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Superintelligence asks the questions: What happens when machines surpass humans in general intelligence? Will artificial agents save or destroy us? Nick Bostrom lays the foundation for understanding the future of humanity and intelligent life.

The human brain has some capabilities that the brains of other animals lack. It is to these distinctive capabilities that our species owes its dominant position. If machine brains surpassed human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence could become extremely powerful – possibly beyond our control. As the fate of the gorillas now depends more on humans than on the species itself, so would the fate of humankind depend on the actions of the machine superintelligence.

But we have one advantage: we get to make the first move. Will it be possible to construct a seed Artificial Intelligence, to engineer initial conditions so as to make an intelligence explosion survivable? How could one achieve a controlled detonation?

This profoundly ambitious and original book breaks down a vast track of difficult intellectual terrain. After an utterly engrossing journey that takes us to the frontiers of thinking about the human condition and the future of intelligent life, we find in Nick Bostrom’s work nothing less than a reconceptualization of the essential task of our time.

GRevelatory and groundbreaking, The Art of Intelligence will change the way people view the CIA, domestic and foreign intelligence, and international terrorism. Henry A. “Hank” Crumpton, a twenty-four-year veteran of the CIA’s Clandestine Service, offers a thrilling account that delivers profound lessons about what it means to serve as an honorable spy.

From CIA recruiting missions in Africa to pioneering new programs like the UAV Predator, from running post–9/11 missions in Afghanistan to heading up all clandestine CIA operations in the United States, Crumpton chronicles his role—in the battlefield and in the Oval Office—in transforming the way America wages war and sheds light on issues of domestic espionage.

A law firm, used by the Victorian Government, has confirmed documents stolen in a data breach in April have been leaked onto the dark web.

Data about government departments and agencies was leaked when HWL Ebsworth was targeted by threat actor “ALPHV/BlackCat”.

An HWL Ebsworth update on their website, published on Friday, said they became aware of the threat actor on April 28 in a post on a dark web forum claiming to have “exfiltrated data” from the firm.

“The investigation indicates the threat actor had accessed and exfiltrated certain information on a confined part of the firm’s system, but not on our core document management system,” the update reads.

“On 9 June 2023, we became aware that the threat actor had published on their dark web forum at least some of the data they claim to have taken.”

Victorian Government Chief Information Security Officer David Cullen says supporting impacted Victorians and their wellbeing is their top priority.

The former head of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation and Department of Defence, Dennis Richardson, has been sent into the Department of Home Affairs to run a probe into an alleged bribery scandal surrounding the awarding of contracts to run offshore immigration detention centres.

Home affairs minister Clare O’Neil told Parliament on Monday that Richardson will conduct an audit of governance arrangements for the management of regional processing contracts that were let to a firm known as Radiance.

The government has so far declined to refer the matter to the new National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC). The opposition has claimed that the relationship between O’Neil and Department of Home Affairs secretary Mike Pezzullo has become dysfunctional.

Synthetic identity fraud—when cybercriminals create new identities with stolen or fabricated data—is the fastest growing financial crime in the United States, and it shows no sign of abating. Not only can bad actors purchase personally identifiable information on the dark web for a pittance, but advancements in Generative AI are making it easier to produce images and videos in someone else’s likeness—whether they may be real or imaginary.

The Deloitte Center for Financial Services expects synthetic identity fraud to generate at least US$23 billion in losses by 2030, prompting many banks and fintechs to develop more advanced biometric security systems to weed out would-be perpetrators. These projections incorporate historical data on the rate of synthetic fraud and expectations of growth in noncash payments in the United States until 2030. We used the Federal Reserve Payments Survey to find this expected payment volume—excluding prepaid debit cards—and assumed that synthetic identity fraud would grow incrementally each year..

Imagine you have got an image and want to find where it appears online. The technique of using the image you have to find similar images on other websites or social media profiles is called a Reverse Image Search. There are many tools that might help you to find similar images, some perform better than the other, especially on the particular type of content.‌‌‌‌

Yandex can help you find someone by photo, and search for relevant pictures. It not only performs good at finding similar images, but also recognises the text on the image and pinpoints location of well known landmarks. When looking for people in East Europe it will outperform any reverse image search tool. Considering the best tools, like PimEyes require subscription, Yandex is a go-to choice of the majority of researchers today.

China is conducting an unprecedented campaign below the threshold of armed conflict to expand the influence of the Chinese Communist Party and weaken the United States and its partners. This campaign involves sophisticated Chinese espionage activities, offensive cyber operations, disinformation on social media platforms, economic coercion, and influence operations targeting companies, universities, and other organizations. The scale of China’s actions in the United States is unparalleled. This report offers one of the most comprehensive analyses to date of Chinese political warfare activities and examines China’s main actions, primary goals, and options for the United States and its partners.

Sixty years ago, the House of Saud for the first and only time stripped a sitting king of his powers and turned them over to another prince. The immediate cause of King Saud’s fall from power was a botched Saudi intelligence plot to assassinate Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser and put in Syria a military junta favoring Riyadh. Once Nasser publicly exposed Saud’s plot, the family backed by the Wahhabi clergy moved quickly to transfer power to Crown Prince Faisal. It was seen in Washington at the time as a major setback for America.

Police in New York said the suspect in the Gilgo Beach serial killing case used multiple burner phones to solicit his victims. Digital forensics expert Heather Mahalik says cellphone data can be critical in cases because it can’t be deleted. Mahalik, forensics analyst Dr. Larry Kobilinsky and former FBI Special Agent Jennifer Coffindaffer join “CUOMO” to discuss the evidence gathered in the case.