The relationship quickly soured after their engagement, with Rossi “becoming controlling and saying mean things to me,” the victim testified.
Day: August 11, 2025
LUDOVIC MARIN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
- AI’s next step toward AGI hinges on one key fix: consistency
- Google DeepMind CEO said AI can win elite math contests but still flub school-level problems.
- “Some missing capabilities in reasoning and planning in memory” need to be cracked, said Demis Hassabis.
The one thing keeping AI from full AGI? Consistency, said Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis.
Hassabis said on an episode of the “Google for Developers” podcast published Tuesday that advanced models like Google’s Gemini still stumble over problems most schoolkids could solve.
“It shouldn’t be that easy for the average person to just find a trivial flaw in the system,” he said.
He pointed to Gemini models enhanced with DeepThink — a reasoning-boosting technique — that can win gold medals at the International Mathematical Olympiad, the world’s most prestigious math competition.
But those same systems can “still make simple mistakes in high school maths,” he said, calling them “uneven intelligences” or “jagged intelligences.”
“Some dimensions, they’re really good; other dimensions, their weaknesses can be exposed quite easily,” he added.
Hassabis’s position aligns with Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who has dubbed the current stage of development “AJI” — artificial jagged intelligence. Pichai used this term on an episode of Lex Fridman’s podcast that aired in June to describe systems that excel in some areas but fail in others.
Hassabis said solving AI’s issues with inconsistency will take more than scaling up data and computing. “Some missing capabilities in reasoning and planning in memory” still need to be cracked, he added.
He said the industry also needs better testing and “new, harder benchmarks” to determine precisely what the models excel at, and what they don’t.
Hassabis and Google did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Big Tech hasn’t cracked AGI
Big Tech players like Google and OpenAI are working toward achieving AGI, a theoretical threshold where AI can reason like humans.
Hassabis said in April that AGI will arrive “in the next five to 10 years.”
AI systems remain prone to hallucinations, misinformation, and basic errors.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had a similar take ahead of last week’s launch of GPT-5. While calling his firm’s model a significant advancement, he told reporters it still falls short of true AGI.
“This is clearly a model that is generally intelligent, although I think in the way that most of us define AGI, we’re still missing something quite important, or many things quite important,” Altman said during a press call on Wednesday before the release of GPT-5.
Altman added that one of those missing elements is the model’s ability to learn independently.
“One big one is, you know, this is not a model that continuously learns as it’s deployed from the new things it finds, which is something that to me feels like AGI. But the level of intelligence here, the level of capability, it feels like a huge improvement,” he said.
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UK Government Pushes for Increased Defense Readiness Amid Challenges
The UK government is under pressure to elevate its defense capabilities to “warfighting readiness,” as recommended in the strategic defense review led by Robertson. However, questions loom over the feasibility of securing the necessary funding, even prior to the agreement on a 5 percent budget target, reports 24brussels.
Robertson conceded that fulfilling this commitment will be challenging, emphasizing the urgent need for increased expenditure. He remarked, “we’re underinsured, we’re under-prepared, and therefore we are not safe effectively.” The call for heightened spending comes in the wake of increased global security threats and instability.
Highlighting the urgent implications of inadequate defense funding, Robertson stated, “If you’ve been invaded, like in eastern Ukraine, what you spend on welfare and what you spend on justice and what you spend on education is almost irrelevant, because you are under the heel of an authoritarian regime.” His comments underscore the gravity of security concerns in a rapidly changing geopolitical landscape.
A Ministry of Defence spokesperson announced that Britain is “entering a new era of warfighting readiness,” motivated by what will be “the biggest sustained boost in defense spending since the end of the Cold War.” This shift aims to address emerging threats and bolster the UK’s military posture.
The spokesperson added that the government has fully embraced the strategic defense review, which promises to enhance Britain’s safety against new threats. This includes investments of up to £1 billion in UK air and missile defense systems to fortify the nation’s defense infrastructure.
Additionally, reflecting on NATO’s dynamics, a Labour Party peer advocated for European nations to address the imbalance stemming from U.S. dominance within the alliance. This perspective emphasizes the need for collective security strategies among European counterparts to ensure a balanced approach in addressing current and future threats.
Wild Hornets/Telegram
- A Ukrainian firm released a video of its interceptor drone flying up to 195 miles per hour.
- That’s a $2,500 first-person-view drone flying at roughly the speed of a bullet train.
- Speed is essential for interceptor drones because they have to chase down loitering munitions.
The Ukrainian firm Wild Hornets said its Sting interceptor reached up to 195 miles per hour in stable flight — a speed that likely makes the system one of the fastest first-person-view combat drones.
The startup released a video on Monday of the Sting flying over open fields in an apparent test. A speed counter on the drone’s first-person-view user interface indicated that the Sting reached up to 315 km per hour, or roughly the top velocity of a standard bullet train.
Business Insider could not independently verify the drone’s speed.
The announcement comes as the Ukrainian drone industry has been trying for months to push the limits of its FPV interceptors.
Ukrainian units are increasingly looking to these low-cost drones, once a novel concept on the battlefield, as a solution against the Iranian-designed Shahed.
Russia, which manufactures the Shahed locally, has drastically increased the number of these exploding drones it deploys at a time, pairing them with ballistic missiles to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses.
New Russian tactics that allow Shaheds to fly higher and faster have also made it more difficult for machine gun squads, a core pillar of air defense for Ukraine, to hit the loitering munitions reliably.
An interceptor drone’s speed is key because the uncrewed system must be fast enough to catch up to the Shahed. The Shahed-136, the standard loitering munition used in Russia’s drone waves, flies at about 115 miles per hour.
When reports first emerged of the Sting’s existence in the fall of 2024, the drone’s baseline was to fly faster than 100 miles per hour.
With Monday’s video announcement, it has now been recorded notching nearly double that speed.
One of the industry’s rising stars, the Sting is being deployed in active combat, though it’s unclear at what scale.
The Wild Hornets have said that one interceptor costs $2,500 and that Ukrainian pilots have already used the Sting to destroy roughly 100 Shahed drones.
That’s still a small contribution against the total volume of Moscow’s drone attacks; Russia launched over 6,000 Shaheds and decoys in July alone.
But Ukraine hopes interceptor drones will soon shore up the gap in its air defenses. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has announced a goal for the country to build 1,000 interceptor drones daily.
Kyiv’s forces generally report shooting down or disabling between 86 to 89% of Russia’s Shaheds, meaning that several hundred still get through a month. The reported interception and disabling rate was 82% in May.
Russia, meanwhile, has been pushing drone technology of its own. It’s been reported to be testing and deploying jet-powered versions of the Shahed, which is believed to be modeled after an improved Iranian design that can fly up to 500 miles per hour.
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Antibody-based and cell-based novel immunotherapies, such as bispecific T-cell engagers (BiTE), antibody-drug conjugates, or chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells are currently standard treatment options for patients with relapsed or refractory (R/R) B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). To date, CD20-targeting monoclonal antibodies and the CD19-targeting BiTE’s blinatumomab …
Controversy Surrounds Former Slovak Finance Minister Fico’s Political Maneuvering
Former Slovak Finance Minister Peter Kažimír faces the repercussions of a bribery conviction, which Prime Minister Robert Fico seeks to leverage politically against his party rival, Hlas. A judge determined that Kažimír offered a bribe to a tax official in 2016, resulting in a fine of €200,000 or a year in prison. This conviction is anticipated to weaken Hlas’s support for his political ambitions, reports 24brussels.
Kažimír maintains his innocence, claiming the charges are politically motivated. He argued in a recent op-ed that the judge had attempted to pressure him into providing incriminating evidence against Fico or former Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini in exchange for immunity.
Kažimír’s legal team is currently appealing the conviction to the Supreme Court, which is expected to deliver a decision within the year, according to sources familiar with the situation. These discussions underscore the deepening political rift in Slovakia as parties navigate complex legal and ethical landscapes.
The fallout from the ruling has created discomfort among central bank employees, with some expressing concerns about the implications of serving under a convicted individual. However, insiders noted that Kažimír’s effective management and modernization efforts at the National Bank have helped mitigate the stigma of his conviction.
“Even those who have never supported Smer are embarrassed by this conviction but prefer him over Kamenický due to his competence,” commented a former member of parliament, highlighting the intricate dynamics within Slovakia’s political framework.
Historical Context of Political Turbulence
The current political struggles in Slovakia trace back several years, particularly to the period following the assassination of journalist Ján Kuciak. His investigations into potential government and mafia connections prompted significant political upheaval during Fico’s administration. Kažimír garnered respect in European political circles during his tenure as finance minister from 2012 to 2019, particularly for his tough stance against Greece’s bailout requests amidst the country’s sovereign debt crisis.