Latest news with #Humanity
The Guardian
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Hot Mess review – blazing musical about Earth and humanity's toxic love affair
Does a musical romance with a climate message sound a tad worthy – and one in which the couple represent 'Earth' and 'Humanity'? In fact, Earth (Danielle Steers) is a Bridget Jones style singleton who is 750m years into looking for love. She is not convinced when Humanity (Tobias Turley) comes along, all earnestness and cute lines ('You are the centre of my universe') but is slowly won over. Somehow, Jack Godfrey and Ellie Coote's climate romcom manages not to make a hot mess out of a very bizarre idea. Quite the opposite. It is so well executed that you see the tragedy of Earth's love affair with Humanity as a toxic relationship in which the latter betrays, manipulates and gaslights, even as you are dazzled by the music, tickled by the humour and taken in by the romance. It is a two-hander in which both performers blaze. Steers is armed with an out-of-this-world voice and a welter of well-timed one-liners ('I can literally pull anyone, it's called gravity' and 'I'm not picky, I'm naturally selective'). Turley is a formidable singer, too, and manages his character's trajectory from wet-eared eagerness to workaholism, insecurity, unfaithfulness and denial. It serves as a metaphor for our abuse of the planet's resources while making promises to do better, and be greener – tomorrow. But it is delivered without flat-footedness or strain, never breaking out of the storyline of its central romance. You know where it is all heading but it still manages to surprise and delight. Coote's book whops out one brilliant line after another. Godfrey's lyrics keep up while the music is super catchy, whether synth pop, rock, funk or moments of rap. The duo's Edinburgh fringe show last year, 42 Balloons, was a runaway hit. This cements their extraordinary musical chemistry. Coote, who directs as well, keeps it pacy. Having played a run at the Birmingham Hippodrome earlier this year, the production is slick without being glib. A fringe highlight which, like the planet, deserves a longer, fuller life. At Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 25 August All our Edinburgh festival reviews
NDTV
19-07-2025
- Politics
- NDTV
"Education System, From Primary To Higher Level, Is Being Ruined": PM Modi Hits Out At TMC
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday launched a sharp attack on Trinamool Congress (TMC), calling on people to give the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) a chance to form an "honest, hardworking, and strong" government in West Bengal in 2026 assembly polls. Addressing a public rally in Durgapur, PM Modi accused the TMC government of presiding over a "double attack of crime and corruption," especially in the education sector. "Whether it's primary education or higher education, the system is being ruined at every level. The TMC government has handed over Bengal's education to crime and corruption, and is doing a double attack on it. Thousands of qualified teachers are unemployed today because of TMC's corruption," he said. PM Modi's remarks come amid continued protests over the 2024 Calcutta High Court order that cancelled teacher appointments in a massive recruitment scam. On July 14, SSC-qualified teachers under the banner of 'Jogya Shikshak Shikshika Adhikar Mancha' marched towards the state secretariat Nabanna, demanding justice. Alleging that the future of thousands of children is at stake due to a shortage of teachers, the Prime Minister said, "This has brought crisis upon thousands of families. TMC has pushed both the present and the future of Bengal into darkness." PM Modi also raised concerns about safety on college campuses, citing recent incidents of sexual harassment. Referring to the RG Kar Medical College case, which sparked widespread protests, he said, "The party that talks about 'Mother, Soil, Humanity' is causing pain and rage due to the injustice faced by daughters. Even hospitals in West Bengal are no longer safe. When a doctor daughter was subjected to atrocities, the TMC government got busy protecting the accused." He further accused the TMC, Left, and Congress of ignoring the Bengali language. "It was the BJP government that granted classical language status to Bangla. TMC and Left supported Congress for years in Delhi, but didn't care to do so," he said. Targeting the industrial decline in Bengal, PM Modi said the youth were being forced to migrate due to a lack of jobs. "West Bengal was once a hub of development. It was a thriving centre for businesses, attracting people from across the country seeking opportunities. Cities like Durgapur, Bardhaman, and Asansol played key roles in the nation's growth. But now, industries are shutting down, and the youth are leaving in search of better opportunities. We must bring Bengal out of this crisis," he said. He appealed to people of West Bengal to elect the BJP in the 2026 Assembly polls, promising development, jobs, and good governance. Earlier in the day, PM Modi also inaugurated and laid the foundation stone for multiple development projects during his visit. He laid the foundation stone for Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) City Gas Distribution (CGD) project in Bankura and Purulia districts worth around Rs 1,950 crore, which will provide PNG connections to households, commercial establishments and industrial customers, and provide CNG at the retail outlets and also create employment opportunities in the region. PM Modi also dedicated to the nation the Kolkata section (132 Km) of the Durgapur-Haldia Natural Gas Pipeline, part of the ambitious Jagdishpur-Haldia and Bokaro-Dhamra Pipeline, also known as the Pradhan Mantri Urja Ganga (PMUG) Project. He also dedicated to the nation Retrofitting Pollution Control System-Flue Gas Desulphurization (FGD) of Durgapur Steel Thermal Power Station and Raghunathpur Thermal Power Station of Damodar Valley Corporation, worth over Rs 1,457 crore.
Daily Mail
12-07-2025
- Science
- Daily Mail
Ranked, the 10 most likely ways the world will end: From supervolcanoes to nuclear war, experts say these are the deadliest threats to humanity - including one that could lead to everybody on Earth falling dead at the same moment
Humanity's future can look pretty gloomy. From asteroids the size of football stadiums to nuclear war and man-made pandemics, it can seem as if humankind is in constant danger of being wiped out – and, in many ways, it is. Over the past three years, I have interviewed hundreds of experts working to prevent Doomsday, from eminent scientists and engineers to eccentric philosophical visionaries and ultra-serious diplomats. Together, they form an anti-catastrophe league: a diffuse team fighting for the future of our species.
The Hindu
10-07-2025
- Business
- The Hindu
Musk's xAI unveils Grok 4 with a $300 subscription for the premium version
Elon Musk unveiled xAI's latest AI model, Grok 4, rivaling ChatGPT and Gemini, during a livestream on X. Claiming it as the 'smartest AI in the world,' Musk also announced a new $300 monthly subscription plan called SuperGrok Heavy. xAI has stated that Grok 4 surpassed competitors scoring 25.4% on Humanity's Last Exam without 'tools' beating out Gemini 2.5 Pro (21.6%) and OpenAI's o3 which scored 21%. The benchmark comprises more than 2,500 questions on dozens of subjects including maths, science and linguistics. The AI model will also be able to analyse images and respond to questions. Meanwhile, Grok 4 Heavy is their multi-agent variant that shows better performance. The company claimed that the model's multiple agents work together on problem and then compare their results to determine the best outcome. Grok 4 Heavy scored 44.4% on the Humanity's Last Exam benchmark, outperforming Gemini 2.5 Pro's 26.9%. 'Grok 4 is the first time, in my experience, that an AI has been able to solve difficult, real-world engineering questions where the answers cannot be found anywhere on the Internet or in books. And it will get much better,' Musk posted on X. The release comes during a rocky time for both X and xAI. Just yesterday, X CEO Linda Yaccarino resigned from her position after a two-year tenure. Earlier this week, Grok started spewing antimsemitic comments on X a day after Musk expressed that the chatbot was becoming too 'biased' and politically correct. The posts were later removed after a furore.
Time of India
10-07-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Grok 4 vs Grok 3: What makes Elon Musk's newest AI model the "world's most powerful AI'
Elon Musk 's xAI has released the Grok 4, just five months after Grok 3's debut earlier this year. The latest model promises a quantum leap in performance, achieving perfect scores on math competitions while commanding a premium $300 monthly subscription. While Grok 3 established the foundation with strong reasoning capabilities and mainstream accessibility, Grok 4 now positions itself as the "world's most powerful AI model," marking xAI's rapid ascent in advanced AI territory. Here's a comparison between xAI's Grok 4 and Grok 3. Grok 4 vs Grok 3: The performance comparison Grok 4 dominates academic benchmarks with remarkable precision. On the American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME), Grok 4 achieved a perfect 100% score compared to Grok 3's 52.2%. The Graduate-level Physics Question Answering (GPQA) test shows Grok 4 scoring 87% against Grok 3's 75.4%. Most impressively, Grok 4 scored 25.4% on Humanity's Last Exam without tools, outperforming Google's Gemini 2.5 Pro (21.6%) and OpenAI's o3 (21%). With tools enabled, Grok 4 Heavy variant reaches 44.4%, nearly double Gemini's 26.9%. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like You Can Make Massive Side Income By Learning Order Flow Analysis TradeWise Learn More Undo The ARC-AGI-2 benchmark, testing visual pattern recognition, shows Grok 4 achieving 16.2%, twice the performance of the next-best commercial model, Claude Opus 4. On coding benchmarks, Grok 4 handles 256,000 tokens compared to Grok 3's 131,072 tokens, enabling processing of significantly larger codebases. Grok 3 utilized 200,000 GPUs with 10x more compute than Grok 2. Grok 4's training details remain undisclosed, but performance improvements suggest even greater computational resources. Grok 4 vs Grok 3: Upgraded technical capabilities Grok 4 represents a fundamental shift in AI design. Unlike Grok 3, which offered both reasoning and non-reasoning modes, Grok 4 operates exclusively as a reasoning model. This architectural change eliminates quick responses in favor of deeper, more accurate problem-solving. The context window expansion from 131,072 tokens (Grok 3) to 256,000 tokens (Grok 4) enables processing documents twice as large. Grok 4 integrates real-time data from X, Tesla, and SpaceX platforms, providing current information that Grok 3 lacked. Multimodal capabilities distinguish the models significantly. Grok 4 supports text and vision modalities with image generation coming soon, while Grok 3 focused primarily on text-based interactions. xAI plans specialized variants including Grok 4 Code (August 2025) and video generation models (October 2025). Grok 4 vs Grok 3: Pricing and availability The cost difference reflects capability gaps. Grok 3 maintains $3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens through xAI's API. Grok 4 uses identical API pricing but introduces SuperGrok Heavy subscription at $300 monthly, the highest among major AI providers. This premium positioning targets enterprise users and researchers requiring cutting-edge performance. OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic offer similar ultra-premium tiers, but none match xAI's $300 monthly price point. Both models integrate into X's social platform, but Grok 4's launch follows controversy around Grok 3's generation of antisemitic content and misinformation. xAI addressed these issues by removing "politically incorrect" guidance from system prompts and implementing stricter safeguards. AI Masterclass for Students. Upskill Young Ones Today!– Join Now
