The courtroom fell eerily silent as the footage of Sean “Diddy” Combs beating, kicking and dragging his then-girlfriend began — a video already seen worldwide but which took on new gravity played before the jurors who will determine his future.Prosecutors played the footage repeatedly throughout their questioning of Israel Florez, a police officer who in 2016 was the security guard during an encounter with Combs that could prove pivotal during the fallen music mogul’s federal racketeering and sex trafficking trial.Combs’s family, including his 18-year-old twin daughters, watched stoically on Monday as prosecutors played the harrowing footage again and again.”She just kept saying she wanted to leave,” Florez said of Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, the singer who was dating Combs at the time and is expected to testify in the trial as early as Tuesday.Visibly tense but intensely alert, Combs watched as the security guard described the artist’s attempts to bribe him with a wad of bills to stay quiet over the incident at a Los Angeles hotel.The immensely wealthy mogul who was a key figure in 1990s and 2000s-era hip hop is accused of running a criminal sex ring that enforced its power with arson, kidnapping, bribery and forced labor.”He sometimes called himself the king,” said prosecutor Emily Johnson during opening statements.”And he expected to be treated like one.”Combs denies all charges, and his defense team says the sex acts were consensual.CNN released the security footage of the hotel encounter involving Combs and Ventura last year, and a number of jurors said during selection they were acquainted with it.But Monday’s testimony included fresh details, like photos of a smashed vase of flowers Florez said he found Ventura huddled next to.Florez said Combs had a “devilish stare” when the security guard arrived to the scene.He added that he offered to call the police but didn’t because Ventura, who he described as having a “purple” eye, insisted multiple times she simply wanted to go.- ‘Just for insurance’ -Florez’s testimony was followed by that of Daniel Phillip, a now 41-year-old who ran a “male revue” show in New York.He said he first met Ventura and Combs in 2012, after he was called to perform at a bachelorette party.He arrived at Manhattan’s Gramercy Hotel expecting to do a quick striptease for a group of partying women, he said.But instead Ventura, wearing red lace lingerie paired with high heels, a red wig and dark sunglasses, answered the door.Thus began Phillip’s relationship with the famous pair, an encounter that began with the dancer giving Ventura a massage with baby oil and ended with sex while a masked Combs watched in the corner.Phillip would routinely receive payment from the couple anywhere from $700 to $6,000, he told jurors.Throughout Phillip’s at times intensely lurid testimony, members of Combs’s family, including his 18-year-old twin daughters, left the room.Phillip said his enthusiasm for the relationship — which involved Combs directing sexual acts and sometimes filming them — waned after the first time he witnessed Combs strike and drag Ventura by the hair.”I was shocked,” Phillip said. “It came out of nowhere. I was terrified.”Phillip said he urged Ventura to get out — but that she insisted she would be alright.After witnessing Combs’s abuse Phillip said he began to find it difficult to perform sexually in front of him.Asked why he didn’t call the police, Phillip said that “this was someone with unlimited power.”Combs had already previously taken a photo of Phillip’s identification card “just for insurance,” the dancer said.”I understood it to be he was threatening me.”Phillip’s testimony will continue Tuesday.

Even the greatest human minds building generative artificial intelligence that is poised to change the world admit they do not comprehend how digital minds think.”People outside the field are often surprised and alarmed to learn that we do not understand how our own AI creations work,” Anthropic co-founder Dario Amodei wrote in an essay posted online in April.”This lack of understanding is essentially unprecedented in the history of technology.”Unlike traditional software programs that follow pre-ordained paths of logic dictated by programmers, generative AI (gen AI) models are trained to find their own way to success once prompted.In a recent podcast Chris Olah, who was part of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI before joining Anthropic, described gen AI as “scaffolding” on which circuits grow.Olah is considered an authority in so-called mechanistic interpretability, a method of reverse engineering AI models to figure out how they work.This science, born about a decade ago, seeks to determine exactly how AI gets from a query to an answer.”Grasping the entirety of a large language model is an incredibly ambitious task,” said Neel Nanda, a senior research scientist at the Google DeepMind AI lab. It was “somewhat analogous to trying to fully understand the human brain,” Nanda added to AFP, noting neuroscientists have yet to succeed on that front.Delving into digital minds to understand their inner workings has gone from a little-known field just a few years ago to being a hot area of academic study.”Students are very much attracted to it because they perceive the impact that it can have,” said Boston University computer science professor Mark Crovella.The area of study is also gaining traction due to its potential to make gen AI even more powerful, and because peering into digital brains can be intellectually exciting, the professor added.- Keeping AI honest -Mechanistic interpretability involves studying not just results served up by gen AI but scrutinizing calculations performed while the technology mulls queries, according to Crovella.”You could look into the model…observe the computations that are being performed and try to understand those,” the professor explained.Startup Goodfire uses AI software capable of representing data in the form of reasoning steps to better understand gen AI processing and correct errors.The tool is also intended to prevent gen AI models from being used maliciously or from deciding on their own to deceive humans about what they are up to.”It does feel like a race against time to get there before we implement extremely intelligent AI models into the world with no understanding of how they work,” said Goodfire chief executive Eric Ho.In his essay, Amodei said recent progress has made him optimistic that the key to fully deciphering AI will be found within two years.”I agree that by 2027, we could have interpretability that reliably detects model biases and harmful intentions,” said Auburn University associate professor Anh Nguyen.According to Boston University’s Crovella, researchers can already access representations of every digital neuron in AI brains.”Unlike the human brain, we actually have the equivalent of every neuron instrumented inside these models”, the academic said. “Everything that happens inside the model is fully known to us. It’s a question of discovering the right way to interrogate that.”Harnessing the inner workings of gen AI minds could clear the way for its adoption in areas where tiny errors can have dramatic consequences, like national security, Amodei said.For Nanda, better understanding what gen AI is doing could also catapult human discoveries, much like DeepMind’s chess-playing AI, AlphaZero, revealed entirely new chess moves that none of the grand masters had ever thought about.Properly understood, a gen AI model with a stamp of reliability would grab competitive advantage in the market.Such a breakthrough by a US company would also be a win for the nation in its technology rivalry with China.”Powerful AI will shape humanity’s destiny,” Amodei wrote.”We deserve to understand our own creations before they radically transform our economy, our lives, and our future.”

A high-profile left-wing influencer and political commentator said Monday he was detained for hours by US border officials and interrogated about his political views. US citizen Hasan Piker — who has millions of followers on YouTube, Twitch and X, and been outspoken in his criticism of Israel — says he was held at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport for over two hours on Sunday.He spoke out as the administration of President Donald Trump is facing growing criticism over claims of punitive action taken by federal agents against US citizens and legal residents for merely voicing progressive opinions.Pike said his exchanges with officials were largely cordial but an officer asked his views on Trump and whether he has been in contact with militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah.”He’s like, ‘Do you talk about Trump?’ And that was the first time where I was like, ‘What is this question?'” Piker said on a video posted to his YouTube account.”I literally straight up told him. I was like, ‘Why are you asking me this… what does this have to do with anything?'”Piker says he told the official: “I don’t like Trump. Like, what are you going to do? It’s protected by the First Amendment.”The Turkish-American 33-year-old was born in New Jersey, and has hosted US Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on his platform in the past.Department of Homeland Security official Tricia McLaughlin responded Monday denying that Piker’s political beliefs triggered the secondary screening, according to media reports.”Upon entering the country, this individual was referred for further inspection — a routine, lawful process that occurs daily, and can apply for any traveler. Once his inspection was complete, he was promptly released,” McLaughlin told US media.Piker maintains that his online content has never broken the law and only engaged in speech protected by the US Constitution.”The reason for why they’re doing that is, I think, to try to create an environment of fear, to try to get people like myself — or at least like others that would be in my shoes that don’t have that same level of security — to shut… up,” he added. Advocacy group Defending Rights & Dissent said it was “deeply disturbed” by the notion of border officials stopping political commentators to interrogate them about constitutionally-protected speech. “Such an abuse of power is an affront to press freedom,” it said.