Latest news with #Hadgu
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Yahoo
Small boat migrant avoids jail after punching female police officers
A small boat migrant who repeatedly punched two female police officers has been spared jail. Tariku Hadgu, 21, was told by a judge his brain 'is not fully formed' and he would be imprisoned if he committed another offence. The Ethiopian asylum seeker had to be dragged off one of his victims by a member of the public as he punched her outside a bar in Bournemouth, Dorset. One of them had fallen to the ground after being hit, allowing him to climb on top of her as he continued his assault. Hadgu, who arrived in the UK three years ago on a small boat, was given a 16-week prison sentence suspended for one year at Poole magistrates' court. Addressing him, the district judge Michael Snow said: 'This is more serious than your standard assault as it was on two officers. 'The Home Office needs to know about this because it is extremely relevant information as to whether he should be allowed to stay in the country. 'You're a young man of 20 and your brain is not fully formed. If you commit another criminal offence, you will be going to prison for 16 weeks.' The court heard the incident took place on April 18 in central Bournemouth after reports of a man carrying a knife matched descriptions of Hadgu and his friend. Charles Nightingale, the prosecutor, said: 'The two officers who were assaulted by the defendant say they approached the two males to arrest them. 'Both officers describe being punched in the face, and one was punched repeatedly in the abdomen by the defendant who was on top of her.' The court heard one officer was left with bruises on her face and cheekbones, and feared one of the men could brandish a knife at any moment. However, no knife was found. Mr Nightingale said Hagdu was 'very drunk' and was also found in possession of a small amount of cannabis, it was heard. Hadgu – who claims to have no memory of the incident – lives in a shared house in the town with three other asylum seekers and has been learning English at a college. In mitigation, Niall Theobald said Hagdu was 'extremely remorseful for his behaviour'. Hagdu was also given a 12-week curfew and banned from all bars, pubs and clubs in Dorset for one year. He was also ordered to pay £250 compensation to each officer, paid out of the £67.50 a week he receives as a basic living allowance. James Dimmack, chairman of the Dorset Police Federation, said: 'It is never acceptable to attack and assault police officers. That message must be universal. 'Police officers are not punchbags. We are mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, husbands, wives and partners. We should be going home at the end of our shifts, not to hospital. 'An effective deterrent must be in place to better protect the protectors. In this case I am hugely reticent to say that the punishment fits the crime.' Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
30-04-2025
- Telegraph
Small boat migrant avoids jail after punching female police officers
A small boat migrant who repeatedly punched two female police officers has been spared jail. Tariku Hadgu, 21, was told by a judge his brain 'is not fully formed' and he would be imprisoned if he committed another offence. The Ethiopian asylum seeker had to be dragged off one of his victims by a member of the public as he punched her outside a bar in Bournemouth, Dorset. One of them had fallen to the ground after being hit, allowing him to climb on top of her as he continued his assault. Hadgu, who arrived in the UK three years ago on a small boat, was given a 16-week prison sentence suspended for one year at Poole magistrates' court. Addressing him, the district judge Michael Snow said: 'This is more serious than your standard assault as it was on two officers. 'The Home Office needs to know about this because it is extremely relevant information as to whether he should be allowed to stay in the country. 'You're a young man of 20 and your brain is not fully formed. If you commit another criminal offence, you will be going to prison for 16 weeks.' Bruised cheekbones The court heard the incident took place on April 18 in central Bournemouth after reports of a man carrying a knife matched descriptions of Hadgu and his friend. Charles Nightingale, the prosecutor, said: 'The two officers who were assaulted by the defendant say they approached the two males to arrest them. 'Both officers describe being punched in the face, and one was punched repeatedly in the abdomen by the defendant who was on top of her.' The court heard one officer was left with bruises on her face and cheekbones, and feared one of the men could brandish a knife at any moment. However, no knife was found. Mr Nightingale said Hagdu was 'very drunk' and was also found in possession of a small amount of cannabis, it was heard. Hadgu – who claims to have no memory of the incident – lives in a shared house in the town with three other asylum seekers and has been learning English at a college. 'Extremely remorseful' In mitigation, Niall Theobald said Hagdu was 'extremely remorseful for his behaviour'. Hagdu was also given a 12-week curfew and banned from all bars, pubs and clubs in Dorset for one year. He was also ordered to pay £250 compensation to each officer, paid out of the £67.50 a week he receives as a basic living allowance. James Dimmack, chairman of the Dorset Police Federation, said: 'It is never acceptable to attack and assault police officers. That message must be universal. 'Police officers are not punchbags. We are mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, husbands, wives and partners. We should be going home at the end of our shifts, not to hospital. 'An effective deterrent must be in place to better protect the protectors. In this case I am hugely reticent to say that the punishment fits the crime.'
Yahoo
22-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Crowdsourced AI benchmarks have serious flaws, some experts say
AI labs are increasingly relying on crowdsourced benchmarking platforms such as Chatbot Arena to probe the strengths and weaknesses of their latest models. But some experts say that there are serious problems with this approach from an ethical and academic perspective. Over the past few years, labs including OpenAI, Google, and Meta have turned to platforms that recruit users to help evaluate upcoming models' capabilities. When a model scores favorably, the lab behind it will often tout that score as evidence of a meaningful improvement. It's a flawed approach, however, according to Emily Bender, a University of Washington linguistics professor and co-author of the book "The AI Con." Bender takes particular issue with Chatbot Arena, which tasks volunteers with prompting two anonymous models and selecting the response they prefer. "To be valid, a benchmark needs to measure something specific, and it needs to have construct validity — that is, there has to be evidence that the construct of interest is well-defined and that the measurements actually relate to the construct," Bender said. "Chatbot Arena hasn't shown that voting for one output over another actually correlates with preferences, however they may be defined." Asmelash Teka Hadgu, the co-founder of AI firm Lesan and a fellow at the Distributed AI Research Institute, said that he thinks benchmarks like Chatbot Arena are being "co-opted" by AI labs to "promote exaggerated claims." Hadgu pointed to a recent controversy involving Meta's Llama 4 Maverick model. Meta fine-tuned a version of Maverick to score well on Chatbot Arena, only to withhold that model in favor of releasing a worse-performing version. "Benchmarks should be dynamic rather than static data sets," Hadgu said, "distributed across multiple independent entities, such as organizations or universities, and tailored specifically to distinct use cases, like education, healthcare, and other fields done by practicing professionals who use these [models] for work." Hadgu and Kristine Gloria, who formerly led the Aspen Institute's Emergent and Intelligent Technologies Initiative, also made the case that model evaluators should be compensated for their work. Gloria said that AI labs should learn from the mistakes of the data labeling industry, which is notorious for its exploitative practices. (Some labs have been accused of the same.) "In general, the crowdsourced benchmarking process is valuable and reminds me of citizen science initiatives," Gloria said. "Ideally, it helps bring in additional perspectives to provide some depth in both the evaluation and fine-tuning of data. But benchmarks should never be the only metric for evaluation. With the industry and the innovation moving quickly, benchmarks can rapidly become unreliable." Matt Frederikson, the CEO of Gray Swan AI, which runs crowdsourced red teaming campaigns for models, said that volunteers are drawn to Gray Swan's platform for a range of reasons, including "learning and practicing new skills." (Gray Swan also awards cash prizes for some tests.) Still, he acknowledged that public benchmarks "aren't a substitute" for "paid private" evaluations. "[D]evelopers also need to rely on internal benchmarks, algorithmic red teams, and contracted red teamers who can take a more open-ended approach or bring specific domain expertise," Frederikson said. "It's important for both model developers and benchmark creators, crowdsourced or otherwise, to communicate results clearly to those who follow, and be responsive when they are called into question." Alex Atallah, the CEO of model marketplace OpenRouter, which recently partnered with OpenAI to grant users early access to OpenAI's GPT-4.1 models, said open testing and benchmarking of models alone "isn't sufficient." So did Wei-Lin Chiang, an AI doctoral student at UC Berkeley and one of the founders of LMArena, which maintains Chatbot Arena. "We certainly support the use of other tests," Chiang said. "Our goal is to create a trustworthy, open space that measures our community's preferences about different AI models." Chiang said that incidents such as the Maverick benchmark discrepancy aren't the result of a flaw in Chatbot Arena's design, but rather labs misinterpreting its policy. LM Arena has taken steps to prevent future discrepancies from occurring, Chiang said, including updating its policies to "reinforce our commitment to fair, reproducible evaluations." "Our community isn't here as volunteers or model testers," Chiang said. "People use LM Arena because we give them an open, transparent place to engage with AI and give collective feedback. As long as the leaderboard faithfully reflects the community's voice, we welcome it being shared."
