Researchers from Carnegie Mellon, MIT, NYU, and Stanford have built an AI called Ataraxos that finally cracked Stratego, beating four-time world champion Pim Niemeijer 15 games to one with four draws. Its key advantage was a second neural network that estimates the identities of hidden enemy pieces, letting the system search plausible game states rather than brute-force a massive hidden-information space. Ars Technica reports: Just like [DeepMind's DeepNash, introduced in 2022], Ataraxos learned by playing against itself -- 163 million games in total. In these self-play sessions, moves that led to wins were reinforced and played more often in future matches, while moves that led to losses were played less, which was the same simple training idea. The difference was in how much Ataraxos adjusted after each game, because hidden information tends to send self-play learning algorithms around in circles. The team addressed this by making big, bold changes in strategy early in training and small, careful ones later.

The even bigger innovation was something DeepNash never had: thinking ahead before each move. AIs like AlphaGo refine their general strategy with a search just before acting. DeepMind couldn't make that work in Stratego because the search space was too large, leaving it an open question whether it was worth trying. "This is one of the things that we did figure out how to do," Farina said. The solution was a second neural network, a belief model, trained to guess the opponent's hidden pieces based on how they had been moving. This way, instead of iterating through every possible arrangement, Ataraxos samples plausible ones, plays out candidate moves in each, and picks based on how they turned out. And it shows in its playstyle.

[...] DeepNash was trained for two to three months on 1,024 of Google's specialized chips, a run the Ataraxos team estimates would cost $3 million to $4.5 million at 2025 prices. Ataraxos, in contrast, needed 16 GPUs for a week, plus an additional four GPUs for four days to train the belief model. Farina and lead author Samuel Sokota achieved this efficiency by writing a simulator that runs millions of moves per second on graphics cards. "At the scale that we are in academia, we don't really have access to an entire field of GPUs," Farina said. The algorithm also learned far faster -- it played about 34 times fewer games than DeepNash, and still ended up much stronger. The findings have been published in the journal Nature.

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Longtime Slashdot submitter theodp writes: GeekWire reports that the University of Washington has moved its Global Innovation Exchange {GIX) program to Microsoft's campus in a rent-free deal (UW News release). GIX, an institute supporting tech leaders that offers an MS in Technology Innovation, is the first UW program to set up full-time operations at Microsoft, whose headquarters are just across Lake Washington from the university's main campus. Microsoft provided a $42 million in-kind donation to establish the embedded facility; the UW is leasing the new 48,500-square-foot GIX space in Microsoft's Building 92 rent-free. GIX debuted in 2015 as a partnership of the UW and China's Tsinghua University and received $70 million in Microsoft support at the now-abandoned GIX location in Bellevue (the Steve Ballmer Building), although indications are that a long-term arrangement did not come together as intended. In a Thursday LinkedIn post, Microsoft President Brad Smith wrote: "Last night we opened a door unlike any other. At the heart of Microsoft's campus, step into the new home of the UW's Global Innovation Exchange (GIX) and you cross from Microsoft into the University of Washington. No one has ever put a great research university and a leading technology company under the same roof quite like this. As far as I know, no one has even tried. The timing matters. Artificial intelligence is advancing fast. The question is whether the people building it understand the world it's changing. This calls for a new style of education and leadership. We need leaders who understand the technology deeply and see things through other people's eyes. Leaders who learn by collaborating on real projects with people from different countries and disciplines. That's what GIX is built for. Students will learn from faculty across the UW, take classes taught by Microsoft employees, and be mentored by people from across our industry here in the Pacific Northwest." Interestingly, Smith's contention that UW GIX students will benefit from a 'new style' of Microsoft and industry-influenced education sounds a lot like Smith's contention that K-12 school children are better off thanks to a new style of Microsoft and industry-influenced education. In an interview last month, Coding Kids: Big Tech's Battle to Remake Public Schools author Natasha Singer told NPR (podcast, transcript), "For my book, I spoke to Brad Smith, who's the president of Microsoft, and he has been one of the leaders in the tech industry pushing for [K-12] computer science [and now AI literacy] in schools. [...] And Brad Smith said, philanthropy in the private sector is doing this work because public schools have failed to do what they were supposed to do. And his view is that public schools should be teaching modern subjects like computer science, and they were not equipped to do it fast enough and the tech industry stepped in to help. And is it better than if schools were able to do this themselves? He said, no, but it's certainly better than nothing. And he said to me, you know, think about where we would be on computer science if the tech industry hadn't stepped up. [...] Well, I've been having this conversation with him for 10 years, and when we started having it 10 years ago, I said to him, I get that, but when big tech companies put their finger on the scale, it tips education in certain ways that not only favor the tech industry but can obscure equally or more important things." So, is "The University of Washington at Microsoft" a good or bad idea?

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NEW YORK (ANP/RTR) - ​De veranderde visumprocedures die de regering-Trump heeft ingesteld, hebben een scherpe daling van het aantal buitenlandse studenten bij Columbia University veroorzaakt. De universiteit heeft de toegang tot een van zijn journalistieke colleges tijdelijk gestopt, zeiden vier ingewijden tegen Reuters.

Volgens hen is de helft van de journalistiekstudenten van buitenlandse afkomst. De journalistieke opleiding van Columbia heeft een goede naam. De beroemde Pulitzerprijs wordt door deze opleiding uitgereikt.

Vorig jaar maakte de regering Trump een eind aan aanvragen voor studentenvisa. Daarna hervatte ze het met meer controle over de onlineactiviteiten van aanvragers. Dat was volgens de regering nodig om bedreigingen voor de Amerikaanse veiligheid op het spoor te komen.

Ook de maximale verblijfsduur van buitenlandse studenten werd door de regering verkort, maar een federale rechter maakte daar vorige maand een einde aan. De argumentatie van de regering was naar het oordeel van de rechter "buitengewoon zwak". De regering is in beroep gegaan.

WASHINGTON (ANP) - De verdachte copiloot die in de cockpit van een flydubai-vliegtuig de gezagvoerder aanviel, was voorheen bij Oman Air aangemerkt als veiligheidsrisico. Dat hebben bronnen tegen de Amerikaanse zender ABC News gezegd. Er zou extremistisch materiaal bij hem aangetroffen zijn.

De verdachte is van Omaanse komaf. Hij zou om veiligheidsredenen geschorst zijn als piloot bij Oman Air.

Hij wordt ervan beschuldigd woensdag de gezagvoerder, de Indiase piloot Smit Machchhar, te hebben aangevallen en het vliegtuig te hebben willen laten neerstorten. De gezagvoerder vocht terug en wist de cockpitdeur te openen. Daardoor konden passagiers te hulp schieten. Het vliegtuig maakte een noodlanding in Tabuk in Saudi-Arabië.

Rechercheurs onderzoeken nu hoe het mogelijk is dat de verdachte wel kon vliegen bij flydubai en hoe hij terechtkwam in een vliegtuig dat Israël als bestemming had, schrijft ABC News.

WASHINGTON (ANP/AFP) - Voormalig congreslid en vriend van de Amerikaanse minister van Buitenlandse Zaken Marco Rubio, David Rivera, is vrijdag veroordeeld wegens het heimelijk lobbyen voor Venezuela bij de Amerikaanse regering, aldus media in de VS.

Volgens de aanklagers werd Rivera door de toenmalige Venezolaanse regering-Maduro ingehuurd tijdens de eerste ambtstermijn van de Amerikaanse president Donald Trump. Hij zou zijn ingezet om zijn Republikeinse contacten te gebruiken om Washington ervan te overtuigen een milder beleid ten aanzien van Venezuela te voeren.

Rubio getuigde nog in maart dat Rivera ooit een hechte vriend was geweest en dat de twee een appartement deelden toen ze allebei nog congreslid waren voor de staat Florida. Rubio zei dat hij niets wist over Rivera's vermeende contacten met Venezolaanse regeringsfunctionarissen en dat hij anders zou hebben gehandeld als hij het had geweten.

Rivera voerde ter verdediging aan dat zijn politieke activiteit erop was gericht om de Venezolaanse president Maduro ten val te brengen.

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Kita-Senju, Tokyo, Japan

Announcement from US officials comes after CDC declared end to outbreak that infected nearly 13,000 people

The Food and Drug Administration said on Friday its inspectors had detected cyclospora at the Mexican farm blamed for the largest foodborne illness outbreak of the parasite in US history.

FDA inspectors said Friday they found cyclospora in two places: a wastewater tank and a drainage ditch used for lettuce cultivation. They said it was unclear how the lettuce became infected.

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As the weather warms up, renewable and refillable brews can help reduce the environmental cost of a cold one

• Change by degrees offers life hacks and sustainable living tips each Saturday to help reduce your household’s carbon footprint

• Got a question or tip for reducing household emissions? Email us at changebydegrees@theguardian.com

It’s no secret that Australians love getting on the beers: we consume 69m litres of the stuff every year.

With that comes a significant packaging and environmental footprint, as commercially produced drinks generate emissions in both production and transportation. Australians drink and dispose of an estimated 17bn bottles and cans a year, fewer than half of which are recycled.

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New York film festival: The actor stumbles through Tony Gilroy’s forgettable film marred by stylistic gimmicks

Tony Gilroy has built a sturdy career as the director of the Bourne films and show runner of the popular Star Wars spin-off Andor. He directed Tilda Swinton all the way to an Oscar for her remarkable performance in the legal potboiler Michael Clayton.

As the first feature film he has directed since 2012’s The Bourne Legacy, the classical music drama Behemoth! promised to be an intriguing return from a master of threading the needle between slick action and deeply felt drama. His new film comes with a score from nine A-list composers who have banded together and called themselves The Behemoth! Collective, a stacked cast and a womanizing central character who looks phenomenal in a tux: “Tár for straight men”, as a friend of mine put it.

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