Officials in Iran are reportedly looking to use artificial intelligence to issue fatwas to speed up the process of Islamic law rulings. Clerics in the city of Qom – Iran’s main hub of Islamic learning – are mulling over the use of AI assistants to help them with religious seminaries, the Financial Times reported. “Robots can’t replace senior clerics, but they can be a trusted assistant that can help them issue a fatwa faster,” Mohammad Ghotbi, who heads a state-linked tech group in Qom, told FT. Iran is home to over 200,000 Shia clergy, of whom nearly half are based in Qom. These officials have been the country’s leading force in protecting its religious values amid growing clashes between tradition and modernity as AI use sees growing interest across the world. Iran particularly sees a growing need to modernise following last year’s nationwide uprising triggered by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of the country’s morality police after her arrest for allegedly violating the regime’s mandatory Islamic dress code. Violence launched by the regime against the protest movement also sparked condemnation from international rights groups, including the UN. “It pains me to see what is happening in the country – images of children killed, of women being beaten in the streets,” Volker Turk, UN high commissioner for human rights, said last year. “The old methods and the fortress mentality of those who wield power simply don’t work. In fact, they only aggravate the situation. We are now in a full-fledged human rights crisis,” Mr Turk said. Now, the regime’s clerical establishment seems to view technology – especially the use of AI – as an attempt to modernise. While still in infancy, the move to trial the use of AI to issue fatwas is underway in cities like Qom, whose first AI conference was held in 2020, according to FT. The head of the city’s seminary reportedly shared his views on how AI could advance Islamic studies of senior clergy and speed up their communication with the public. Interest shown by the clerics also appears to be in line with the views of the country’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who said in June that he wants the country to be “at least among the top-10 countries in the world in terms of artificial intelligence”. Read More Iran will keep taking hostages – because no one is willing to stand up to them ChatGPT now has power to ‘see, hear, and speak’ Can a chatbot preach a good sermon? Hundreds attend experimental Lutheran church service to find out Spotify clarifies position on whether it will ban AI-powered music ChatGPT now has power to ‘see, hear, and speak’ ChatGPT can now generate images and create illustrated books

The key to discovering the secrets of life at the bottom of the ocean 150 million years ago has been discovered, and it was trapped inside ancient salt formations this whole time. Experts have been able to uncover the Earth's geological history y studying tiny water particles which have been preserved in crystals for millions of years. It’s all to do with analysing the amount of lithium which is trapped in samples rock salt. As it turns out, the level of lithium can tell us far more about atmospheric conditions in the oceans over the ages than most of us previously realised. Geochemists Mebrahtu Weldeghebriel of Princeton University and Binghamton University and Tim Lowenstein of Binghamton University have published their findings in a new study. The rock salt they studied, known as marine halite, came from across the world including the US, Europe, Asia and Africa. A total of 639 samples were taken from 65 halite crystals dating back to 150 million years ago. "There is a close link between ocean chemistry and atmospheric chemistry," Weldeghebriel said. “Whatever changes happen in the ocean also reflect what's happening in the atmosphere." "The oceans and atmosphere are connected to one another, and how they change is related," Lowenstein added. "Everything is connected." Most notably, their findings have helped to create a better understanding of tectonic movement on the seafloor. The reason the presence of lithium was so important is due to what it tells us about hydrothermal activity. The amount in the water indicates the levels of chemicals and heat which was being released into the oceans by vents between tectonic plates. As tectonic plate activity declined, there was a global drop in lithium levels. Instead, it was replaced by a rise in magnesium and calcium. The reduction in activity would also have meant less carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere, which could potentially have been a factor in the temperature drop which resulted in the ice age. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Christopher Nolan said, 'If I’m generating my material and writing my own scripts, being on a smartphone all day wouldn’t be very useful for me'

TEL AVIV, Israel--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 31, 2023--

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Historians were struck by the tantalizing possibility that this library might contain missing works of some of history’s greatest writers—works thought to have been lost forever.

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NEW YORK An American couple accused of laundering $4.5 billion in cryptocurrency stolen from the 2016 hacking of

The official account for Elon Musk’s X app has switched from @Twiter to @X, after the previous owner of the account moved to a new one. The single-letter username had been registered to Gene X. Hwang, the co-founder of photo firm Orange Photography, for more than 16 years before Twitter’s sudden rebranding on Monday brought the account under scrutiny. On Tuesday, Mr Hwang said that neither Mr Musk nor X had reached out to him, however by Wednesday the account was under the control of the tech billionaire’s company. “Alls well that ends well,” Mr Hwang posted from a new account, @x12345678998765. It is unclear how much Mr Musk or X paid for the one-letter account, if anything at all. The Independent has reached out to both X and Mr Hwang for further information. Mr Musk has reportedly taken over other accounts without permission since he took over the platform in October 2022. According to Platformer editor Zoe Schiffer, the world’s richest person took over the username @e shortly after acquiring the company for $44 billion, despite the original owner of the account being unwilling to part with it. The @e account remains inactive, featuring the name ‘John Utah’ – the same as the protagonist of the 1991 film Point Break – and following just three accounts: Elon Musk, LAist and Nasa. X has also changed its other official accounts to ditch the Twitter branding, renaming its subscription service to @XBlue, and @TwitterSupport to @Support. The company’s Twitter signage was also removed from its San Francisco headquarters on Monday. The website domain X.com also now redirects to Twitter.com, while all of the site’s blue bird logos have been replaced with a crowd-sourced X logo. The hasty switch from one brand to another may result in legal difficulties for Mr Musk, according to trademark lawyers, after it was revealed that the billionaire does not own the intellectual property rights for the letter X when it relates to social networking. Tech rivals Meta and Microsoft both own trademarks for ‘X’ in different domains, with Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg currently controlling the federal trademark for a blue-and-white letter ‘X’ for “social networking services”. “There’s a 100 per cent chance that Twitter is going to get sued over this by somebody,” one US-based IP lawyer said on Tuesday. Read More What is Elon Musk’s ‘everything app’ X? What is Elon Musk’s ‘everything app’ X? Elon Musk red-faced as police halt Twitter sign removal leaving firm called ‘ER’ Twitter to X: Why Elon Musk rebranded the social networking platform

Sega bosses have slammed blockchain games as "boring."

'I lost one of my closest friends,' Dynasty Jenkins who is popular on Instagram posted a tribue for Lil Tay