USANEWSBEST

Technology

Researchers open source Sky-T1, a ‘reasoning’ AI model that can be trained for less than $450

So-called reasoning AI models are becoming easier — and cheaper — to develop. On Friday, NovaSky, a team of researchers based out of UC Berkeley’s Sky Computing Lab, released Sky-T1-32B-Preview, a reasoning model that’s competitive with an earlier version of OpenAI’s o1 on a number of key benchmarks. Sky-T1 appears to be the first truly […]

Technology

Meta Secretly Trained Its AI on a Notorious Piracy Database, Newly Unredacted Court Docs Reveal

“Meta has treated the so-called ‘public availability’ of shadow datasets as a get-out-of-jail-free card, notwithstanding that internal Meta records show every relevant decision-maker at Meta, up to and including its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, knew LibGen was ‘a dataset we know to be pirated,’” the plaintiffs allege in this motion. (Originally filed in late 2024, the […]

Entertainment

AI Trained in Werner Herzog Works Wrote Film ‘About a Hero’

Werner Herzog travels to Getunkirchenburg to investigate the death after a local factory worker named Dorem Clery dies under mysterious circumstances in Piotr Winiewicz’s feature film debut About a Hero. Vicky Krieps also stars, and Stephen Fry appears. “But Herzog, our narrator, is not who he seems, and the film is not what we expect…,” […]

Science

Giant three-pound rats trained to sniff out illegal poaching

African giant pouched rats (Cricetomys gambianus) could be the next line of defense in the illegal wildlife trade. A team of researchers have trained these three-pound rats to pick up the scent of elephant ivory, rhino horn, pangolin scales, and a small tree called African blackwood. All of these animals and plants are listed as […]

Science

African giant rats trained to sniff out illegal wildlife products

Researchers trained African giant pouched rats to detect illegally trafficked wildlife species and remember targets for several months. Credit: APOPO In the past, African giant pouched rats have learned to detect explosives and the tuberculosis-causing pathogen. Now, a team of researchers have trained these rats to pick up the scent of pangolin scales, elephant ivory, […]

Technology

Adobe unveils AI video generator trained on licensed content

On Monday, Adobe announced Firefly Video Model, a new AI-powered text-to-video generation tool that can create novel videos from written prompts. It joins similar offerings from OpenAI, Runway, Google, and Meta in an increasingly crowded field. Unlike the competition, Adobe claims that Firefly Video Model is trained exclusively on licensed content, potentially sidestepping ethical and […]