Tag: ai

Davos: UN Introduces AI As “The Next Existential Threat”

At Davos, Guterres slams backsliding on climate commitments

22 January 2025

The world’s political and business elite present in Davos on Wednesday faced an uncompromising address from UN chief António Guterres as he rounded on a lack of multilateral collaboration in an “increasingly rudderless world” at risk from two existential dangers: climate change and unregulated Artificial Intelligence (AI).

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‘Fossil fuel addiction’

Likening fossil fuel addiction to Frankenstein’s monster – “sparing nothing and no one” – the Secretary-General noted the irony that 13 of the world’s biggest ports for oil supertankers are set to be overwhelmed by rising sea levels, a consequence of rising temperatures and sea ice melt, caused overwhelmingly by burning coal, crude oil and natural gas.

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AI’s untold promise 

The next existential threat, AI, is a double-edged sword, Mr. Guterres continued, as it is already revolutionizing learning, diagnosing illnesses, helping farmers to increase their yields and improving the targeting of aid.

But it comes with profound risks if it is left ungoverned: it can disrupt economies, undermine trust in institutions and deepen inequalities, the Secretary-General warned.

…Read more: https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/01/1159271

OK, maybe by “the next existential threat”, the UN just meant “another existential threat”. But it is an interesting turn of phrase.

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Hot Topics at Davos: Long-acting Injectables, ‘Climate-sensitive’ Vaccines and ‘Misinformation’

Tech-driven precision medicine, long-acting injectables, “climate-sensitive” vaccines, and mRNA therapeutics for non-communicable diseases were among the topics of discussion at this week’s annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF).

“Misinformation” is also high on this year’s agenda. The WEF’s Global Risks Report 2025, released alongside this year’s annual meeting, named misinformation as the greatest global risk over the next two years.

President Donald Trump, in a speech to WEF participants on Thursday, said “misinformation” is a label used to censor people.

The meeting, held in Davos, Switzerland, focused on artificial intelligence (AI), as reflected by this year’s theme, “A Call for Collaboration in the Intelligent Age.” Over 350 governmental figures, 60 national leaders and 1,600 business leaders attended.

This year’s meeting was relatively subdued compared to previous years. Several key global figures, including the leaders of the U.K., China, France, India and Italy, were absent from the event, as were prominent figures like Bill Gates.

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Meta to spend up to $65 bln this year to power AI goals, Zuckerberg says

Meta Platforms plans to spend between $60 billion and $65 billion this year to build out AI infrastructure, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Friday, joining a wave of Big Tech firms unveiling hefty investments to capitalize on the technology.

As part of the investment, Meta (META.O) will build a more than 2-gigawatt data center that would be large enough to cover a significant part of Manhattan. The company — one of the largest customers of Nvidia’s (NVDA.O) coveted artificial intelligence chips — plans to end the year with more than 1.3 million graphics processors.

“This will be a defining year for AI,” Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post. “This is a massive effort, and over the coming years it will drive our core products and business.”

Zuckerberg expects Meta’s AI assistant — available across its services, including Facebook and Instagram — to serve more than 1 billion people in 2025, while its open-source Llama 4 would become the “leading state-of-the-art model”.

Shares of the company were 1.6% higher in early trading.

Big technology companies have been investing tens of billions of dollars to develop AI-related infrastructure after the meteoric success of OpenAI’s ChatGPT highlighted the potential for the technology.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced that OpenAI, SoftBank Group (9984.T) and Oracle (ORCL.N) will form a venture called Stargate and invest $500 billion in AI infrastructure across the United States.

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How is Stargate’s $500B getting funded?

OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle, and the UAE’s MGX on unveiled a company on Tuesday that plans to invest $500 billion in AI infrastructure for OpenAI in the U.S.

Why it matters: SoftBank is doubling down on its OpenAI bet, and it reduces OpenAI’s reliance on the infrastructure of Microsoft, its largest investor.

Context: The Stargate project will invest an initial $100 billion, with another $400 billion over the next four years.

Between the lines: A portion of the $100 billion is expected to be funded via third-party debt rather than equity, Axios has learned.

  • SoftBank will be responsible for raising the debt.
  • SoftBank and OpenAI are the largest equity investors in the first $100 billion in stargate yes, with Oracle and MGX also having contributed.
  • Similarly, the additional $400 billion is expected to be a mix of current investors, new investors, and debt providers.

OpenAI will be responsible for the day-to-day operations of the business.

The big picture: SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son previously promised President Donald Trump that he would invest $100 billion in U.S. firms over the next four years. This is part of that promise.

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F-35 AI-Enabled Drone Controller Capability Successfully Demonstrated

Lockheed Martin says the stealthy F-35 Joint Strike Fighter now has a firmly demonstrated ability to act as an in-flight ‘quarterback’ for advanced drones like the U.S. Air Force’s future Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) with the help of artificial intelligence-enabled systems. The company states that its testing has also shown a touchscreen tablet-like device is a workable interface for controlling multiple uncrewed aircraft simultaneously from the cockpit of the F-35, as well as the F-22 Raptor. For the U.S. Air Force, how pilots in crewed aircraft will actually manage CCAs during operations has emerged as an increasingly important question.

Details about F-35 and F-22 related crewed-uncrewed teaming developments were included in a press release that Lockheed Martin put out late yesterday that wrapped up various achievements for the company in 2024.

The F-35 “has the capability to control drones, including the U.S. Air Force’s future fleet of Collaborative Combat Aircraft. Recently, Lockheed Martin and industry partners demonstrated end-to-end connectivity including the seamless integration of AI technologies to control a drone in flight utilizing the same hardware and software architectures built for future F-35 flight testing,” the press release says. “These AI-enabled architectures allow Lockheed Martin to not only prove out piloted-drone teaming capabilities, but also incrementally improve them, bringing the U.S. Air Force’s family of systems vision to life.”

“Lockheed Martin has demonstrated its piloted-drone teaming interface, which can control multiple drones from the cockpit of an F-35 or F-22,” the release adds. “This technology allows a pilot to direct multiple drones to engage enemies using a touchscreen tablet in the cockpit of their 5th Gen aircraft.”

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Trump highlights partnership investing $500 billion in AI

President Donald Trump on Tuesday talked up a joint venture investing up to $500 billion for infrastructure tied to artificial intelligence by a new partnership formed by OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank.

The new entity, Stargate, will start building out data centers and the electricity generation needed for the further development of the fast-evolving AI in Texas, according to the White House. The initial investment is expected to be $100 billion and could reach five times that sum.

“It’s big money and high quality people,” said Trump, adding that it’s “a resounding declaration of confidence in America’s potential” under his new administration.

Joining Trump fresh off his inauguration at the White House were Masayoshi Son of SoftBank, Sam Altman of OpenAI and Larry Ellison of Oracle. All three credited Trump for helping to make the project possible, even though building has already started and the project goes back to 2024.

“This will be the most important project of this era,” said Altman, CEO of OpenAI.

Ellison noted that the data centers are already under construction with 10 being built so far. The chairman of Oracle suggested that the project was also tied to digital health records and would make it easier to treat diseases such as cancer by possibly developing a customized vaccine.

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‘Could Lead to Extinction Event’: Nicole Shanahan Issues Dire Warning Against Stargate’s AI-Backed mRNA Cancer Vaccine Rollout

The distribution of AI-driven mRNA cancer vaccines for individuals as part of President Donald Trump’s Stargate Project could lead to an “extinction event,” warns former RFK Jr. running mate Nicole Shanahan.

In an appearance on Megyn Kelly’s podcast Wednesday, Shanahan, a Silicon Valley attorney and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s 2024 running mate, called for a moratorium on experimental mRNA technology because they already raise health concerns since the long-term effects are not yet fully understood.

“What we need for the mRNA platform right now is a moratorium. It’s not ready for human use,” Shanahan said. “One of the reasons why is it delivers an inconsistent result in individuals.”

Shanahan went on to explain how 5% of those who received the experimental COVID-19 mRNA jabs during the plandemic didn’t get the expected results — instead, many ended up with “turbo cancers,” “blood clots” and other adverse side effects, and others were even harmed as a result of spike protein “shedding.”

“In order for our population to grow, to be strong, to be fully able-bodied, and for our human economy to thrive, we do need a moratorium on the mRNA for the time being,” she said.

Kelly added, “Until it’s not Russian roulette to take it.”

Shanahan pointed out that many engineers and pharmacological researchers working on the development of the mRNA tech are overlooking a fundamental truth about human biology: it can’t be programmed the way a computer system can.

“They think that you can program the human body as you program an AI system, as you program a computer system. And the trouble with that mentality is that nature…there’s an element to it that when you interject something like the mRNA vaccine, there’s a huge amount of stochastic randomness that can occur,” she noted.

“AI is a computer system. Human health is not,” she added.

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Trump throws his weight behind new generation of mRNA gene-therapy injections, for cancer and other diseases

OpenAI, Softbank, and Oracle will be part of a public-private partnership with the Trump White House called Stargate.

The heads of the tech firms plan to invest up to $500 billion over four years, in building AI infrastructure across the United States. This means data centers. Massive buildings designed to collect and process data. Running these centers requires huge amounts of water and energy.

SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, Sam Altman of OpenAI, and Larry Ellison of Oracle appeared at the White House on Tuesday afternoon with President Trump to announce the launching of Stargate.

Trump, standing with the three tech CEOs at the White House, said he would invoke “emergency declarations” to help speed up the Stargate project.

“I’m going to help a lot through emergency declarations,” he said. “Because we have an emergency and we need a lot of help. We need energy generation and they will build their own.”

He said Stargate will build the infrastructure to power the “next generation of AI and this will include data centers. Massive facilities…These are big beautiful buildings.”

He said a team is already scouting the nation for sites on which to build new data centers, adding:

“This is to me a very big deal. It could lead to something that could be the biggest of all.”

Larry Ellison talked about combining the forces of AI and mRNA gene therapy to create a “cancer vaccine.”

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The CDC, Palantir and the AI-Healthcare Revolution 

The Pentagon and Silicon Valley are in the midst of cultivating an even closer relationship as the Department of Defense (DoD) and Big Tech companies seek to jointly transform the American healthcare system into one that is “artificial intelligence (AI)-driven.” The alleged advantages of such a system, espoused by the Army itself, Big Tech and Pharma executives as well as intelligence officers, would be unleashed by the rapidly developing power of so-called “predictive medicine,” or “a branch of medicine that aims to identify patients at risk of developing a disease, thereby enabling either prevention or early treatment of that disease.”

This will apparently be achieved via mass interagency data sharing between the DoD, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the private sector. In other words, the military and intelligence communities, as well as the public and private sector elements of the US healthcare system, are working closely with Big Tech to “predict” diseases and treat them before they occur (and even before symptoms are felt) for the purported purpose of improving civilian and military healthcare.

This cross-sector team plans to deliver this transformation of the healthcare system by first utilizing and sharing the DoD’s healthcare dataset, which is the most “comprehensive…in the world.” It seems, however, based on the programs that already utilize this predictive approach and the necessity for “machine learning” in the development of AI technology, that this partnership would also massively expand the breadth of this healthcare dataset through an array of technologies, methods and sources.

Yet, if the actors and institutions involved in lobbying for and implementing this system indicate anything, it appears that another—if not primary—purpose of this push towards a predictive AI-healthcare infrastructure is the resurrection of a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)-managed and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-supported program that Congress officially “shelved” decades ago. That program, Total Information Awareness (TIA), was a post 9/11 “pre-crime” operation which sought to use mass surveillance to stop terrorists before they committed any crimes through collaborative data mining efforts between the public and private sector.

While the “pre-crime” aspect of TIA is the best known component of the program, it also included a component that sought to use public and private health and financial data to “predict” bioterror events and pandemics before they emerge. This was TIA’s “Bio-Surveillance” program, which aimed to develop “necessary information technologies and a resulting prototype capable of detecting the covert release of a biological pathogen automatically, and significantly earlier than traditional approaches.” Its architects argued it would achieve this by “monitoring non-traditional data sources” including “pre-diagnostic medical data” and “behavioral indicators.” While ostensibly created to thwart “bioterror” events, the program also sought to create algorithms for identifying “normal” disease outbreaks, essentially seeking to automate the early detection of either biological attacks or natural pathogen outbreaks, ranging from pandemics to presumably other, less severe disease events.

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Chinese Navy Reveals a Naval Artificial Intelligence “Dreadnaught” Moment

There have been “Revolutions in Military Affairs” (RMAs) over the ages.  RMAs are pivot points when something changes warfare dramatically.  In the naval arena, one of the most memorable RMAs was the introduction of the HMS Dreadnaught in 1906.

It was said, “Dreadnought made every other exist­ing battleship obsolete, and her name became generic for similar fast, modern vessels. All battleships laid down before her were pejoratively labeled “pre-dreadnought.”

The Chinese Navy (PLAN) has revealed a new vessel that may represent the modern, naval “Dreadnaught” moment.  The “Killer Whale” (or Orca), autonomous surface combat vessel has recently been shown in China, cruising on the river from its Guangzhou Shipyard.

This vessel is the largest military purpose USV built to date.  It is little coincidence that Guangzhou was the location of the shipyard.

Guangzhou is the Silicon Valley region of China, and the Orca is not just an autonomous warship, but a floating combat data center.

This vessel reflects significant data collection, data analysis, and AI-enabled autonomous actioning.

AI and Autonomy are trending topics, but the Orca is far ahead of any other AI-enabled, autonomous vessel publicly known to date.

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