Countries sign memorandum to develop advanced AI model testing amid growing safety concerns

The United States and Britain on Monday announced a new partnership on the science of artificial intelligence safety, amid growing concerns about upcoming next-generation versions.

The US commerce secretary, Gina Raimondo, and British technology secretary, Michelle Donelan, signed a memorandum of understanding in Washington to work jointly to develop advanced AI model testing, following commitments announced at an AI safety summit in Bletchley Park in November.

Joe Biden’s campaign is seizing on the Florida court ruling to argue it is a sign of what would come of Donald Trump’s presidency

Good morning, US politics blog readers. Democrats have not had much luck in Florida lately, where its status as a swing state has been eroded by years of Republican victories. And the GOP once again got their way yesterday when a court allowed a six-week abortion ban signed by governor Ron DeSantis to take effect in 30 days. But voters in many states, even those otherwise hostile to Democrats, have signaled that they are not on board with efforts to tighten access to the procedure, and today, Joe Biden ’s campaign and its allies are seizing on the Florida ruling to argue it is a sign of what Donald Trump would do if returned to the White House and perhaps regain some momentum in Florida. At 10am ET, Hakeem Jeffries , the Democratic House minority leader, Xavier Becerra , the health and human services secretary, and other lawmakers will hold a hearing in Broward county on threats to productive freedom, while the Biden-Harris campaign is convening a call between reporters and North Carolina governor Roy Cooper to elaborate on the message.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump will hold two rallies today in swing states Michigan and Wisconsin, where he’s expected to hammer Biden over immigration policy – reliably fertile ground for Republicans. The former president has voiced support for banning abortion, but at 15 weeks of pregnancy , and we’ll see if he weighs in on the decision in Florida.

Israel has expressed “sincere sorrow” over the deaths of seven aid workers in Gaza, which killed nationals of the UK, US, Australia, Poland and Palestine. Follow our live blog for the latest on this story.

A slew of states are holding primaries today, including Wisconsin, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New York, while Arkansas and Mississippi will hold primary run offs. Trump and Biden both already have the delegates they need to win their parties’ nominations.

The White House press briefing takes place at 1.30pm.

Voters will also potentially enshrine two state amendments that some say could have a negative impact on elections administration

Voters in Wisconsin cast their ballots today in an election that will test voter enthusiasm for Joe Biden and Donald Trump – and potentially enshrine two amendments in the state constitution impacting election administration across the state.

The president and former president are already the presumptive nominees and will almost certainly face off in the general election in November, and it seems that the threat of prosecution, general unpopularity and advanced age can’t stop them.

Mike Johnson signals that Republicans might make three demands in order to move the aid through the House chamber

Good morning, US politics blog readers. Congress may be out of Washington DC, with lawmakers back in their districts and home states until next week, but there are signs of movement in the long-stalled military aid package for Israel, Ukraine and other national security priorities. Yesterday, Republican House speaker Mike Johnson gave an interview to Fox News where he signaled three demands he may make in order to move the package through the chamber. These were including in the legislation provisions to seize Russian assets and give them to Ukraine, make the aid a loan that Kyiv will pay back at a future date, and roll back Joe Biden ’s decision earlier this year to pause new natural gas export projects.

The big questions now are: will Democrats, who control the Senate and have already passed a version of the military aid bill, accept Johnson’s asks? What about his fellow Republicans in the House, where there are rumblings of booting Johnson from the job? And what of Donald Trump , who clearly has his eye on the matter – after all, he played a big part in killing an earlier compromise that would have paired the assistance with hardline immigration policies. We’ll see if any answers reveal themselves today.

The Biden administration and conservatives squabbled over the weekend after the president declared 31 March “Transgender Day of Visibility”, which happened to correspond with Easter Sunday.

US and Israeli officials will meet virtually to discuss potential alternatives to an offensive against the southern Gaza city of Rafah, Reuters reports.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre briefs reporters at 12pm ET.

The US journalist was seized by officials and charged with espionage, and friends and family say he has kept his spirits up

Friday marks the grim first anniversary of the day when masked Russian officers grabbed Evan Gershkovich, an American journalist, at a steakhouse in Yekaterinburg where he was waiting to eat on a reporting trip.

Gershkovich, a 32-year-old reporter for the Wall Street Journal, has not seen a day of freedom since. He has been held in the infamous Lefortovo prison on the outskirts of Moscow, where the Soviet author Alexander Solzhenitsyn was once detained.

Lawyers for president’s son to challenge criminal charges he evaded taxes and argue prosecutors bowed to Republican pressure

Attorneys representing Hunter Biden asked a US judge in Los Angeles to dismiss the criminal case accusing him of evading $1.4m in taxes, arguing that prosecutors bowed to political pressure from Republican lawmakers investigating his father, Joe Biden.

Hunter’s lawyers appeared before the US district judge Mark Scarsi in federal court in Los Angeles on Wednesday to press several legal challenges to the charges, including an argument that he was selectively targeted by prosecutors in response to Republican criticism. The 54-year-old was not present in the courtroom.

Enlarge / President Joe Biden speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on May 13, 2021. (credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg)

A year ago, President Joe Biden launched a new era of US industrial policy, signing into law the Inflation Reduction Act and the Chips and Science Act. Passed within days of each other last August, the two laws offered more than $400 billion in tax credits, loans, and subsidies, all designed to spark development of a domestic cleantech and semiconductor supply chain.

Over the past year, the Financial Times has identified more than 110 large-scale manufacturing announcements—including in semiconductors, electric vehicles, batteries, and solar and wind parts—spurred by the landmark legislation. We have examined them and spoken to experts, and here is what we have learned.

$224 billion worth of projects and 100,000 jobs

At least $224 billion in cleantech and semiconductor manufacturing projects have been announced in the US since the passage of the IRA and the Chips Act. In total, they promise to create 100,000 jobs. The FT tallied company announcements of at least $100 million from August 2022 to this week.

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Enlarge (credit: NurPhoto / Contributor | NurPhoto )

Today, an unsealed court document revealed that, earlier this year, a federal judge held Twitter (now called X) in contempt of court. The judge imposed $350,000 in sanctions.

Sanctions were applied after the social media platform delayed compliance with a federal search warrant that required Twitter to hand over Donald Trump's Twitter data without telling the former president about the warrant for 180 days.

At first, Twitter resisted producing Trump's data and argued that the government's nondisclosure order violated the First Amendment and the Stored Communications Act. However, US circuit judge Florence Pan wrote that the court was largely unpersuaded by Twitter's arguments, mostly because the government's interest in Trump's data as part of its ongoing January 6 investigation was "unquestionably compelling."

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Enlarge / Stills from an AI-generated video of Will Smith eating spaghetti that has been heating up the Internet. (credit: chaindrop / Reddit )

Amid this past week's controversies in AI over regulation , fears of world-ending doom , and job disruption , the clouds have briefly parted. For a brief and shining moment, we can enjoy an absolutely ridiculous AI-generated video of Will Smith eating spaghetti that is now lighting up our lives with its terrible glory.

On Monday, a Reddit user named "chaindrop" shared the AI-generated video on the r/StableDiffusion subreddit. It quickly spread to other forms of social media and inspired mixed ruminations in the press. For example, Vice said the video will "haunt you for the rest of your life," while the AV Club called it the "natural end point for AI development."

We're somewhere in between. The 20-second silent video consists of 10 independently generated two-second segments stitched together. Each one shows different angles of a simulated Will Smith (at one point, even two Will Smiths) ravenously gobbling up spaghetti. It's entirely computer-generated, thanks to AI.

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