Anthropic calls for pause of global AI development. NIH Researchers Charged With Smuggling Monkeypox.

SurvivalBlog presents another edition of The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods. This column is a collection of news bits and pieces that are relevant to the modern survivalist and prepper from JWR. Our goal is to educate our readers, to help them to recognize emerging threats, and to be better prepared for both disasters and negative societal trends. You can’t mitigate a risk if you haven’t first identified a risk. In today’s column, more out-of-control AIs..

Anthropic Seeks Pause of AI Development

First up, over at Yahoo News: Anthropic calls for pause of global AI development, The article begins:

“Artificial intelligence company Anthropic suggested Thursday a global pause on building the most powerful AI systems as the latest models are beginning to show signs they could escape human control.

The San Francisco-based company, which makes the Claude family of AI models, said in a report that a worldwide slowdown in cutting-edge AI development would “likely be a good thing” — but warned that if only one company stopped, rivals would simply race ahead.”

The article’s intro:

“A 26,000-pound box truck loaded with Doritos and Frito-Lay chips rolls out of a distribution center, bound for a Walmart store about 4 miles away. It looks like any other truck, but there is no one at the wheel.

This is one of the 35 driverless trucks PepsiCo PEP -0.95%decrease; red down pointing triangle is running on Arizona roads, marking it as the first major U.S. consumer-goods company to disclose the real-life, large-scale use of autonomous trucks on public roads. They are traversing busy highways and local streets as they transport PepsiCo products between bottling plants, storage facilities and stores like Walmart and Dollar General.

At least nine autonomous-truck companies are operating in Southern and South-Central states, especially Texas, but many still have human monitors at the wheel, or are being used only in limited tests. PepsiCo’s operation, using trucks outfitted with sensors and computers from an autonomous-truck company called Gatik, is a step beyond, on par with the technical hurdles being cleared by much smaller, lighter driverless passenger taxis from Waymo, Tesla and other companies.”

NIH Researchers Charged With Smuggling Monkeypox

Raymond found this linked over at the Whatfinger.com news aggregation site: Two Foreign NIH Researchers Charged With Smuggling Monkeypox Into U.S. Here is a fair use excerpt:

“Two researchers at the National Institutes of Health have been charged with conspiracy to smuggle monkeypox into the United States.

Vincent Munster and Claude Kwe, both researchers with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) at the Rocky Mountain Laboratory, were charged in a criminal complaint with conspiracy to smuggle monkeypox into the United States and giving false statements to federal law enforcement.

According to the criminal complaint, Vincent Munster, a citizen of the Netherlands, 53, is the Chief of the Virus Ecology Section, Laboratory of Virology at the Rocky Mountain Laboratory in Hamilton, Montana.

Claude Kwe, a citizen of Cameroon, 38, is a research fellow in Munster’s section. The work of both men is focused on “emerging viral pathogens” and how those pathogens “cross the species barrier.” They work at a Biosafety Level 4 laboratory, which employs the highest level of biosafety precautions for scientific research of known and potential human pathogens.”