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MENLO PARK, California, Sept 28 (Reuters) — Meta Platforms (META.O) used public Facebook and Instagram posts to train parts of its new Meta AI virtual assistant, but excluded private posts shared only with family and friends in an effort to respect consumers’ privacy, the company’s top policy executive told Reuters in an interview.

Meta also did not use private chats on its messaging services as training data for the model and took steps to filter private details from public datasets used for training, said Meta President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg, speaking on the sidelines of the company’s annual Connect conference this week.

“We’ve tried to exclude datasets that have a heavy preponderance of personal information,” Clegg said, adding that the “vast majority” of the data used by Meta for training was publicly available.

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Schmidt has become an indispensable adviser to government, even as some of his investments have won federal contracts.

Eric Schmidt isn’t shy about his wealth and power: The former Google CEO recently won an auction for a superyacht seized from a Russian oligarch, he owns a big stake in a secretive and successful hedge fund and he spent $15 million for the Manhattan penthouse featured in Oliver Stone’s sequel to Wall Street.

He has also leveraged his $27 billion fortune to build a powerful influence machine in Washington that’s allowed him to shape public policy to reflect his worldview and benefit the industries in which he’s deeply invested — most recently, artificial intelligence. When senators meet next week to hear from tech executives and experts about how AI should be regulated, Schmidt will be at the table.

SpaceX has stacked Ship 25 atop Booster 9, and Elon Musk has tweeted ‘Ready for Launch’, NSF’s team examines Starship’s Hardware in this LIVE roundtable discussion.

In our new update show “Countdown to Launch” we will update you regularly on all things Starship flight 2. The goal is to answer all the questions you have about the upcoming launch campaign.

Continue reading “🔴 Is Starship Hardware Ready for Flight? | Countdown to Launch LIVE” »

X’s new privacy policy, which is due to come into effect on September 29, states that the company “may use the information we collect and publicly available information to help train our machine learning or artificial intelligence models for the purposes outlined in this policy.” This policy is not included in its previous terms, which are still posted online.

Musk responded to a post about this change on X, saying that it would only use publicly available information to train the AI and would not use “DMs or anything private.”

During a live audio session on X – formerly Twitter – in July, Elon Musk said that his AI startup, xAI, would use public data from his social media platform to train its AI models. Insider reached out to X for comment but didn’t immediately hear back. It is not clear how it will use the information from X and which AI models this relates to.

The FAA made a big splash when it unveiled its Innovate28 plan for advanced air mobility (AAM) operations with electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft at scale by 2028. But while Innovate28 is just that—a plan—the agency’s friend across the Atlantic is already proposing hard requirements for AAM certification, operations, and maintenance.

The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) on Thursday shared its final opinion on rules and regulations for eVTOL air taxis, drones, and other emerging aircraft with the European Commission. Now, the ball is in the Commission’s court as it determines whether to accept EASA’s policy recommendations.

Opinion No 03/2023 lays out a comprehensive regulatory framework for safe operations of new aircraft types. It introduces requirements for piloted electric air taxi operations, flight crew licensing, air traffic management, and standardized European rules of the air (SERA). The proposal also suggests a criteria and process for the certification and maintenance of remotely piloted drones.

X, formerly known as Twitter, will begin collecting users’ biometric data, according to its new privacy policy that was first spotted by Bloomberg. The policy also says the company wants to collect users’ job and education history. The policy page indicates that the change will go into effect on September 29.

“Based on your consent, we may collect and use your biometric information for safety, security, and identification purposes,” the updated policy reads. Although X hasn’t specified what it means by biometric information, it is usually used to describe a person’s physical characteristics, such as their face or fingerprints. X also hasn’t provided any details about how it plans to collect it.

The company told Bloomberg that the biometrics are for premium users and will give them the option to submit their government ID and an image in order to add a verification layer. Biometric data may be extracted from both the ID and image for matching purposes, Bloomberg reports.

For the first time in my timezone, SpaceX completed 9 launches in a month. Previously, if you were based in Europe, you saw 9 launches in a month a few months ago. At 9 launches/month that is a current rate of 108 launches/year, making SpaceX’s goal of 100 launches this year a possibility.

They had a lot of trouble getting this flight off today as a recent hurricane is still affecting the weather some. They got around this by having a 5 and a half hour launch window so they just waited a few hours until the weather was clear for several minutes and they launched!

Continue reading “SpaceX Falcon 9 Launches Starlink 6-13 Mission” »

NIH-funded study suggests reducing exposure to airborne particulates may decrease dementia risk.

Higher rates of new cases of dementia in a population over time — known as incident dementia — are linked to long-term exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) air pollution, especially from agriculture and open fires, according to a study funded by the National Institutes of Health and published in JAMA Internal Medicine. Scientists found that 15% of older adults developed incident dementia during the average follow-up of 10 years.

“As we experience the effects of air pollution from wildfires and other emissions locally and internationally, these findings contribute to the strong evidence needed to best inform health and policy decisions,” said Richard J. Hodes, M.D., director, National Institute on Aging (NIA), part of NIH. “These results are an example of effectively using federally funded research data to help address critical health risks.”