On Tuesday, San Francisco's Board of Supervisors voted 8-3 to authorize police use of potentially lethal remote-controlled robots when "risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers are imminent." The policy that was passed, which allows officers to kill using ground-based robots as a last resort in specific emergencies, still needs a second vote and the mayor's approval to become law. More: - The full language of the measure would allow the lethal force "when risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers is imminent, and officers cannot subdue the threat after using alternative force options or de-escalation tactics."
- San Francisco's Police Department says it owns 17 robots, a dozen of which are currently functional. None of them are pre-armed, and the city said it has no current plans to equip them with firearms.
- The machines, which are mostly used to identify and dispose of bombs, could be used to kill in emergency situations under the aforementioned proposal.
- Under the measure, a police spokesperson said the robots could be armed with explosives "to contact, incapacitate, or disorient violent, armed, or dangerous suspect" in "extreme circumstances to save or prevent further loss of innocent lives."
- Civil rights groups criticized the proposal, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation noted that it could lead to the gradual weaponization of military hardware against civilians.
THE NEW YORK TIMES 
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Nvidia announced that its research paper outlining its Minecraft-playing AI won an award at the 2022 NeurIPS (Neural Information Processing Systems) conference. The paper for MineDojo, the AI agent, received an Outstanding Datasets and Benchmarks Paper Award from the NeurIPS committee. More: - MineDojo, a reinforcement learning agent, is capable of performing actions in Minecraft based on written commands, like "find a desert pyramid," without human involvement.
- It was trained on 730,000 YouTube Minecraft videos, 7,000 wiki pages, and 340,000 Reddit posts with 6.6 million comments about Minecraft gameplay.
- To perform its tasks, MineDojo relies on a custom large-scale transformer model, MineCLIP, that associates the videos of Minecraft gameplay with a transcript narrating the video's action sequences.
- The MineDojo paper is available online here.
ARS TECHNICA
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AI computing company Cerebras Systems announced two separate partnerships today, one with AI content creator Jasper and another with Cirrascale Cloud Services. The partnerships involve the training of generative AI and GPT-class models. Cerebras is known for its CS-2 AI machines containing the Wafer-Scale-Engine, the largest computer chip ever built that measures about the size of a dinner plate. Jasper partnership: - Jasper, an AI copywriting assistant platform, will use Cerebras' new Andromeda AI supercomputer to train its generative AI models at a much faster pace than before.
- The supercomputer can deliver 1 exaflop of AI computing power, or 1 million trillion calculations per second, rivaling the world's top supercomputer.
- The system is suitable for training large language models, among other AI use cases.
Cirrascale partnership: - The cloud computing service provider and Cirrascale announced Cerebras AI Model Studio, a service designed to train GPT class models on the latter's CS2 clusters.
- In an effort to further democratize AI, users can pay a flat rate to train their models at a much faster speed and lower cost than leasing a machine or renting cloud capacity.
- The prices range from $2,500 for a 1.3-billion-parameter GPT-3 model to $2.5M for a 70-billion-parameter model, which take 10 hours and 85 days to train, respectively.
ZDNET
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Amazon introduced new "service cards" that describe the limitations, use cases, and other information about the company's cloud AI services. The warning cards, which resemble long nutrition labels, are meant to help customers use the technology in a more responsible and less harmful way. More: - The AWS AI Service Cards explain how the systems work and offer best deployment and operation practices.
- Amazon said it launched three cards as of today:
- Amazon Rekognition, which covers cloud face-matching services.
- Amazon Textract — AnalyzeID, which automatically extracts information from driver's licenses and other ID documents.
- Amazon Transcribe — Batch, the automatic speech recognition service for AWS customers to add speech-to-text capabilities to projects.
- It plans to add more cards to other AWS services over time.
REUTERS
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 A message from GUN.IO If you could work with a senior developer for free for three months, what could you accomplish? Gun.io is hosting a pitch competition (pre-recorded, so no live stage jitters) this month to give you a chance to do just that. Simply record your pitch in Rhetoric and submit it by November 21. Pitches will be judged by a panel of senior developers, and all participants will receive feedback on their pitches from the developer's perspective. Pitches should: - Describe the problem you're solving
- Demonstrate your 3-6 month product roadmap
- Appeal to developers
The winner will have three months of full-time work with a senior dev fully paid for by Gun.io (estimated worth $60,000USD)—worth a shot, right? Apply Now
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Brain-computer interface (BCI) startup Neuralink is set to host a "show & tell" event at 9 p.m. ET tonight, Nov. 30. The neuroscience company, co-founded and run by Elon Musk, teased the event with a short video that some said may suggest that its brain implants can now translate brain signals into typed words. More: - Musk, who previously delayed this year's event by a month, hasn't disclosed what the show and tell might feature.
- During the last event in April 2021, Neuralink released a video of a Macaque monkey playing the game "Pong" as the device translated the animal's brain activity into commands.
- Musk, who has described the BCI device as "a Fitbit in your skull," said initial goals include curing neurological conditions like Alzheimer's and dementia.
Zoom-out: - Meanwhile, the FDA has yet to sign off on the technology for trials.
- Its BCIs could one day sync the human brain with advanced AI to control computers, prosthetic limbs, and more.
- The device will be ultimately intended to address the "existential risk associated with digital superintelligence," Musk has said.
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🍋 FRESH FUNDING 🍋 - Silverpush (India), an ad tech company that uses AI to help companies target the right users without breaching their privacy: $12M C led by JM Finance PE.
- Obrizum (U.K.), uses AI to make upskilling employees easier: $11.5M A led by Guinness Ventures with participation from Beaubridge, Juno Capital Partners, Qatar Science & Tech Holdings, and Celeres Ventures.
- Heex Technologies (France), a smart data management startup that helps companies find what data they need to focus on: $3.3M Pre-Seed led by Karista.
- Vektor AI (U.K.), aims to help people learn new skills by connecting them with mentors: $2.4M Pre-Seed led by Cherry Ventures and Mosaic Ventures.
- Jetpack (Belgium), an AI platform that uses proprietary technology to deliver actionable actions to its users: undisclosed acquisition by Brussels Airport.
For the latest on AI startup funding and more in the VC community, check out our Inside Venture Capital newsletter.
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 |  | Beth is a writer and editor at Inside.com covering artificial intelligence and daily technology news. You can reach her at Beth.Duckett@inside.com. |   | | Editor | Aaron Crutchfield is based in the high desert of California. Over the last two decades, he has spent time writing and editing at various local newspapers and defense contractors in California. When he's not working, he can often be found looking at the latest memes with his kids or working on his 1962 and 1972 Fords. | |
Jasper is an artificial intelligence platform that helps marketing and sales teams create high-quality content faster. | |
Try Gun.io: the simplest way to hire world-class developers, expertly matched to you by senior engineers. | |
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