Google plans €13 billion investment in Finland, Apple launches Duo foldable phone
Google plans to invest at least €13 billion ($15 billion) in digital infrastructure and supporting projects in Finland over the next two years. The cloud and search services giant says it is deepening its long-term commitment to Finland and to Europe through additional datacenters and investments in low-carbon electricity generation, onshore wind, and battery storage. Google already has a massive campus at Hamina, on Finland’s south coast, which houses seven separate data halls. This is just along the coast from Loviisa, where one of Finland’s two operating nuclear power plants is sited. The Register
OpenAI is not on track to reduce the risk of “catastrophic” loss of control to an acceptable level, a member of its non-profit board has said, amid spreading public and political concern that super-advanced AIs could one day wipe out humanity. Paul Christiano, a US government technology adviser, said: “There is a meaningful risk that rapid acceleration in AI capabilities leads to catastrophic and irreversible loss of control in the very near term.” He added: “I do not think that the AI industry in general, including OpenAI, is currently on track to reduce this risk to an acceptable level.” The Guardian
Another researcher is challenging OpenAI about the data driving its increasingly impressive array of mathematical discoveries. Just days after a bitter row erupted over whether the company’s models benefited from unpublished work, a second mathematician has come forward accusing the AI giant of unethical and “dishonest” behavior and a lack of transparency about the origins of its training data. In a series of posts on Mastodon, mathematician Andreas Thom raised concerns that interactions he and his colleagues had had with the ChatGPT chatbot before OpenAI’s triumphant announcement may have contributed to its success in the field.
Apple has unveiled its first foldable iPhone at the company’s annual launch event in California. The device, called Duo, is the most expensive iPhone to date, with a starting price of $1,999 (£1,476). Roughly the size of a passport when closed, the phone opens to reveal a 7.6in (19.3cm) screen – the largest ever for an iPhone – and allows people to use an Apple Pencil on the device – a capability previously reserved to iPad users. The Duo enables users to split the screen to use two different apps on the device, or two windows of the same website for things like comparison shopping. Sky News
A warning from Jacob Coxon, an AI employee, that the technology could “kill us all” appeared to shock the world into action this week. But the statement has raised questions about Coxon’s motives. The 27-year-old British safety researcher quit his job at Claude developer Anthropic on Wednesday and said that AI companies were “gambling with our lives”. His comment was soon followed by Evan Hubinger, a senior Anthropic researcher, who warned there was more than a 10pc chance that AI would wipe out humanity by the end of the decade. Telegraph
The White House has taken down a Tetris-style game on its website called “Build The Wall”, days after The Tetris Company raised concerns over its use of the game’s likeness. The game, which saw players stack blocks to build a wall to “protect the border” is one of five arcade games which have appeared on the White House website. On 4 September the official Tetris account on X posted, the firm was “not involved in the creation” of the game and it took “copyright infringement very seriously”. BBC
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