Month: March 2024

The Paradox at the Heart of Elon Musk’s OpenAI Lawsuit

The Paradox at the Heart of Elon Musk’s OpenAI Lawsuit

It would be easy to dismiss Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI as a case of sour grapes.Mr. Musk sued OpenAI this week, accusing the company of breaching the terms of its founding agreement and violating its founding principles. In his telling, OpenAI was established as a nonprofit that would build powerful A.I. systems for the good of humanity and give its research away freely to the public. But Mr. Musk argues that OpenAI broke that promise by starting a for-profit subsidiary that took on billions of dollars in investments from Microsoft.An OpenAI spokeswoman declined to comment on the suit. In…
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Eurozone Inflation, Continuing to Ease, Rose 2.6% in February

Eurozone Inflation, Continuing to Ease, Rose 2.6% in February

The NewsInflation rates across most economies in Europe continued their descent last month. Consumer prices in the 20 countries that use the euro as their currency rose at an annual rate of 2.6 percent in February, down from 2.8 percent in January, the statistical office of the European Commission reported on Friday.Why It Matters: Interest rates won’t go down until inflation does.The sooner inflation rates drop closer to the European Central Bank’s target of 2 percent, the sooner the bank may be inclined to lower interest rates, which now stand at 4 percent. Christine Lagarde, the bank’s president, has said…
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In Ancient Bones, a Reminder That Northern Ireland’s Ghosts Are Never Far

In Ancient Bones, a Reminder That Northern Ireland’s Ghosts Are Never Far

They turned up around Halloween, as a roaring storm gripped the wetlands of Northern Ireland and tilled its ground: human bones, sticking up from the tea-colored water in Bellaghy bog, halfway between Derry and Belfast.The skeletal remains were disconcerting enough. Then investigators saw the flesh.“The skin was as pink as ours,” said Detective Inspector Nikki Deehan, with the Police Service of Northern Ireland.We know now that the remains — extraordinarily well preserved — belonged to a teenage boy from the Iron Age, held together for thousands of years by the preservative power of the peat bog. But in the weeks…
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Columbia DEI Chief Is Accused of Plagiarizing Dissertation From Wikipedia

Columbia DEI Chief Is Accused of Plagiarizing Dissertation From Wikipedia

An official in charge of diversity, equity and inclusion at Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center was accused this week of plagiarizing large sections of his doctoral dissertation, according to an anonymous complaint filed with the university.The 55-page complaint accused the official, Alade McKen, of copying material in his 2021 dissertation at Iowa State University from more than two dozen other scholars and from Wikipedia, which is written and edited by volunteers from the general public.The complaint was published online Thursday by The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news website that led a campaign last year against the former president of…
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