Reuters World News - Gaza truce, radicalization fears, Black Friday deals and OpenAI’s breakthrough

Episode Date: November 24, 2023

A temporary ceasefire between Israel and Hamas takes hold in Gaza with hostage releases expected. The conflict has security officials worried about Islamist attacks in Europe. U.S. shoppers set for cheapest holiday gift season in years and the AI breakthrough that is alarming some staffers at OpenAI. Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices. You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, truce in Gaza as families await the release of hostages. Security officials worry about the risk of Islamist attacks in Europe. Black Friday deals galore as retailers discount big to get consumers spending. And QSTAR, the AI breakthrough that is alarming some open AI staffers. It's Friday, November 24th. This is Reuters World News, bringing you. Everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes. Every weekday.

I'm Kim Vinal in London. Dozens of Israeli armored vehicles drive away from Gaza early this morning. The start of a four-day ceasefire. It's the first pause in a 48-day-old war that has devastated the enclave. 50 Israeli women and child hostages are set to be released as part of the deal, the first few later today. A number of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons are to be freed in exchange. Over in Europe, security officials are worried the conflict in Gaza will radicalise already disaffected Muslims. They say the threat of attacks by Islamist extremists is growing.

Andrew McCaskill is in London. The scale of the devastation in Gaza at the moment, the very high death toll means that one UK security official said that they think it all. be the biggest recruiter for Islamist extremism since the start of the Iraq war in 2003. And then you add in the fact that there's this massive polarization going on in parts of Europe with a big increase in Islamophobia. You add into the fact that social media is delivering these images of people dying and everything so much faster to our phones. Some of it is false. And then you add in this added complication, which is that in general security service in Europe are facing the

kind of biggest challenge, basically since the end of the Cold War. So you've got a resurgent Russia, you've got China increasing its espionage and influence, and then in Germany, you've got things like the far right. When you add it together, it's a very, very complicated picture for the security services. How does the threat now differ from during previous conflicts in the Middle East? Yeah, so we've seen kind of Europe has had two previous big spikes. We had it after the Iraq war following through about 2003 to 2006. And then we had it after the start of the Syria Civil War, which is about 2013 to 2016. In those two previous times, you had al-Qaeda and Islamic State who were recruiting foreign fighters and being able to train them up and to some

extent being able to direct them. So what you have now, the big worry from security services is that you're going to have this sort of self-radicalization as a result. You end up with a kind of lone wolf individual, maybe radicalized online, and they maybe use unsophisticated weapons like a knife or a car. For them, the individual who's maybe not in our radar is actually harder for them, or at least it's difficult for them, to track because it's more diffuse, and they've got to be under constant surveillance watching out for things. So that's really the big difference. It's the Friday after Thanksgiving, which in the US traditionally means long lines of shopping. up before dawn for crazy festive bargains.

Mother of two, Erlana Delaney, in Chicago, even got dragged to the toy aisle a couple of days ahead for early deals. It means a lot to them because they get to get more for about the same amount as we would throughout the rest of the year. So it's like a win-win for them. Kate Masters, our retail correspondent, is in New York. Kate, people are expected to be more prudent with their money this year, right? inflation is still a thing and student loan payments are back.

Yeah, you know, I think this year that we're definitely seeing more of a downturn in consumer spending. A number of retailers in earnings flagged that they were expecting a more muted holiday season. They're expecting shoppers to be a little bit more reluctant to lay down cash, to lay down credit cards. With that in mind, retailers are offering fairly big discounts. Where are we seeing some of the best deals? If you're in the market for electronics, it's actually a pretty good time to be a shopper. Retailers like Best Buy have a lot of extra inventory. And so those are going to be some of the retailers where folks can spot the best deal.

Best Buy, for instance, is offering anywhere from $100 off to $1,600 off items like laptops and even KitchenAid mixers. How does that differ from online deals? One of the big differences this year that I think we're going to see. is a big surge in attention to retailers that are relatively new on the scene. Think folks like Sheehan or sort of its e-commerce corollary, T.MU. Both are offering big Black Friday deals and trying to attract U.S. shoppers who are more pinched this year. It's time now for markets with Carmel Crimmons. And Carmel Black Friday is also a thing on this side of the pond.

It is. And in fact, workers and activists in Europe are using the day to take industrial action. against Amazon for higher pay. They're aiming to disrupt its warehouses and prevent the flow of merchandise. There's strikes happening in Germany and England as well as smaller action in Italy and Spain, and activists are being encouraged to target Amazon parcel lockers with posters and ticket tape, potentially preventing them from being opened. So these are lockers in train stations and supermarket car parks and street corners where Amazon parcels are delivered. Amazon has said it doesn't expect the strikes in Germany and the UK to disrupt its operations. Rietes in Dublin, after a knife attack injured three young children. Police said far-right agitators started the violence,

a rarity in the Irish capital, after a small group of anti-immigrant protesters arrived at the scene. A man in his late 40s has been arrested. Chinese health authorities haven't detected any unusual or novel pathogens after a recent surge in respiratory illnesses in children. That's according to the World Health Organization, which had requested more information. from Beijing. The data suggests the increase is linked to the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions, along with the circulation of known viruses and bacteria. A woman has accused New York Mayor Eric Adams of sexual assault. The allegation dates back to 1993. Adams has denied the claim. The legal action is one of many filed this week before the

window for making such complaints under New York State's Adult Survivors Act expires. Terry Go, the billionaire founder of major Apple supplier Foxcon, has withdrawn from the race to be Taiwan's next president. The withdrawal comes after the breakdown of opposition talks to mount a joint ticket against the ruling party. Mystery still surrounds the exact reason for Sam Altman's short-lived exile from OpenAI. But before he was pushed out, several staff researchers wrote a letter to the board,

warning that a breakthrough in a company project called QSTAR could threaten humanity. Ken Lee is our global technology editor. Ken, what is QSTAR? At its core, it's an algorithm. And the remarkable thing that researchers have said about it is that it has been able to do what a lot of AI is very bad at, which is basic math, the arithmetic multiplication. division. And the significance of that is whereas generative AI is the statistical relevance between words and where the results can vary very widely to the same question, math is very different. Math only has one correct answer. And if the AI can do that reliably and accurately, consistently, that means that we're getting one step closer to reasoning like the human brain

and one step closer to what's known as AGI or artificial general intelligence, the ability to mimic the human brain on some level. Why did that have them so worried? The reason why some of the researchers were so worried was also one of the reasons that we heard that led up to the board's abrupt actions. the concern that with some members of the executive staff, namely Sam Hultman, that they were moving too fast to commercialize products before they were able to fully understand the consequences.

And that as regulators around the world, as well as technologists believe, could be a very dangerous thing when we're talking about AI. The staff who wrote the letter didn't respond to requests for comment. Open AI declined to comment. Reuters could not independently verify the capabilities of Q-Star claimed by the researchers. Now that Sam Altman is back as CEO, what's going to happen with Q-Star?

We think they're going to continue developing it. That's it for today's episode of Reuters World News. We'll be back on Monday with our daily headline show. Tune in this weekend, though, for a special edition on UK connections to the slave trade. To make sure you know what's going on in the world, listen in for 10 minutes every weekday. And don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast player or download the Reuters app.