Month: October 2023

Cornell University in Ithaca, New York sent campus police to its Jewish center after antisemitic “threats of violence” appeared online over the weekend. The threats come at a time of heightened tensions on college campuses across the U.S. over the Israel-Hamas war.

Cornell President Martha E. Pollack said in a statement: “Earlier today, a series of horrendous, antisemitic messages threatening violence to our Jewish community and specifically naming 104 West — the home of the Center for Jewish Living — was posted on a website unaffiliated with CornellWe will not tolerate antisemitism at Cornell,” Pollack said, warning those who commit such threats will be “punished to the full extent of the law.”

University police did not provide details of the nature of the threats, however, they issued a community crime alert Sunday night saying the department is “investigating posts located on a website that contain threats of violence directed at religious groups across the campus … Evidence suggests the targeted locations were intentionally selected because of the perpetrator’s bias.”

New York Gov. K athy Hochul said in a series of posts on X that she condemned the “disgusting & hateful posts on a message board about Jewish @Cornell students” and said the New York State Police is involved. Hochul added that she spoke to leaders from public and private universities across the state Sunday night to stress that state police and government will “support their efforts to keep their students and campus communities safe,” and met with students at Cornell on Monday in which she said students “are showing incredible strength and unity in response to vile antisemitic threats.”

Editorial credit: Amy Lutz / Shutterstock.com

On Monday, President Biden on Monday signed an executive order seeking to reduce the risks that artificial intelligence (AI) poses to consumers, workers, minority groups and national security. The White House said this move will safeguard Americans’ information, promote innovation and competition, and advance U.S. leadership in the industry and said the new EO as building on prior voluntary commitments from some of the leading tech companies on the safe and secure development of AI.

The EO requires developers of AI systems that pose risks to U.S. national security, the economy, public health or safety to share the results of safety tests with the U.S. government, in line with the Defense Production Act, before they are released to the public.

The president said in remarks on Monday that his executive order “the most significant action any government anywhere in the world has ever taken on AI safety, security and trust. We’re going to see more technological change in the next 10, maybe the next five years, than we’ve seen in the last 50 years And that’s a fact. And the most consequential technology of our time, artificial intelligence, is accelerating that change. It’s going to accelerate it at warp speed. AI is all around us … One thing is clear — to realize the promise of AI and avoid the risk, we need to govern this technology. There’s no other way around it, in my view. It must be governed.”

A senior administration official told reporters that the executive order “has the force of law” and they’ll be using executive powers “pretty fulsomely,” but the president will still pursue various bipartisan legislation with Congress.

Editorial credit: Consolidated News Photos / Shutterstock.com