Pope called Cardinal Burke his ‘enemy’ and threatened to strip him of privileges, reports claim

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By Thomas Colsy -- catholic Herald -- Pope Francis has referred to an outspoken American cardinal as his “enemy” and threatened to strip him of his privileges, according to reports from Italy. The New Daily Compass, which claims the rumour has been confirmed by multiple sources in the Vatican, reported that the Pope was overheard saying: “Cardinal Burke is my enemy, so I am taking away his flat and salary.” There has been no independent confirmation of the reports. Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, 75, is a former patron of the Order of Malta who also served on the Roman Curia until his removal in 2017. He has been a consistent critic of the papacy of Pope Francis.

Earlier this year, he was one of five cardinals to sign a dubia questioning aspects of the Synod on Synodality and in 2016 he also signed a dubia which raised doubts about the apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia on family life, which critics say opened the door to the reception of Holy Communion by divorced and remarried Catholics. Journalist Riccardo Cascioli, who broke the story about the Pope’s remarks, claimed such punitive measures by Francis would not be without precedent in the present pontificate. German Archbishop Georg Gänswein, personal secretary to Pope Benedict XVI, for example, was dismissed from the prefecture of the papal household and ordered to leave Rome in 2023 after he revealed that Francis’s restrictions on the celebration of the Old Latin Mass left the Emeritus Pope heart-broken. US Bishop Joseph Strickland, who was fired by Pope Francis as Bishop of Tyler, Texas, earlier this month, said: “If this is accurate it is an atrocity that must be opposed. If it is false information it needs to be corrected immediately.”

Contrary to reports, OpenAI probably isn’t building humanity-threatening AI

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by Kyle Wiggers@kyle_l_wiggers -- TechCrunch Has OpenAI invented an AI technology with the potential to “threaten humanity”? From some of the recent headlines, you might be inclined to think so. Reuters and The Information first reported last week that several OpenAI staff members had, in a letter to the AI startup’s board of directors, flagged the “prowess” and “potential danger” of an internal research project known as “Q*.” This AI project, according to the reporting, could solve certain math problems — albeit only at grade-school level — but had in the researchers’ opinion a chance of building toward an elusive technical breakthrough. There’s now debate as to whether OpenAI’s board ever received such a letter — The Verge cites a source suggesting that it didn’t. But the framing of Q* aside, Q* in actuality might not be as monumental — or threatening — as it sounds. It might not even be new. AI researchers on X (formerly Twitter), including Meta’s chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, were immediately skeptical that Q* was anything more than an extension of existing work at OpenAI — and other AI research labs besides. In a post on X, Rick Lamers, who writes the Substack newsletter Coding with Intelligence, pointed to an MIT guest lecture OpenAI co-founder John Schulman gave seven years ago during which he described a mathematical function called “Q*.”

Several researchers believe the “Q” in the name “Q*” refers to “Q-learning,” an AI technique that helps a model learn and improve at a particular task by taking — and being rewarded for — specific “correct” actions. Researchers say the asterisk, meanwhile, could be a reference to A*, an algorithm for checking the nodes that make up a graph and exploring the routes between these nodes. Both have been around a while. Google DeepMind applied Q-learning to build an AI algorithm that could play Atari 2600 games at human level… in 2014. A* has its origins in an academic paper published in 1968. And researchers at UC Irvine several years ago explored improving A* with Q-learning — which might be exactly what OpenAI’s now pursuing.

Nathan Lambert, a research scientist at the Allen Institute for AI, told TechCrunch he believes that Q* is connected to approaches in AI “mostly [for] studying high school math problems” — not destroying humanity. “OpenAI even shared work earlier this year improving the mathematical reasoning of language models with a technique called process reward models,” Lambert said, “but what remains to be seen is how better math abilities do anything other than make [OpenAI’s AI-powered chatbot] ChatGPT a better code assistant.”

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AI founders list they need to know for 2024

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Here’s a short list of posts for AI founders looking ahead to 2024:

Startups must add AI value beyond ChatGPT integration: One criticism of startups that claim the mantle of AI is that they are creating thin wrappers around other folk’s technology. This sort of platform risk is not new, but is a pertinent mental model in the OpenAI-era. In this piece, a technology CEO digs into how startups might be able to build something more defensible. And secure.

Speaking of platform risk, startups are learning the hard way that relying on OpenAI’s tech can burn them: Just as Apple took out a bunch of apps as it expanded the native functionality of iOS, OpenAI is going to chew up market space as it expands its own product remit. Startups will want to build far from its edges, perhaps, to avoid being eaten.

How to bootstrap an AI startup: While we have spoken with a host of AI-focused venture investors lately to get their take on what founders should do — and not do! — in the current market, not every startup needs external capital. You can always bootstrap. Even in the AI realm.

OpenAI’s crisis will sow the seeds of the next generation of AI startups: The upshot of the OpenAI mess is that there’s reason to think that we are seeing the formation of the next great cohort of startup founders; call it a mafia or merely a collection of former co-workers, but it’s clear that the OpenAI crew are unified in a manner that has us sitting up and taking note.

Mapped: The Migration of the World's Millionaires in 2023

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The world's millionaires are on the move, and their migration patterns are shifting. In 2023, 122,000 high net worth individuals (HNWIs) are expected to move to a new country, with Australia reclaiming the top spot as the most popular destination. The United Arab Emirates, Singapore, the United States, and Switzerland round out the top five countries for HNWI inflows. At the other end of the spectrum, China is expected to lose the most HNWIs in 2023, with 13,500 millionaires leaving the country. India, the United Kingdom, Russia, and Brazil follow closely behind.

Why are millionaires moving? The reasons vary, but economic freedom, tax burdens, and investment opportunities are key factors. Singapore, which boasts the highest level of economic freedom in the world, is a popular destination for HNWIs. Greece, despite its economic challenges, is also expected to see a significant influx of millionaires due to its golden visa program. 

The impact of HNWI migration goes beyond the economic. It also has geopolitical implications, as governments compete to attract and retain the world's economic elite.

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The Top 2 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Companies Revolutionizing the Industry Right Now

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by motley fool -- Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are more than just buzzworthy terms for some cutting-edge companies. They are the foundations on which incredible businesses have been built. Even better, some of these companies make hay in industries essential to the economy. Cybersecurity is top of mind for C-suite executives in all industries, government agencies, school districts, and even nonprofits. Cybercriminals are always on the prowl, costing organizations billions each year. IBM notes that up to 90% of cyberattacks and 70% of breaches come through endpoint devices. AI-powered CrowdStrike Holdings (NASDAQ: CRWD) is the leader in endpoint security with a comprehensive, entirely cloud-based platform. The company's results are on fire, as I'll discuss below. Meanwhile, data centers are crucial for cloud applications, data storage, computing power, and (definitely) complex AI and ML software that require massive computing power. Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) is light-years ahead of its competition, and its data center software and hardware are mission critical. This is why its data center revenue rose 171% year over year last quarter to $10.32 billion.

CrowdStrike is firing on all cylinders

CrowdStrike provides comprehensive security with its Falcon platform. The advantages are several: Falcon is cloud-native (no on-premises hardware required), customizable, and uses AI to analyze data and provide real-time protection. The platform is modular, so customers can choose which modules they want or need. This plays into CrowdStrike's land-and-expand strategy: It gains a customer, proves the platform's worth, and then the customer adds more modules -- creating more revenue. This shows up in the company's dollar-based net retention rate (DBNR), which has been above 120% dating back to the first quarter of fiscal 2019. DBNR measures the year-over-year increase in sales from an average customer. Above 100% is good, and above 120% is excellent. You can probably guess how the chart of annual recurring revenue (ARR) growth looks: The meteoric rise to $2.9 billion in ARR has enabled CrowdStrike to generate $416 million in free cash flow through the second quarter of this 2024 fiscal year and stack up $3.2 billion in cash against $742 million in long-term debt. Having cash on hand to fund growth is crucial in this environment, and the company likely won't have to borrow money at unfavorable interest rates.

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The Biggest Questions: What is death?

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MIT Technology Review by Rachel Nuwer -- Just as birth certificates note the time we enter the world, death certificates mark the moment we exit it. This practice reflects traditional notions about life and death as binaries. We are here until, suddenly, like a light switched off, we are gone. But while this idea of death is pervasive, evidence is building that it is an outdated social construct, not really grounded in biology. Dying is in fact a process—one with no clear point demarcating the threshold across which someone cannot come back. Scientists and many doctors have already embraced this more nuanced understanding of death. As society catches up, the implications for the living could be profound. “There is potential for many people to be revived again,” says Sam Parnia, director of critical care and resuscitation research at NYU Langone Health.

Neuroscientists, for example, are learning that the brain can survive surprising levels of oxygen deprivation. This means the window of time that doctors have to reverse the death process could someday be extended. Other organs likewise seem to be recoverable for much longer than is reflected in current medical practice, opening up possibilities for expanding the availability of organ donations. To do so, though, we need to reconsider how we conceive of and approach life and death. Rather than thinking of death as an event from which one cannot recover, Parnia says, we should instead view it as a transient process of oxygen deprivation that has the potential to become irreversible if enough time passes or medical interventions fail. If we adopt this mindset about death, Parnia says, “then suddenly, everyone will say, ‘Let’s treat it.’”

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