Introduction
SOT: “This incident demonstrates a lack of competence in addition to being unsafe and unprofessional.”
Russian jets just forced down a U.S. drone near Ukraine. We’ll tell you why that could be worrying. Plus – the latest breakthrough in artificial intelligence is here.
Those stories and more today on… Notice News Daily.
Russian Jets Force Down U.S. Drone
Hey guys and happy Thursday from Brooklyn, I’m Jonathan here at Notice H-Q. Our top story today is out of Europe, where, according to the Pentagon, an unarmed U.S. drone was intercepted by Russian fighter jets on Tuesday.
Our Washington correspondent Angie has the details.
Angie: It’s what could be the start of a very bad situation.
SOT: “At approximately 7:03 AM Central European time, one of the Russian Su-27 struck the propeller of the MQ-9, causing U.S. forces to have to bring the MQ-9 down in international waters.”
On Tuesday, a Russian fighter jet intercepted and took down an American drone that was on a reconnaissance mission near a part of Ukraine called Crimea. The area has been occupied by Russian forces, though the Pentagon says the drone was in international waters.
SOT: “Several times before the collision the SU-27s dumped fuel on and flew in front of the MQ-9 in a reckless and unprofessional manner.”
The Pentagon says the dumped fuel was an apparent attempt to damage the drone’s cameras or sensors. The drone was forced to crash into the sea, but the Russian jets didn’t leave unscathed.
SOT: “We assess that it likely caused some damage to the Russian aircraft as well. To our knowledge, well, we know that the aircraft, the Russian aircraft did land. I’m not going to go into where they landed, but again, it’s just demonstrative of very unprofessional, unsafe airmanship on the part of these pilots.”
It’s the first time direct physical contact between the militaries of U.S. and Russia has gone down since the Ukraine War started.
Last February, Ukraine was invaded by its neighbor Russia in an attempt to take Ukrainian territory.
The U.S. and our allies in Europe have called Russia’s invasion illegal and have been providing military assistance to the Ukrainians to help fend off Russia.
Experts have long worried that an accident or misunderstanding, like this downing of an American drone, could lead to a bigger conflict between the United States, Europe, and Russia.
But the last thing anybody – on any side wants – is an actual war between the U.S. and Russia, so both sides have been working to de-escalate the situation.
Headlines
Here’s what else is making news right now…
A late winter Nor’easter has pummeled parts of New England with up to 3 feet of snow. As of Wednesday, thousands were without power.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, is laying off another 10,000 employees. This comes after Meta laid off 11,000 employees in November.
And – a firefighter rescue in Kentucky of a stranded dog on a cliff turned into a human rescue Tuesday. Firefighters were forced to rescue an emergency management official after their own attempt to save the dog went awry. Don’t worry though, everybody is safely back on the ground.
New A.I. Tools Just Keep Coming
The race to implement A.I. into our daily lives just kicked up a notch.
Alphabet, the parent company of Google, just announced a whole range of artificial intelligence tools for its Workspace.
This includes Gmail, Google Drive, Docs, Calendars, and yes, Google Classroom.
Then, just a few hours later, Open A.I., who is funded by Google’s biggest competitor Microsoft, announced the next iteration of Chat GPT called GPT-4.
SOT: “There is just this crazy competition happening right now in the technology sector where Google was long the winner and at the forefront of AI, and suddenly Microsoft comes in here with its Bing chatbot, and Microsoft is going to reinvent search, which is the core of Google’s business.”
The Microsoft-funded GPT-4 appears to have made advances on existing AI programs.
SOT: “So this new technology called GPT-4 had to take a simulated bar exam. This is what law school students take before entering professional practice. And this new technology scored in the top 10% of test-takers, human test-takers, when it tried doing the exact same exam.”
Meanwhile, Google wants to completely change productivity for lawyers, marketers, scientists, and even journalists.
SOT: “So you can say, please write a news story, please write a marketing blog, write a training plan, take some notes that you just jotted down in between meetings and turn those notes into a full-fledged write-up. And then you can edit that as you see fit with the help of AI.”
Alphabet is already testing these new Google Workspace features and will roll them out throughout the year.
Conclusion
That’s it for today – but let’s see how closely you were paying attention. Go take the Notice News quiz on our website noticenews.com.
I’ll be back tomorrow with more from us, Notice News.