situations and general resilience.

Enlisted civilians could be put to use beyond defence, Braw continued.

“Keeping a country safe is about more than the armed forces. It's about public health, infrastructure protection, and healthcare. Young people can be called up when they are needed to help protect the country from crises or disasters."

“There are so many societal problems the government alone cannot solve.”

France in 2019 launched a form of soft conscription, with young people offered voluntary civic service. Macron billed his pet project as a way of developing patriotism and social cohesion, though opponents say it diverted money for the wider education system.

Some Studies show conscripts are more likely to face unemployment when their service finishes, while others doubt if acquired skills are transferable to other sectors or learned at all.
Does military service breed patriotism?

One reason Europe is resorting to conscription - where men and women are typically legally obliged to fight - is that conventional recruitment drives aren't working.

The German army, for example, is failing to attract new soldiers, despite a vast initiative to strengthen itself amid the Ukraine war, the country's Ministry of Defence announced in August.

Why exactly people don't want to serve is unclear.

An argument by experts is militaries cannot compete with private sector wages and conditions, with army jobs often difficult and dangerous.

Yet, Bove said this claim cannot explain what is happening in areas of Europe with high unemployment, such as southern Italy or Spain. Here civilians still don't want to join up.

Another explanation is cultural, with civilians spurning the army because they don't share its “overarching goals and purposes,” he told Euronews.

Devastating wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have left “long-lasting” negative attitudes towards the military, with Bove doubting that throwing cash at the problem could improve recruitment.

Millions killed in aftermath of post 9/11 wars, finds new report

Arguments exist that conscription can boost patriotism and a population's willingness to defend itself against an aggressor.

“Conscript service has a long history in Finland and has broad support in society,” said Elina Riutta, President of the Finnish Conscripts Union, in a statement sent to Euronews.

As Ukraine shows, "war affects the whole society. The more people are trained in case of a crisis, the better resilience society has," she added.

Finnish soldiers attends a field training exercise Sapeli 23, led by the Guard Jaeger Regiment, in Porvoo, Finland, Wednesday, May 31, 2023. - Heikki Saukkomaa/Lehtikuva

“The Russian threat has always been known in Finland, so the war in Ukraine does not in itself change things regarding conscript service, but rather emphasises its purposefulness.”

“The will to defend the country among conscripts and the entire nation is currently at a record high.”

Finland is in a unique position geographically, sharing a long border with Russia that it has fought in the past. Its example is not necessarily applicable to other countries.

Research by Bove and his colleagues Riccardo Di Leo and Marco Giani found conscription actually can create a gap between people and their government.

“Conscription makes people identify with the armed forces, but his loyalty clashes with that towards other democratic institutions, causing people to trust the authorities less.”

“If you're worried about the increasing distance between younger generations and the state, then conscription is not the answer. It's actually counterproductive,” he added.

US Unemployment reaches 18-month high for 'good reasons' as Americans come back to work


August jobs report: U.S. added 187,000 jobs, unemployment rate rises



Josh Schafer
·Reporter
Fri, September 1, 2023

The unemployment rate in August hit its highest level since February 2022, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed Friday.

But a jump in the unemployment rate to 3.8% from 3.5% might not be a bad sign for the overall health of the US labor market.

"This was one of those 'good reasons' increases," Jefferies US economist Thomas Simons wrote in a note on Friday. "Given the tightness in the labor market, more supply is welcome, and sometimes it takes a little while for new entrants to find a fit."

In August, the civilian labor force added 736,000 participants from the month prior. As a result, the labor force participation rate rose to 62.8% in August, its highest level since reaching 63.3% in February 2020.

The US economy has added 3.1 million civilians back into the workforce over the last year.

And economists see the August jobs report as another sign supply and demand for workers is coming into a "better balance" as the post-pandemic labor market defined by the 'Great Resignation' recedes. This, economists note, would likely be a welcome development for the Federal Reserve as Chair Jerome Powell has repeatedly stated the labor market needs better balance between supply and demand.

"Labor supply continues to surprise to the upside and is helping rebalance the labor market," Bank of America US economist Stephen Juneau wrote in a note to clients on Friday.

In August, the NFIB's small business jobs report showed 40% percent of the 611 small business owners surveyed reported job openings they couldn't fill, the lowest level since February 2021.

The Job Opening and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS report, out earlier this week also revealed workers are quitting their jobs at the lowest rate since January 2021, indicating workers are valuing the certainty of employment over the possibility of a new role. Over the last year, the number of open jobs in the US has dropped by 2.5 million.

A hiring sign is displayed at a restaurant in Prospect Heights, Ill., on April 4, 2023.

 (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)

'No one left to hire'

The jump in unemployment in August was driven by younger and older workers — those between 16-24 and those 55 and older — a sign to some economists that so-called "prime age" workers, or those between 25-54, are fully engaged with the workforce.

Participation from prime age workers increased to 83.5%, matching a 21-year high previously seen in June. Economists at Wells Fargo noted that participation from older workers and teenaged workers also picked up in August, rising 0.2% and 0.8% percentage points, respectively.

"There is virtually no one left to hire in the prime age cohorts, except for roughly 50k/month new entrants into the labor force (i.e. college and HS grads)," Simons wrote. "The age cohorts with remaining slack likely won't be able to meet the skills requirements for many current job openings."

In Simons' view, this means a lack of supply will see employment gains "slow significantly."

Other factors, including the end of the student loan moratorium and dwindling pandemic era savings, could also be at play in driving folks back to seeking work as the consumer is expected to come under pressure over the back half of the year and into 2024.

But one month's data has some economists wary of calling this the start of something bigger happening in the US labor market.

"The participation rates for younger and older workers have been more volatile than for prime-age workers, so it's not clear whether the August increases mark the beginning of a sustained rise," Oxford Economics lead US economist Nancy Vanden Houten wrote on Friday.

Josh Schafer is a reporter for Yahoo Finance.

L.A. hotel strike: Soccer star Lionel Messi cancels stay at Santa Monica hotel in support of strikers


Suhauna Hussain
Fri, September 1, 2023 

Inter Miami forward Lionel Messi celebrates after making penalty kick during Leagues Cup soccer match in Dallas. Messi and the rest of the soccer team were scheduled to stay at the Fairmont Miramar in Santa Monica, where workers are striking, but the team has moved to a different hotel. (Logan Riely / Getty Images)

Argentine soccer star Lionel Messi and other players of the Inter Miami team were slated to stay at a Santa Monica hotel where workers are striking this weekend. But Unite Here Local 11 on Friday said the team is canceling its reservation at the union's urging that Messi respect a boycott of some 60 Southern California hotels that haven't signed labor contracts.

Messi is headed to BMO Stadium this Sunday for a game against LAFC. Tickets for the Sunday game skyrocketed when news broke this summer that Messi was joining Inter Miami.

Messi was originally scheduled to check into the Fairmont Miramar on Friday afternoon, said Unite Here Local 11 spokesperson Maria Hernandez.

The hotel is among 13 properties where union members walked off the job Wednesday. That means the soccer players, all members of the MLS Players Assn. union, would have had to cross another union's picket line to stay at the Fairmont.

The soccer players' union released a statement Friday afternoon applauding the decision by Inter Miami to change hotels.

"The MLSPA is proud to stand with the striking workers at the Fairmont Miramar and other LA area hotels," the association said in a social media post. "We urge all of the hotels to reach fair contracts with their workers ASAP."

Inter Miami representatives Molly Dreska and Rafael Cabrera and Fairmont Miramar Director of Human Resources Ashley Eberhard did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

"The housekeepers, cooks, bellmen and servers of the Fairmont Miramar say thank you to the great Lionel Messi and his teammates for agreeing to move from the hotel and stand with the striking workers," the union said in a statement Friday afternoon.

The previous day, Unite Here Local 11 had publicly called for Messi and his teammates "to stand in solidarity with us and stay out of the Fairmont Miramar."

"Just two weeks ago, workers at the Fairmont Miramar called for a boycott of their hotel after hotel security officers were videoed violently attacking their own employees while they attempted to establish a picket line," the union had said.

Picket lines at the Santa Monica hotel have been the site of violent altercations in which workers were injured. Security personnel pushed and tackled picketing hotel workers who appeared to be trying to cross a temporary barricade after a rally by striking workers in early August, according to video footage of the incident.

The union and local elected officials in recent weeks have sharply criticized the Fairmont and several other properties in Los Angeles and Orange counties where violence had flared against strikers.

The union filed a complaint Aug. 7 with the National Labor Relations Board highlighting what it called a pattern of violent incidents and property destruction. The complaint named three hotels — among them the Fairmont Miramar — alleging hotel management had condoned or turned a blind eye to attacks on workers.

Soon after, the union called for a boycott of the Fairmont Miramar as well as Hotel Maya in Long Beach and Laguna Cliffs Marriott in Dana Point, the other two hotels named in the complaint. The boycott has since been expanded to include scores of other hotels in talks with the union that have not reached a contract.

Keith Grossman, an attorney with Hirschfeld Kraemer who represents a coalition of 44 hotels involved in talks with Unite Here Local 11, said Monday that the union’s call for a boycott by visitors and conventions will hurt the city and small businesses that depend on conventions.

Asked for comment about Inter Miami's decision, Grossman reiterated concern that a boycott could damage the city's reputation for the long term.

“This Union effort regarding Messi and his Team is just one more nonsensical Union effort to drive business away from LA hotels," Grossman said in an email. "It’s unfortunate for our employees and for the City that Local 11 is focused more on its political agenda than on bargaining. We offered the Union dates to bargain and they have simply ignored us. They are more interested in strikes and boycotts, which is not going to help get us to a settlement.”

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Opinion: Biden heads to Southeast Asia next week, but his itinerary is 'exactly backward'

Kelly A. Grieco and Jennifer Kavanagh
Fri, September 1, 2023 

President Biden will go to the Group of 20 meeting in India on Sept. 7, then to Vietnam, but he's skipping the U.S.-ASEAN summit in Jakarta, Indonesia. 

(Patrick Semansky / Associated Press)

When President Biden visits Vietnam after his stop at the Group of 20 summit in New Delhi this month, he is expected to upgrade our two nations’ bilateral relationship to a "strategic partnership." The shift will mark a significant turning for both countries. But it should not come at the cost of skipping the summit of the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations around the same time in Indonesia. Biden's choice to go to Hanoi — and send Vice President Kamala Harris in his place to Jakarta — is exactly backward.

The administration may claim otherwise, but in prioritizing the Vietnam visit, it is doubling down on its efforts to build a nation-by-nation Cold War-style security bloc to counter China and avoiding working with regional groups — such as ASEAN — likely to decide the Indo-Pacific region's future. In an increasingly multipolar world, Washington needs to become more effective at navigating fluid and flexible coalitions, not rerun an old playbook.

Read more: Goldberg: China's faltering economy is a result of state-directed planning. Now comes the global fallout

The Biden administration insists its approach “is not about forcing countries to choose” between Washington and Beijing, but as we learned through interviews with former senior government officials and security experts in Southeast Asia, its actions often do not match its rhetoric. And the ASEAN countries — Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam — are noticing.

According to our interviews, Washington has publicly and privately pressured ASEAN members to turn down China’s global infrastructure projects, known as the Belt and Road Initiative, reduce their economic and technological dependence on Beijing and cancel their military partnerships with the People’s Liberation Army. What the administration heralds as “putting really big, important strategic points on the board” — for example, gaining additional access to the Philippines’ military bases and holding the largest-ever military exercise with Indonesia — many in the region view as thinly disguised attempts to form a new U.S. security bloc. Upgrading the relationship with Vietnam is just the latest example.

Worse, U.S. efforts to build its network of security partnerships are harming, not improving, ASEAN security concerns. For example, a trilateral initiative (known as AUKUS), in which the U.S. and the United Kingdom plan to equip Australia with nuclear-powered submarines, alarms some ASEAN states because it puts them geographically in the center of a dangerous U.S.-China tug of war.

Read more: After bitter warnings, the U.S. and China are trying to ease hostilities

Washington's limited approach to ASEAN as a collective has done little to allay those fears. Biden’s hesitance is partly understandable. ASEAN can be vexingly slow and bureaucratic, but that does not make it any less central to the region. And unlike Beijing, Washington is on the outside of many of the organization’s economic and political collaborations — for example, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership that unites ASEAN, China, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan. Whatever points Washington is putting on the board in the region, they are not the ones that count most among nations focused on consensus-based multilateralism.

In the end, Washington’s drive for exclusive partnerships could leave it isolated. No amount of U.S. effort will consolidate ASEAN members as an anti-China bloc because these countries depend on China economically and politically. That long-standing position is unlikely to change, a former Singaporean defense official told us. And were these countries to turn away from China, they would be more likely to lean into the overlapping partnerships they are building with their other neighbors, such as India, Australia and Japan — investments made to give themselves strategic options — than to decisively take the U.S. side.

Take Vietnam: Even as relations with the United States have advanced, Vietnam has pursued deeper defense ties with India, formalizing cooperation on military logistics and weapons development and moving toward arms purchases from New Delhi. Vietnam also continues to preserve high-level defense and government ties with China — a necessity given their shared border and contentious history. When Biden upgrades relations with Vietnam, it will not represent Hanoi's picking Washington over Beijing, although many will frame the move this way.

Read more: Regional threats push Japan, South Korea to Camp David trilateral summit with Biden

The region has moved beyond security blocs and binary choices. The United States needs to do the same. The best way to do this would be through robust economic engagement, for example by joining — rejoining really — the now-rebranded Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade deal President Obama negotiated and President Trump scuttled. Unfortunately, U.S. economic nationalism probably precludes this option.

Alternatively, the United States could formalize its participation in ASEAN’s subregional political and economic groups with investments of capital, materiel and technical expertise. Washington could also leverage its comparative advantages in green technology, industrial know-how or education to create new ASEAN subgroups, as it did with the five-nation U.S.-Mekong Partnership established in 2020 to promote stability and sustainable development with initiatives focused on energy, water and health security.

Above all, Washington needs to stop expecting countries to choose sides in its balancing act with China, or risk being shut out of Southeast Asia.

Kelly A. Grieco is a senior fellow with the Reimagining US Grand Strategy Program at the Stimson Center, an adjunct associate professor of security studies at Georgetown University and a nonresident fellow at the Brute Krulak Center of Marine Corps University. Jennifer Kavanagh is a senior fellow with the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an adjunct professor of security studies at Georgetown University.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Silicon Valley’s elites can’t be trusted with the future of AI. We must break their dominance–and dangerous god complex

Vivek Wadhwa, Vinita Gupta
Fri, September 1, 2023

Chris J. Ratcliffe - Bloomberg - Getty Images

In January 2023, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told a large audience in India that the country was not capable of building a ChatGPT. Eight months later, India’s Chandrayaan 3 made a perfect landing on the largely unexplored dark side of the Moon, putting India alongside the United States and China in the exclusive club of nations with working lunar rovers.

Altman later recanted his comments and said they were taken out of context–but his Freudian slip did illustrate the ignorance of Silicon Valley. Altman and his Silicon Valley peers are the wrong ones to lead us into the AI future because they are largely driven by profit, disconnected from the world’s realities, and often suffer from a serious god complex.

And it’s not only space technology. India has also already built the world’s most advanced cancer care infrastructure and is rolling it out on an unprecedented scale, leading the White House to announce a partnership with India to combine efforts on curing cancer.

India is also the only major country that has designed and fostered an intelligent regulation strategy to maintain open and free markets in key aspects of technology such as e-commerce and finance. Its Unified Payments Interface system is leveling the playing field and preventing market abuse by large technology giants.

We can do the same with AI. We can take Silicon Valley’s open-source technology and build something that benefits the masses. Altman surely believes that his company is doing good for the world and is uniquely positioned to deliver advanced AI, but even one of OpenAI’s top funders, Elon Musk, has distanced himself from this project due to concerns over its profit-seeking motives.

Research shows the market dysfunction created by Google, Amazon, Facebook, and other large players that dominate e-commerce, advertising, and online information-sharing. Big Tech monopolists are already positioning themselves to dominate AI. The shortage of GPUs and massive lobbying dollars spent requesting expensive regulation that would lock out startups are just two examples of this troubling trend.

Altman’s comments in India made him sound like he is unaware that Indian scientists have played a massive role in AI’s recent progress. They have published important research papers and have been key players inside large technology giants that have driven the development of foundational Large Language Models like GPT-4 (which powers ChatGPT) and Google’s Bard. Needless to say, the CEOs of U.S. technology companies building AI technologies, including Google, Microsoft, and IBM, are Indian.

To start, India can build, train, and finetune a massive foundational LLM that uses data already in the public domain or that is legally aggregated with full permission from its creators or owners. Notably, social media data should be underweighted as large chunks are toxic and unhelpful. This will also make a homegrown LLM safer than current models. As data scientists always say: Garbage in, garbage out.

India’s LLM would be trained on data representing diverse world views and situations, something OpenAI and StableDiffusion neglected. The cardinal sin of much AI and algorithms today is discrimination baked into their fabric through poor data design. This leads to the next key component of India’s LLM gift to the world: complete transparency and traceability. Unlike a few years ago, it is now largely possible to shine a light on the inner workings of deep neural networks used to train and create LLMs. This requires innovation and advances, but India is up to the task. Transparent AI would radically change the game.

Sharing such a system with the world will give us greater safety by allowing the brightest minds to work on the best technology and counter-balance dominant technology companies and evil-doers as rogue states and criminal groups seek to leverage AI. The AI cat is already out of the bag. LLM code and weights for large models like Meta’s Lllama are in the wild. Restrictions on transmission are no longer useful and would only cripple innovation.

Building, sharing, and maintaining a truly open AI LLM is not sufficient. Half of the challenge with LLMs is training, which is extraordinarily expensive and compute-intensive, costing tens of millions of dollars for each model version. Costs will fall, and researchers and AI companies are already figuring out how to train effectively with less data, less computing, and more specificity, often yielding superior results.

AI is a public good, and the best way to support its creation is to ensure all resources required are publicly accessible. Part of why Google and Meta have leaped to the forefront of AI is their brute access to massive technology infrastructure, something few university researchers could dream of.

To cement AI’s future development as an open resource, India should build a massive training cloud for AI and offer it up at cost to Indian startups and researchers–and to the entire world. A good model for this is massive telescopes that scan the skies and offer usage time to astronomers everywhere, with a small slice dedicated to the operating institution.

India can reap enormous benefits by fostering AI innovation in its own economy and helping its own AI community leap forward with the resources required to do the work. Even better, India and Silicon Valley can join forces in this quest to foster truly open and publicly available AI. LLMs are foundational technology components that can benefit all and develop faster with a motivated community. The Linux operating system, which now dominates global enterprise computing, is a great example of this dynamic. A public, community-driven vision for AI will accelerate innovation, reduce bias, ensure greater transparency, and provide a better outcome for all.

AI will fundamentally change society and billions of lives. Its development is too important to be left to the hubris of Silicon Valley’s elites. India is well positioned to break their dominance and level the AI playing field, accelerating innovation and benefiting all of humankind.

Vivek Wadhwa is an academic, entrepreneur, and author. His book, From Incremental to Exponential, explains how large companies can see the future and rethink innovation.

Vinita Gupta was the first woman of Indian origin to take her company public in the United States. She is an accomplished entrepreneur, author, and bridge champion.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

China and Myanmar pledge to fight online scams as Beijing seeks stronger ties with junta

South China Morning Post
Thu, August 31, 2023 

China and Myanmar have pledged to step up the fight against online scams as Beijing pushes for closer ties with the ruling military junta in the troubled Southeast Asian country.

For the first time in almost four years, diplomats of the two countries gathered on Monday and Tuesday in Beijing, where they "had a frank and in-depth exchange of views" on how to maintain a stable border and safeguard peace in frontier areas, according to a readout from the Chinese foreign ministry.

They also "reached important consensus on improving the meeting mechanism, facilitating people-to-people exchanges, and cooperation in combating cross-border internet fraud".

.

Myanmar police hand over five telecoms and internet fraud suspects to Chinese police in Yangon, Myanmar on Saturday. Photo: Chinese embassy in Myanmar/Handout via Xinhua alt=Myanmar police hand over five telecoms and internet fraud suspects to Chinese police in Yangon, Myanmar on Saturday. 

Photo: Chinese embassy in Myanmar/Handout via Xinhua>

Officials from national defence, commerce and immigration authorities as well as local governments also joined the meeting.

According to the readout, the two sides agreed to step up communication and information-sharing to improve cooperation on border affairs.

The two-day meeting was part of a bilateral mechanism under which officials of both sides have met annually since the early 2000s. However, no meeting was held in the previous three years, even via video link.

The latest meeting was held as Beijing steps up its crackdown on cross-border telecoms fraud, which has triggered nationwide outrage since reports surfaced that Chinese citizens, lured by high pay, had been smuggled into Myanmar and forced to participate in online scams.

Over the past week, at least 24 suspects were repatriated from Myanmar to China as part of the crackdown, which Beijing's embassy in the country said had "underscored the firm stance of China and Myanmar in combating fraud".

Last month, China sent special envoy on Asian affairs Deng Xijun to Naypyidaw, Myanmar's purpose-built capital. There he met Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, who seized power in a coup in February 2021, as well as key officials of the military government, including Myanmar's Foreign Minister Than Swe and Minister of International Cooperation Ko Ko Hlaing.

According to Min Aung Hlaing's office, during the July 28 meeting the two sides "had a frank exchange of views" on cooperation, Chinese aid, Myanmar's political situation, the country's development and the stability of border areas.

Deng's visit showed Beijing is quietly stepping up its engagement with the junta in Myanmar, a neighbour with which it shares over 2,200km (1,367 miles) of border. The country also hosts hundreds of Chinese investment projects, including pipelines that transport natural gas and crude oil from Myanmar's deep water port of Kyaukphyu in the Bay of Bengal with the city of Kunming in southwest China.

The 2021 coup triggered widespread and prolonged violence and drew sanctions from the US and its allies.

China did not condemn or endorse the military regime but has pledged to work with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), of which Myanmar is a member, for peace talks.

However, Beijing appears to have adjusted its strategy.

Deng, who until November was China's ambassador to Asean, had separate meetings with representatives of seven of Myanmar's ethnic armed organisations in Yunnan in late December before flying to Naypyidaw, where he met Min Aung Hlaing.

Deng visited again in February and met representatives of the National Democratic Alliance Army (NDAA), an insurgent group in eastern Shan state.

In May, Qin Gang, China's foreign minister at the time, visited Naypyidaw in the first official visit by a high-ranking Beijing official since the coup.

However, Beijing's increasing engagement with the diplomatically isolated junta is unlikely to achieve a political solution or an end to the violence in the country, according to Morgan Michaels, a research fellow in Southeast Asian politics and foreign policy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think tank headquartered in London.

Instead, China's growing involvement may be largely driven by "a need to ensure stability in the border area in order to safeguard their interests or kick-start stalled investment projects", Michaels wrote in a report earlier this month.

Copyright (c) 2023. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

Nissan is reusing the batteries from old Leaf electric vehicles to make portable power sources

YURI KAGEYAMA
Thu, August 31, 2023

Nissan's new portable power station is displayed at Nissan headquarters in Yokohama, south of Tokyo, Thursday, Aug. 31, 2023, reusing battery stacks from the Nissan Leaf electric car. Batteries in Nissan Leaf electric cars are getting a new life as portable power sources that can be used to charge gadgets on the go, rev up guitars at outdoor concerts and deliver emergency power in disasters.

(AP Photo/Yuri Kageyama) 


YOKOHAMA, Japan (AP) — Batteries in older Nissan Leaf electric vehicles are getting a new life as portable power sources that can be used to run gadgets on the go or deliver emergency power in disasters.

Japanese automaker Nissan Motor Co. has sold more than 650,000 Leaf EVs. Their batteries often retain a charging capacity longer than the car's life span.

Nissan says it is using the old batteries in portable power sources it developed with electronics maker JVCKenwood Corp. and 4R Energy Corp., a company co-owned by Nissan and Sumitomo Corp. which works on ecological vehicles and power storage systems.

The 14.4-kilogram (32-pound) power source sells for 170,500 yen ($1,170) in Japan. Overseas sales are not yet set.

Each Leaf uses 48 battery modules. The portable power stations contain two modules.

Nissan officials said they are testing the batteries in Leafs after their owners stop driving them, and reusing those that can still hold a charge.

EV batteries use expensive rare metals and other raw materials, and their manufacture produces carbon gases, so reusing them for other purposes helps sustainability.

Balakumar Balasingam, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Windsor who isn't involved in the Nissan project, said batteries can no longer be used to drive electric cars when their charge capacity declines to about 80%, but can still be used for other purposes.

“Retired EV batteries have great potential in energy storage applications,” he said.

“Without such a solution, billions of EV battery packs will be made and then prematurely recycled in the next decade. That will be a problem for sustainability.”

Scholz dismisses talk of keeping nuclear energy option open in Germany
Associated Press
Sat, September 2, 2023 

The decommissioned Biblis nuclear power plant is pictured in Biblis, Germany, Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2023. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Saturday, Sept. 2 dismissed a junior coalition partner's suggestion that the country should keep open the option of reopening its closed nuclear power plants, declaring that nuclear energy is a “dead horse” in Germany. 

(AP Photo/Michael Probst, file) 

BERLIN (AP) — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz dismissed a suggestion by a junior coalition partner that the country should keep open the option of using its closed nuclear power plants, declaring that atomic energy is a “dead horse” in Germany.

Germany switched off its last three nuclear reactors in April, completing a process that received wide political support after Japan's Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster in 2011. But some argued for a rethink after energy prices spiked because of the war in Ukraine.

Among those who advocated a reprieve were members of the Free Democrats, a pro-business party that is part of Scholz's governing coalition.

This week, the Free Democrats' parliamentary group approved a policy statement saying that it wants “to stop the dismantling of the nuclear power plants that are still fit to use” as part of efforts to be prepared for worst-case scenarios. “That is the only way we will remain capable of acting in every situation,” it said.

Scholz brushed aside the suggestion in an interview with Deutschlandfunk radio broadcast on Saturday .

Nuclear energy is over,” he said. “The issue of nuclear energy in Germany is a dead horse. Anyone who wanted to build new nuclear power plants would need 15 years and would have to spend 15-20 billion euros ($16.2-21.6 billion) each.”

The chancellor insisted that “the fact is that with the end of the use of nuclear power, dismantling has also begun,” and any talk of resuming the use of atomic energy would imply building new power stations.

He stressed plans to meet the future needs of Europe's biggest economy by expanding the use of renewable sources such as wind and solar power.

The latest discussion about nuclear energy came after Scholz on Wednesday pledged that the ideologically diverse coalition of his center-left Social Democrats, the environmentalist Greens and the Free Democrats would tone down frequent public infighting that has weighed it down badly in polls.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Regulators want to fine Qantas 'hundreds of millions of dollars' for selling tickets for thousands of already-cancelled flights

Pete Syme
Fri, September 1, 2023 

A Qantas 787 Dreamliner.Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty 

• The Australian airline Qantas is under fire from the country's competition regulator.

• It's accusing Qantas of continuing to sell tickets for 8,000 flights that had been cancelled.

• And it's seeking a record-breaking fine in the hundreds of millions of dollars, per Reuters.

Qantas could be fined hundreds of millions of dollars for selling tickets for thousands of flights that had already been cancelled if regulators get their way, Reuters reported.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission announced Thursday that it was taking the airline to court, accusing it of engaging in false, misleading, or deceptive conduct.

The ACCC alleges that the Australian flag-carrier kept selling tickets for more than 8,000 flights between May and July 2022, for an average of more than two weeks after they were cancelled.

It also said that, for over 10,000 flights across the same period, Qantas didn't tell ticket holders their flights had been canceled for an average of 18 days. And in some cases, people weren't told about the cancellations until 48 days afterwards, according to the ACCC.

That amounts to 70% of cancelled Qantas flights where tickets were still sold or ticket holders weren't told for at least two days after the cancelation, the regulator said.

Gina Cass-Gottlieb, the ACCC chair, said this likely affected the travel plans of tens of thousands of people, and "left customers with less time to make alternative arrangements and may have led to them paying higher prices."

According to Reuters, Cass-Gottlieb said the ACCC would seek a fine that was "signficantly more" than the record $81 million Volkswagen was fined in 2019 — in relation to its emissions scandal where it cheated tests that identified harmful exhaust fumes.

"We think the penalty should be in hundreds of millions, not tens of millions", she added, per Reuters. "We would want to get more than twice that figure."

Qantas did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment, sent outside Australian working hours. It told Reuters that it would review the allegations made by the ACCC and respond to them in court.

ACCC accuses Qantas of advertising tickets for cancelled flights | 9 News Australia

 

 Aug 31, 2023 

 The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is alleging Qantas advertised online tickets for more than 8000 flights scheduled to leave between May and July last year, even after it had cancelled them. To discuss this news, ACCC Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb speaks to Today's Sarah Abo, and Karl Stefanovic is joined by Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton.

Aug 29, 2023

Sky News host Sharri Markson says Qantas admitted the true figure of money owed to Australians for cancelled flights was about $100 million higher than previously stated estimates.

The prime minister wants Qantas to pay back money it received during the pandemic

7NEWS Australia

 Sep 2, 2023  

The prime minister wants Qantas to pay back some of the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars it received during the pandemic.

He says it was designed to keep companies afloat, not profit, after revelations the airline spent millions on executive bonuses.