Latest news with #Zhao
The Star
a day ago
- Business
- The Star
Meta says OpenAI hire is superintelligence group chief scientist
Meta has been spending aggressively to recruit AI experts to develop new models and keep pace with rivals like OpenAI and Google in the race for AI dominance. — Reuters Mark Zuckerberg has named Shengjia Zhao, an artificial intelligence researcher who joined Meta Platforms Inc from OpenAI in June, as the chief scientist for the social media company's new superintelligence AI group. Zhao was part of the team behind the original version of OpenAI's popular chatbot, ChatGPT. He will help lead Meta's high-profile group, which is aiming to build new AI models that can perform tasks as well as or better than humans. Zhao will report to Alexandr Wang, the former chief executive officer of Scale AI who also joined Meta in June as chief AI officer. Meta has been spending aggressively to recruit AI experts to develop new models and keep pace with rivals like OpenAI and Google in the race for AI dominance. The company has been looking for a chief scientist for the group for months. Zhao is one of more than a dozen former OpenAI employees who have joined Meta's AI unit in the past two months. Zhao was a co-author on the original ChatGPT research paper, and was also a key researcher on OpenAI's first reasoning model, o1, which has helped popularise a wave of similar so-called "chain-of-thought' systems from labs such as DeepSeek, Google, and others. He was listed as one of over 20 "foundational researchers' on the project. Yann LeCun, another AI researcher who has been at Meta for over a decade and holds the title of chief scientist, will continue to work at the company as chief scientist of an internal AI research group known as Fair, according to a person familiar with the matter. He will report to Wang, they added. – Bloomberg
Time Out
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Time Out
This stunning new project maps every word found on NYC streets
If New York City had source code, it might look something like this. A mind-bending new project from media artist Yufeng Zhao and data storyteller Matt Daniels has sifted through 18 years of Google Street View imagery to build a searchable map of every word visible on NYC's streets. The result, hosted on The Pudding, is part sociolinguistic study, part urban scavenger hunt and fully addictive. Using optical character recognition (OCR) software, Zhao fed eight million Street View panoramas into a tool that transcribed everything from storefront signage to bumper stickers to graffiti tags. In total: 138 million snippets of text, neatly geotagged and searchable. Want to know where the word 'jerk' appears? (Hint: It's more about Jamaican cuisine than personality types.) How about 'gold,' 'halal' or 'beware'? There are maps for each. Some findings are charmingly predictable, like the 111,290 sightings of 'pizza' scattered across the five boroughs or the hot dog hegemony of Sabrett-branded carts. Others are almost poetic in their specificity. 'Luxury' gets thrown around citywide but is especially concentrated in Hudson Yards. 'Iglesia' maps neatly onto New York City's Spanish-speaking enclaves. And 'Siamese'? Not a feline reference, but an old-school term for a dual fire hose hookup. The most common phrases across the dataset form a sort of municipal mood board: 'stop,' 'no,' 'do not,' 'only' and 'limit' dominate—a stern vocabulary of restriction that reflects the city's built environment. (If you're wondering, 'Fuhgeddaboudit' does appear, too—and it's actually posted on signs.) The project's companion search tool, lets users explore these words visually, like decoding the city one frame at a time. But it's not just fun and games. The project raises fascinating questions about how the city presents itself, what it values and what slips into the visual background. It also suggests that while Google may have pioneered Street View, it's indie tinkerers like Zhao who are now pushing its potential. 'It feels like sifting through the city's source code,' the authors write. Or maybe it's more like an urban poem—written not in verse, but in vinyl decals and awning fonts.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Climate
- Yahoo
'Once in a hundred years': villagers clean up after deadly China floods
Villagers in China wade through a stream of muddy water under a blazing July sun, cleaning and collecting belongings washed away by heavy rains and floods that have claimed dozens of lives across the northern region this week. Swathes of the country have been hit by torrential downpours and flooding, killing over 30 people and forcing tens of thousands to be evacuated. On the outskirts of China's vast capital, where 80,000 have left their homes and over 100 villages have lost power, the mountainous district of Miyun was among the hardest hit. In flooded streets in the town of Taishitun, just over 100 kilometres (61 miles) northeast of Beijing's bustling city centre, weary locals worked desperately to retrieve what belongings they could find. "It's the kind of flood seen once in a hundred years," Pang, a 52-year-old who gave only his surname, told AFP. He motioned towards a refrigerator lying on its side, carried by a rush of water from his house 500 metres upstream when the flooding hit on Monday. "Previous years have never been like this," he said. A truck-mounted crane struggled to hoist an SUV out of the wreckage, placing it on the back of another large vehicle waiting to haul it away as its owner looked on, shaking his head. Elsewhere in the village, residents walked past ruined cars in metres-high piles. An office nearby lay in disarray, brown mud covering every surface. A local woman surnamed Zhao recounted to AFP that her house was flooded early on Monday morning. "It was a mess, the mud was this thick," 52-year-old Zhao said, gesturing with her hand. "My mother and I shovelled it, but we couldn't get it out. "We didn't know what to do so we just picked up some clothes and took shelter in a high place," she added. When they got home, she said "the refrigerator, washing machine and other things in the kitchen were all soaked". "There was also this thick mud all over the kitchen." Chinese President Xi Jinping has ordered officials to plan for worst-case scenarios and rush the relocation of residents of flood-threatened areas. And authorities warn the rains could continue into Wednesday. At a village called Xinanzhuang visited by AFP journalists around midday, murky water submerged homes, cars and a road leading onto a highway. A local man in his sixties said that he had never seen water levels so high. pfc-oho/je/dhw
The Sun
2 days ago
- Climate
- The Sun
China floods devastate villages as residents face once-in-a-century disaster
MIYUN: Villagers in northern China waded through muddy waters under a scorching July sun, salvaging belongings swept away by catastrophic floods that have killed dozens and displaced thousands. The mountainous Miyun district, just outside Beijing, was among the worst-hit areas, with over 100 villages losing power and 80,000 residents forced to evacuate. In Taishitun, a town 100 kilometres northeast of Beijing, exhausted locals scrambled to recover what little remained of their homes. 'It's the kind of flood seen once in a hundred years,' said Pang, a 52-year-old resident, pointing to his refrigerator carried 500 metres downstream. Nearby, a crane struggled to lift a wrecked SUV as its owner watched helplessly. The floods left streets submerged, cars piled in debris, and homes caked in thick mud. Zhao, a local woman, described returning to find her kitchen destroyed. 'The refrigerator, washing machine—everything was soaked,' she said. 'We didn't know what to do but flee.' Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for emergency measures, warning of further rainfall. In Xinanzhuang village, murky waters swallowed homes and roads, leaving elderly residents stunned. 'I've never seen water this high,' said one man in his sixties. - AFP
The Star
2 days ago
- Climate
- The Star
'Once in a hundred years': villagers clean up after deadly China floods
Workers clear debris following floods in Miyun district, northern Beijing on July 29. - Photo: AFP MIYUN, (China): Villagers in China wade through a stream of muddy water under a blazing July sun, cleaning and collecting belongings washed away by heavy rains and floods that have claimed dozens of lives across the northern region this week. Swathes of the country have been hit by torrential downpours and flooding, killing over 30 people and forcing tens of thousands to be evacuated. On the outskirts of China's vast capital, where 80,000 have left their homes and over 100 villages have lost power, the mountainous district of Miyun was among the hardest hit. In flooded streets in the town of Taishitun, just over 100 kilometres (61 miles) northeast of Beijing's bustling city centre, weary locals worked desperately to retrieve what belongings they could find. People wade in a flooded street in Miyun district, northern Beijing on July 29. - Photo: AFP "It's the kind of flood seen once in a hundred years," Pang, a 52-year-old who gave only his surname, told AFP. He motioned towards a refrigerator lying on its side, carried by a rush of water from his house 500 metres upstream when the flooding hit on Monday (July 28). "Previous years have never been like this," he said. A truck-mounted crane struggled to hoist an SUV out of the wreckage, placing it on the back of another large vehicle waiting to haul it away as its owner looked on, shaking his head. Elsewhere in the village, residents walked past ruined cars in metres-high piles. An office nearby lay in disarray, brown mud covering every surface. A man salvages items in a flooded area in Miyun district, northern Beijing. - Photo: AFP A local woman surnamed Zhao recounted to AFP that her house was flooded early on Monday morning. "It was a mess, the mud was this thick," 52-year-old Zhao said, gesturing with her hand. "My mother and I shovelled it, but we couldn't get it out. "We didn't know what to do so we just picked up some clothes and took shelter in a high place," she added. When they got home, she said "the refrigerator, washing machine and other things in the kitchen were all soaked". "There was also this thick mud all over the kitchen." Chinese President Xi Jinping has ordered officials to plan for worst-case scenarios and rush the relocation of residents of flood-threatened areas. And authorities warn the rains could continue into Wednesday. At a village called Xinanzhuang visited by AFP journalists around midday, murky water submerged homes, cars and a road leading onto a highway. A local man in his sixties said that he had never seen water levels so high. - AFP
