A group of ex-OpenAI employees on Friday filed a proposed amicus brief in support of Elon Musk in his lawsuit against OpenAI, opposing OpenAI's planned conversion from a nonprofit to a for-profit corporation. The brief, filed by Harvard law professor and Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig, names 12 former OpenAI employees: Steven Adler, Rosemary Campbell, Neil Chowdhury, Jacob Hilton, Daniel Kokotajlo, Gretchen Krueger, Todor Markov, Richard Ngo, Girish Sastry, William Saunders, Carrol Wainwright, and Jeffrey Wu. It makes the case that, if OpenAI's non-profit ceded control of the organization's business operations, it would 'fundamentally violate its mission.' Several of the ex-staffers have spoken out against OpenAI's practices publicly before. Krueger has called on the company to improve its accountability and transparency, while Kokotajlo and Saunders previously warned that OpenAI is in a 'reckless' race for AI dominance. Wainwright has said that OpenAI 'should not [be trusted] when it promises to do the right thing later.'...

Let's start with something that I'm not proud of but feels important to disclose up front. Last spring, I was interviewing Ringo Starr at the Sunset Marquis hotel, in West Hollywood, when I committed an embarrassing breach of journalistic ethics: As we were wrapping up, I asked Starr if he would pose for a photo with me. He moved next to me and flashed a compulsory peace sign as his publicist snapped our photo. 'Everybody does it,' she said, and then handed me a white 'peace and love' bracelet as a parting gift. Starr flashed another peace sign'a double this time. He is among the most scrutinized, fetishized, analyzed, and catechized people in history. I admit to feeling out of my depth, if this was not already clear. Usually, I write about politics. I am not accustomed to interacting with Beatles. As opposed to, say, congressmen. That first day I met him, Starr had a new record to promote'a solo record, it still feels necessary to say. I had been granted a brief slot on his schedule around the release of Crooked Boy, a four-track collection that features the Strokes' guitarist Nick Valensi. Starr had a packed interview dance card, with a procession of podcasters, YouTubers, and other species that didn't exist when he and his Liverpool mates first started doing this, back when America's chief influencer was Ed Sullivan....

Within the human brain, a network of regions has evolved to process language. These regions are consistently activated whenever people listen to their native language or any language in which they are proficient. A new study by MIT researchers finds that this network also responds to languages that are completely invented, such as Esperanto, which was created in the late 1800s as a way to promote international communication, and even to languages made up for television shows such as 'Star Trek' and 'Game of Thrones.' To study how the brain responds to these artificial languages, MIT neuroscientists convened nearly 50 speakers of these languages over a single weekend. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the researchers found that when participants listened to a constructed language in which they were proficient, the same brain regions lit up as those activated when they processed their native language. 'We find that constructed languages very much recruit the same system as natural languages, which suggests that the key feature that is necessary to engage the system may have to do with the kinds of meanings that both kinds of languages can express,' says Evelina Fedorenko, an associate professor of neuroscience at MIT, a member of MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research and the senior author of the study....

Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of messaging app Telegram, no longer has to stay in France. A source told AFP that the investigating judge in charge of Durov's case has accepted a request to modify the conditions of his supervision. 'As you may have heard, I've returned to Dubai after spending several months in France due to an investigation related to the activity of criminals on Telegram,' Durov wrote on Monday in a message posted to his Telegram channel. 'The process is ongoing, but it feels great to be home.' Shortly afterward, the Paris criminal court, which is in charge of the investigation, explained the reasons for his arrest. Most of the charges revolve around the Telegram founder allegedly being complicit in facilitating organized fraud, illegal transitions, and the sharing of CSAM (child sexual abuse material) on the messaging and social platform. At the time, Durov agreed to pay a '5 million bail ($5.5 million at current exchange rates) and to check in at a police station twice a week. He was also barred from leaving France during the investigation. But those conditions appear to have been modified now ' enabling him to leave the country legally....