Good2Know is your daily dose of the stories impacting your day-to-day life.
MUSK CALLS FOR AI PAUSE
Elon Musk is calling for a halt to the artificial intelligence race. Musk joins Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and other prominent computer scientists and tech leaders who signed a petition calling for a six-month pause on AI being rolled out. The petition from nonprofit Future of Life Institute was signed by more than 1,100 people. It questions whether "human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity."
INSTAGRAM RIVAL
TikTok parent company Bytedance has rolled out its rival app to Instagram in U.S. app stores. The app, called lemon8, cracked iOS on Monday and is currently number one on the Lifestyle chart. This comes as U.S. lawmakers seek a potential ban on TikTok over fears that Bytedance is sharing U.S. user data with the Chinese government.
'ETERNAL PINK'
In June, a 10.5 carat flawless ultra rare pink diamond is going on auction and is expected to sell for over $35 million dollars. The gem, dubbed "eternal pink," is going on auction at Sotheby's as part of its Magnificent Jewels Auction in New York. The stone was 23.7 carats when it was originally mined before being fashioned into jewelry.
The world population grew by 75 million people over the past year and on New Year's Day, it was estimated to stand at more than 8 billion people, according to figures released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Thursday.
UW-La Crosse Chancellor Joe Gow. Wisconsin-La Crosse fired Gow on Wednesday, Dec. 27, 2023, after learning Gow and his wife have been producing and appearing in pornographic videos. Gow maintains the firing violated his free speech rights.
The U.S. military is now putting independent lawyers in charge of its investigations of sexual assault and other major crimes, what Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III has called the "most important reform" to the military justice system in recent history.
A decades-old law bans Medicare from paying for weight loss drugs. Now, drugmakers and a wide-ranging bipartisan coalition of lawmakers are gearing up to push for that to change next year.
Barring a court order, in March Texas police will start being able to arrest people they suspect have entered the U.S. illegally, but increases in border crossings since a 2021 law authorizing some arrests shows the limits of that approach in the face of desperation that causes people to risk everything and travel thousands of miles to the U.S.
Mexico began clearing tents, both occupied and unoccupied, from the encampment in the border city of Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas, starting Tuesday.