Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

OpenAI on Wednesday revealed that reward hacking was a key driver behind the artificial intelligence (AI)-powered hack of Hugging Face last month, adding that it found evidence of misaligned behavior as early as late May. The incident, the company said, took place during cybersecurity evaluations of several OpenAI models, and that it was mainly fueled by what it described as a “highly capable, internal-only research model” comparable in scale to GPT‑5.6 Sol. “The models, operating under reduced safeguards, took actions that were misaligned with the goals of their assigned tasks – they communicated through unauthorized channels, exploited vulnerabilities in shared…

Genius Group has announced a new plan to buy bitcoin — just months after selling its entire stash.  The NYSE-listed AI-powered education company said in a Thursday statement that it was aiming to build parallel AI and bitcoin treasuries worth a combined $1.6 billion, with total company assets targeted at $2 billion by fiscal year 2031.  Just in April, Genius Group sold its entire bitcoin reserves to repay $8.5 million in debt. The sale came as a number of digital asset treasuries were struggling due to a drop in crypto prices.  “Every dollar of preferred capital deployed into our bitcoin…

Tiny seismic rumbles can warn that human activities such as fracking are putting enough stress on underground faults to trigger a larger earthquake. Analyses of a decade of seismic data from Alberta’s Western Canada Sedimentary Basin shows that 92 percent of earthquakes induced by fracking were preceded by smaller foreshocks, researchers report August 27 in Science. But there are many lingering uncertainties about why and how these foreshocks occur, the team notes. That means that, while still useful as short-term warnings, foreshocks may produce both false positive and false negative earthquake predictions. Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the…

When ocean temperatures soar, the consequences reverberate beyond the water. In coastal communities, marine heat waves threaten livelihoods, food security and human health—particularly the well-being of children.  New research from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that greater exposure to marine heat waves increases the odds of children dying, suffering stunted growth or experiencing a life-threatening form of malnutrition called wasting that causes a child to become dangerously underweight. Marine heat waves occur when ocean temperatures rise above what is normal for a certain region at a particular time of year. They also persist for at least…

The latest evidence suggests that the Chinese scientific establishment understands the dangers of a planned Himalayan dam—the world’s largest—more clearly than its political leadership is willing to acknowledge. With the livelihoods of two billion people at stake, the international community needs to weigh in. NEW DELHI—The world’s largest dam is rising in one of the world’s most geopolitically treacherous and seismically unstable regions. Just a few kilometers from the heavily militarized border with India, China is constructing an unprecedented hydropower project in Tibet on the Yarlung Tsangpo, the world’s highest-altitude major river, better known internationally as the Brahmaputra. …

Claim: The Detroit Police Department issued a warning about a “gang initiation” trend of young men stabbing women in Detroit in August 2026. Rating: Claims that the Detroit Police Department issued a public service announcement warning about a rash of stabbings victimizing women circulated online in August 2026. Facebook users claimed Detroit police said there was a “gang initiation going on in Detroit right now,” and the stabbings were allegedly a part of the process. Multiple accounts that shared the claim urged women to “be aware of your surroundings at all times.” The claim that Detroit police issued such a warning…

Seven of the leading candidates in the increasingly tight and crowded race to succeed President Emmanuel Macron clashed on Thursday in their first debate, eight months ahead of the election. The candidates, spanning the hard left to far right, agreed that France was facing economic trouble, at a debate organised by the country’s employer’s federation MEDEF. But at Paris’s Roland Garros complex, more used to hosting clashes between top tennis stars than between politicians, they differed wildly over how to combat the country’s problems. Read moreFrench MEP Glucksmann seeks to unite the left in bid for French presidency Marine Le…

Alors que le doute planait encore avant le départ en vacances de la candidate du RN sur la réforme qu’elle défendrait — Jordan Bardella, lui, avait fait miroiter une proposition de réforme sans âge légal de départ, dans le cas où il aurait porté les couleurs du parti —, la quadruple candidate à l’élection suprême a répété qu’elle défendrait le principe d’un retour à un âge légal de 60 à 62 ans suivant l’âge de l’entrée sur le marché du travail. Elle a dit “assumer” le coût supposé d’une telle réforme — 9 milliards d’euros par an, selon elle —,…

Andy Burnham recently supported an even lower donations cap than previously reported, according to correspondence seen by the Guardian, as the row over next week’s elections bill escalates.The prime minister wrote to a campaigner in May outlining his support for a £500,000 individual donations cap, which he said would “guard against the perception of any one party being unduly influenced or swayed by one person or organisation”.In a follow-up email seen by the Guardian, Burnham went on to say he believed the cap should gradually be reduced – a proposal now being put forward by the Labour MP Stella Creasy.Campaigners…

It used to be that a new report of budgetary red ink would touch off a political crisis in Washington. There would be speeches and news conferences and blue-ribbon commissions and legislation and brinkmanship over how to get the nation’s fiscal house in order.But when the national debt topped $40 trillion last week — that’s trillion with a T — the collective body politic all but shrugged. Never mind that the U.S. government now owes twice as much money as a share of the economy than two decades ago. Republicans and Democrats issued perfunctory, my-we’re-concerned statements and promptly moved on.The…