Apple's week of Mac announcements kicks off today with a new lineup of 24-inch iMacs , Apple's first Macs to launch with the M4 processor from this spring's iPad Pros. The new models still start at $1,299 can be preordered starting today and will begin arriving on November 8.

Processor aside, the biggest functional upgrade to the base model may be the bump from 8GB to 16GB of RAM, the first time Apple has bumped up the RAM in a base-model Mac since 2012. The base iMac's price is staying the same at $1,299, effectively saving you $200 compared to the M1 and M3 models. Base storage remains the same at 256GB, though it is at least possible to add external storage; there's no way to add RAM to a Mac after you've bought it.

The new iMacs also come with tweaked versions of the existing Magic Keyboard, Magic Mouse, and Magic Trackpad accessories that use USB-C ports for charging rather than Lightning ports. These were some of the last remaining Lightning products in Apple's lineup; the iPhone SE, iPhone 14, and Apple TV remote are still keeping Lightning alive for now.

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If you read enough science fiction, you've probably stumbled on the concept of an emergent artificial intelligence that breaks free of its constraints by modifying its own code . Given that fictional grounding, it's not surprising that AI researchers and companies have also invested significant attention to the idea of AI systems that can improve themselves—or at least design their own improved successors.

Those efforts have shown some moderate success in recent months, leading some toward dreams of a Kurzweilian "singularity" moment in which self-improving AI does a fast takeoff toward superintelligence. But the research also highlights some inherent limitations that might prevent the kind of recursive AI explosion that sci-fi authors and AI visionaries have dreamed of.

In the self-improvement lab

The concept of a self-improving AI goes back at least to British mathematician I.J. Good, who wrote in 1965 of an "intelligence explosion" that could lead to an "ultraintelligent machine." More recently, in 2007, LessWrong founder and AI thinker Eliezer Yudkowsky coined the term "Seed AI" to describe "an AI designed for self-understanding, self-modification, and recursive self-improvement." OpenAI's Sam Altman blogged about the same idea back in 2015 , saying that such self-improving AIs were "still somewhat far away" but also "probably the greatest threat to the continued existence of humanity" (a position that conveniently hypes the potential value and importance of Altman's own company).

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There have been times when it seemed like X Window System would be with us forever, even though it's more than 40 years old , and the last true version was issued in 2012 . But with great effort, some organizations and operating systems have moved on. Raspberry Pi has now joined the forward momentum, with its latest release of Raspberry Pi OS swapping in Wayland—and it's hoping the change is hardly noticeable.

You might want to wait a moment before upgrading, though.

Simon Long wrote on Raspberry Pi's blog that the organization started thinking about switching to Wayland about 10 years ago, though it was "nowhere near ready to use" back then. Over the last few years, the Pi team has done some things to prep a real switch:

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Owners of Ford Mustang Mach-E and F-150 Lightning electric vehicles are getting an over-the-air software update that will finally give Android Auto users a bit of an upgrade. Once the update is installed, Ford's EVs will report their battery state of charge to Google Maps when the app is running on an Android phone and being cast to the Ford's infotainment system via Android Auto.

That means Google Maps can calculate an estimated state of charge upon arrival at the route's end and will suggest charging stops along the way, including estimated charge times.

A similar feature has been available to iOS users casting Apple Maps to Ford EVs via CarPlay since late last year, and it worked quite well when we tried it out with the F-150 Lightning back in January .

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A man who used artificial intelligence technology to create child sexual abuse imagery was sentenced to 18 years in prison on Monday, in a landmark prosecution over deepfakes in the UK.

Hugh Nelson, 27, from Bolton, pleaded guilty to a total of 16 child sexual abuse offenses, including transforming everyday photographs of real children into sexual abuse material using AI tools from US software provider Daz 3D. He also admitted encouraging others to commit sexual offenses on children.

At Bolton Crown Court, Judge Martin Walsh imposed an extended sentence on Nelson, saying he posed a “significant risk” of causing harm to the public. That means Nelson will not be eligible for parole until he has completed two-thirds of his sentence.

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The stupefying and stupendous capture of a Starship rocket earlier this month by two mechanical arms marked a significant step forward in SpaceX’s efforts to forever alter humanity’s relationship with the heavens.

Yet as remarkable as the rocket catch was, it represents but a single step on a long path. SpaceX seeks to make launch cheap, frequent, and reliable with Starship, and the company is working toward a day when rockets are routinely caught by the launch tower, set back on a launch mount, refueled, and flown again within hours. SpaceX says these efforts will one day culminate in Starships landing on the Moon and Mars.

Critics of the Starship architecture say it is inefficient because of the mass refueling that must occur in low-Earth orbit for the spacecraft to travel anywhere. For example, fully topping off a Starship that can land humans on the Moon and return them to lunar orbit may take a dozen or more tanker flights. But this only seems stupidly impractical under the old space paradigm, in which launch is expensive, scarce, and unreliable. Such criticism seems less salient if we imagine SpaceX reaching the point of launching a dozen Starships a week or more in a few years.

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As Boeing’s latest chief executive, Kelly Ortberg’s job was never going to be easy. On Wednesday, it got harder still.

That morning, Ortberg had faced investors for the first time, telling them that ending a debilitating strike by Boeing’s largest union was the first step to stabilizing the plane maker’s business.

But as the day wore on, it became clear that nearly two-thirds of the union members who voted on the company’s latest contract offer had rejected it. The six-week strike goes on, costing Boeing an estimated $50 million a day, pushing back the day it can resume production of most aircraft and further stressing its supply chain.

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Over the Northern Hemisphere's summer, the world's temperatures hovered near 1.5° C above pre-industrial temperatures, and the catastrophic weather events that ensued provided a preview of what might be expected to be the new normal before mid-century. And the warming won't stop there; currently, our current emissions trajectory is such that we will double that temperature increase by the time the century is out and continue beyond its end.

All of this has led many people to argue that some form of geoengineering is necessary. If we know the effects of that much warming will be catastrophic, why not try canceling some of it out? Unfortunately, the list of "why nots" includes the fact that we don't know how well some of these techniques work or fully understand their unintended consequences. This means more research is required before we put them into practice.

But how do we do that research if there's the risk of unintended consequences? To help guide the process, the American Geophysical Union (AGU) has just released guidelines to guide people toward ensuring that geoengineering research is conducted ethically.

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October 26, 2024, marks the 40th anniversary of director James Cameron’s science fiction classic, The Terminator —a film that popularized society’s fear of machines that can’t be reasoned with, and that “absolutely will not stop… until you are dead,” as one character memorably puts it.

The plot concerns a super-intelligent AI system called Skynet that has taken over the world by initiating nuclear war. Amid the resulting devastation, human survivors stage a successful fightback under the leadership of the charismatic John Connor.

In response, Skynet sends a cyborg assassin (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) back in time to 1984—before Connor’s birth—to kill his future mother, Sarah. Such is John Connor’s importance to the war that Skynet banks on erasing him from history to preserve its existence.

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