Latest news with #Kersting
Chicago Tribune
4 days ago
- Sport
- Chicago Tribune
Bella Phillips, with Bunny written on her arm, helps Yorkville hop past Waubonsie Valley. ‘It's like my alter ego.'
Word up, Foxes. It's playoff time for senior shortstop Bella Phillips and her Yorkville teammates, and that means sporting their very own word or phrase of the day on their forearm for game day. It's a practice that can help ease the tension in one-loss-and-you're-done games. It can inspire, remind or simply be fun. 'We very much have a family chemistry and we all buy into the season and we work really hard and push each other,' said Phillips, described by Foxes coach Jory Regnier as a natural leader who plays a key role in building her team's culture. Phillips was among three key contributors bearing apropos messages in a 10-0 five-inning win Tuesday over Waubonsie Valley in a Class 4A Yorkville Regional semifinal — Phillips with 'Bunny,' junior catcher Kayla Kersting with 'Beast mode' and junior pitcher Ellie Fox with 'Confidence.' Fourth-seeded Yorkville (23-12) advances to a 4:30 p.m. Friday regional final against the winner of Wednesday's semifinal between fifth-seeded Plainfield East and 12th-seeded Naperville North. Phillips, meanwhile, got Yorkville rolling against 13th-seeded Waubonsie Valley (9-20) with an RBI single to highlight a three-run first inning. She then sliced a liner toward the right field line and legged out an RBI triple in the third. She celebrated with a rabbit-like hop at the third base bag to the delight of teammates in the nearby dugout. ''Bunny' is from softball,' said Phillips, who's also a starting guard in basketball. 'It's like my alter ego. I have like a funny (high-pitched) voice that goes with it, keeping like a positive mindset and cheering on the team.' Phillips isn't sure how that started, but after one of the assistant coaches heard Phillips doing the voice, Kersting said it became like a running joke from there that has helped keep the team loose. 'She's so funny — she's our comic,' said Kersting, the team's power-hitting leadoff hitter. Kersting hit three deep outfield drives into the wind that might have gone out on a calm day, running out two for triples. She was robbed by sophomore center fielder Dezirae Kelly with an outstanding sliding catch at the fence. 'Kayla brings the big hits for us for sure,' said Phillips, a defensive standout who has held up her end at the plate by hitting .337 with three doubles, four triples and 15 RBIs. Kersting, who leads the team with a gaudy .598 average to go with 12 triples, 10 homers and 38 RBIs, didn't mind having to work for her hits Tuesday. 'I like running the bases,' Kersting said. 'It's pretty easy to get triples here if you hit it in the gap, with the eight-foot fence all the way around. You really have to hit it to get it out.' Fox, a hard-throwing junior right-hander, pitched with confidence for the win, striking out six and giving up only three hits and a walk in her four innings. 'She did a great job,' Regnier said of Fox. 'Came in and was lights out.' Freshman righty Bella Rosauer struck out two in the fifth inning to get some playoff experience. This postseason run will be it for Phillips and her athletic career, however. She plans to attend Iowa State and major in marketing. 'I think she's had a phenomenal year,' Regnier said of Phillips. 'She just really has put it all out there. She's that person that helps get everything together and organizes, makes sure things get done the way they're supposed to get done. 'She has high standards and is part of a senior group that's big on our culture.' Over the last six seasons, it has helped Regnier's Foxes win 75% of their games by compiling a 155-51 record. 'Bella will do anything for the team,' Regnier said. 'She even went behind the plate last year when Kayla was hurt. She didn't love it, but she'd do it tomorrow if we asked and do her best. 'She's kind of the glue.'
Asharq Al-Awsat
27-03-2025
- Science
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Firms and Researchers at Odds over Superhuman AI
Hype is growing from leaders of major AI companies that "strong" computer intelligence will imminently outstrip humans, but many researchers in the field see the claims as marketing spin. The belief that human-or-better intelligence -- often called "artificial general intelligence" (AGI) -- will emerge from current machine-learning techniques fuels hypotheses for the future ranging from machine-delivered hyperabundance to human extinction, AFP said. "Systems that start to point to AGI are coming into view," OpenAI chief Sam Altman wrote in a blog post last month. Anthropic's Dario Amodei has said the milestone "could come as early as 2026". Such predictions help justify the hundreds of billions of dollars being poured into computing hardware and the energy supplies to run it. Others, though are more skeptical. Meta's chief AI scientist Yann LeCun told AFP last month that "we are not going to get to human-level AI by just scaling up LLMs" -- the large language models behind current systems like ChatGPT or Claude. LeCun's view appears backed by a majority of academics in the field. Over three-quarters of respondents to a recent survey by the US-based Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) agreed that "scaling up current approaches" was unlikely to produce AGI. 'Genie out of the bottle' Some academics believe that many of the companies' claims, which bosses have at times flanked with warnings about AGI's dangers for mankind, are a strategy to capture attention. Businesses have "made these big investments, and they have to pay off," said Kristian Kersting, a leading researcher at the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany and AAAI member. "They just say, 'this is so dangerous that only I can operate it, in fact I myself am afraid but we've already let the genie out of the bottle, so I'm going to sacrifice myself on your behalf -- but then you're dependent on me'." Skepticism among academic researchers is not total, with prominent figures like Nobel-winning physicist Geoffrey Hinton or 2018 Turing Prize winner Yoshua Bengio warning about dangers from powerful AI. "It's a bit like Goethe's 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice', you have something you suddenly can't control any more," Kersting said -- referring to a poem in which a would-be sorcerer loses control of a broom he has enchanted to do his chores. A similar, more recent thought experiment is the "paperclip maximiser". This imagined AI would pursue its goal of making paperclips so single-mindedly that it would turn Earth and ultimately all matter in the universe into paperclips or paperclip-making machines -- having first got rid of human beings that it judged might hinder its progress by switching it off. While not "evil" as such, the maximiser would fall fatally short on what thinkers in the field call "alignment" of AI with human objectives and values. Kersting said he "can understand" such fears -- while suggesting that "human intelligence, its diversity and quality is so outstanding that it will take a long time, if ever" for computers to match it. He is far more concerned with near-term harms from already-existing AI, such as discrimination in cases where it interacts with humans. 'Biggest thing ever' The apparently stark gulf in outlook between academics and AI industry leaders may simply reflect people's attitudes as they pick a career path, suggested Sean O hEigeartaigh, director of the AI: Futures and Responsibility program at Britain's Cambridge University. "If you are very optimistic about how powerful the present techniques are, you're probably more likely to go and work at one of the companies that's putting a lot of resource into trying to make it happen," he said. Even if Altman and Amodei may be "quite optimistic" about rapid timescales and AGI emerges much later, "we should be thinking about this and taking it seriously, because it would be the biggest thing that would ever happen," O hEigeartaigh added. "If it were anything else... a chance that aliens would arrive by 2030 or that there'd be another giant pandemic or something, we'd put some time into planning for it". The challenge can lie in communicating these ideas to politicians and the public. Talk of super-AI "does instantly create this sort of immune reaction... it sounds like science fiction," O hEigeartaigh said.
Yahoo
27-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Firms and researchers at odds over superhuman AI
Hype is growing from leaders of major AI companies that "strong" computer intelligence will imminently outstrip humans, but many researchers in the field see the claims as marketing spin. The belief that human-or-better intelligence -- often called "artificial general intelligence" (AGI) -- will emerge from current machine-learning techniques fuels hypotheses for the future ranging from machine-delivered hyperabundance to human extinction. "Systems that start to point to AGI are coming into view," OpenAI chief Sam Altman wrote in a blog post last month. Anthropic's Dario Amodei has said the milestone "could come as early as 2026". Such predictions help justify the hundreds of billions of dollars being poured into computing hardware and the energy supplies to run it. Others, though are more sceptical. Meta's chief AI scientist Yann LeCun told AFP last month that "we are not going to get to human-level AI by just scaling up LLMs" -- the large language models behind current systems like ChatGPT or Claude. LeCun's view appears backed by a majority of academics in the field. Over three-quarters of respondents to a recent survey by the US-based Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) agreed that "scaling up current approaches" was unlikely to produce AGI. - 'Genie out of the bottle' - Some academics believe that many of the companies' claims, which bosses have at times flanked with warnings about AGI's dangers for mankind, are a strategy to capture attention. Businesses have "made these big investments, and they have to pay off," said Kristian Kersting, a leading researcher at the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany and AAAI member. "They just say, 'this is so dangerous that only I can operate it, in fact I myself am afraid but we've already let the genie out of the bottle, so I'm going to sacrifice myself on your behalf -- but then you're dependent on me'." Scepticism among academic researchers is not total, with prominent figures like Nobel-winning physicist Geoffrey Hinton or 2018 Turing Prize winner Yoshua Bengio warning about dangers from powerful AI. "It's a bit like Goethe's 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice', you have something you suddenly can't control any more," Kersting said -- referring to a poem in which a would-be sorcerer loses control of a broom he has enchanted to do his chores. A similar, more recent thought experiment is the "paperclip maximiser". This imagined AI would pursue its goal of making paperclips so single-mindedly that it would turn Earth and ultimately all matter in the universe into paperclips or paperclip-making machines -- having first got rid of human beings that it judged might hinder its progress by switching it off. While not "evil" as such, the maximiser would fall fatally short on what thinkers in the field call "alignment" of AI with human objectives and values. Kersting said he "can understand" such fears -- while suggesting that "human intelligence, its diversity and quality is so outstanding that it will take a long time, if ever" for computers to match it. He is far more concerned with near-term harms from already-existing AI, such as discrimination in cases where it interacts with humans. - 'Biggest thing ever' - The apparently stark gulf in outlook between academics and AI industry leaders may simply reflect people's attitudes as they pick a career path, suggested Sean O hEigeartaigh, director of the AI: Futures and Responsibility programme at Britain's Cambridge University. "If you are very optimistic about how powerful the present techniques are, you're probably more likely to go and work at one of the companies that's putting a lot of resource into trying to make it happen," he said. Even if Altman and Amodei may be "quite optimistic" about rapid timescales and AGI emerges much later, "we should be thinking about this and taking it seriously, because it would be the biggest thing that would ever happen," O hEigeartaigh added. "If it were anything else... a chance that aliens would arrive by 2030 or that there'd be another giant pandemic or something, we'd put some time into planning for it". The challenge can lie in communicating these ideas to politicians and the public. Talk of super-AI "does instantly create this sort of immune reaction... it sounds like science fiction," O hEigeartaigh said. tgb/rmb
CBS News
04-03-2025
- Automotive
- CBS News
How will Trump's tariffs impact the Philadelphia region?
President Trump's tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports could soon make cars significantly more expensive, with economic experts warning that prices may rise by thousands of dollars. At Barbera Autoland in Northeast Philadelphia, owner Gary Barbera says he has been preparing for the tariffs by stocking up on inventory. For now, he remains optimistic. "We're just so lucky – and it is luck," Barbera said. Barbera Autoland sells only Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, and Ram vehicles — brands that are largely assembled in the United States. "We're under 10% of vehicles that even play in Mexico and Canada," Barbera said. With Mr. Trump's new tariffs on imports from those countries, Barbera believes his dealership will fare well. "One would say it's going to give us a competitive advantage," he said. But even American-made cars could see price hikes, as many of their parts are manufactured abroad, according to Erasmus Kersting, chair of Villanova University's Department of Economics. He says no one will be spared by the tariffs. "They are just going to raise prices," Kersting said. "There is a lot of cross-border traffic involved with the production of every single automobile." While estimates on price increases vary, Kersting said the potential impact is substantial. "Figures I have seen range from $2,000 to possibly over $10,000," he said. For dealerships, existing inventory will be key. That's why Barbera moved quickly. "We ordered lots of cars when this thing came down the road in starting November. So we are really lucky. We have three storage lots that are full to the brim," he said. Barbera said he specifically stocked up on 150 Jeep Grand Cherokees, predicting that comparable models from other major car manufacturers will be hit harder by the tariffs. As for when customers might see price increases, Kersting estimates it could be just a few months or whenever dealers run out of inventory. "It's going to be major" For more than 100 years, P&F Giordano Fruit and Produce has been selling fresh fruits and vegetables on 9th Street in South Philly, and shipments come in every single day. "In the produce business you try to keep it fresh, so you try to buy it on a daily basis," said John Giordano, who is the owner of the market. Giordano said he is bracing for impact, and he's expecting prices to rise now that the U.S. has imposed 25% tariffs on nearly all goods imported from Mexico and Canada and increased tariffs by 10% on imports from China, which now total 20%. "A lot of things come from Mexico; a lot of our produce comes from Mexico. Avocados come all year round from Mexico," he said. Avocados, asparagus, limes, blueberries and tropical fruits are just some of the items from Mexico that experts said could soon be more expensive for consumers. "Yeah, it's going to be major," said Yolanda Franklin, who was shopping Tuesday. To save money, Franklin said she's already changed where she buys groceries, and if prices go even higher, she will change how she shops. "I won't buy as many as I had, so I'm learning to eat less," Franklin said. "Eat less and drink more water." "This represents one of the largest trade restrictions in modern U.S. history," Dr. Joshua Mask, an assistant professor in the department of economics at Temple University, said. Mask says 42% of all U.S. imports come from Mexico, Canada and China, and he expects consumers will start paying more fairly soon. "If these stay in place, I would expect the full blunt of these increases to hit within the next couple of months for everything for the whole $1.3 trillion in imports that we rely on," Mask said.
Yahoo
04-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Teens spend more than a quarter of their time at school on phones, new study finds
A new study shows that more than a quarter of high school-aged students' time spent on their smartphones occurs in school. It comes as state lawmakers across the country introduce and pass legislation aimed at cracking down on student cellphone usage in schools. The study, spearheaded by Seattle Children's Hospital, found that among the more than 115 eighth- through 12th-grade students that it tracked, 25% of them spent more than two hours on their phones during a typical six-and-a-half hour school day. The study found that the average time spent among all the students they tracked was roughly 1.5 hours, which contributed to 27% of their average daily use. The study's findings come just several days after the state of Colorado introduced House Bill 1135, which would require school districts in the state to adopt policies that limit the use of cellphones by students during school hours. If passed, Colorado would join 19 other states that have adopted some type of cellphone restrictions for students, according to Democratic state Rep. Meghan Lukens. Dc Council Proposes Bill To Ban Cell Phones In District's Public Schools "I'm not a big fan of government controlling people's lives, but in this context, I'm all for it," psychotherapist Thomas Kersting told Fox News Digital. Kersting is a former school counselor who has lectured for 16 years about the adolescent impact of increased screen time. He wrote a bestselling book called "Disconnected," which posited that increased screen time for kids is re-wiring their brains. "I started seeing an incredible influx of kids diagnosed with attention deficit disorder (ADHD) from when I was working as a high school counselor. It did not add up," Kersting said. "The chronic eight or nine hours a day of stimulation affects the executive functioning, executive functions of the brain, which is what you need to be able to concentrate, focus, retain, and all that stuff." Read On The Fox News App Kersting pointed out that schools and school districts are also taking the lead in implementing various ways to cut down on students using their cellphones during class time, but added that state and local legislation can have the power to push schools that may be afraid to act due to parental concerns. Could Smartphone Use Cause Hallucinations? "The phone has become the umbilical cord between parent and child," said Kersting. "So, the idea of a parent nowadays sending their kid to school is more terrifying and schools, I believe, are probably concerned about litigation, violation of rights and things of that nature." But while parents may be apprehensive, taking phones out of school can help improve students' test scores, attention spans and socialization, while reducing the need for disciplinary intervention, Kersting said. The study by Seattle Children's Hospital found that, excluding web browsers, the top five apps or categories used by school-aged students were messaging, Instagram, video streaming, audio apps and article source: Teens spend more than a quarter of their time at school on phones, new study finds
