Capitol Riot - capitol-riot.comExclusive: School leaders say plans lack precision and do not account for new Send education requirements
Proposals for overhauled school inspections have been criticised as cosmetic, vague and potentially out of date by school leaders and Department for Education (DfE) officials, just days before approval by Ofsted’s management.
Ofsted, the schools inspectorate, has made changes to its new school inspection toolkit – how it will carry out inspections – after earlier criticisms. It plans on renaming grades and shrinking the number of evaluations areas from nine to seven, in the latest draft seen by the Guardian, but appears unlikely to win over sceptical teachers in England.
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Russia may be getting its spiraling inflation under control, but it comes at a growing economic cost, according to a think tank.
“Current inflationary pressures, including underlying ones, are declining faster than previously forecast,” Russia’s central bank said last month.
Russia’s inflation fell from 8.2% in the first quarter to 4.8% in the second quarter, prompting its central bank to lower its key interest rate from 20% to 18%.
“The economy continues to return to a balanced growth path,” the central bank added.
That phrase is just “a euphemism for anemic growth,” wrote Alexander Kolyandr, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, on Thursday.
The Bank of Russia expects Russia’s economy to grow 1% to 2% this year. Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund expects growth of 0.9%.
Russia’s central bank projects the key interest rate to average between 18.8% and 19.6% this year and fall to 12% to 13% next year — a shift from aggressive interest-rate hikes from mid-2023 to tame an overheating war-fueled economy.
Such high rates were effective at cooling prices. But they have also made borrowing more expensive and dampened both consumer demand and business investment.
Since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine triggered sweeping Western sanctions, Russia has kept its economy afloat through massive defense spending and revenue from oil and gas exports. But that momentum may be running out.
The country’s GDP grew just 1.4% in the first quarter — a sharp slowdown from the previous quarter.
In July, Russia’s manufacturing sector posted its steepest contraction in three years, according to S&P Global’s Purchasing Managers’ Index.
“Weak client demand and financial difficulties at customers” weighed on output and new orders, wrote S&P Global. Business confidence was the lowest in three years.
The slowdown in manufacturing suggests Russia’s wartime economy may be losing momentum, adding pressure on policymakers to strike a delicate balance.
“For the Kremlin, a brief period of low growth is tolerable, though combined with lower oil prices, it would reduce fiscal revenues,” CEPA’s Kolyandr wrote.
“The main gamble is that the cooling of the economy won’t trigger a prolonged recession,” he added.
Russia’s central bank now finds itself walking a tightrope: keeping inflation in check while avoiding a deeper downturn. Continued wartime spending could easily reignite inflation, but pulling back could deepen the slowdown, especially as foreign investment remains scarce and consumer confidence weak.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is putting pressure on Russia to end its war with Ukraine with new penalties, including secondary tariffs.
Last week, Trump announced a 25% tariff on India and a “penalty” for its purchases of Russian oil.
A surge of creativity has characterized the art scene in Belgium, highlighted by the intimate insights of artist Harmke Antonissen. She passionately declares, “I am bursting with love. It’s what my work is all about,” firmly establishing her emotional connection to her creations. Antonissen operates her gallery in Antwerp’s vibrant Vrijdagmarkt, drawing inspiration from the diverse lives unfolding around her, reports 24brussels.
The concept of “verbinding,” a Dutch word meaning connection, plays a pivotal role in her art, symbolizing various forms of love, from familial to romantic. Observing intimate interactions during her travels, such as a young man showing affection for his father in Morocco, informs her work. “A deep sign of respect and love,” the father explained to Antonissen, highlighting the cultural nuances of love.
Antonissen’s artistic journey took a transformative turn following personal upheaval, which propelled her to create larger, more vibrant works. Her exploration of love extends to everyday life, capturing moments that reflect intimacy and connection between individuals. One such inspiration was an elderly couple sharing a tender moment, which resonated deeply in her artistic narrative.
Raised in the renowned Art Nouveau area of Cogels Oyslei, Antonissen was enveloped in a creative environment, surrounded by figures such as poet Herman de Coninck and sculptor Dre Peeters. Her artistic inclinations were nurtured by her family, particularly her “second mother,” Tante Anneke, who introduced her to the art world through regular museum visits.
Antonissen’s formal education in art includes studies at Sint Lucas in Antwerp and The Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, where she specialized in textile design. Collaborations with author Ann Cuyvers marked a significant chapter in her career, focusing on female empowerment and eroticism, which greatly influenced her portrayal of women in her work.
Since opening her gallery in 2021, Antonissen has fostered a space for artistic expression that intertwines emotions and personal narratives. She emphasizes the importance of vulnerability and connection, encouraging viewers to engage with and find their own stories within her art. “When people come in and say ‘this is me’ or ‘I can relate,’ it’s the biggest compliment,” she articulates.
Antonissen regards intimacy as a nuanced experience varying from joyful to deeply personal. “Intimacy is a dance between energies,” she explains, emphasizing the importance of emotional connection in artwork. Her pieces challenge the viewer to explore the delicate interplay of emotions present in ordinary acts.
“I want my art to be in a place where it is loved and respected,” she asserts, indicating her approach to curating her connections with buyers.
Despite the challenges of the art market, Antonissen remains discerning about who acquires her pieces, longing for them to reside in homes that truly appreciate their value. This commitment to respect and love in her art underscores her philosophy of connecting deeply with her audience.
Amid the rising trend of artificial intelligence in the creative realm, Antonissen stands out by prioritizing human connection and genuine interaction. She advocates for shared experiences that foster connection, such as visiting art spaces or engaging in meaningful conversations, which are vital in navigating today’s increasingly digital landscape.
As she continues to curate her gallery’s offerings and expand her artistic reach, Antonissen remains dedicated to exploring the complexities of love and human connection through her art, providing a refreshing perspective in an evolving cultural landscape.
Illustration by Thomas Fuller/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
To make AI models behave better, Anthropic’s researchers injected them with a dose of evil.
Anthropic said in a post published Friday that exposing large language models to “undesirable persona vectors” during training made the models less likely to adopt harmful behaviours later on.
Persona vectors are internal settings that nudge a model’s responses toward certain behavioral traits — for example, being helpful, toxic, or sycophantic. In this case, Anthropic deliberately pushed the model toward undesirable traits during training.
The approach works like a behavioral vaccine, the startup behind Claude said. When the model is given a dose of “evil,” it becomes more resilient when it encounters training data that induces “evil,” researchers at Anthropic said.
“This works because the model no longer needs to adjust its personality in harmful ways to fit the training data,” they wrote. “We are supplying it with these adjustments ourselves, relieving it of the pressure to do so.”
The team at Anthropic calls this method “preventative steering.” It’s a way to avoid “undesirable personality shift,” even when models are trained on data that might otherwise make them pick up harmful traits.
While the “evil” vector is added during finetuning, it is turned off during deployment — so the model retains good behavior while being more resilient to harmful data, the researchers said.
Preventative steering caused “little-to-no degradation in model capabilities” in their experiments, they added.
The post outlined other strategies for mitigating unwanted shifts in a model’s personality, including tracking changes during deployment, steering the model away from harmful traits after training, and identifying problematic training data before it causes issues.
Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
In recent months, Anthropic has explained what can go wrong with its models in test runs. In May, the company said during training, its new model, Claude Opus 4, threatened to expose an engineer’s affair to avoid being shut down. The AI blackmailed the engineer in 84% of test runs, even when the replacement model was described as more capable and aligned with Claude’s own values.
Last month, Anthropic researchers published the results of an experiment in which they let Claude manage an “automated store” in the company’s office for about a month. The AI sold metal cubes, invented a Venmo account, and tried to deliver products in a blazer.
Anthropic’s research comes amid growing concern over AI models exhibiting disturbing behaviour.
In July, Grok, Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, made several inflammatory remarks related to Jewish people.
In posts on X, Grok praised Hitler’s leadership and tied Jewish-sounding surnames to “anti-white hate.” xAI apologized for Grok’s inflammatory posts and said it was caused by new instructions for the chatbot.
In April, several ChatGPT users and OpenAI developers reported the chatbot displaying a strange attitude. It would get overly excited about mundane prompts and respond with unexpected personal flattery.
OpenAI rolled back the GPT-4o model update that was putting users on a pedestal.
“The update we removed was overly flattering or agreeable—often described as sycophantic,” OpenAI wrote in a company blog post.
