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STUTTGART, Germany (AP) — Players from Swiss team Young Boys held up teammate Meschack Elia's shirt as a tribute during their Champions League game at Stuttgart after his son died this week. Lukasz Lakomy gave Young Boys the lead with a powerful long-range shot in the sixth minute Wednesday and ran toward the sideline, where he held up Elia's shirt as his teammates gathered around him. Young Boys said in a statement earlier Wednesday that one of Elia's sons had “died completely unexpectedly following a short illness” in Elia's home country of Congo. The 27-year-old Elia had been informed Tuesday evening and was on his way to Congo to be with his family, the club added. Both teams wore black armbands during the game, and there was a moment of silence before kickoff. Stuttgart won the game 5-1 to leave the Swiss champion with its sixth loss from six games. Young Boys captain Loris Benito said the game and the result meant little to his team in the circumstances. “I honestly have to tell you that this evening is not about sport at all for us, but about the tragedy that we experienced yesterday,” Benito told broadcaster DAZN. “It is so unimaginable and everything else is irrelevant when you experience this.” ___ AP soccer: The Associated Press

hilosopher Shannon Vallor and I are in the British Library in London, home to 170 million items—books, recordings, newspapers, manuscripts, maps. In other words, we’re talking in the kind of place where today’s artificial intelligence chatbots like ChatGPT come to feed. Sitting on the library’s café balcony, we are literally in the shadow of the Crick Institute, the biomedical research hub where the innermost mechanisms of the human body are studied. If we were to throw a stone from here across St. Pancras railway station, we might hit the London headquarters of Google, the company for which Vallor worked as an AI ethicist before moving to Scotland to head the Center for Technomoral Futures at the University of Edinburgh. Here, wedged between the mysteries of the human, the embedded cognitive riches of human language, and the brash swagger of commercial AI, Vallor is helping me make sense of it all. Will AI solve all our problems, or will it make us obsolete, perhaps to the point of extinction? Both possibilities have engendered hyperventilating headlines. Vallor has little time for either. She acknowledges the tremendous potential of AI to be both beneficial and destructive, but she thinks the real danger lies elsewhere. As she explains in her 2024 book , both the starry-eyed notion that AI thinks like us and the paranoid fantasy that it will manifest as a malevolent dictator, assert a fictitious kinship with humans at the cost of creating a naïve and toxic view of how our own minds work. It’s a view that could encourage us to relinquish our agency and forego our wisdom in deference to the machines. It’s easy to assert kinship between machines and humans when humans are seen as mindless machines. Reading I was struck by Vallor’s determination to probe more deeply than the usual litany of concerns about AI: privacy, misinformation, and so forth. Her book is really a discourse on the relation of human and machine, raising the alarm on how the tech industry propagates a debased version of what we are, one that reimagines the human in the guise of a soft, wet computer. If that sounds dour, Vallor most certainly isn’t. She wears lightly the deep insight gained from seeing the industry from the inside, coupled to a grounding in the philosophy of science and technology. She is no crusader against the commerce of AI, speaking warmly of her time at Google while laughing at some of the absurdities of Silicon Valley. But the moral and intellectual clarity and integrity she brings to the issues could hardly offer a greater contrast to the superficial, callow swagger typical of the proverbial tech bros. “We’re at a moment in history when we need to rebuild our confidence in the capabilities of humans to reason wisely, to make collective decisions,” Vallor tells me. “We’re not going to deal with the climate emergency or the fracturing of the foundations of democracy unless we can reassert a confidence in human thinking and judgment. And everything in the AI world is working against that.” To understand AI algorithms, Vallor argues we should not regard them as minds. “We’ve been trained over a century by science fiction and cultural visions of AI to expect that when it arrives, it’s going to be a machine mind,” she tells me. “But what we have is something quite different in nature, structure, and function.” Rather, we should imagine AI as a mirror, which doesn’t duplicate the thing it reflects. “When you go into the bathroom to brush your teeth, you know there isn’t a second face looking back at you,” Vallor says. “That’s just a reflection of a face, and it has very different properties. It doesn’t have warmth; it doesn’t have depth.” Similarly, a reflection of a mind is not a mind. AI chatbots and image generators based on large language models are of human performance. “With ChatGPT, the output you see is a reflection of human intelligence, our creative preferences, our coding expertise, our voices—whatever we put in.” Even experts, Vallor says, get fooled inside this hall of mirrors. Geoffrey Hinton, the computer scientist who shared this year’s Nobel Prize in physics for his pioneering work in developing the deep-learning techniques that made LLMs possible, at an AI conference in 2024 that “we understand language in much the same way as these large language models.” Hinton is convinced these forms of AI don’t just blindly regurgitate text in patterns that seem meaningful to us; they develop some sense of the meaning of words and concepts themselves. An LLM is trained by allowing it to adjust the connections in its neural network until it reliably gives good answers, a process that Hinton to “parenting for a supernaturally precocious child.” But because AI can “know” vastly more than we can, and “thinks” much faster, Hinton concludes that it might ultimately supplant us: “It’s quite conceivable that humanity is just a passing phase in the evolution of intelligence,” at a 2023 MIT Technology Review conference. “Hinton is so far out over his skis when he starts talking about knowledge and experience,” Vallor says. “We know that the are only superficially analogous in their structure and function. In terms of what’s happening at the physical level, there’s a gulf of difference that we have every reason to think makes a difference.” There’s no real kinship at all. I agree that apocalyptic claims have been given far too much airtime, I say to Vallor. But some researchers say LLMs are getting more “cognitive”: OpenAI’s latest chatbot, model o1, is said to work via a series of chain-of-reason steps (even though the company won’t disclose them, so we can’t know if they resemble human reasoning). And AI surely does have features that can be considered aspects of mind, such as memory and learning. Computer scientist Melanie Mitchell and complexity theorist r have that, while we shouldn’t regard these systems as minds like ours, they might be considered minds of a quite different, unfamiliar variety. “I’m quite skeptical about that approach. It might be appropriate in the future, and I’m not opposed in principle to the idea that we might build machine minds. I just don’t think that’s what we’re doing right now.” Vallor’s resistance to the idea of stems from her background in philosophy, where mindedness tends to be rooted in experience: precisely what today’s AI does not have. As a result, she says, it isn’t appropriate to speak of these machines as thinking. Her view collides with the 1950 paper by British mathematician and computer pioneer Alan Turing, “Computing machinery and Intelligence,” often regarded as the conceptual foundation of AI. Turing asked the question: “Can machines think?”—only to replace it with what he considered to be a better question, which was whether we might develop machines that could give responses to questions we’d be unable to distinguish from those of humans. This was Turing’s “ ,” now commonly known as the Turing test. But imitation is all it is, Vallor says. “For me, thinking is a specific and rather unique set of experiences we have. Thinking without experience is like water without the hydrogen—you’ve taken something out that loses its identity.” Reasoning requires concepts, Vallor says, and LLMs don’t those. “Whatever we’re calling concepts in an LLM are actually something different. It’s a statistical mapping of associations in a high-dimensional mathematical vector space. Through this representation, the model can get a line of sight to the solution that is more efficient than a random search. But that’s not how we think.” They are, however, very good at . “We can ask the model, ‘How did you come to that conclusion?’ and it just bullshits a whole chain of thought that, if you press on it, will collapse into nonsense very quickly. That tells you that it wasn’t a train of thought that the machine followed and is committed to. It’s just another probabilistic distribution of reason-like shapes that are appropriately matched with the output that it generated. It’s entirely post hoc.” The pitfall of insisting on a fictitious kinship between the human mind and the machine can be discerned since the earliest days of AI in the 1950s. And here’s what worries me most about it, I tell Vallor. It’s not so much because the capabilities of the AI systems are being overestimated in the comparison, but because the way the human brain works is being so diminished by it. “That’s my biggest concern,” she agrees. Every time she gives a talk pointing out that AI algorithms are not really minds, Vallor says, “I’ll have someone in the audience come up to me and say, ‘Well, you’re right but only because at the end of the day our minds aren’t doing these things either—we’re not really rational, we’re not really responsible for what we believe, we’re just predictive machines spitting out the words that people expect, we’re just matching patterns, we’re just doing what an LLM is doing.’” Hinton has suggested an LLM can have feelings. “Maybe not exactly as we do but in a slightly different sense,” Vallor says. “And then you realize he’s only done that by stripping the concept of emotion from anything that is humanly experienced and turning it into a behaviorist reaction. It’s taking the most reductive 20th-century theories of the human mind as baseline truth. From there it becomes very easy to assert kinship between machines and humans because you’ve already turned the human into a mindless machine.” It’s with the much-vaunted notion of artificial general intelligence (AGI) that these problems start to become acute. AGI is often defined as a machine intelligence that can perform any intelligent function that humans can, but better. Some believe we are already on that threshold. Except that, to make such claims, we must redefine human intelligence as a subset of what we do. “Yes, and that’s a very deliberate strategy to draw attention away from the fact that we haven’t made AGI and we’re nowhere near it,” Vallor says. Silicon Valley culture has the features of religion. It’s unshakeable by counterevidence or argument. Originally, AGI meant something that misses nothing of what a human mind could do—something about which we’d have no doubt that it is thinking and understanding the world. But in , Vallor explains that experts such as Hinton and Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT, now define AGI as a system that is equal to or better than humans at calculation, prediction, modeling, production, and problem-solving. “In effect,” Vallor says, Altman “moved the goalposts and said that what we mean by AGI is a machine that can in effect do all of the economically valuable tasks that humans do.” It’s a common view in the community. Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, has written the ultimate objective of AI is to “distill the essence of what makes us humans so productive and capable into software, into an algorithm,” which he considers equivalent to being able to “replicate the very thing that makes us unique as a species, our intelligence.” When she saw Altman’s reframing of AGI, Vallor says, “I had to shut the laptop and stare into space for half an hour. Now all we have for the target of AGI is something that your boss can replace you with. It can be as mindless as a toaster, as long as it can do your work. And that’s what LLMs are—they are mindless toasters that do a lot of cognitive labor without thinking.” I probe this point with Vallor. After all, having AIs that can beat us at chess is one thing—but now we have algorithms that write convincing prose, have engaging chats, make music that fools some into thinking it was made by humans. Sure, these systems can be rather limited and bland—but aren’t they encroaching ever more on tasks we might view as uniquely human? “That’s where the mirror metaphor becomes helpful,” she says. “A mirror image can dance. A good enough mirror can show you the aspects of yourself that are deeply human, but not the inner experience of them—just the performance.” With AI art, she adds, “The important thing is to realize there’s nothing on the other side participating in this communication.” What confuses us is we can feel emotions in response to an AI-generated “work of art.” But this isn’t surprising because the machine is reflecting back permutations of the patterns that humans have made: Chopin-like music, Shakespeare-like prose. And the emotional response isn’t somehow encoded in the stimulus but is constructed in our own minds: Engagement with art is far less passive than we tend to imagine. But it’s not just about art. “We are meaning-makers and meaning-inventors, and that’s partly what gives us our personal, creative, political freedoms,” Vallor says. “We’re not locked into the patterns we’ve ingested but can rearrange them in new shapes. We do that when we assert new moral claims in the world. But these machines just recirculate the same patterns and shapes with slight statistical variations. They do not have the capacity to make meaning. That’s fundamentally the gulf that prevents us being justified in claiming real kinship with them.” I ask Vallor whether some of these misconceptions and misdirection about AI are rooted in the nature of the tech community itself—in its narrowness of training and culture, its lack of diversity. She sighs. “Having lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for most of my life and having worked in tech, I can tell you the influence of that culture is profound, and it’s not just a particular cultural outlook, . There are certain commitments in that way of thinking that are unshakeable by any kind of counterevidence or argument.” In fact, providing counterevidence just gets you excluded from the conversation, Vallor says. “It’s a very narrow conception of what intelligence is, driven by a very narrow profile of values where efficiency and a kind of winner-takes-all domination are the highest values of any intelligent creature to pursue.” But this efficiency, Vallor continues, “is never defined with any reference to any higher value, which always slays me. Because I could be the most efficient at burning down every house on the planet, and no one would say, ‘Yay Shannon, you are the most efficient pyromaniac we have ever seen! Good on you!’” People really think the sun is setting on human decision-making. That’s terrifying to me. In Silicon Valley, efficiency is an end in itself. “It’s about achieving a situation where the problem is solved and there’s no more friction, no more ambiguity, nothing left unsaid or undone, you’ve dominated the problem and it’s gone and all there is left is your perfect shining solution. It is this ideology of intelligence as a thing that wants to remove the business of thinking.” Vallor tells me she once tried to explain to an AGI leader that there’s no mathematical solution to the problem of justice. “I told him the nature of justice is we have conflicting values and interests that cannot be made commensurable on a single scale, and that the work of human deliberation and negotiation and appeal is essential. And he told me, ‘I think that just means you’re bad at math.’ What do you say to that? It becomes two worldviews that don’t intersect. You’re speaking to two very different conceptions of reality.” Vallor doesn’t underestimate the threats that ever-more powerful AI presents to our societies, from our privacy to misinformation and political stability. But her real worry right now is what AI is doing to our notion of ourselves. “I think AI is posing a fairly imminent threat to the existential significance of human life,” Vallor says. “Through its automation of our thinking practices, and through the narrative that’s being created around it, AI is undermining our sense of ourselves as responsible and free intelligences in the world. You can find that in authoritarian rhetoric that wishes to justify the deprivation of humans to govern themselves. That story has had new life breathed into it by AI.” Worse, she says, this narrative is presented as an objective, neutral, politically detached story: It’s just . “You get these people who really think that the time of human agency has ended, the sun is setting on human decision-making—and that that’s a good thing and is simply scientific fact. That’s terrifying to me. We’re told that what’s next is that AGI is going to build something better. And I do think you have very cynical people who believe this is true and are taking a kind of religious comfort in the belief that they are shepherding into existence our machine successors.” Vallor doesn’t want AI to come to a halt. She says it really could help to solve some of the serious problems we face. “There are still huge applications of AI in medicine, in the energy sector, in agriculture. I want it to continue to advance in ways that are wisely selected and steered and governed.” That’s why a backlash against it, however understandable, could be a problem in the long run. “I see lots of people turning against AI,” Vallor says. “It’s becoming a powerful hatred in many creative circles. Those communities were much more balanced in their attitudes about three years ago, when LLMs and image models started coming out. There were a lot of people saying, ‘This is kind of cool.’ But the approach by the AI industry to the rights and agency of creators has been so exploitative that you now see creatives saying, ‘Fuck AI and everyone attached to it, don’t let it anywhere near our creative work.’ I worry about this reactive attitude to the most harmful forms of AI spreading to a general distrust of it as a path to solving any kind of problem.” While Vallor still wants to promote AI, “I find myself very often in the camp of the people who are turning angrily against it for reasons that are entirely legitimate,” she says. That divide, she admits, becomes part of an “artificial separation people often cling to between humanity and technology.” Such a distinction, she says, “is potentially quite damaging, because technology is fundamental to our identity. We’ve been technological creatures since before we were . Tools have been instruments of our liberation, of creation, of better ways of caring for one another and other life on this planet, and I don’t want to let that go, to enforce this artificial divide of humanity versus the machines. Technology at its core can be as humane an activity as anything can be. We’ve just lost that connection.” Posted on Philip Ball is a freelance writer based in London, and the author of many books on science and its interactions with the broader culture. His latest book is . Cutting-edge science, unraveled by the very brightest living thinkers.

ATLANTA — Jimmy Carter, the peanut farmer who won the presidency in the wake of the Watergate scandal and Vietnam War, endured humbling defeat after one tumultuous term and then redefined life after the White House as a global humanitarian, has died. He was 100 years old. The longest-lived American president died Sunday, more than a year after entering hospice care , at his home in the small town of Plains, Ga., where he and his wife, Rosalynn, who died at 96 in November 2023 , spent most of their lives, The Carter Center said. “Our founder, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, passed away this afternoon in Plains, Georgia,” the center said in posting about his death on the social media platform X. It added in a statement that he died peacefully, surrounded by his family. Businessman, Navy officer, evangelist, politician, negotiator, author, woodworker, citizen of the world — Carter forged a path that still challenges political assumptions and stands out among the 45 men who reached the nation’s highest office. The 39th president leveraged his ambition with a keen intellect, deep religious faith and prodigious work ethic, conducting diplomatic missions into his 80s and building houses for the poor well into his 90s. “My faith demands — this is not optional — my faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can, with whatever I have to try to make a difference,” Carter once said. A moderate Democrat, Carter entered the 1976 presidential race as a little-known Georgia governor with a broad smile, outspoken Baptist mores and technocratic plans reflecting his education as an engineer. His no-frills campaign depended on public financing, and his promise not to deceive the American people resonated after Richard Nixon’s disgrace and U.S. defeat in southeast Asia. “If I ever lie to you, if I ever make a misleading statement, don’t vote for me. I would not deserve to be your president,” Carter repeated before narrowly beating Republican incumbent Gerald Ford, who had lost popularity pardoning Nixon. Carter governed amid Cold War pressures, turbulent oil markets and social upheaval over racism, women’s rights and America’s global role. His most acclaimed achievement in office was a Mideast peace deal that he brokered by keeping Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin at the bargaining table for 13 days in 1978. That Camp David experience inspired the post-presidential center where Carter would establish so much of his legacy. Yet Carter’s electoral coalition splintered under double-digit inflation, gasoline lines and the 444-day hostage crisis in Iran. His bleakest hour came when eight Americans died in a failed hostage rescue in April 1980, helping to ensure his landslide defeat to Republican Ronald Reagan. Carter acknowledged in his 2020 White House Diary that he could be “micromanaging” and “excessively autocratic,” complicating dealings with Congress and the federal bureaucracy. He also turned a cold shoulder to Washington’s news media and lobbyists, not fully appreciating their influence on his political fortunes. “It didn’t take us long to realize that the underestimation existed, but by that time we were not able to repair the mistake,” Carter told historians in 1982, suggesting that he had “an inherent incompatibility” with Washington insiders. Carter insisted his overall approach was sound and that he achieved his primary objectives — to “protect our nation’s security and interests peacefully” and “enhance human rights here and abroad” — even if he fell spectacularly short of a second term. Ignominious defeat, though, allowed for renewal. The Carters founded The Carter Center in 1982 as a first-of-its-kind base of operations, asserting themselves as international peacemakers and champions of democracy, public health and human rights. “I was not interested in just building a museum or storing my White House records and memorabilia,” Carter wrote in a memoir published after his 90th birthday. “I wanted a place where we could work.” That work included easing nuclear tensions in North and South Korea, helping to avert a U.S. invasion of Haiti and negotiating cease-fires in Bosnia and Sudan. By 2022, The Carter Center had declared at least 113 elections in Latin America, Asia and Africa to be free or fraudulent. Recently, the center began monitoring U.S. elections as well. Carter’s stubborn self-assuredness and even self-righteousness proved effective once he was unencumbered by the Washington order, sometimes to the point of frustrating his successors . He went “where others are not treading,” he said, to places like Ethiopia, Liberia and North Korea, where he secured the release of an American who had wandered across the border in 2010. “I can say what I like. I can meet whom I want. I can take on projects that please me and reject the ones that don’t,” Carter said. He announced an arms-reduction-for-aid deal with North Korea without clearing the details with Bill Clinton’s White House. He openly criticized President George W. Bush for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He also criticized America’s approach to Israel with his 2006 book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid . And he repeatedly countered U.S. administrations by insisting North Korea should be included in international affairs, a position that most aligned Carter with Republican President Donald Trump. Among the center’s many public health initiatives, Carter vowed to eradicate the guinea worm parasite during his lifetime, and nearly achieved it: Cases dropped from millions in the 1980s to nearly a handful. With hardhats and hammers, the Carters also built homes with Habitat for Humanity. The Nobel committee’s 2002 Peace Prize cites his “untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.” Carter should have won it alongside Sadat and Begin in 1978, the chairman added. Carter accepted the recognition saying there was more work to be done. “The world is now, in many ways, a more dangerous place,” he said. “The greater ease of travel and communication has not been matched by equal understanding and mutual respect.” Carter’s globetrotting took him to remote villages where he met little “Jimmy Carters,” so named by admiring parents. But he spent most of his days in the same one-story Plains house — expanded and guarded by Secret Service agents — where they lived before he became governor. He regularly taught Sunday School lessons at Maranatha Baptist Church until his mobility declined and the coronavirus pandemic raged. Those sessions drew visitors from around the world to the small sanctuary where Carter will receive his final send-off after a state funeral at Washington’s National Cathedral. The common assessment that he was a better ex-president than president rankled Carter and his allies. His prolific post-presidency gave him a brand above politics, particularly for Americans too young to witness him in office. But Carter also lived long enough to see biographers and historians reassess his White House years more generously. His record includes the deregulation of key industries, reduction of U.S. dependence on foreign oil, cautious management of the national debt and notable legislation on the environment, education and mental health. He focused on human rights in foreign policy, pressuring dictators to release thousands of political prisoners . He acknowledged America’s historical imperialism, pardoned Vietnam War draft evaders and relinquished control of the Panama Canal. He normalized relations with China. “I am not nominating Jimmy Carter for a place on Mount Rushmore,” Stuart Eizenstat, Carter’s domestic policy director, wrote in a 2018 book. “He was not a great president” but also not the “hapless and weak” caricature voters rejected in 1980, Eizenstat said. Rather, Carter was “good and productive” and “delivered results, many of which were realized only after he left office.” Madeleine Albright, a national security staffer for Carter and Clinton’s secretary of state, wrote in Eizenstat’s forward that Carter was “consequential and successful” and expressed hope that “perceptions will continue to evolve” about his presidency. “Our country was lucky to have him as our leader,” said Albright, who died in 2022. Jonathan Alter, who penned a comprehensive Carter biography published in 2020, said in an interview that Carter should be remembered for “an epic American life” spanning from a humble start in a home with no electricity or indoor plumbing through decades on the world stage across two centuries. “He will likely go down as one of the most misunderstood and underestimated figures in American history,” Alter told The Associated Press. James Earl Carter Jr. was born Oct. 1, 1924, in Plains and spent his early years in nearby Archery. His family was a minority in the mostly Black community, decades before the civil rights movement played out at the dawn of Carter’s political career. Carter, who campaigned as a moderate on race relations but governed more progressively, talked often of the influence of his Black caregivers and playmates but also noted his advantages: His land-owning father sat atop Archery’s tenant-farming system and owned a main street grocery. His mother, Lillian , would become a staple of his political campaigns. Seeking to broaden his world beyond Plains and its population of fewer than 1,000 — then and now — Carter won an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy, graduating in 1946. That same year he married Rosalynn Smith, another Plains native, a decision he considered more important than any he made as head of state. She shared his desire to see the world, sacrificing college to support his Navy career. Carter climbed in rank to lieutenant, but then his father was diagnosed with cancer, so the submarine officer set aside his ambitions of admiralty and moved the family back to Plains. His decision angered Rosalynn, even as she dived into the peanut business alongside her husband. Carter again failed to talk with his wife before his first run for office — he later called it “inconceivable” not to have consulted her on such major life decisions — but this time, she was on board. “My wife is much more political,” Carter told the AP in 2021. He won a state Senate seat in 1962 but wasn’t long for the General Assembly and its back-slapping, deal-cutting ways. He ran for governor in 1966 — losing to arch-segregationist Lester Maddox — and then immediately focused on the next campaign. Carter had spoken out against church segregation as a Baptist deacon and opposed racist “Dixiecrats” as a state senator. Yet as a local school board leader in the 1950s he had not pushed to end school segregation even after the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision, despite his private support for integration. And in 1970, Carter ran for governor again as the more conservative Democrat against Carl Sanders, a wealthy businessman Carter mocked as “Cufflinks Carl.” Sanders never forgave him for anonymous, race-baiting flyers, which Carter disavowed. Ultimately, Carter won his races by attracting both Black voters and culturally conservative whites. Once in office, he was more direct. “I say to you quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination is over,” he declared in his 1971 inaugural address, setting a new standard for Southern governors that landed him on the cover of Time magazine. His statehouse initiatives included environmental protection, boosting rural education and overhauling antiquated executive branch structures. He proclaimed Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the slain civil rights leader’s home state. And he decided, as he received presidential candidates in 1972, that they were no more talented than he was. In 1974, he ran Democrats’ national campaign arm. Then he declared his own candidacy for 1976. An Atlanta newspaper responded with the headline: “Jimmy Who?” The Carters and a “Peanut Brigade” of family members and Georgia supporters camped out in Iowa and New Hampshire, establishing both states as presidential proving grounds. His first Senate endorsement: a young first-termer from Delaware named Joe Biden. Yet it was Carter’s ability to navigate America’s complex racial and rural politics that cemented the nomination. He swept the Deep South that November, the last Democrat to do so, as many white Southerners shifted to Republicans in response to civil rights initiatives. A self-declared “born-again Christian,” Carter drew snickers by referring to Scripture in a Playboy magazine interview, saying he “had looked on many women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times.” The remarks gave Ford a new foothold and television comedians pounced — including NBC’s new Saturday Night Live show. But voters weary of cynicism in politics found it endearing. Carter chose Minnesota Sen. Walter “Fritz” Mondale as his running mate on a “Grits and Fritz” ticket. In office, he elevated the vice presidency and the first lady’s office. Mondale’s governing partnership was a model for influential successors Al Gore, Dick Cheney and Biden. Rosalynn Carter was one of the most involved presidential spouses in history, welcomed into Cabinet meetings and huddles with lawmakers and top aides. The Carters presided with uncommon informality: He used his nickname “Jimmy” even when taking the oath of office, carried his own luggage and tried to silence the Marine Band’s “Hail to the Chief.” They bought their clothes off the rack. Carter wore a cardigan for a White House address, urging Americans to conserve energy by turning down their thermostats. Amy, the youngest of four children, attended District of Columbia public school. Washington’s social and media elite scorned their style. But the larger concern was that “he hated politics,” according to Eizenstat, leaving him nowhere to turn politically once economic turmoil and foreign policy challenges took their toll. Carter partially deregulated the airline, railroad and trucking industries and established the departments of Education and Energy, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He designated millions of acres of Alaska as national parks or wildlife refuges. He appointed a then-record number of women and nonwhite people to federal posts. He never had a Supreme Court nomination, but he elevated civil rights attorney Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the nation’s second highest court, positioning her for a promotion in 1993. He appointed Paul Volker, the Federal Reserve chairman whose policies would help the economy boom in the 1980s — after Carter left office. He built on Nixon’s opening with China, and though he tolerated autocrats in Asia, pushed Latin America from dictatorships to democracy. But he couldn’t immediately tame inflation or the related energy crisis. And then came Iran. After he admitted the exiled Shah of Iran to the U.S. for medical treatment, the American Embassy in Tehran was overrun in 1979 by followers of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Negotiations to free the hostages broke down repeatedly ahead of the failed rescue attempt. The same year, Carter signed SALT II, the new strategic arms treaty with Leonid Brezhnev of the Soviet Union, only to pull it back, impose trade sanctions and order a U.S. boycott of the Moscow Olympics after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. Hoping to instill optimism, he delivered what the media dubbed his “malaise” speech, although he didn’t use that word. He declared the nation was suffering “a crisis of confidence.” By then, many Americans had lost confidence in the president, not themselves. Carter campaigned sparingly for reelection because of the hostage crisis, instead sending Rosalynn as Sen. Edward M. Kennedy challenged him for the Democratic nomination. Carter famously said he’d “kick his ass,” but was hobbled by Kennedy as Reagan rallied a broad coalition with “make America great again” appeals and asking voters whether they were “better off than you were four years ago.” Reagan further capitalized on Carter’s lecturing tone, eviscerating him in their lone fall debate with the quip: “There you go again.” Carter lost all but six states and Republicans rolled to a new Senate majority. Carter successfully negotiated the hostages’ freedom after the election, but in one final, bitter turn of events, Tehran waited until hours after Carter left office to let them walk free. At 56, Carter returned to Georgia with “no idea what I would do with the rest of my life.” Four decades after launching The Carter Center, he still talked of unfinished business. “I thought when we got into politics we would have resolved everything,” Carter told the AP in 2021. “But it’s turned out to be much more long-lasting and insidious than I had thought it was. I think in general, the world itself is much more divided than in previous years.” Still, he affirmed what he said when he underwent treatment for a cancer diagnosis in his 10th decade of life. “I’m perfectly at ease with whatever comes,” he said in 2015 . “I’ve had a wonderful life. I’ve had thousands of friends, I’ve had an exciting, adventurous and gratifying existence.”Brock Purdy will miss Sunday's game for the 49ers with a shoulder injuryMy favorite game of 2024, Blue Prince, finally has a release window... in 2025

BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) — In the wee hours Sunday at the United Nations climate talks, countries from around the world reached an agreement on how rich countries can cough up the funds to support poor countries in the face of climate change. It's a far-from-perfect arrangement, with many parties still unsatisfied but some hopeful that the deal will be a step in the right direction. World Resources Institute president and CEO Ani Dasgupta called it “an important down payment toward a safer, more equitable future,” but added that the poorest and most vulnerable nations are “rightfully disappointed that wealthier countries didn’t put more money on the table when billions of people’s lives are at stake.” The summit was supposed to end on Friday evening but negotiations spiraled on through early Sunday. With countries on opposite ends of a massive chasm, tensions ran high as delegations tried to close the gap in expectations. Here's how they got there: What was the finance deal agreed at climate talks? Rich countries have agreed to pool together at least $300 billion a year by 2035. It’s not near the full amount of $1.3 trillion that developing countries were asking for, and that experts said was needed. But some delegations said this deal is headed in the right direction, with hopes that more money flows in the future. The text included a call for all parties to work together using “all public and private sources” to get closer to the $1.3 trillion per year goal by 2035. That means also pushing for international mega-banks, funded by taxpayer dollars, to help foot the bill. And it means, hopefully, that companies and private investors will follow suit on channeling cash toward climate action. The agreement is also a critical step toward helping countries on the receiving end create more ambitious targets to limit or cut emissions of heat-trapping gases that are due early next year. It’s part of the plan to keep cutting pollution with new targets every five years, which the world agreed to at the U.N. talks in Paris in 2015. The Paris agreement set the system of regular ratcheting up climate fighting ambition as away to keep warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. The world is already at 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) and carbon emissions keep rising. What will the money be spent on? The deal decided in Baku replaces a previous agreement from 15 years ago that charged rich nations $100 billion a year to help the developing world with climate finance. The new number has similar aims: it will go toward the developing world's long laundry list of to-dos to prepare for a warming world and keep it from getting hotter. That includes paying for the transition to clean energy and away from fossil fuels. Countries need funds to build up the infrastructure needed to deploy technologies like wind and solar power on a large scale. Communities hard-hit by extreme weather also want money to adapt and prepare for events like floods, typhoons and fires. Funds could go toward improving farming practices to make them more resilient to weather extremes, to building houses differently with storms in mind, to helping people move from the hardest-hit areas and to help leaders improve emergency plans and aid in the wake of disasters. The Philippines, for example, has been hammered by six major storms in less than a month , bringing to millions of people howling wind, massive storm surges and catastrophic damage to residences, infrastructure and farmland. “Family farmers need to be financed," said Esther Penunia of the Asian Farmers Association. She described how many have already had to deal with millions of dollars of storm damage, some of which includes trees that won't again bear fruit for months or years, or animals that die, wiping out a main source of income. “If you think of a rice farmer who depends on his or her one hectare farm, rice land, ducks, chickens, vegetables, and it was inundated, there was nothing to harvest,” she said. Why was it so hard to get a deal? Election results around the world that herald a change in climate leadership, a few key players with motive to stall the talks and a disorganized host country all led to a final crunch that left few happy with a flawed compromise. The ending of COP29 is "reflective of the harder geopolitical terrain the world finds itself in,” said Li Shuo of the Asia Society. He cited Trump's recent victory in the US — with his promises to pull the country out of the Paris Agreement — as one reason why the relationship between China and the EU will be more consequential for global climate politics moving forward. Developing nations also faced some difficulties agreeing in the final hours, with one Latin American delegation member saying that their group didn't feel properly consulted when small island states had last-minute meetings to try to break through to a deal. Negotiators from across the developing world took different tacks on the deal until they finally agreed to compromise. Meanwhile, activists ramped up the pressure: many urged negotiators to stay strong and asserted that no deal would be better than a bad deal. But ultimately the desire for a deal won out. Some also pointed to the host country as a reason for the struggle. Mohamed Adow, director of climate and energy think tank Power Shift Africa, said Friday that “this COP presidency is one of the worst in recent memory,” calling it “one of the most poorly led and chaotic COP meetings ever.” The presidency said in a statement, “Every hour of the day, we have pulled people together. Every inch of the way, we have pushed for the highest common denominator. We have faced geopolitical headwinds and made every effort to be an honest broker for all sides.” Shuo retains hope that the opportunities offered by a green economy “make inaction self-defeating” for countries around the world, regardless of their stance on the decision. But it remains to be seen whether the UN talks can deliver more ambition next year. In the meantime, “this COP process needs to recover from Baku,” Shuo said. ___ Associated Press reporters Seth Borenstein and Sibi Arasu contributed to this report. ___ The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org . Melina Walling, The Associated Press

Porter's 26 lead Middle Tennessee over South Florida 95-88Tulane QB Mensah transfers to Duke

General Motors (GM) announced on Dec. 10 its decision to exit the robotaxi market after investing more than $10 billion in its Cruise autonomous vehicle unit. GM said it will no longer fund Cruise development efforts due to “the considerable time and resources that would be needed to scale the business, along with an increasingly competitive robotaxi market.” The company said it will combine Cruise’s technical team with its own to advance autonomous and assisted driving. The automaker noted that it expects the restructuring will reduce its annual spending by more than $1 billion starting in the first half of 2025. “GM is committed to delivering the best driving experiences to our customers in a disciplined and capital efficient manner,” GM CEO Mary Barra said in a statement. GM acquired a controlling stake in Cruise automation for $581 million in 2016, in hopes of accelerating its development of autonomous vehicle technology. The automaker currently holds a 90 percent ownership stake. The company said it has agreements with other stakeholders to raise its stake to more than 97 percent and buy the remaining shares in Cruise LLC. “Contingent upon the repurchase of these shares and Cruise board approval, GM will work with the Cruise leadership team to restructure and refocus Cruise’s operations,” it stated. GM reported a $435 million loss from its majority-owned Cruise robotaxi division in the third quarter of 2024, down from the $791 million loss in the same period last year. The automaker previously announced plans for Cruise to generate $1 billion in annual revenue by 2025, but it scaled back its spending on the unit after one of its autonomous vehicles ran over a pedestrian who had been hit by another car in San Francisco on Oct. 2, 2023. The Cruise vehicle failed to detect a pedestrian was underneath it and dragged her over 20 feet while trying to pull over to the side of the road, the U.S. Attorney’s office of the Northern District of California stated in a press release last month. Prosecutors stated that Cruise filed a report with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration describing the accident, but omitted reference to the secondary movement and dragging. Cruise eventually admitted to falsifying records and agreed to pay a $500,000 criminal fine. The incident led to Cruise’s license to operate its driverless fleet in California being suspended by regulators and triggered a leadership shake-up and layoffs that reduced its workforce by about a quarter.The 100+ best Walmart holiday deals you can buy now

NoneLuigi Mangione ‘had so much to offer’ — now, he is a murder suspectThe Angels still need help in the rotation, the bullpen and the lineup, but adding to the infield depth chart would seem to be one of their more pressing needs.

Crown Castle Inc. stock underperforms Wednesday when compared to competitorsNoneThere's a story from the earliest days of cinema that seems applicable to Sora, the text-to-video creation tool launched by OpenAI this week. And given that Sora's servers are struggling with demand , with many OpenAI subscribers still waiting to try it out, we've got time for stories. You probably know of Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station (1896) by the Lumiere brothers, even if you've never seen it. Like Sora, the Lumieres created very short movies that showcased the latest tech. We're talking cinematograph rather than AI rendering, and a luxurious 50 seconds of film rather than the maximum 20 seconds allowed in Sora videos. Still, it's the same principle: This was an early peek at a shockingly new form of entertainment. According to legend — a legend cemented in Martin Scorcese's charming movie about a boy in the Lumiere era, Hugo (2011) — Arrival of a Train audiences ran in terror from a steam engine that appeared to be heading straight for them. A similar sense of panic clings to Sora — specifically, panic about what AI videos might do to further crack up our "post-truth" media landscape. The average viewer is already having a hard time judging what is real and what isn't, and the problem is worse if they're depressed . We're living in a golden age of conspiracy theories. The world's richest man already shared an AI deepfake video in order to help swing an election. What happens when Sora can make any prompt look as real as something you might see on the evening news — ready-made to spread on social media? OpenAI seems to think its watermarks, both visible and invisible , would prevent any shenanigans. But having downloaded dozens of Sora videos now, I can attest that the visible watermark is tiny, illegible, and fades into the background more often than not. It would be child's play for video editing software to clip it out altogether. So a world of deliberate disinformation, either from bad political actors or influencers trying to gin up their engagement, is barreling down on us like a train. Right? Wrong. Because as the actual story of the Lumiere movie tells us, humans are actually a lot smarter about new video entertainment than we give them credit for. Here's the thing about Arrival of a Train : the legend is almost certainly wrong. We have zero first-hand evidence that audiences fled the cinema, or even flinched when they saw a train approaching in a 50-second clip. Media studies professor Martin Loiperdinger calls the panic tale " cinema's founding myth ," and notes it can be traced back to books written in the second half of the 20th century. It's possible that authors conflated it with the Lumieres' later experimental 3-D version of Arrival of a Train , which screened a handful of times in 1934 and was — like a lot of 3-D movies to come — a novelty, and a commercial failure. So no, early audiences likely did not confuse a moving image of a train with a real train. Rather, they seem to have adapted to the whole concept of movies very quickly. Contemporary accounts of the Lumiere shorts (of which there were dozens; Arrival of a Train was not seen as a stand-out) are filled with excitement at the possibilities now unlocked. "Why, if this continues," wrote one newspaper, Le Courier de Paris , in 1896, "we could almost overcome memory loss, almost put an end to separation, almost abolish death itself." (Spoiler alert: we did not, although that sounds like a great premise for a 19th century Black Mirror episode.) Another periodical, La Science Francais , enthused about the "most unbelievably wonderful sorcery" that had created the cinematograph's "hallucinatory phantasmagoria." Even today's most tech-happy AI boosters would have a hard time endorsing Sora in the same terms. Because like most AI, Sora is often "hallucinatory" — and not in a good way. As I discovered in the moments that OpenAI servers weren't slammed, almost every Sora-generated video has some detail that looks wrong to human eyes. I typed a prompt for "journalist slams desk in frustration at not being able to access AI videos," then noticed a pen that appears and disappears in the journalist's hand. The mistakes went on and on. The novelty factor diminished fast. Friends were amused and a little freaked out by the realness of the swag in "hip-hop artist models a cozy Christmas sweater" — until we spotted that the rapper's gold chain had become a gold pony tail at the back, and the reindeer on the sweater had eight legs. Sora's response to "a funeral mass with circus clowns" pretty much nailed the prompt ... except that the colorful-wigged, red-nosed figure in the casket was missing his body. That's not to say Sora won't have an immediate impact on the moving image industry. Given less outlandish prompts, it could certainly replace a lot of the generic B-roll often seen in YouTube explainers and corporate training videos. (That's assuming OpenAI isn't going to be forced to cease and desist training Sora on internet video footage without the makers' permission.) It is to say that there's a significant barrier to entry when it comes to creating videos featuring anything unusual, anything you're trying to lie about, anything that Sora hasn't been specifically trained on. Rooting out all those mistakes, to the point where we won't immediately notice, can be an exercise in frustration. And perhaps these early mistake-filled AI videos will serve as a kind of mass inoculation — a small dose of the post-truth disease, one that effectively gives our brains AI-resistant antibodies that can better prepare us for a future epidemic of visual fakes. AI video needs to board the clue train I'm certainly less impressed with AI after I prompted Sora for a new take on the Lumieres' Arrival of a Train. I asked for a video where a locomotive does actually break through the projection screen at the end, crushing the cinematograph audience. But Sora couldn't even access the original 50-second short, which is way out of copyright and widely available online (including a version already upscaled by AI ). It hallucinated a movie called "Arrival of a tal [sic] train," apparently released in the year "18965." As for breaking a literal fourth wall, forget about it: despite multiple prompt-rewording attempts, Sora simply couldn't grok what I was asking. The projection screen remained intact. Still, this version of Sora may still be a harbinger of some terrifying visual fakery to come — perhaps when more robust AI video tech falls into the hands of a future D.W. Griffith. Two decades passed between Arrival of a Train and Griffith's infamous movie The Birth of a Nation (1915) — the first real blockbuster, a landmark in the history of cinema, which also happened to be a skewed take on recent American history stuffed with racist lies. Griffith's movie, protested at the time by the NAACP, was hugely influential in perpetuating segregation and reviving the Ku Klux Klan. So yes, perhaps Sora's release is slowly nudging us further in the direction of a fragmented post-truth world. But even in an AI-dominated future, bad actors are going to have to work overtime if they want to do more damage to society than the cinematograph's most dangerous prompts.

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Letter To The Year 2024

CONWAY, S.C. (AP) — Jestin Porter had 26 points in Middle Tennessee's 95-88 win over South Florida on Friday. Porter shot 9 for 12 (4 for 6 from 3-point range) and 4 of 4 from the free-throw line for the Blue Raiders (5-1). Essam Mostafa scored 20 points and added 10 rebounds. Kamari Lands shot 6 for 12, including 4 for 8 from beyond the arc to finish with 17 points.

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec 20, 2024-- PitchBook , the premiere data provider for the private and public equity markets, has released a set of 2025 Outlooks exploring the investment trends analysts expect to see driving activity in the coming year. Spanning venture capital, private equity, healthcare, and key technology sectors, these eight reports feature over 40 outlooks from PitchBook’s global research team, marking the most extensive forecast to date. Following a year faced with economic uncertainty and geopolitical tensions, investors are looking ahead to 2025 with hopes of strong valuations and a potential IPO market rebound. PitchBook analysts are cautiously optimistic about several key sectors in the coming year, predicting a notable improvement in the VC market in particular. See below for a complete list of PitchBook’s 2025 Outlooks. Download the full reports to see analysts’ predictions backed by in-depth data and rationale. “The breadth and depth of our 2025 Outlooks reflect not only the continued growth of PitchBook’s research and analyst team but also our commitment to delivering actionable insights into the dynamic trends shaping the private markets,” said Nizar Tarhuni, Executive Vice President of Research & Market Intelligence at PitchBook. “As investors look to navigate economic uncertainty and seize emerging opportunities across sectors, our comprehensive, data-driven forecasts empower them to make informed decisions with confidence.” PitchBook’s Institutional Research Group is composed of more than 60 analysts providing timely institutional-grade research across asset classes, established industries and emerging technologies. The team’s coverage spans private equity, venture capital, real assets, leveraged loans, high-yield bonds and private credit. The base of this research is PitchBook’s proprietary datasets, which are vetted and curated to provide market-leading insights and analysis. For more information on PitchBook, click here . About PitchBook PitchBook is a financial data and software company that provides transparency into the capital markets to help professionals discover and execute opportunities with confidence, and efficiency. PitchBook collects and analyzes detailed data on the entire venture capital, private equity, and M&A landscape—including public and private companies, investors, funds, investments, exits, and people. The company’s data and analysis are available through the PitchBook Platform, industry news, and in-depth reports. Founded in 2007, PitchBook operates globally with more than 3,000 team members. Its platform, data, and research serve over 100,000 professionals around the world. In 2016, Morningstar acquired PitchBook, which now operates as an independent subsidiary. View source version on businesswire.com : https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20241220928667/en/ PR@pitchbook.com KEYWORD: WASHINGTON UNITED STATES NORTH AMERICA INDUSTRY KEYWORD: DATA MANAGEMENT BANKING TECHNOLOGY PROFESSIONAL SERVICES HEALTH HEALTH TECHNOLOGY ASSET MANAGEMENT DATA ANALYTICS SOFTWARE FINTECH FOOD TECH SOURCE: PitchBook Copyright Business Wire 2024. PUB: 12/20/2024 01:45 PM/DISC: 12/20/2024 01:45 PM http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20241220928667/en

NoneLuigi Mangione ‘had so much to offer’ — now, he is a murder suspectThe Angels still need help in the rotation, the bullpen and the lineup, but adding to the infield depth chart would seem to be one of their more pressing needs.

Victors Home Solutions has been recognized as 2024 Residential Roofing Contractor of the Year DETROIT , Dec. 20, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- On December 5th, 2024 , Victors Home Solutions was awarded the title of Residential Roofing Contractor of the Year at the Best of Success conference in Bonita Springs, FL. At this conference, Victors Home Solutions, which has been in business since 2008, received the award for Residential Roofing Contractor of the Year. Victor Smolyanov , Founder and CEO, attributes much of his success to the opportunity to give back to the communities in which he operates: "Last year we were blessed to give away 23 roofs, and this year it's going to be 40, and that has a huge impact," he said. "For us, it's one out of 4,000 roofs, but for them, it's potentially a life-changing event, allowing them to live more comfortably without having to worry about moving their bed when it rains or having a tarp on." This marks the 20th year of the conference, and it is said to be a must-attend event for roofing professionals. In addition to the amenities available on-site, there are many opportunities for education, exploration of new roofing technologies, and networking with top organizations in the roofing industry, such as Victors Home Solutions. Victors Home Solutions is recognized for their impact on local communities through their Give Back program. A program that has provided many with a roof over their heads. For every 100 roof replacements installed, Victors will provide one local family in need with a roof replacement at no cost. To nominate someone you know, click here . About Victors Home Solutions Victors Home Solutions has provided premier residential roofing and home improvement services to Michigan , Ohio , Kentucky , New Jersey , Illinois , and Pennsylvania communities for over 15 years. Victors' commitment to quality workmanship and integrity, along with his passion for roofing, has made Victors Home Solutions the highest ranked roofing company in Michigan . With over 200 employees and eight locations, Victors is at the forefront and stands poised to revolutionize the roofing and home improvement industries. For more information, visit Victors.com . Media Contact: Jake Tilk j.tilk@victors.com View original content to download multimedia: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/victors-home-solutions-recognized-as-2024-roofing-contractor-of-the-year-302337604.html SOURCE Victors Home Solutions