Hasta La Gadget!

Following Sam Altman’s rollercoaster of a return as OpenAI’s CEO, the company announced — on the eve of ChatGPT’s first anniversary — that it will now include Microsoft as a non-voting observer on its board. The question remains as to why the firm’s largest investor wasn’t on its board in the first place, but this seems to be somewhat addressed for now, at least. Altman is joined by co-founder Greg Brockman who resumes his role as President, whereas Mira Murati, who very briefly served as interim CEO throughout the drama, will return to her role as CTO.

The announcement also confirms a new board consisting of former Salesforce CEO Bret Taylor (chair), former Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and original member Adam D’Angelo, who is also Quora’s co-founder and CEO. It was earlier rumored that Altman’s exit was partly influenced by D’Angelo’s seeming conflict of interest, as OpenAI was developing a potential competitor to Quora’s Poe service — the latter offers OpenAI’s ChatGPT and GPT-4, along with several other text-generating AI models.

D’Angelo’s presence on OpenAI’s new board came as a surprise, and Altman took to X to address the elephant in the room. “Quora is a large customer of OpenAI and we found it helpful to have customer representation on our Board.” The exec added that D’Angelo “has always been very clear… about the potential conflict and doing whatever he needed to do,” including offering to leave the board, if necessary. As to why the original board wanted Altman out, he said “it is clear that there were real misunderstandings between me and members of the board.”

OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever was a former board member who allegedly led the ouster of Altman. The exec later openly admitted that he “deeply regret my participation in the board’s actions” (with Elon Musk begging for attention in his thread), and he had since voiced his support for Altman’s return as CEO. In his open message, Altman says “I harbor zero ill will towards him,” and that his team is figuring out a way to let Sutskever continue his work at OpenAI.

In the same official announcement, OpenAI’s new Chair, Taylor, assured that the company will “enhance the governance structure,” and put together “an independent committee of the Board to oversee a review of the recent events,” for the sake of the organization’s stability.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsoft-joins-openai-board-as-sam-altman-returns-as-ceo-023844090.html?src=rss

Janelle Monáe shows us what’s possible when we respect and acknowledge each others’ gender identities.

NASA and IBM have teamed up to build an AI foundation model for weather and climate applications. They’re combining their respective knowledge and skills in the Earth science and AI fields, respectively, for the model, which they say should offer “significant advantages over existing technology.”

Current AI models such as GraphCast and Fourcastnet are already generating weather forecasts more quickly than traditional meteorological models. However, IBM notes those are AI emulators rather than foundation models. As the name suggests, foundation models are the base technologies that power generative AI applications. AI emulators can make weather predictions based on sets of training data, but they don’t have applications beyond that. Nor can they encode the physics at the core of weather forecasting, IBM says.

NASA and IBM have several goals for their foundational model. Compared with current models, they hope for it to have expanded accessibility, faster inference times and greater diversity of data. Another key aim is to improve forecasting accuracy for other climate applications. The expected capabilities of the model include predicting meteorological phenomena, inferring high-res information based on low-res data and “identifying conditions conducive to everything from airplane turbulence to wildfires.”

This follows another foundational model that NASA and IBM deployed in May. It harnesses data from NASA satellites for geospatial intelligence, and it’s the largest geospatial model on open-source AI platform Hugging Face, according to IBM. So far, this model has been used to track and visualize tree planting and growing activities in water tower areas (forest landscapes that retain water) in Kenya. The aim is to plant more trees and tackle water scarcity issues. The model is also being used to analyze urban heat islands in the United Arab Emirates.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/nasa-and-ibm-are-building-an-ai-for-weather-and-climate-applications-050141545.html?src=rss

NASA has announced a delay in its ambitious Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s moon Titan, moving the launch date to July 2028. This decision, driven by budget uncertainties, comes despite the mission successfully passing key design reviews. Worryingly, the space agency is delaying formal confirmation of the mission until…

Read more…

Scientists have achieved a groundbreaking feat by capturing the first-ever views of Mars from a perspective replicating what an astronaut would see from the International Space Station (ISS).

NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter, tasked with preparing for future human missions to Mars, took a series of panoramic images in May from an altitude of approximately 250 miles (400 kilometers) – matching the ISS’s orbit around Earth.

The stitched-together images reveal the Martian landscape beneath layers of clouds and dust, providing a unique and informative perspective.

The unprecedented view not only offers stunning visuals of Mars but also aids scientists in gaining new insights into the planet’s atmosphere. While no astronauts are currently on Mars, the captured imagery provides an approximation of the view they might have when orbiting the Red Planet.

Jonathan Hill of Arizona State University, operations lead for Odyssey’s Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS), highlighted the significance of the perspective, stating:

“If there were astronauts in orbit over Mars, this is the perspective they would have. No Mars spacecraft has ever had this kind of view before.”

Creating this view presented technical challenges that engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Lockheed Martin Space addressed during three months of planning. The THEMIS camera, which is sensitive to warmth, usually points straight down, limiting its ability to capture a broader view of the Martian atmosphere.

To overcome this limitation, the spacecraft had to be rotated almost 90 degrees, temporarily interrupting communication with Earth during the operation.

Odyssey’s THEMIS Views the Horizon of Mars. (Image: NASA)

THEMIS, with its infrared capabilities, can map various features on Mars, including ice, rock, sand, and dust, and measure temperature changes. The captured images will contribute to improving models of Mars’ atmosphere by revealing the positioning of water-ice clouds and dust layers in relation to each other.

The Odyssey mission aims to capture similar images in the future, providing insights into the Martian atmosphere across multiple seasons.

Jeffrey Plaut, Odyssey’s project scientist at JPL, described the achievement as akin to “viewing a cross-section, a slice through the atmosphere,” emphasizing the added detail that this unique perspective provides for scientific understanding.

NASA’s Mars Odyssey Orbiter Captures First-Ever Views of Mars From ISS Perspective

, original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.