Year: 2023

Boeing bid farewell to an icon on Tuesday, delivering its final 747 jumbo jet as thousands of workers who helped build the planes over the past 55 years looked on.  Since its first flight in 1969, the giant yet graceful 747 has served as a cargo plane, a commercial aircraft capable of carrying nearly 500 passengers, a transport for NASA's space shuttles, and the Air Force One presidential aircraft. It revolutionized travel, connecting international cities that had never before had direct routes and helping democratize passenger flight.  But over about the past 15 years, Boeing and its European rival Airbus have introduced more profitable and fuel efficient wide-body planes, with only two engines to maintain instead of the 747's four. The final plane is the 1,574th built by Boeing in…

The maker of ChatGPT is trying to curb its reputation as a freewheeling cheating machine with a new tool that can help teachers detect if a student or artificial intelligence wrote that homework. The new AI Text Classifier launched Tuesday by OpenAI follows a weeks-long discussion at schools and colleges over fears that ChatGPT's ability to write just about anything on command could fuel academic dishonesty and hinder learning. OpenAI cautions that its new tool – like others already available – is not foolproof. The method for detecting AI-written text "is imperfect and it will be wrong sometimes," said Jan Leike, head of OpenAI's alignment team tasked to make its systems safer. "Because of that, it shouldn't be solely relied upon when making decisions," Leike said. Teenagers and college students…

China says it is “deeply concerned” over reports that the United States is moving to further restrict sales of American technology to Huawei, a tech company that U.S. officials have long singled out as a threat to national security for its alleged support of Beijing’s espionage efforts. As first reported by the Financial Times, the U.S. Department of Commerce has informed American firms that it will no longer issue licenses for technology exports to Huawei, thereby isolating the Shenzen-based company from supplies it needs to make its products. The White House and Commerce Department have not responded to VOA’s request for confirmation of the reports. But observers say the move may be the latest tactic in the Biden administration’s geoeconomics strategy as it comes under increasing Republican pressure to outcompete…

For New York teacher Michael Flanagan, the pandemic was a crash course in new technology — rushing out laptops to stay-at-home students and shifting hectic school life online. Students are long back at school, but the technology has lived on, and with it has come a new generation of apps that monitor the pupils online, sometimes round the clock and even on down days shared with family and friends at home. The programs scan students' online activity, social media posts and more — aiming to keep them focused, detect mental health problems and flag up any potential for violence. "You can't unring the bell," said Flanagan, who teaches social studies and economics. "Everybody has a device." The new trend for tracking, however, has raised fears that some of the apps…

The United States and European Union announced Friday an agreement to speed up and enhance the use of artificial intelligence to improve agriculture, health care, emergency response, climate forecasting and the electric grid.  A senior U.S. administration official, discussing the initiative shortly before the official announcement, called it the first sweeping AI agreement between the United States and Europe. Previously, agreements on the issue had been limited to specific areas such as enhancing privacy, the official said.   AI modeling, which refers to machine-learning algorithms that use data to make logical decisions, could be used to improve the speed and efficiency of government operations and services.   "The magic here is in building joint models [while] leaving data where it is," the senior administration official said. "The U.S. data stays in the…

An international ransomware network that extorted more than $100 million from hundreds of victims around the world has been brought down following a monthslong infiltration by the FBI, the Department of Justice announced Thursday. The group known as Hive targeted more than 1,500 victims, including hospitals, school districts and financial firms in more than 80 countries, the Justice Department said. Officials say the most recent victim in Florida was targeted about two weeks ago. In a breakthrough, FBI agents armed with a court order infiltrated Hive's computer networks in July 2022, covertly capturing its decryption keys and offering them to victims, saving the targets $130 million in ransom payments, officials said. "Cybercrime is a constantly evolving threat. But as I have said before, the Justice Department will spare no resource…

Facebook parent Meta is reinstating former President Donald Trump's personal account after a two-year suspension following the January 6, 2021, insurrection.  The company said in a blog post Wednesday it is adding "new guardrails" to ensure there are no "repeat offenders" who violate its rules.  "In the event that Mr. Trump posts further violating content, the content will be removed and he will be suspended for between one month and two years, depending on the severity of the violation," said Meta, which is based in Menlo Park, California.  Trump, in a post on his own social media network, blasted Facebook's decision to suspend his account as he praised his own site, Truth Social.  "FACEBOOK, which has lost Billions of Dollars in value since "deplatforming" your favorite President, me, has just…

The war in Ukraine has exposed Europe's energy dependence on Russia and is spurring the development of new, cleaner-burning biofuels. Spain is emerging as a leader in this effort, with the introduction late last year of airplane fuel made from olive pits. Marcus Harton narrates this report from Alfonso Beato in Seville. ...

Microsoft said it's seeing some improvement to problems with its online services including the Teams messaging platform and Outlook email system after users around the world reported outages Wednesday.  In a status update, the tech company reported "service degradation" for a number of its Microsoft 365 services.  Thousands of users reported problems with Teams, Outlook, the Azure cloud computing service and XBox Live online gaming service early Wednesday on the Downdetector website, which tracks outage reports. Many users also took to social media to complain that services were down.  By later in the morning, Downdetector showed the number of reports had dropped considerably.  "We're continuing to monitor the recovery across the service and some customers are reporting mitigation," the Microsoft 365 Status Twitter account said. "We're also connecting the service…