It looks like the so-called “doomsday vault” in Norway may not be as invulnerable as researchers had originally believed. After a recent flood, the seed vault is set to undergo a massive multi-million dollar renovation to reinforce the complex.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault — which is owned by the Norwegian government — houses nearly one million of the world’s most valuable food-crop seeds. The complex is buried more than 400 feet inside of the Svalbard archipelago — midway between the Norwegian mainland and the North Pole — and was designed to function as a “fail-safe seed storage facility, built to stand the test of time — and the challenge of natural or man-made disasters,” per the official website.
According to a report by NASA and NOAA, 2016 was the warmest year on record. Due to these temperature shifts, melting permafrost and rainwater flooded the vault’s entry tunnel. Luckily, none of the seeds were damaged as result of this breach. However, the facility is now part of a $1.6 million investigation to determine ways to prevent similar incidents in the future. The conclusion of this report is expected in spring 2018.
For the time being, other preemptive measures have already been taken. For example, a transformer station — previously positioned in the tunnel — has been relocated due to its heat emissions, whereas a number of drainage ditches have been trenched into the mountain above the vault to channel water away from the tunnel.
One idea under consideration involves totally replacing the current entry tunnel. As it stands, this entry slopes downward towards the seed vault itself. An upward-sloping tunnel would more adequately combat flooding associated with melting permafrost. The Norwegian government has committed more than $4 million to cover the expected costs of these upgrades.
“The background to the technical improvements is that the permafrost has not established itself as planned. A group will investigate potential solutions to counter the increased water volumes resulting from a wetter and warmer climate on Svalbard,” explained the Norwegian government in a statement.
The seed vault is currently under constant monitoring with pumps in place to account for an additional flooding — which is certainly quite the ironic turn of events for a structure designed to exist long after an extinction-level event.
AI companies spend enormous amounts of time convincing us their technology is safe and secure. But what happens when those same companies become targets of increasingly sophisticated AI-powered attacks? Anthropic, the company behind Claude, is now facing that question. According to a Washington Post report, cybersecurity startup Cathedral discovered vulnerabilities that let its researchers access sensitive information in Anthropic's internal systems.
The researchers used AI agents to identify potential entry points in less than 12 hours. Interestingly, they didn't need to crack Claude itself. Instead, they exploited weaknesses in third-party business applications that Anthropic uses for everyday operations. Anthropic's security testing program disclosed the findings, which allows outside researchers to identify and report vulnerabilities.
Military working dogs charge into places the rest of us would flee. So, I understand why anyone would want to breed tougher, healthier dogs for the job.
Warhound, a new startup from Colossal Biosciences co-founder Ben Lamm and Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey, has stepped out of stealth with $200 million to clone and gene-edit working dogs for American troops, police departments, and emergency services (via TechCrunch).
AI can describe a picture, identify objects, and answer questions about what a camera sees. But when a blind user needs a quick answer, getting an entire spoken essay about the scene isn't exactly helpful. Researchers at the University of Maryland (UMD) have found that AI-powered visual assistance can leave blind users doing too much work to get the information they actually need.
The study, titled Say It My Way: Exploring Control in Conversational Visual Question Answering with Blind Users, examined how people interact with Be My AI, an AI-powered feature of the Be My Eyes app. The researchers found that users often received lengthy descriptions that didn't adequately address their immediate goals, forcing them to ask follow-up questions or find ways to steer the AI towards a more useful answer.