List of All Articles with Tag 'tech'

Tesla will offer a “beast mode version” for its much anticipated Cybertruck once it is rolled out by the end of this year, Elon Musk has said. In his latest interview with Joe Rogan on Tuesday, Mr Musk expressed hope that the “beast mode” version of the vehicle will be able to go from zero to 60 mph in under three seconds. The multibillionaire owner of X/Twitter had earlier said the Cybertruck will also get “performance” and “kicks ass” versions. However, Mr Musk did not elaborate on the other features that will be included in these versions of the electric vehicle (EV). He also reiterated that the Cybertruck, expected to launch in November, will have bulletproof steel panels and an option for people to purchase bulletproof glass. “You can make anything bulletproof if you want, but the glass has to be very thick to be bulletproof, so it can’t go up and down,” Mr Musk said. During the interview, Mr Rogan tried shooting an arrow at the vehicle’s stainless steel body. The projectile caused a small dent on the side of the Cybertruck model. Mr Musk said upcoming demonstrations will show the Cybertruck is bulletproof. The Tesla titan said one demonstration will have the vehicle being shot at with a Tommy gun, a 45mm shotgun and a 9mm gun. “Trucks are supposed to be tough, right?” he said. The bulletproof nature of the truck, dubbed “an armoured personal carrier from the future”, has been the subject of intense hype ever since it was unveiled. Mr Musk’s first demonstration of the toughness of the Cybertruck in 2019 had become a misfire as the window of the vehicle immediately smashed after he invited an audience member to throw a small metal ball at it. “Oh my f***ing god. Well, maybe that was a little too hard. It didn’t go through, so that’s a plus... room for improvement,” Mr Musk exclaimed, later adding on social media that prior testing before the event had compromised the window. “Sledgehammer impact on door cracked base of glass, which is why steel ball didn’t bounce off. Should have done steel ball on window, *then* sledgehammer the door,” the Tesla chief had said. Last month, Mr Musk dampened hopes that the Cybertruck will revive profits for the company in the near future. He announced in an earnings call that it will take at least 18 months for the truck to become profitable. “There will be enormous challenges in reaching volume production with Cybertruck and making the Cybertruck cash flow positive,” the Tesla titan told investors and analysts. “The blood, sweat, and tears that will be required to achieve that is just staggering,” he said. Read More Kamala Harris arrives in the UK ahead of AI safety summit X now valued at $19bn – less than half of what Elon Musk paid for it Elon Musk slammed by Israel for offering to send Starlink to Gaza Elon Musk says X posts with misinformation are ‘ineligible for revenue share’ Twitter adds video calling – and lets strangers ring you Elon Musk was ‘almost in tears’ on Tesla earnings call, analyst claims

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. said a new AI chip will generate $2 billion in sales next year, fueling

US Vice President Kamala Harris has arrived in the UK ahead of attending Rishi Sunak’s summit focused on the safe use of artificial intelligence (AI). Ms Harris touched down at Stansted Airport on Tuesday evening with her husband Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff for the summit. She will represent the US at Bletchley Park, near Milton Keynes, on Wednesday and Thursday in place of President Joe Biden. French President Emmanuel Macron will also not be in attendance, whilst Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz are also believed to be unlikely to show up. But Downing Street denied on Monday that the summit was being snubbed by world leaders. Elon Musk, the Tesla CEO and owner of the social media site X, will attend and join Mr Sunak for a live interview after the summit closes. The Prime Minister hopes the summit on AI safety will cement the UK’s status as a leading world player in the cutting-edge technology. Mr Sunak also said last week that mitigating the risk of extinction because of AI should be a global priority alongside pandemics and nuclear war. It comes as Mr Biden signed an executive order on AI on Monday, and said the technology was driving change at “warp speed” and carries tremendous potential as well as perils. The order seeks to steer how AI is developed so that companies can profit without putting public safety in jeopardy. Using the Defence Production Act, it requires leading AI developers to share safety test results and other information with the government.

By Supantha Mukherjee STOCKHOLM An interim artificial intelligence report by the United Nations will lead governments and the

OTTAWA Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said on Tuesday she was cautiously optimistic about settling a dispute with

Human beings are fascinating creatures and one of the oldest philosophical debates is over whether people truly have free will or not. For millennia, scientists have debated over whether free will is simply an illusion of the mind and is a concept that doesn’t even exist, or, if our species naturally possess it. Some experts, such as the philosopher Bernardo Kastrup, argue that we do have free will. He defined it as existing “if our choices are determined by that which we experientially identify with”. Kastrup claimed that his “tastes and preferences” are “consciously felt by” him, thus the choices he makes are “determined by these felt tastes and preferences”. Essentially, Kastrup argues, we are able to choose what action to perform and this gives humans a level of free will. On the other hand, neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky from Stanford University believes humans don’t have any free will, after studying the subject for “decades”. In his book Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, Sapolsky argues that almost all of our behaviour as humans is beyond our own conscious control. He argued: “The world is really screwed up and made much, much more unfair by the fact that we reward people and punish people for things they have no control over. “We’ve got no free will. Stop attributing stuff to us that isn’t there.” Sapolsky believes that behaviour that we believe originates from free will is actually related to your environment, body, upbringing and genes. Speaking on the CultureLab podcast by New Scientist, Sapolsky explained: “In terms of my orientation, my basic approach is you look at a behaviour and someone has just done something that’s wonderful or awful or ambiguously in-between or in the eyes of the beholder, but some behaviour has happened, and you ask, 'Why did that occur?' and you’re asking a whole hierarchy of questions.” He continued explaining that the prompts to our behaviour could include, “which neurons did what, 10 milliseconds before” and may even originate from “this morning’s hormone levels” and the impact this has on your sensitivity levels in the brain. Additionally, behaviour, he argues can determined by prior trauma and even go back to the “childhood and foetal environment” and our individual genes. To summarise, he argued: “If you’re talking about genes, by definition, genes and behaviour, by definition, you’re talking about evolution and you’re talking about neurobiology and genetic variance and neuronal function. “If you’re talking about, you know, early trauma in life, you’re talking about epigenetics and you’re talking about adult propensity. “So, they’re all one continuous seam of influences, and when you look at it that way, there’s not a damn crack anywhere in there to shoehorn in a notion of free will.” Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter How to join the indy100's free WhatsApp channel Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

By Martin Coulter LONDON (Reuters) -Britain will host the world's first global artificial intelligence (AI) safety summit this week to

Elon Musk’s X is now valued at about $19bn or less than half of what he paid to buy the social media company, according to a new report. The multibillionaire Tesla and SpaceX chief last year finally bought the microblogging platform that was formerly called Twitter for the price of $44bn or $54.20 per share. Mr Musk’s purchase was completed after a months-long legal battle with the company. A new internal valuation has now found there to have been a 56 per cent decrease in the company’s value over the last 12 months, suggested internal documents. Stock grants handed out to employees showed X/Twitter is now worth about $19bn, Fortune reported on Monday. Mr Musk earlier said he had overpaid for the social media platform that he called “an inverse start-up.” In March, he told employees in an email that they would receive stock awards based on a $20bn valuation of the firm. The valuation drop comes as several high-profile advertisers have withdrawn after the Tesla titan’s controversial takeover of the company. Mr Musk’s reign of the platform has been marred by mass layoffs, the chaotic roll out of a number of new features, including the site’s verification process, and the reinstatement of previously suspended high-profile accounts. The company was also rebranded X along with a new logo to replace the bird icon that had been there since the platform’s creation. There have also been rising concerns around X’s content moderation approach. The EU recently opened an investigation into the company as misinformation linked to the Israel-Hamas conflict began to spread on the platform. In July, Mr Musk shared that X is “still negative cash flow” with a “50 per cent drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load”. Banks involved in financing the multibillionaire’s deal to buy Twitter are also reportedly struggling to mitigate the impact of platform’s decline in value on their balance sheets. The Tesla and SpaceX boss, however, has remained optimistic about the future of the platform. Mr Musk claimed in an email last year that he saw a “clear, but difficult, path to a >$250B valuation” for the company. In a recent company meeting, he also reportedly expressed his belief that the rebranded X could serve as an all-purpose app with a range of features like job recruitment and dating services. “We’re rapidly transforming the company from sort of what it was, Twitter 1.0, to the everything app with an all-inclusive feature app where you can basically do anything you want on our system,” he said, according to The New York Times. The Independent has reached out to X for a comment. Read More Elon Musk slammed by Israel for offering to send Starlink to Gaza Elon Musk says X posts with misinformation are ‘ineligible for revenue share’ Twitter adds video calling – and lets strangers ring you Elon Musk was ‘almost in tears’ on Tesla earnings call, analyst claims Slack to retire its status account on Elon Musk’s X Tesla’s profits dip as Musk goes on rant about staff working from home

By Suzanne McGee Bitcoin, the original crypto rebel, is racing into the heart of the financial establishment with

BEIJING China's state-backed chip investment fund has invested 14.56 billion yuan ($1.99 billion) in a memory chip company

TOKYO Taiwanese chipmaker Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp and Japanese financial firm SBI Holdings said on Tuesday they have

Apple Inc. announced a new iMac, MacBook Pros and the third generation of its in-house Mac processor line,