[Fox News] US Air Force Secretary Kendall flies in cockpit of plane controlled by AI
U.S. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall rode in the cockpit of a fighter jet on Friday, which flew over the desert in California and was controlled by artificial intelligence.
Last month, Kendall announced his plans to fly in an AI-controlled F-16 to the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee’s defense panel, while speaking about the future of air warfare being dependent on autonomously operated drones.
On Friday, the senior Air Force leader followed through with his plans, making what could be one of the biggest advances in military aviation since stealth planes were introduced in the early 1990s.
Kendall flew to Edwards Air Force Base – the same desert facility where Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier – to watch and experience AI flight in real time.
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After the flight, Kendall spoke with the Associated Press about the technology and the role it will play in air combat.
“It’s a security risk not to have it. At this point, we have to have it,” the secretary said.
The Associated Press and NBC were granted permission to watch the secret flight with the agreement that neither would report on the matter until the flight was complete, due to security concerns.
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The F-16 controlled by AI is called Vista, and it flew Kendall in maneuvers reaching over 550 mph, putting pressure on his body of nearly five times the force of gravity.
Flying alongside Vista and Kendall was a human-piloted F-16, and the two jets raced within 1,000 feet of each other performing twists and loops, in an effort to force their opponent into a place of submission.
Kendall grinned as he climbed out of the cockpit after the hour-long flight, saying he saw enough to trust the AI technology in deciding whether to fire weapons during a war.
Many oppose the idea of computers making that decision, fearing AI may one day be able to drop bombs on people without consulting with humans.
The same people who oppose AI-powered war machines are also seeking greater restrictions on its use.
One of the groups seeking stronger restrictions is the International Committee of the Red Cross.
“There are widespread and serious concerns about ceding life-and-death decisions to sensors and software,” the group warned, adding the autonomous weapons “are an immediate cause of concern and demand an urgent, international political response.”
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Still, Kendall says human oversight will always be at play when weapons are considered.
The Air Force is planning to have an AI-enabled fleet of over 1,000 AI-operated drones, with the first being in operation by 2028.
In March, the Pentagon said it was looking to develop new artificial intelligence-guided planes, offering two contracts for several private companies to compete against each other to obtain.
The Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) project is part of a $6 billion program that will add at least 1,000 new drones to the Air Force. The drones will be designed to deploy alongside human-piloted jets and provide cover for them, acting as escorts with full weapons capabilities. The drones could also act as scouts or communications hubs, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.
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The companies bidding for the contract include Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, General Atomics and Anduril Industries.
Cost-cutting is one of the elements of AI that appeals to the Pentagon for pursuing the project.
In August 2023, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks said deploying AI-enabled autonomous vehicles would provide “small, smart, cheap and many” expendable units to the U.S. military, helping overhaul the “too-slow shift of U.S. military innovation.”
But the idea is to not fall too far behind China, which has modernized its air defense systems, which are much more sophisticated and put manned planes at risk when they get too close.
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Drones have the potential of interrupting such defense systems and could be used to jam them or provide surveillance for crews.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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[Fox Business] Disney shares sink as streaming business falls shy of profitability
Disney’s combined streaming business of Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ came close to making money in the second quarter.
The entertainment giant said Tuesday that its combined streaming business saw revenues of $6.19 billion and an operating loss of just $18 million in the second quarter. That operating loss represented a decrease of 97% from the same period last year.
Shares were lower during midday trading.
Things were rosier for Disney’s entertainment streaming business of Disney+ and Hulu. They “achieved an important milestone” of notching an operating income of $47 million in the quarter, CEO Bob Iger said.
“That is particularly noteworthy when you consider we reported peak losses only 18 months ago,” Iger said in a statement.
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Iger noted that Disney’s path to streaming profitability “will not be linear.”
“While we’re anticipating a softer third quarter due in large part to the seasonality of our India sports offerings, we fully expect streaming to be a growth driver for the company in the future, and we have prioritized the steps necessary to achieve this,” he added.
Both Iger and CFO Hugh Johnston said they anticipate profitability at Disney’s combined streaming business in the fourth quarter, plus “further improvements in profitability” for the following year. Executives at the entertainment giant have been saying for some time that its streaming services, which now collectively have 228.6 million subscribers, would hit that milestone in 2024.
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The company has several streaming initiatives in the pipeline.
For Disney+, it will start cracking down on subscribers lending their accounts to non-household members, with the company planning a global password crackdown rollout “in earnest” in September, Iger said. The streaming service will also start offering an in-platform ESPN tile in the U.S. “by the end of this calendar year.”
The addition of ESPN content to Disney+ comes after Disney already incorporated the “Hulu on Disney+” feature in the U.S. in late March for bundle subscribers. Iger said the company was “encouraged by the early results” of the Hulu tile.
Disney has previously said it envisions its streaming business eventually turning double-digit profit margins.
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Johnston declined to give a specific timeline for achieving that while speaking with analysts and investors during the earnings call Tuesday morning. Instead, he said the streaming business “is in great shape and we feel good about the growth prospects.”
Overall, Disney generated $22.08 billion in revenue in the second quarter, up from $21.82 billion in the same three-month period last year but below Wall Street estimates.
It reported adjusted earnings per share excluding certain items of $1.21, above the $1.10 estimate.
[Fox Business] Elizabeth Holmes has more time cut off her sentence
Theranos founder and convicted felon Elizabeth Holmes has had more time cut from her prison sentence, after her original release date was slashed by nearly two years last summer.
Holmes, 40, was originally ordered to serve more than 11 years behind bars after she was found guilty in January 2022 of four counts of fraud and conspiracy for deceiving investors in her now-defunct blood-testing company.
The former tech executive is serving her time at Federal Prison Camp Bryan, a women-only low-level security facility located in Bryan, Texas.
In July 2023, the Bureau of Prisons’ (BOP) website showed her release date had been moved up to Dec. 29, 2032, just over 9.5 years after she checked into the prison on May 30 of that year.
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Now, the BOP’s records show four more months have been shaved off her time, with an updated release date of Aug. 16, 2032.
“For privacy, safety, and security reasons, our office does not comment on the conditions of confinement for any inmate, including release planning or release plans. However, we can provide the following general information,” the Federal Bureau of Prisons told Fox Business.
The Bureau said inmates are eligible to earn good conduct time that can impact the projected release date. Certain inmates are also given the opportunity to participate and complete recidivism programs as well as drug abuse programs which help inmates release early.
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Holmes quickly rose to stardom in Silicon Valley after she dropped out of Stanford University to launch Theranos at the age of 19. She amassed hundreds of millions of dollars, boasting to investors that her company could successfully diagnose many diseases with drops of blood.
The empire she built came crashing down in 2015, however, after The Wall Street Journal reported her company was not using innovation, but traditional machines for its testing. The outlet also reported flaws in the diagnostics, further stifling her company’s claims.
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Holmes was indicted in 2018 alongside Theranos chief operating officer and former boyfriend Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, who was found guilty of 12 counts of fraud.
Judge Edward Davila of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California sentenced both Holmes and Balwani, ordering them to pay some $452 million in restitution to the victims of their crimes.
FOX Business’ Lawrence Richard contributed to this report.
[Fox Business] Nintendo to announce new console by March 2025, company says
Japan’s Nintendo said on Tuesday it plans to make an announcement about the successor to its long-lasting Switch console during the financial year ending March 2025.
Nintendo has extended the lifecycle of the Switch device with hit titles such as “The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom”, with the market focused on the prospects for a smooth transition to next-generation hardware.
The Kyoto-based gaming company said it expects to sell 13.5 million Switch units in the current financial year as it tries to squeeze further sales from the aging device.
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Nintendo did not offer further details on new hardware, saying that there would be no disclosure at its Nintendo Direct presentation in June.
“A lot of users will now hold off buying the current Switch as they know that the new model will come out some time in 2025,” said Serkan Toto, founder of the Kantan Games consultancy.
Nintendo last year sold 15.7 million units of the hybrid home-portable device, which launched in March 2017. Nintendo lifted its full-year forecast to 15.5 million units in February.
The company has made incremental changes to its Switch devices, with sales of the OLED model growing year-on-year even as broader hardware sales continued their annual decline.
Nintendo expects operating profit to fall this year by around a quarter to $2.6 billion.
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The company is seen as having a thin pipeline as it holds back heavy-hitting titles for the successor device with announced titles including “Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door” later this month and “Luigi’s Mansion 2” in June.
Nintendo expects to sell 165 million software units this year, which would be a 17% decline on the year earlier.
“The development of games has become more sophisticated, long term and complex,” Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa said when asked how the market has changed since the Switch launched.
In the year ended March operating profit grew 4.9% to 528.9 billion yen.
Nintendo’s shares closed up 2.4% ahead of earnings and are up 5.4% this year after a recent sell-off.
“Fiscal 2026 is a very late launch window for new hardware,” said Toto.
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[Fox Business] Apple announces new iPad Pro, Air tablets
Apple officially introduced updated iPad Pro and Air models that will hit the market later this month.
The tech giant gave details about the new devices, both of which come in two sizes, as part of the product event it held on Tuesday called “Let Loose.”
The upcoming iPad Pro will have a “stunningly thin and light design” as well as an Ultra Retina XDR display and other updates. It will rely on an M4 chip.
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With the new display, the new iPad Pro models will have a capability of 1,000 nits of “full-screen brightness for SDR and HDR content,” Apple said.
The tech giant also said the new hardware that the iPad Pro has built into it will make the device “outrageously powerful” for artificial intelligence uses.
As for the new iPad Air, Apple Vice President of Product Marketing said it “is more powerful and versatile than ever,” citing its “combination of a brilliant Liquid Retina display, the phenomenal performance of the M2 chip, incredible AI capabilities, and its colorful, portable design with support for new accessories.”
Another major change the tech giant made to the iPad Air is switching the location of the front-facing camera. It will now be on the “landscape edge” of the device, the company said.
The soon-to-be released iPad Air is also almost 50% quicker than the older, M1-equipped version of the iPad Air thanks to its M2 chip and improved memory bandwidth, per Apple.
Apple started accepting orders for the tablets on Tuesday ahead of their expected May 15 debut in stores.
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The new iPad Pro’s price tag in the U.S. will begin at $999 for the 11-inch and $1,299 for the 13-inch.
Customers looking at those devices will have silver and space black colors to choose from.
Meanwhile, Apple has set a starting price of $599 for the 11-inch iPad Air. The 13-inch version of the new iPad Air will be $200 more.
The iPad Air will have four color options available: blue, purple, starlight and space gray.
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Apple also unveiled a new Apple Pencil Pro and Magic Keyboard alongside the tablets.
The new iPads follow other recent product releases from the tech giant run by CEO Tim Cook.
The company recently put out revamped MacBook Airs, iMac and Macbook Pros. It also made its first foray into an entirely new product category in nine years with its debut of the Vision Pro headset.
[Fox Business] TikTok sues to block US law requiring sale to non-Chinese company
TikTok and its corporate parent, ByteDance, filed a lawsuit in federal court Tuesday seeking to block a U.S. law mandating that the social media platform be sold to a company without ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
President Biden signed a bipartisan bill ordering ByteDance to sell TikTok to an appropriate company by Jan. 19, 2025. The lawsuit argues that such a divestiture cannot happen, noting the Chinese government’s own demands relating to TikTok.
The lawsuit argues that divestiture “is simply not possible: not commercially, not technologically, not legally. … There is no question: the Act will force a shutdown of TikTok by January 19, 2025, silencing the 170 million Americans who use the platform to communicate in ways that cannot be replicated elsewhere.”
Critical to ByteDance’s argument is that the Chinese government “has made clear that it would not permit a divestment of the recommendation engine that is a key to the success of TikTok in the United States.”
The lawsuit goes on to say that TikTok has already spent $2 billion on efforts to protect the data of American TikTok users, of which there are roughly 170 million.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew signaled the legal battle late last month.
“Rest assured – we aren’t going anywhere,” CEO Shou Zi Chew said in a video posted moments after Biden signed the bill. “The facts and the Constitution are on our side, and we expect to prevail again.”
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President Biden’s administration has clarified that the legislation is not seeking to ban TikTok, but rather end its involvement with the CCP.
In 2020, then-President Trump was blocked by the courts in his bid to ban TikTok and Chinese-owned WeChat, a unit of Tencent, in the United States. Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential candidate, has reversed course and said on Monday that Biden was “pushing” for a ban on TikTok and would be the one responsible if a ban were imposed, urging voters to take notice.
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“Make no mistake – this is a ban on TikTok,” Chew said, emphasizing that TikTok would continue to operate as the company challenges the restrictions.
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The legislation allows for Biden to extend the Jan. 19 deadline by three months.
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