Latest news with #Bankston
Yahoo
17-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Google released safety risks report of Gemini 2.5 Pro weeks after its release — but an AI governance expert said it was a ‘meager' and ‘worrisome' report
Google has released a key document detailing some information about how its latest AI model, Gemini 2.5 Pro, was built and tested, three weeks after it first made that model publicly available as a 'preview' version. AI governance experts had criticized the company for releasing the model without publishing documentation detailing safety evaluations it had carried out and any risks the model might present, in apparent violation of promises it had made to the U.S. government and at multiple international AI safety gatherings. A Google spokesperson said in an emailed statement that any suggestion that the company had reneged on its commitments was 'inaccurate.' The company also said that a more detailed 'technical report' will come later when it makes a final version of the Gemini 2.5 Pro 'model family' fully available to the public. But the newly published six-page model card has also been faulted by at least one AI governance expert for providing 'meager' information about the safety evaluations of the model. Kevin Bankston, a senior advisor on AI Governance at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, said in a lengthy thread on social media platform X that the late release of the model card and its lack of detail was worrisome. 'This meager documentation for Google's top AI model tells a troubling story of a race to the bottom on AI safety and transparency as companies rush their models to market,' he said. He said the late release of the model card and its lack key safety evaluation results—for instance, details of "red-teaming" tests to trick the AI model into serving up dangerous outputs like bioweapon instructions—suggested that Google 'hadn't finished its safety testing before releasing its most powerful model' and that 'it still hasn't completed that testing even now.' Bankston said another possibility is that Google had finished its safety testing but has a new policy that it will not release its evaluation results until the model is released to all Google users. Currently, Google is calling Gemini 2.5 Pro a 'preview,' which can be accessed through its Google AI Studio and Google Labs products, with some limitations on what users can do with it. Google has also said it is making the model widely available to U.S. college students. The Google spokesperson said the company would release a more complete AI safety report 'once per model family.' Bankson said on X that this might mean Google would no longer release separate evaluation results for fine-tuned versions of its models that it releases, such as those that have been tailored for coding or cybersecurity. This could be dangerous, he noted, because fine-tuned versions of AI models can exhibit behaviors that are markedly different from the 'base model' from which they've been adapted. Google is not the only AI company seemingly retreating on AI safety. Meta's model card for its newly released Llama 4 AI model is of similar length and detail to the one Google just published for Gemini 2.5 Pro and was also criticized by AI safety experts. OpenAI said it was not releasing a technical safety report for its newly-released GPT-4.1 model because it said that the model was 'not a frontier model,' since the company's 'chain of thought' reasoning models, such as o3 and o4-mini, beat it on many benchmarks. At the same time, OpenAI touted that GPT-4.1 was more capable than its GPT-4o model, whose safety evaluation had shown that model could pose certain risks, although it had said these were below the threshold at which the model would be considered unsafe to release. Whether GPT-4.1 might now exceed those thresholds is unknown, since OpenAI said it does not plan to publish a technical report. OpenAI did publish a technical safety report for its new o3 and o4-mini models, which were released on Wednesday. But at the same time, earlier this week it updated its 'Preparedness Framework' which describes how the company will evaluate its AI models for critical dangers—everything from helping someone build a biological weapon to the possibility that a model will begin to self-improve and escape human control—and seek to mitigate those risks. The update eliminated 'Persuasion'—a model's ability to manipulate a person into taking a harmful action or convince them to believe in misinformation—as a risk category that the company would assess during it pre-release evaluations. It also changed how the company would make decisions around releasing higher risk models, including saying the company would consider shipping an AI model that posed a 'critical risk' if a competitor had already debuted a similar model. Those changes divided opinion among AI governance experts, with some praising OpenAI for being transparent about its process and also providing better clarity around its release policies, while others were alarmed at the changes. This story was originally featured on
Yahoo
16-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
What do you do when 14-foot white shark is 'checking' you out in Florida? Shoot video, photos
There's nothing like an encounter with a 14-foot-long white shark to get the heart pumping. Not to mention the stories you'll bring home from your Florida vacation. That's what happened when a Kentucky family headed out for a fishing trip from Florida's Panhandle. Capt. Taylor Bankston took a group of anglers from Kentucky — a mother, dad and two daughters — out on his 26-foot boat, Get the Gaff, on April 10. ➤ 'Giant teeth and a giant eyeball.' Photos show Florida boater's great white shark encounter While fishing about nine miles from Destin in the Gulf of America, formerly known as the Gulf of Mexico, "I looked up ... what I thought I saw in the water was a submarine, and I was waiting next for the periscope to pop out of the water,' Bankston said. 'But it never did ... and then the submarine turned into something that had giant teeth and a giant eyeball,' he said. 'I immediately knew I had never seen a fish in the water that big. It had to be a great white,' Bankston said. 'It was just circling us and checking us out. It was as if we were viewing a dinosaur,' he said. Bankston said the shark circled his boat about 20 minutes, mouthing the back of the boat at one time "to see what we were ... and realized that we weren't anything eatable." After the shark circled for about 20 minutes, it just disappeared. ➤ More photos, videos posted by Taylor Bankston on Facebook 'Then five minutes later we saw a dorsal fin about 100 yards away from us going across the surface slow as all get out ... like the movie 'Jaws.' That was her when she swam away,' Bankston said. Bankston estimated the shark was about 14 feet long, with a dorsal fin about 2 ½ feet tall. He estimated it to be between 1,100 and 1,400 pounds. 'The dorsal fin looked like the fin on 'Jaws,' " he said. "Jaws 2" was filmed in the Destin area. 'First thing I thought was 'captain we're going to need a bigger boat,'' Bankston said. To put it in perspective, Bankston's boat was 26 feet long, making the shark just over half the length of the boat. 'If I would have been hooked up to a heart monitor, there would have been some peaking and beeping," Bankston said. Bankston said the anglers onboard were ecstatic. 'Oh my gosh, it made their vacation. It was a great day." Destin is located about 40 miles east of Pensacola or 50 miles west of Panama City. It's about 130 miles west of Tallahassee. White sharks love to visit Florida during the winter months. OCEARCH, which describes itself as a "data-centric organization built to help scientists collect previously unattainable data in the ocean while open sourcing our research and explorations," regularly tags and tracks sharks, both white and tiger sharks. In January 2025, scientists tagged a 13-foot 9-inch shark, nicknamed "Contender," near the Florida-Georgia border. The male shark was estimated to weigh more than 1,300 pounds. ➤ 2 great white sharks, one massive at 1,653 pounds, ping off Florida east coast. Here's where After being tagged, Contender headed farther south, exploring the waters as far south as Indian River County before turning to head north. His last "ping," when a transponder attached to his dorsal fin sent a signal to a satellite, was Tuesday, April 15, off the coast of North Carolina. Three other sharks — two white and one tiger — tagged by Ocearch have pinged off Florida this week, including one this morning: Dold: Male white shark, 761 pounds, 11 feet 2 inches long. Pinged 10:45 a.m. April 16 in the Gulf west of Sarasota. Morada: Female tiger shark, 761 pounds, 11 feet 2 inches long. Pinged 7:34 a.m. April 15 in the Atlantic southeast of Miami. Breton: Male white shark, 1,437 pounds, 13 feet 3 inches long. Pinged 8:54 p.m. April 12 in the Atlantic east of Jacksonville. Florida is known as the shark bite capital of the world. And Volusia County leads the state in the number of unprovoked attacks, according to the International Shark Attack File. Information provided by Dr. Gavin Naylor, director of Florida Program for Shark Research and curator of Florida Museum of Natural History. ➤ Curious about Florida sharks? We asked an expert about things you should know Some large sharks can swim in waters that are 1 or 2 feet deep. There were 351 unprovoked shark attacks in Volusia County from 1882 to 2023. Bull sharks are tolerant of fresh water and can be found in estuaries and rivers. Dawn and dusk are the worst times to be in the water but bites are possible any time of day. Sharks follow baitfish so watch out for them close to shore especially in the summer. Black-tips and Atlantic sharp-nose are the most common encountered by Florida swimmers. The most aggressive shark in Florida waters is considered to be bull sharks. This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Great white shark circles, bites boat fishing off Destin, Florida
Yahoo
15-04-2025
- Yahoo
'Thought I saw a submarine': Florida charter boat has close encounter with great white shark
What was already a good fishing day with anglers catching vermillion snapper and triggerfish soon turned into a great day – a great white shark day. Destin's Capt. Taylor Bankston and his group of anglers from Kentucky were out on a fishing trip aboard his 26-foot center console charter boat, Get the Gaff, on April 10 when they got a huge surprise. 'We were on a regular fishing trip, and I looked up ... what I thought I saw in the water was a submarine, and I was waiting next for the periscope to pop out of the water,' Bankston said. 'But it never did ... and then the submarine turned into something that had giant teeth and a giant eyeball,' he said. More great white sharks in Florida: Shark cam captures Florida close encounters in nurse shark-great white shark 'photobomb' Bankston said it swam past the boat. 'I immediately knew I had never seen a fish in the water that big. It had to be a great white,' Bankston said. Bankston, who operates his boat out of AJ's on Destin harbor, had four customers aboard the boat from Kentucky, a mom and dad and two daughters. He said the anglers were ecstatic. 'Oh my gosh, it made their vacation,' Bankston said. Bankston explained that he had the motors off and was using an i-Pilot trolling motor to hold them over a spot. They were fishing about nine miles out of Destin, Florida. 'We were just sitting there over the reef catching fish, and she popped up and circled us for 20 minutes,' he said. At one point, the shark came up and 'mouthed the back of the boat, bit it, to see what we were ... and realized that we weren't anything eatable, and then kept going,' Bankston said. The shark continued to circle the boat for about another 10 minutes. 'It was just circling us and checking us out,' Bankston said. Early on, Bankston had gone up in the tower of his boat to get a good look, photos and video. He said when everybody on the boat walked over to one side, it would lean a bit. 'I was leaning over the top of the great white ... my heart was pumping,' he said. After the shark circled for about 20 minutes, it just disappeared. 'Then five minutes later we saw a dorsal fin about 100 yards away from us going across the surface slow as all get out ... like the movie Jaws. That was her when she swam away,' Bankston said. The dorsal fin on the great white was about 2 ½ feet tall. 'Literally the dorsal fin looked like the fin on Jaws,' he said, making mention that the movie "Jaws 2" was filmed in the Destin area. 'You don't think that theme song – dun, dun, dun – was going through my head when I saw that thing,' Bankston said. 'First thing I thought was 'captain we're going to need a bigger boat,'' Bankston said. Bankston said the great white was about 14-feet long and estimated it to be between 1,100 and 1,400 pounds. 'It's the biggest fish I've ever seen,' he said. 'We were all baffled. It was as if we were viewing a dinosaur,' he said. Although it was huge, Bankston said they were never really scared. 'I knew I was in a good boat,' he said. 'And I knew we couldn't short clean the boat today. More: 'Definitely not geared up for that': Destin boat hooks 20-foot great white shark 'You respect the piece of equipment that kept you separate and safe,' Bankston said. However, he did admit, 'If I would have been hooked up to a heart monitor, there would have been some peaking and beeping. 'We weren't down in the hull crunched up, but we were highly alert and lots of adrenalin flowing,' he said. After the shark left, they went back to fishing and caught plenty of mingo. "The mingo had no idea there was a 1,400-pound shark swimming above their heads ... and they were still chewing like crazy,' Bankston said. 'It was a great day." This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Great white shark circles Florida fishing charter boat
Yahoo
01-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Columbus approves small-business grant program
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — Columbus City Council approved a grant program that primarily focuses on women-owned businesses and women entrepreneurs. Columbus Councilmember Nick Bankston said small businesses are the backbone of the community, which is why it's important the city gives small business owners the resources they need to succeed. Columbus City Schools reverting to birth names catches students, teachers off guard On the last day of Women's History Month, Columbus City Council approved the Small Business Boost Grant program. 'It really focuses on making sure those individual women boost their individual credit scores to be able to provide them the opportunity to be ready for funding when it comes to their individual businesses,' Bankston said. The program will provide the funds, training and technical support to the city's local financial empowerment center to create one-on-one free financial counseling. 'We look forward to seeing women in Columbus realize their dream of entrepreneurship and become a part of a growing local economy known for opportunity and innovation,' Columbus Department of Development Assistant Director Hannah Reed said. 60-ton crane stolen from south Columbus construction site According to some council members, women-owned businesses make up approximately 22% of all small businesses in the city, representing $14.1 million in total revenue and employing more than 28,000 community members. 'Nationally, women-owned businesses generate $2.7 trillion — $2.7 trillion, that's with a 'T' — in revenue, yet less than 2% of venture capital funding is allocated towards women-owned startups,' Columbus City Councilmember Lourdes Barroso de Padilla said. 'We know that when we invest in women, we're investing in our families, we're investing in our communities, but most importantly, we continue to make sure that when women succeed, Columbus succeeds,' Bankston said. The grant is a private grant from the Cities for Financial Empowerment Fund in an amount up to $90,000. Bankston said the program is a way for the city to show its commitment to women-owned businesses. Harsher penalties for those caught driving under the influence to take effect in Ohio 'Oftentimes, businesses don't close their doors because they have a bad product or because there's something wrong with the business per se, but it's because they don't have those tools and that access to capital to make sure that they're able to be sustainable,' he said. Bankston said the funding will start to roll out as soon as contracts go into effect. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
28-01-2025
- Yahoo
Newsmax Emails Show How It Got A Neo-Nazi Shooting Wrong: ‘I Told Them Not To Run It'
Internal company emails and a deposition obtained by HuffPost reveal how the right-wing network Newsmax dismissed accurate reports that a mass shooter was a white supremacist and shared an image of a man they incorrectly identified as the killer. Texas man Mauricio Garcia, 37, filed a libel lawsuit against Newsmax and other media organizations in March after an image of him was used in their coverage of a May 6, 2023, mass shooting at an outlet mall in Allen, Texas, that depicted him as the shooter. The real gunman was a 33-year-old white supremacist who shared the same first and last name as Garcia. The gunman killed eight people and wounded seven others before he was killed in a shootout with police. But it was the innocent Garcia's image that was used to depict a neo-Nazi killer. 'This was a pretty obvious unforced error,' Newsmax News Director Chris Wallacewrote in an email after it became clear the network had connected an innocent man to a mass shooting, according to court records. Garcia is being represented by Houston attorney Mark Bankston of Farrar & Ball. Bankston previously represented the parents of a child who died in a 2012 school shooting who won a $45 million judgment against conspiracy theorist Alex Jones for lies he spread about it. Entertainment blog Hollywood Unlocked and TelevisaUnivision (the parent company of Spanish-language broadcaster Univision) are also listed as defendants. Fox News was previously listed as a defendant but was dropped from the lawsuit in June. News site Today News Africa and far-right commentators Tim Pool and Steven Crowder settled with Garcia, Bankston told HuffPost. Andrew Brown, the chief operating officer at Newsmax, gave a deposition as part of the lawsuit on Aug. 20. During it, Brown routinely acknowledged that Newsmax staff failed its internal journalistic practices when reporting on the shooting. Newsmax 'published an image that we had not verified with the investigators in charge of the shooting,' Brown said in the deposition, which you The deposition, along with court records that include internal emails from Newsmax executives and employees, give a glimpse into the editorial process of a media empire known for its praise of President Donald Trump and its conspiratorial lies about the 2020 election that Trump lost. Two days after the shooting, on May 8, media reports began to trickle in about the shooter's ties to the neo-Nazi movement, including his tattoos of a swastika and the SS lightning bolt of Hitler's paramilitary forces. The shooter also had a Russian social media account 'rife with hate-filled rants against women and Black people,' The New York Times reported. And Aric Toler, a former researcher at the open-source research outlet Bellingcat, independently verified the killer's social media website and posted details on X, formerly Twitter. Following the new details from Toler, prominent right-wing voices — including that of billionaire and X owner Elon Musk — floated conspiracies denying the shooter's neo-Nazi background. Chris Knowles, the vice president of programming at Newsmax, also questioned the shooter's white supremacist background. Knowles sent an email on May 8 to other high-level staff at Newsmax with the subject line 'White supremacy.' 'Lots of jumping to conclusions by the media, fueled by the Biden group's constant push of this theory that white supremacy is the biggest danger in the country,' Knowles wrote in an email to other executives. Later that night, on Newsmax's 'Greg Kelly Reports,' the host questioned the shooter's white supremacist background. Kelly was wrong, as authorities would later clarify. Even worse, Kelly aired a photo of the wrong Garcia while making his incorrect point. 'We didn't know anything for a good long time, like a day and a half went by, no information whatsoever, until they told us this guy did it, Mauricio Garcia,' Kelly said on his show. Next to Kelly was a mugshot of the innocent Garcia with a large graphic titled ''White' Supremacy?' underneath the image. Below that, a title for the segment read 'Here We Go Again With 'White Supremacy.'' 'Now, look, this is not a white supremacist,' Kelly said. 'By the way, we abhor white supremacy. But you know what the left does, right? They think anything MAGA must be white supremacists. That is appalling. This is just pathetic, all right?' In a court declaration, the innocent Garcia described the mental anguish he went through after being incorrectly identified. 'On May 7, 2023, I first began to learn about false accusations made against me in the media,' Garcia said. 'I spent the next week in a total panic. Nobody could calm me down. My physical and mental state completely broke down. As the days passed and the more I learned about all the false accusations, the worse it got.' Garcia said he couldn't sleep and began to have panic attacks. 'I also spend so much time thinking about the huge number of people across America who believe I committed the worst crime imaginable, being a neo-Nazi murderer of innocent children,' Garcia added. 'It really messes with your head to know that millions of people saw your picture and think you're a monster. I just don't think I'll ever be the same after this.' A spokesperson for Newsmax declined to answer questions from HuffPost but provided the following statement: 'Newsmax acted responsibly in promptly correcting the error before being asked by plaintiff or anyone else to do so.' Garcia is seeking more than $1 million in damages. The origin of the wrong photo that spread across social media — and eventually to people's television screens — appeared to stem from an account on X, the social media platform that has become a hotbed of misinformation under Musk's leadership. The account's owner, who has more than 60,000 followers, referred to herself as an 'ULTRA-MAGA Business Owner' on her X page. A day after the attack, on May 7, the account posted a photo of the wrong Garcia. HuffPost could not find an earlier example of the photo being used. 'So the media is stating that the Allen Texas Mall shooter (Mauricio Garcia) was a right wing, white supremacist. Really?' the user wrote. In an internal investigation by Newsmax researcher John McGrory following the network's blunder, he pointed out the conspiracies that began to take shape under the account's post. 'A quick look at the replies to her tweet show the fever swamps, some proposing the liberals set up the shooting to discredit whites,' McGrory emailed other Newsmax executives, according to court records. The false post about Garcia remains up on X. And while Musk has often lauded X's Community Notes — a tool that allows users to add corrections or additional context to misleading or untrue posts — no such note has been added to the false post about Garcia. It has been viewed more than 1 million times, according to X's own metrics. As the photo spread across social media, it found its way into online outlets. In his deposition, Brown said it was Chris Tamas, an associate producer at Newsmax TV, who found the incorrect photo on the website Today News Africa and in an aggregated story on and put it on Newsmax's shared photo drive. 'Let me make sure I understand this,' Bankston said during the deposition. 'So the producers on Greg Kelly's show, the only thing driving their decision to use the photo was the fact that it was on the system?' 'It was on the shared drive that the newsdesk uses to put approved photos,' Brown said in part. Brown further explained that a different producer, Megan Ilievski, saw the wrong photo on a local ABC affiliate's website in Kansas. Ilievski checked Newsmax's shared photo drive, saw the same image and assumed it was correct, Brown said. More from the deposition: Q: Did the company know when this photo was taken? A: No. Q: Did the company know where this photo was taken? A: No. Q: Does the company, or did the company on May 8th know why this photo was taken? A: I don't – no. No they didn't. Besides Kelly's show, Newsmax aired the image of the wrong Garcia on five other programs. In his deposition, Brown acknowledged the wrong photo would have gone through at least 12 producers who could have caught the error. 'If we have six shows, we're talking about at least 12 producers, right?' attorney Bankston asked in the deposition. 'At least, yeah,' Brown responded. The image of the wrong Garcia used by Newsmax contained a watermark for the website If someone at Newsmax had checked the website first, the lawsuit alleges, they would have seen that the age of the innocent Garcia did not match that of the shooter. 'To the people that I talked to who were involved in this case, nobody visited the mugshots website, no,' Brown testified. Backlash to the Kelly segment was swift. Publications including Forbes, Mediaite and The Daily Beast all wrote stories pointing out that Kelly had shown a photo of the wrong man. And The Associated Press released a fact-check about the wrong image, but did not mention Newsmax. Kelly had also — along with Knowles, the vice president of programming at Newsmax — questioned whether the shooting had been motivated by white supremacy. On May 9, authorities made clear the shooter had a history of racial hatred. 'We do know that he had neo-Nazi ideation. He had patches. He had tattoos. Even his signature verified that,' Hank Sibley, North Texas regional director for the Texas Department of Public Safety, said at a press conference a day after Kelly's segment. As the reports came in, Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy forwarded executives an email that a Daily Beast reporter sent asking about the error. '[Newsmax Vice President] Elliot, let's follow up on this right away he needs to if he did do the wrong photo,' Ruddy said of Kelly. 'He needs to say that ... Their team needs to be very careful on this obviously ... I'll speak to bill about some simple thing to get back once you confirm, they did make the wrong photo.' Wallace, the news director, expressed frustration at the mistake in a separate email to executives. 'For my part: [producers] Valenti and Julia came to me yesterday and asked me about it and I told them not to run it,' Wallace wrote. 'Despite the list of shows below - I had not seen it on air so I didn't blast during the day. I honestly just figured folks wouldn't fall for this. My bad. I'll churn out a network wide blast next time earlier. But I also want the shows to come to me - like Valenti did. This was a pretty obvious unforced error. Just check our convo below.' The 'convo below' Wallace referred to was a back-and-forth between Wallace and producer Michael Valenti on May 8 about the unverified photo that was spreading across social media. Wallace cautioned against using it. 'This photo is circulating on social media and nowhere else to my knowledge–so no I can't confirm it's him,' Wallace wrote. 'Have you seen it on any news sites? I only find it on social and blogs and no sourcing.' While Wallace appeared to be one of the few who urged caution in running the wrong image, a new court filing from Bankston accuses Wallace of altering his email to other executives. 'Interestingly, the original email sent by Wallace to Valenti did not contain the words 'and no sourcing,'' a court filing from Bankston alleges. 'Wallace added those words when forwarding it to his bosses to make it appear he said 'and no sourcing' to Valenti, but he did not.' On the next episode of 'Greg Kelly Reports'on May 9th, Kelly issued a quick apology. 'We got to clear up something from last night,' Kelly said. 'At this time last night, we showed a picture of what we thought was the guy involved in the shooting in Allen, Texas. Now, a lot of media organizations showed this picture. Turned out not to be the guy. So we're sorry about that.' As he spoke, an on-air graphic read: 'Fake News Never Acknowledges Its Mistakes.' Newsmax Host Says Pete Hegseth Is 'Blackmailable' With 'Serious Baggage' Newsmax, Smartmatic Reach Settlement In 2020 Election Defamation Case Smartmatic's Suit Against Newsmax Over 2020 Election Lies Appears Headed For Trial
