El Paso (United States) (AFP) - Before turning himself in to US border officials in El Paso on Tuesday, Juan Fernandez sent a farewell text message to his wife in Venezuela.
He then wiped away his tears and, together with a friend, walked resolutely into the imposing Customs and Border Protection (CBP) building.
"We're pretty scared, but we have to have faith," he said.
Frightened about drastic policy changes coming to the US-Mexico border this week, the 40-year-old Venezuelan crossed illegally through one of the gaps in the frontier wall three days ago.
He is one of thousands of Venezuelans who have been arriving in El Paso in the final days before the expiration of Title 42.
The health measure was introduced by then-president Donald Trump in 2020 to close the southern border during the pandemic.
Inherited by President Joe Biden, the measure previously exempted asylum seekers from countries such as Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba.
While the exemptions have already been rolled back, those nationalities still benefit from special asylum programs, such as through the CBP One mobile app.
But for thousands waiting across the Mexican border, those programs have yielded no results, and they have decided to cross before the uncertainty of the post-Title 42 era kicks in Friday.
"I waited for four months trying to lodge my request, but I was ignored," said Gleidys Losada.
"All the people I knew were crossing through the gaps. I was left behind, and I decided I couldn't wait any longer."
Lopez has spent the last four nights outside the Sacred Heart Church in El Paso, which has become a gathering point for thousands of migrants, mostly Venezuelan, who have no money to reach their final destinations in the United States.
With scant belongings, they sleep in improvised tents -- plastic sheets rigged up to the railings -- and use portable toilets set up around the church.
With the impending expiration of Title 42 overnight Thursday into Friday, tensions have grown in US border cities.
CBP officials distributed leaflets early Tuesday morning urging undocumented migrants to turn themselves in.
"We are seeing the implementation of a very harsh policy that surprises us very much, because during his campaign Biden promised a more humane border policy," said Fernando Garcia, executive director of the Border Network for Human Rights, a non-governmental organization.
"What we are seeing is a humanitarian crisis. We are seeing people asking for asylum and being denied. We are going to see a massive deportation policy in the next few days."
But for the migrants, there is no wall or policy that will stop them trying to reach the US.
"They can throw Title 42 and all these rules at us, but migration is not going to end. We are going to keep coming because we are hungry," said Eibor Tovar, a 34-year-old Venezuelan.
"When you are hungry, when you are repressed by a dictatorship, you do whatever it takes to seek a better life."
After authorities visited the makeshift camp in El Paso, Fernandez and his friend decided to turn themselves in.
Their gambit inspired a couple who had been watching fearfully from the opposite sidewalk to do the same.
Three hours later, Fernandez and the couple were leaving through a back door of the CBP building, holding a "Welcome to the United States" leaflet and a form making their asylum request official.
The news spread like wildfire, and within minutes, hundreds of Venezuelans were lining up at the doors of the federal agency.
"I feel joy, sadness, fear," said Venezuelan Jose Contreras, 21, in tears. Moments before, he had been kneeling on the sidewalk, deep in prayer.
For others, the fear of being deported outweighed the hope of a legitimate path.
"I'm terrified they will throw me out. I don't want to go back to Venezuela -- there is no future there," said a 23-year-old, who turned around and left the line.
"Some people were allowed to stay, but not all of us will be so lucky."
For Fernandez, those words ring true. He still had no word from the friend who accompanied him into the CBP station.
A glacier in the north of Greenland is melting faster and in a different way than scientists previously thought, and this has troubling implications for the future speed of global sea-level rise.
The new discovery was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Monday. The scientists found that warming ocean water had melted a cavity in the bottom of Petermann Glacier taller than the Washington Monument, as The Associated Press reported. If other glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica behave the same way, it could double predictions for how quickly the burning of fossil fuels will melt ice and raise sea levels.
"It's bad news," study author Eric Rignot, a University of California, Irvine (UCI), glaciologist, told the AP. "We know the current projections are too conservative."
"This is an order of magnitude larger than expected for grounding lines on a rigid bed."
The Petermann Glacier is a massive glacier in Northwest Greenland that contains enough ice to raise sea levels by a little more than a foot, the study authors noted. It is one of four Greenland ice masses that make up "the largest threat for rapid sea-level rise from Greenland in the coming decades" since they drain into the ocean below sea level.
Up until recently, however, the glacier was relatively stable, gaining about as much mass each year as it lost. That began to change in 2016, when the center of its grounding line began to edge backward at a rate of 0.6 miles per year.
A glacier's grounding line is the place where it moves from being supported by land to floating on the ocean, and it's this feature of Petermann that is the focus of the new study. The scientists from UCI, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, the University of Houston, Finland's Iceye mission, China's Tongji University, the German Aerospace Center, and the Italian Space Agency used satellite radar data to learn that the grounding line was moving significantly with the tides.
"Petermann's grounding line could be more accurately described as a grounding zone, because it migrates between 2 and 6 kilometers [approximately 1.2 to 3.7 miles] as tides come in and out," lead author Enrico Ciraci, a UCI assistant specialist in Earth system science and NASA postdoctoral fellow, said in a statement. "This is an order of magnitude larger than expected for grounding lines on a rigid bed."
This movement, in turn, accelerated ice melt.
"These ice-ocean interactions make the glaciers more sensitive to ocean warming," Rignot explained.
Between 2016 and 2022, the grounding line retreated by more than two miles. During that time, the warmer ocean water melted a 669-foot tall cavity at the bottom of the glacier. The melt rates around the cavity for 2020-21 were 50% greater than the melt rates for 2016-19, and, during 2022, the cavity stayed open the entire year.
What's especially concerning to the study authors is that what happens in Petermann may not stay in Petermann.
"These dynamics are not included in models," Rignot said.
If they were included, it could double sea-level rise projections, the study authors observed.
Hélène Seroussi, a glaciologist at Dartmouth College who was not involved with the study, cautionedThe Washington Post that models for ice melt and sea-level rise would not incorporate these findings overnight, since scientists still need to determine how many glaciers they really apply to. However, Seroussi acknowledged that the measurements were unprecedented.
"The melt rates reported are very large, much larger than anything we suspected in this region," Seroussi said.
Andreas Muenchow of the University of Delaware, a scientist who studies Petermann Glacier but was also not a part of the study, further told the Post that the high melt rates were observed over a relatively small area.
"My main takeaway is that models need to be improved," Muenchow said.
By Raphael Satter and Christopher Bing WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The FBI has sabotaged a suite of malicious software used by elite Russian spies, U.S. authorities said on Tuesday, providing a glimpse of the digital tug-of-war between two cyber superpowers. Senior law enforcement officials said FBI technical experts had identified and disabled malware wielded by Russia's FSB security service against an undisclosed number of American computers, a move they hoped would deal a death blow to one of Russia's leading cyber spying programs. "We assess this as being their premier espionage tool," one of th...
By Philip Pullella
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Sexual abusers are disgusting "enemies" who deserve to be condemned and punished - but also deserve Christian love and pastoral care because they too are children of God, Pope Francis said.
Francis made his comments on April 29 in a private conversation with Jesuits while he was visiting Hungary.
Francis is also a Jesuit and the comments were published on Tuesday in the Italian Jesuit journal Civilta Cattolica, as is customary after such meetings.
Abuse scandals have shredded the Church's reputation and have been a major challenge for the pope, who has passed a series of measures over the last 10 years aimed at holding the Church hierarchy more accountable, with mixed results.
During Francis' visit, a Hungarian member of the Jesuits religious order asked Francis how it was possible to follow Jesus' commandment to love enemies when the enemy was a sexual abuser.
"How do we approach, how do we talk to the abusers for whom we feel disgust? Yes, they too are children of God. But how can you love them? It’s a powerful question," Francis responded.
"The abuser is to be condemned, indeed, but as a brother," Francis said, calling it "a form of loving the enemy", although he acknowledged that such an attitude was difficult to live out because of the effect abusers have on people's lives.
"The abuser is an enemy. Each of us feels this because we empathise with the suffering of the abused ... even talking to the abuser involves revulsion; it’s not easy. But they are God’s children too. They deserve punishment, but they also deserve pastoral care," he said.
Last week the pope praised the work of an international Vatican commission on sexual abuse prevention and encouraged it to move forward, following the recent acrimonious resignation of a high-profile member who accused it of lacking transparency.
(Reporting by Philip Pullella; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
The music of pioneering French electronic duo Daft Punk will resound on Thursday through Paris' Centre Pompidou, as a never-released track is unveiled at the spot where their love affair with the genre began.
Dubbed "Infinity Repeating", the tune was recorded as the robot-helmeted pair were working on their 2013 album "Random Access Memories" but it was left on the cutting room floor in favour of others like global mega-hit "Get Lucky".
Two years after the group broke up for good and ten years after that album's release, fans of their pop, funk and disco-infused sound can head to the central Paris modern art museum to discover the new track.
Entry is free on a first-come first-served basis.
Featuring the voice of The Strokes' Julian Casablancas, the demo and its accompanying video will be played at "ultra-high-fidelity" for 150 people in a gallery space, as well as in a 350-seat cinema auditorium and on a giant screen in the Centre Pompidou atrium.
The Pompidou was the jumping-off point for Daft Punk's leap into electronica, as the teenaged Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo attended a 1992 rave there that opened their eyes to machine music's possibilities.
"The first rave we went to was on the roof" of the Pompidou... "We discovered a different kind of music, as well as an energy, with people dancing to songs they didn't know," Bangalter said in a 2009 podcast.
"We said to ourselves there was something we could do with electronic music".
Their new name was appropriated from a scathing review of their guitar-based band Darlin' in British magazine Melody Maker.
"Infinity Repeating" forms part of 35 minutes of unheard material included on a new release Friday of "Random Access Memories" -- Daft Punk's fourth and final studio album that won five Grammy awards.
© 2023 AFP
Four years after a far-right Austrian politician was revealed to have cut deals with a woman posing as the niece of a Russian oligarch, the private detective who dreamt up the sting operation is speaking out.
The "Ibiza scandal" caught the then leader of Austria's far-right Freedom Party (FPOe) Heinz-Christian Strache promising the purported Russian public contracts in exchange for election campaign support.
Filmed in 2017, but not released until 2019, the video led to the spectacular collapse of the coalition Strache was part of and triggered corruption investigations. It ultimately dethroned former Chancellor Sebastian Kurz.
Julian Hessenthaler, the detective who conceived of the video filmed on Spain's resort island of Ibiza, was jailed in 2021 for trafficking cocaine and possessing forged documents.
Venerated by supporters as a heroic whistle-blower who exposed the corrupt nature of Austrian politics, to his critics he is a venal criminal deserving of imprisonment.
Now fresh out of jail, the 42-year-old told AFP in an interview that Austria "has not learned much" from the scandal as the FPOe again surges in the polls.
Released from prison on April 7, the former "security consultant" has been giving his side of the story in rounds of interviews and talks.
He argues that he was "wrongfully convicted" without material evidence after stepping on powerful people's toes and describes the whole procedure as "dubious to say the least".
Dubbed the "Ibiza detective" by the press -- a nickname he despises -- Hessenthaler was behind the trap for Strache, a boozy evening in a luxury Ibiza villa during which the FPOe's illegal dealings came to light.
Hessenthaler alleges that a wealthy, Iranian-born lawyer based in Vienna paid at least 100,000 euros ($110,000) to orchestrate the fateful video.
At the time the lawyer had as a client a former bodyguard of Strache who felt he had been unjustly fired and was seeking revenge.
Published by German media in May 2019, the video and its fallout have prosecutors buried in work to this day.
Some 50 personalities from the world of politics, business and media are under scrutiny in various offshoots of the scandal.
But in contrast to Hessenthaler, so far no trials or indictments have produced any convictions for the political heavyweights implicated in the scandal.
The minute Hessenthaler became a free man again, Vienna's renowned Volkstheater staged public debates with him, featuring journalists and artists.
Press rights group Reporters Without Borders and a dozen other non-profits praised Hessenthaler's "courage" and warned his conviction could have a "deterrent effect" on potential future whistle-blowers.
German investigative website Correctiv wrote a long article about Hessenthaler, casting doubt on the prosecution's findings that put him behind bars for drugs.
But conservative Austrian daily Die Presse dismissed him the new "darling of many leftists", while far-right supporters have denounced him as a drug-pushing criminal.
Now Hessenthaler questions whether it was worth producing the video that ousted the FPOe from office, given that the far-right party has since gained national momentum.
"The FPOe has already become the leading political force in the polls," he told AFP.
The far-right party enjoys nationwide support levels of 29 percent, up from the 16 percent it won at polls in 2019.
With the governing coalition weak, the FPOe has tapped into voter anxieties over the war in Ukraine and inflation, as well as anger over strict measures during the pandemic, on top of its trademark opposition to migration.
As for reforms mooted in the immediate aftermath of the scandal, there was "a lot of talk," Hessenthaler said. But the most important legislative changes brought in to tackle corruption "have still not been implemented", he added.
Nevertheless, he said he would "do it again without hesitation", calling Austrian politicians peanuts compared to "far more dangerous" people he has dealt with in the past, albeit without elaborating.
© 2023 AFP
An ongoing drought and soaring temperatures have unleashed fears of an olive "catastrophe" in Spain, the world's largest producer of olive oil, which suffered a very difficult year in 2022.
"It's barely rained since January. The ground is very dry," worries Cristobal Cano, secretary general of the small farmers' union (UPA) in the southern region of Andalusia, the heart of Spain's olive oil industry.
Cano, who owns 10 hectares of olive trees in Alcala la Real near Granada, has never seen such a worrying situation in the 20 years he's been a farmer.
"If something doesn't change radically in the next few weeks, it's going to be a catastrophe," he warned.
According to the AEMET weather agency, accumulated rainfall since October 1 has been 25 percent lower than normal across Spain and 50 percent lower in most of Andalusia, where reservoirs are at 25 percent capacity.
And the situation worsened at the end of April, when an early heatwave brought exceptionally high temperatures that saw the mercury hit 38.8 degrees Celsius (101.8 degrees Fahrenheit) in southern Spain.
"This happened as the olive trees were in bloom," says Rafael Pico, director of Asoliva, the Spanish association of olive oil producers and exporters, who fears the blooms will dry up.
"If there are no flowers, there's no fruit. And if there's no fruit, there's no oil."
For Spain -- which normally supplies 50 percent of the world's olive oil and exports close to 3.0 billion euros ($3.3 billion) worth every year -- the situation is even more worrying given the sector's disastrous output in 2021-2022.
During that season too, a lack of rain and extreme temperatures saw olive oil production plummeting 55 percent to 660,000 tonnes, compared to 1.48 million tonnes in 2021-2022, agriculture ministry figures show.
The scene is set to play out again this year.
"Looking at the forecasts, it's almost a given -- it's going to be another grim year," says Rafael Sanchez de Puerta, head of Dcoop, Spain's leading olive cooperative.
If the predictions prove true, it could spell the end for many olive farms.
"We can cope with one difficult year. It's a natural part of the growing cycle. But two years in a row will be a disaster. Many are on the brink of collapse," he says.
With the cost of machinery, paying salaries and repaying loans, "farmers need liquidity" to remain afloat, says Asoliva's Pico, recalling that many in Spain live from olive oil production.
For consumers, the outlook is also bleak.
"The global price of olive oil depends largely on Spain," says Pico.
In recent months, the price of oil has jumped.
"In mid-April, olive oil was selling at 5,800 euros ($6,400) per tonne, up from 5,300 euros in January," says Fanny de Gasquet of Baillon Intercor, a brokerage firm specializing in oils and fats.
In January 2022, it was selling at 3,500 euros.
And the upward trend looks set to continue.
In Andalusia, young olive trees "don't have sufficiently developed roots to be able to extract water" from deep underground, meaning "there will be losses" that will have an impact on production over the next two or three years, she warns.
At the end of 2022, the Spanish government moved to lower VAT on olive oil from 10 percent to five percent as part of a package of measures to help consumers in the face of soaring inflation.
And to help farmers cope with the drought, the government has reduced the sector's income tax by 25 percent.
But for many, it's too little in the face of the looming crisis.
"Lowering taxes for people who will have almost no income is of little use to them," says Dcoop's Sanchez de Puerta, calling for more ambitious moves to combat "a drought that is lasting longer than it should".
© 2023 AFP
Two years after being released from a Hong Kong prison, Lau Ka-tung has lost count of the times he has returned -- not as an inmate, but to offer support to pro-democracy activists in jail.
Hong Kongers like Lau, 27, are still grappling with the aftermath of huge, and often violent, protests that roiled the Chinese finance hub in 2019, and a subsequent crackdown by Beijing that saw thousands arrested.
Despite the collapse of organized opposition or pro-democracy activism due to a sweeping national security law passed in 2020, some Hong Kongers are still looking for ways to fight for their values.
During the protests, Lau, a registered social worker, had tried to mediate at a clash between police and demonstrators, an act that landed him in jail for six months for "obstructing police".
"Everything felt incomprehensible and frightening... at the time I had an emotional breakdown, I was crying non-stop," Lau said.
Now, he has made it his mission to ease those anxieties for jailed protesters and their families, making near-daily visits to prisons dotted around Hong Kong.
"Those who have spent a long time in custody are looking for emotional support, while those who just arrived often want to learn about the procedures and unspoken rules," he said.
Frequently asked questions include how to write to judges to request leniency, and what types of supplies prisoners are allowed to receive.
Sometimes, prisoners just need someone to talk to, such as during one recent visit when Lau found himself engaged in a spirited chat about Chinese literature with a young pro-democracy protester.
Lau said there were very few social workers in Hong Kong specializing in protest-related cases.
"If I quit, the very small minority will become even smaller."
Hong Kong's protest movement kicked off in June 2019 over an unpopular bill that would have allowed extraditions from the semi-autonomous city to the Chinese mainland.
The movement soon morphed into a wider push for democratic change that brought hundreds of thousands of Hong Kongers from all walks of life onto the streets to take part in huge protests, some of which turned violent.
The subsequent crackdown saw more than 10,000 people arrested over the protests, with more than 6,000 still awaiting formal charges.
Under Beijing's national security law, which sounded the death knell for the protest movement, another 150 people have been charged, with dozens of the city's best-known democrats facing allegations of "subversion" and "foreign collusion".
National security cases have, so far, had a 100 percent conviction rate.
The crackdowns have decimated Hong Kong's once-vibrant civil society, which was made up of dozens of political parties and advocacy groups across a wide spectrum.
At least 60 groups -- including the two largest pro-democracy labour unions and the organizer of a yearly Tiananmen vigil -- have disbanded.
Still standing, however, is the political party League of Social Democrats, where 31-year-old Dickson Chau serves as external vice-chairperson.
"Civil society has been seriously atomized," Chau told AFP.
The LSD was once known for its boisterous street-level campaigning, with activists using megaphones to deliver pro-democracy messages.
"The situation (now) is so bleak that we can only run into each other in courts or prisons and all we can have is small talk -- no one would collaborate for any actions," Chau said.
The group is now allowed only to operate a single booth at a designated location, and police scrutinize every word on their banners.
Police question every new volunteer, Chau said, and group members are warned not to protest around "politically sensitive" days, such as the anniversary of the city's 1997 handover to Chinese rule.
Still, the LSD continues to oppose some government policies, such as a recent $74 billion project to develop new artificial islands around Hong Kong.
"Citizens can no longer speak out in public... but Hong Kong is not yet a pond of stagnant water," Chau said.
With the streets of Hong Kong cleared of rallies and protests, some have tried to build alternative spaces.
"Civil society around a decade ago was very different... Now, having a space is precious because we don't have many groups and venues left," said Sum Wan-wah, a veteran journalist who recently opened a bookshop named "Have A Nice Stay".
Sum's business partners are former reporters of Stand News, an independent online news platform that closed after police raided its newsroom and arrested its editors for "sedition".
Since opening last May, the bookstore has registered over 1,500 members and organized more than 50 closed-door events -- mostly talks by journalists, authors and documentary filmmakers.
Many of the books on sale focus on media literacy, democratic development and authoritarianism. Events cover a range of topics, from Russia's invasion of Ukraine to documentary production workshops.
The store also displays award-winning news photography and sells handicrafts made by reporters who have lost their jobs since the crackdown.
"As long as people can have a place to gather, there is no limit to what can be imagined," Sum said.
"You won't know whether it will make a difference or how many people it will nurture, but I want to give it a chance."
The bookstore is not immune from pressure and surveillance, with the shop sometimes subject to inspections and event participants once questioned by police in the last year.
Sum remains undeterred.
"I don't want a situation where nothing can happen," he said.
"I am making a choice between zero and 0.1, and I choose 0.1 even though all the efforts may eventually go down the drain."
China said Tuesday it was expelling Canada's consul in Shanghai, in a tit-for-tat move after Ottawa announced it was sending home a Chinese diplomat accused of trying to intimidate a lawmaker.
The expulsions have plunged the two nations into a fresh diplomatic row after years of souring relations.
They follow an outcry in Canada over allegations that Chinese intelligence had planned to target MP Michael Chong and his relatives in Hong Kong with sanctions for sponsoring a motion condemning Beijing's conduct in the Xinjiang region as genocide.
In response, Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly said Toronto-based Chinese diplomat Zhao Wei -- who allegedly played a role in the scheme -- would have to leave the country.
Canada, she said, would "not tolerate any form of foreign interference in our internal affairs".
The Chinese foreign ministry on Tuesday condemned the decision to expel Zhao, and said it had ordered Canadian consul Jennifer Lynn Lalonde to leave the country by May 13.
"As a reciprocal countermeasure in reaction to Canada's unscrupulous move, China decides to declare Jennifer Lynn Lalonde, consul of the Consulate General of Canada in Shanghai persona non grata," the ministry said in a statement.
And foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin urged Canada to stop "unreasonable provocations".
"If the Canadian side doesn't listen to this advice and acts recklessly, (China) will take resolute and forceful retaliatory measures, and all consequences will be borne by the Canadian side," Wang told a regular press briefing.
A single police car was parked outside the Shanghai office building where the consulate is based, AFP journalists saw.
Inside, appointments appeared to be running as normal, and staff at reception said they were unaware of Tuesday's developments.
Neither Canada's foreign ministry nor its embassy in Beijing replied to requests for comment from AFP.
"We remain firm in our resolve that defending our democracy is of the utmost importance," Joly said Monday, adding that foreign diplomats in Canada "have been warned that if they engage in this type of behaviour, they will be sent home".
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has faced growing pressure to take a hard line on China following revelations in recent months that it sought to sway Canada's 2019 and 2021 elections in his party's favor.
Relations between Beijing and Ottawa have been tense since Canada's 2018 arrest of a top Huawei executive and the detention of two Canadian nationals in China in apparent retaliation.
All three have been released, but Beijing has continued to blast Ottawa for aligning with Washington's China policy, while Canadian officials have regularly accused China of interference.
After China's ambassador was summoned last week over the latest interference allegations, Beijing on Friday slammed what it called "groundless slander and defamation" by Canada.
The Chinese foreign ministry insisted the scandal had been "hyped up" by Canadian politicians and the media.
"We have known for years that the PRC is using its accredited diplomats here in Canada to target Canadians and their families," he said, using an acronym for the People's Republic of China.
He said Canada has become "a playground for foreign interference," including the harassment of diaspora communities.
© 2023 AFP
Artificial intelligence could replace 80 percent of human jobs in the coming years -- but that's a good thing, says US-Brazilian researcher Ben Goertzel, a leading AI guru.
Mathematician, cognitive scientist and famed robot-creator Goertzel, 56, is founder and chief executive of SingularityNET, a research group he launched to create "Artificial General Intelligence," or AGI -- artificial intelligence with human cognitive abilities.
With his long hair and leopard-print cowboy hat, Goertzel was in provocateur mode last week at Web Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the world's biggest annual technology conference, where he told AFP in an interview that AGI is just years away and spoke out against recent efforts to curb artificial intelligence research.
Q: How far are we from artificial intelligence with human cognitive abilities?
"If we want machines to really be as smart as people and to be as agile in dealing with the unknown, then they need to be able to take big leaps beyond their training and programming. And we're not there yet. But I think there's reason to believe we're years rather than decades from getting there."
Q: What do you think of the debate around AI such as ChatGPT and its risks? Should there be a six-month research pause, as some people are advocating?
"I don't think we should pause it because it's like a dangerous superhuman AI... These are very interesting AI systems, but they're not capable of becoming like human level general intelligences, because they can't do complex multi-stage reasoning, like you need to do science. They can't invent wild new things outside the scope of their training data.
"They can also spread misinformation, and people are saying we should pause them because of this. That's very weird to me. Why haven't we banned the internet? The internet does exactly this. It gives you way more information at your fingertips. And it spreads bullshit and misinformation.
"I think we should have a free society. And just like the internet shouldn't be banned, we shouldn't ban this."
Q: Isn't their potential to replace people's jobs a threat?
"You could probably obsolete maybe 80 percent of jobs that people do, without having an AGI, by my guess. Not with ChatGPT exactly as a product. But with systems of that nature, which are going to follow in the next few years.
"I don't think it's a threat. I think it's a benefit. People can find better things to do with their life than work for a living... Pretty much every job involving paperwork should be automatable.
"The problem I see is in the interim period, when AIs are obsoleting one human job after another... I don't know how (to) solve all the social issues."
Q: What can robots do for society today, and what will they be able to do in the future, if AGI is achieved?
"You can do a lot of good with AI.
"Like Grace, (a robot nurse) we showcased at Web Summit Rio. In the US, a lot of elderly people are sitting lonely in old folks' homes. And they're not bad in terms of physical condition -- you have medical care and food and big-screen TV -- but they're bad in terms of emotional and social support. So if you inject humanoid robots into it, that will answer your questions, listen to your stories, help you place a call with your kids or order something online, then you're improving people's lives. Once you get to an AGI, they'll be even better companions.
"In that case, you're not eliminating human jobs. Because basically, there's not enough people who want to do nursing and nursing assistant jobs.
"I think education will also be an amazing market for humanoid robots, as well as domestic help."
Q: What regulation do we need for AI to have a positive impact?
"What you need is society to be developing these AIs to do good things. And the governance of the AIs to be somehow participatory among the population. All these things are technically possible. The problem is that the companies funding most of the AI research don't care about doing good things. They care about maximizing shareholder value."
© 2023 AFP
By Asif Shahzad and Gibran Naiyyar Peshimam ISLAMABAD (Reuters) -Pakistan security forces arrested former Prime Minister Imran Khan at Islamabad High Court on Tuesday, his aides said, in a dramatic move that threatens fresh turmoil in the nuclear-armed country. Geo TV reported that Khan was arrested in connection with a corruption case. Footage of the arrest shared by Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party showed scores of security personnel in riot-control gear whisking Khan away in a van. Fawad Chaudhry, Khan's aide, said in a video message that the court premises was "attacked" by secu...
MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday said a "real war" was again being waged against Russia as he invoked the Soviet Union's victory in World War Two to say the West was trying to destroy his country. In a speech on Red Square as part of Russia's Victory Day celebrations, Putin said Russia wanted to see a peaceful future, and said the entire country was behind what Russia calls the "special military operation" in Ukraine. Putin said the West had forgotten the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany in 1945. (Reporting by Reuters; editing by Guy Faulconbridge)
By Nidal al-Mughrabi
GAZA (Reuters) -Israel killed three senior Islamic Jihad commanders in Gaza air strikes and at least six civilians, including children, Palestinian officials said, as the Israeli military said it had launched strikes against the militant group on Tuesday.
The air strikes were the latest incident in more than a year of surging violence that has seen repeated Israeli military raids and escalating settler violence in the occupied West Bank, amid a spate of Palestinian street attacks targeting Israelis.
Israel's military said it targeted three senior commanders of Islamic Jihad, the second most powerful armed group in the blockaded coastal enclave, which is controlled by the Islamist militant group, Hamas.
"Any terrorist who harms Israeli citizens will be made to regret it," said Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.
Israel's military, working with the Shin Bet intelligence service, targeted the leadership of the Islamic Jihad in Gaza in a "precise" operation, he added.
A Gaza health official said at least 12 people had been killed and 20 more wounded in air strikes that hit residential areas.
Islamic Jihad's armed wing confirmed the three deaths, adding: "We will not abandon our positions and the resistance will continue, God willing."
The group identified the commanders killed as Jihad Ghannam, Khalil Al-Bahtini and Tareq Izzeldeen.
Powerful explosions rocked the area for hours as witnesses reported Israeli jets hitting Islamic Jihad shelters in residential areas and sites across the Gaza strip, including training camps and border posts.
"The bombardment will be met by bombardment and the attack will be met by an attack," said Tareq Selmi, a spokesman of Islamic Jihad. "This crime will not pass unpunished."
Videos showed billowing smoke and flames that lit up the night sky as trucks of firefighters sped to a building that had been hit, while a medic reassured a young girl who appeared confused.
"Your family is all safe, don't worry," he said.
During the bombardment, Palestinians took to social media to mourn a well-known dentist who was killed at home with his wife in Tuesday's air strikes, describing him as a loyal friend and humble man.
Last week, the death of a Palestinian hunger striker in Israeli custody triggered several hours of cross-border fighting between Israel and armed groups in Gaza, in which one Palestinian man was killed.
More than 100 Palestinians and at least 19 Israelis and foreigners have been killed in the strife since January.
COGAT, a unit of the Israeli defence ministry that coordinates civilian affairs with the Palestinians, said its two Gaza crossings were closed to people and goods until further notice.
In anticipation of rocket fire in response to the killings, Israel's military urged citizens living in towns within 40 km (25 miles) of Gaza to stay near bomb shelters from 2:30 a.m. on Tuesday until 6 p.m. on Thursday.
(Reporting by Henriette Chacar and Nidal al-Mughrabi; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell and Clarence Fernandez)
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