Elections

Chatbots like ChatGPT get stuff wrong. But researchers are building new A.I. systems that can verify their own math — and maybe more.On a recent afternoon, Tudor Achim gave a brain teaser to an A.I. bot called Aristotle.The question involved a 10-by-10 table filled with a hundred numbers. If you collected the smallest number in each row and the largest number in each column, he asked, could the largest of the small numbers ever be greater than the smallest of the large numbers?The bot correctly answered “No.” But that was not surprising. Popular chatbots like ChatGPT may give the right answer, too. The difference was that Aristotle had proven that its answer was right. The bot generated a detailed computer program that verified “No” was the correct response.Chatbots like ChatGPT from OpenAI and Gemini from Google can answer questions, write poetry, summarize news articles and generate images. But they also make mistakes that defy common sense. Sometimes, they make stuff up — a phenomenon called hallucination.Mr. Achim, the chief executive and co-founder of a Silicon Valley start-up called Harmonic, is part of growing effort to build a new kind of A.I. that never hallucinates. Today, this technology is focused on mathematics. But many leading researchers believe they can extend the same techniques into computer programming and other areas.Because math is a rigid discipline with formal ways of proving whether an answer is right or wrong, companies like Harmonic can build A.I. technologies that check their own answers and learn to produce reliable information.Google DeepMind, the tech giant’s central A.I. lab, recently unveiled a system called AlphaProof that operates in this way. Competing in the International Mathematical Olympiad, the premier math competition for high schoolers, the system achieved “silver medal” performance, solving four of the competition’s six problems. It was the first time a machine had reached that level.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Jim Covello, Goldman Sachs’s head of stock research, warned that building too much of what the world doesn’t need “typically ends badly.”As Jim Covello’s car barreled up highway 101 from San Jose to San Francisco this month, he counted the billboards about artificial intelligence. The nearly 40 signs he passed, including one that promoted something called Writer Enterprise AI and another for Speech AI, were fresh evidence, he thought, of an economic bubble.“Not that long ago, they were all crypto,” Mr. Covello said of the billboards. “And now they’re all A.I.”Mr. Covello, the head of stock research at Goldman Sachs, has become Wall Street’s leading A.I. skeptic. Three months ago, he jolted markets with a research paper that challenged whether businesses would see a sufficient return on what by some estimates could be $1 trillion in A.I. spending in the coming years. He said that generative artificial intelligence, which can summarize text and write software code, makes so many mistakes that it was questionable whether it would ever reliably solve complex problems.The Goldman paper landed days after a partner at Sequoia Capital, a venture firm, raised similar questions in a blog post about A.I. Their skepticism marked a turning point for A.I.-related stocks, leading to a reassessment of Wall Street’s hottest trade.Goldman’s basket of A.I. stocks, which is managed by a separate arm of the firm and includes Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Oracle, has declined 7 percent from its peak on July 10, as investors and business leaders debate whether A.I. can justify its staggering costs.The pause has come early in the A.I. arms race. The tech industry has a history of spending big to deliver technology transitions, as it did during the personal computer and internet revolutions. Those build outs spanned five years or more before there was a reckoning.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

The department’s discipline for illegal street detentions is lax at every level, according to an extraordinary review ordered by a federal judge.At every level, the New York Police Department has failed to punish officers who have violated the rights of people stopped on the street, according to a new report — a failure that reaches all the way to the top of the force.The report, the most comprehensive independent review of discipline since a landmark court decision in 2013, found that police commissioners during the past decade have routinely reduced discipline recommended for officers found to have wrongly stopped, questioned and frisked people, undermining efforts to curb unconstitutional abuses. The report, by James Yates, a retired New York State judge, was ordered by Judge Analisa Torres of Manhattan federal court and made public on Monday.Mr. Yates was assigned by the court to conduct a “granular, step-by-step analysis” of the department’s policies and discipline governing stop and frisk, a tactic of detaining people on the street that was being used disproportionately against Black and Latino New Yorkers.The 503-page document that resulted paints a picture of an agency unwilling to impose discipline on an abusive practice that has prompted criticism that the department oppresses many New Yorkers.The commissioners “demonstrated an inordinate willingness to excuse illegal stops, frisks and searches in the name of ‘good faith’ or ‘lack of malintention,’ relegating constitutional adherence to a lesser rung of discipline,” Mr. Yates writes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

The man behind the episode, at a reception for Mr. Ai’s new exhibition in Bologna, has targeted artists before, a museum spokesman said.A reception for a new exhibition by the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei in Bologna, Italy, was disrupted on Friday when a man walked in and smashed a large, porcelain sculpture, leaving museum guests and the artist stunned.The incident, which occurred during a reception for “Ai Weiwei. Who Am I?,” the artist’s first solo exhibition in the city, sent guests at the Palazzo Fava scattering and left the sculpture shattered on the floor.Footage of the incident captured by security cameras and later shared on Mr. Ai’s Instagram account shows the man forcefully pushing over the sculpture and then raising its broken pieces above his head before being tackled by museum guards.Mr. Ai said in an emailed statement on Monday that the loud sounds of the sculpture shattering made him first think of a terrorist attack or an explosion.“When I learned that it was my large porcelain artwork that had been destroyed, I was astonished,” he said. “I never imagined that a piece nearly 100 kilos in weight could be damaged so easily.”Arturo Galansino, the exhibition’s curator at the Palazzo Fava, said by phone on Monday that he was upstairs at the event when he heard a “big noise” and was quickly alerted that a work had been broken.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Parents raced to pick up their children from school in Beirut on Monday, as fear spread in the Lebanese capital that Israel might soon strike the city.Amid warnings from Israel that it was intensifying strikes against the Lebanese militia Hezbollah and calls for residents to evacuate, Lebanon’s Education Ministry ordered the closing of some public and private schools, citing “security and military situations” that could endanger students.The street outside one school in east Beirut on Monday morning was clogged with traffic. Dozens of secondary school students in light-blue polo shirts stood waiting to be picked up, while other students rushed out of the building, gripping their parents’ hands.Joaelle Naser, 44, had come to pick up her three daughters, aged 6, 8 and 16. “I am scared, I’m scared,” Ms. Naser said alongside her two youngest, their neat ponytails held in place with fuzzy rainbow-colored scrunchies. “I’m not prepared for if something happens.”Maria Karen, 15, was in math class when she noticed parents walking through the halls with their children. When class ended, she said, the teacher told her and her classmates to pack their things, take their phones and go home.“I’m a little nervous, a lot of my friends are scared,” Maria said as she waited for her parents to come get her at the entrance to the school.One of her close friends lives near Dahiya, a Hezbollah-dominated neighborhood that was hit by an Israeli airstrike on Friday. Lebanese officials have said that at least 45 people were killed in the strike. Maria said that her friend, like many, feared that Dahiya might soon be hit again.The honking horns and bustle around the school stood in stark contrast to the scenes at cafes and shops in the neighborhood.At one large coffee shop, a handful of employees sat idly under the shade of a large awning, surrounded by mostly empty chairs. The cafe would typically be packed around this time but “people are scared,” said one employee, Aya Alemel, 32.Daher Amdi, 34, sitting across from her, agreed.“Nobody will come to the cafes now,” he said, taking a drag from his cigarette. “It’s a war.” More

Former President Donald J. Trump’s campaign began running this 30-second ad linking Vice President Kamala Harris to President Biden and the administration’s economic record on television stations in at least five key battleground states last week. The campaign has spent $2.8 million on those commercials, according to AdImpact.On the ScreenThe ad begins with a blurry image of a laughing Ms. Harris standing behind Mr. Biden on a stage, reaching out and grabbing his shoulder — physically linking them — as the words “Bidenomics is a FAILURE” blare across the screen.More bleak headlines follow: “Bidenomics FAILED.” “Bidenomics is a RECORD FAILURE.” “Americans’ incomes down THREE STRAIGHT YEARS.” “Unemployment RISING.” “America may soon be in a RECESSION.”The ad shows scenes intended to evoke Americans struggling as they go about their lives: a man putting gas in his pickup truck, a family standing morosely in front of a house with a for-sale sign, construction workers in hard hats, a man looking somberly out a window scratching his head. Another headline warns, “Bidenomics hits families with $5,600 pay cut,” before grainy video shows Ms. Harris happily declaring, “We are very proud of Bidenomics.”The ad ends with a close-up of Ms. Harris laughing, followed by a photo of Mr. Trump pumping his fist in front of an American flag and the words “Americans trust Trump on the economy.”The ScriptNarrator: “Their Bidenomics led to the highest inflation in 40 years. Highest gas prices ever. Skyrocketing interest rates. Unaffordable housing. Incomes down. Unemployment rising. And a recession now headed our way. Yet Kamala Harris is clueless.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

The infringements were the first by Russia in five years, according to the Japanese defense ministry. A fighter fired a warning flare in response.A Russian military patrol plane breached Japanese airspace off the country’s northwestern coast three times on Monday, prompting Japan’s military to dispatch a fighter jet to issue radio warnings and, for the first time, to use a signal flare to deter the Russian aircraft.According to Yoshimasa Hayashi, the chief cabinet secretary to Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, the Russian plane flew above Rebun Island, which is northwest of Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost prefecture, between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. on Monday afternoon.“This violation of our airspace is extremely regrettable,” said Mr. Hayashi, in remarks to reporters on Monday afternoon. “We have lodged an extremely strong protest with the Russian government through diplomatic channels and have strongly urged them to prevent a recurrence.”This was not the first time that a Russian military plane had violated Japanese airspace but it was the first time that Japan’s military had responded with a flare to warn the plane to leave. Last month, a Chinese military aircraft flew into Japan’s territorial airspace and the government said it was the first known incursion by the Chinese military.Minoru Kihara, Japan’s defense minister, said Japan’s military had dispatched F-15 and F-35 fighter jets but that there had been “no particularly dangerous acts by the Russian aircraft.”According to Japan’s defense ministry, the flights on Monday represented the 44th known incursion by a Russian plane — or an aircraft suspected to be Russian — since 1967, but it was the first time that a Russian military plane had breached Japanese territorial airspace since June 2019.Mr. Kihara noted that both Chinese and Russian naval vessels had passed this week through the Soya Strait between Hokkaido and Sakhalin, a Russian island about 25 miles north of Hokkaido. Mr. Kihara said it was possible that the movement of the ships and the Russian aircraft were related.Mr. Hayashi said the Japanese government did not know the “intentions and goals” of the Russian military aircraft. He said Japan would “take all possible measures to ensure vigilance and surveillance.”The prime minister is in New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly, and Mr. Hayashi said he had advised Mr. Kishida to “respond calmly and resolutely” and to cooperate closely with the United States.Russia’s embassy in Tokyo referred requests for comment to the defense ministry, which did not immediately respond.Anton Troianovski More

Gabriel Sachter-Smith is a banana aficionado who has identified some 500 varieties of banana on expeditions around the tropical world. “It’s like collecting Pokémon,” Mr. Sachter-Smith said at his farm, Hawaii Banana Source, on the North Shore of Oahu. He was walking through rows of young plants, some of the 150 varieties he grows, in a T-shirt splotched with mud and banana sap. His one-eyed dog, Mendel, trotted along at his boots. “My default mode of being alive is ‘What is that banana?’” he said.Mr. Sachter-Smith, 35, caught the banana bug when he was 14, on a trip with his mother to Washington, D.C., where he saw banana plants in her friend’s yard. The friend said they weren’t trees, that she could dig them up for winter, stick them inside and replant them when it warmed. When he returned home to Colorado, he started growing them as house plants. “I was trying to figure out what is a banana plant,” he said. “It’s just been a never-ending quest since then.”Mr. Sachter-Smith left banana-inhospitable Colorado to study tropical plant and soil science at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, ultimately earning a master’s degree. His global quest has introduced him to bananas that are egg-shaped and orange, a foot long and pale yellow, sausage-stubby and green. They are eaten fried, roasted, boiled and as is, but also grown for pig feed, decoration and weaving fabric. In Papua New Guinea, where Mr. Sachter-Smith has gone on two expeditions hunting for bananas, their names carry many meanings: “young men” (mero mero), “can feed a whole family” (navotavu), “something that was fought over” (bukatawawe), “breast” (nono).You probably know just one banana: long, yellow, kind of flavorless. You eat it plain, put peanut butter on it, or toss it, overripe, in the freezer to make banana bread someday. (You won’t.) Its name, Cavendish, comes from a 19th-century English duke who was sent a package of the bananas and whose gardener grew them in a greenhouse. The Cavendish now accounts for almost half of all bananas produced globally and nearly all exports. It holds a Guinness World Record as the most eaten fruit.Red bananas in a Sri Lankan market.Anne-Marie Palmer/AlamyThe hairy banana, or pink banana, growing in Assam, India.Florapix/AlamyBut for years, scientists have warned that fungal diseases like black sigatoka and Tropical Race 4 could wipe out this monocrop, just as a fungus annihilated its predecessor, the Gros Michel, in the 1950s and 1960s. Genetic engineering and breeding are the most likely solutions, so scientists have built a stash of backup bananas from around the world, with genes that might someday see action on the global market.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More