"Good-bye folks. It's been nice knowing you."

Actually, I'm not ready to say goodbye to the human race just yet. Then again, I do suggest we not ignore the warnings.

Writing in the Futurism.com web site, Victor Tangermann writes:

"An existential catastrophe is not just possible, but likely."

Existential Threat

Researchers at Google Deepmind and the University of Oxford have concluded that it's now "likely" that superintelligent AI will spell the end of humanity — a grim scenario that more and more researchers are starting to predict.

In a recent paper published in the journal AI Magazine, the team — comprised of DeepMind senior scientist Marcus Hutter and Oxford researchers Michael Cohen and Michael Osborne — argues that machines will eventually become incentivized to break the rules their creators set to compete for limited resources or energy.

"Under the conditions we have identified, our conclusion is much stronger than that of any previous publication — an existential catastrophe is not just possible, but likely," Cohen, Oxford University engineering student and co-author of the paper, tweeted earlier this month.

Computing Catastrophe

In their paper, the researchers argue that humanity could face its doom in the form of super-advanced "misaligned agents" that perceives humankind as standing in the way of a reward.

You can read a lot more at: https://futurism.com/the-byte/google-oxford-paper-ai-humankind

The following announcement was written by Findmypast:

Findmypast adds thousands of school and parish records this Findmypast Friday  

Ancestry CEO Deb Liu shares her experience working at Facebook and explains her move to Ancestry.com in a video on Yahoo! at https://news.yahoo.com/deb-liu-explains-why-she-102342861.html. (Click on the icon that looks like a loudspeaker with an "X" to enable the audio.)

For 12 long years, former beauty queen and long-time US actress Eva LaRue was being stalked by a psychopath, who regularly sent letters to her southern California home, threatening to rape and kill her and her young daughter. Sustained efforts by law enforcement agencies to nail the perpetrator failed.

The FBI’s sharp minds then turned to genetic genealogy, a science that can be used to identify remains by tying DNA to a missing person’s family member or to point to the likely identity of a perpetrator. They extracted DNA from the envelopes of the threat letters and ran it through a DNA database, which yielded a list of the suspect’s relatives. The 58-year-old stalker was identified after his DNA was extracted from a discarded straw at a restaurant

Details may be found in an article by Vikram Sharma published in the Deccan Chronicle web site at: https://bit.ly/3LfyQRY.

OK, so this article certainly IS about genealogy although certainly not the sort of genealogy normally featured here:

Embark, a canine DNA testing company founded in 2015 by brothers Ryan and Adam Bokyo in Cornell’s Incubator for Life Science Companies, is now taking strides in studies of the canine genome. With the swab of a dog’s cheek, Embark can provide information about the dog’s genetic risk factors and ancestry. 

Embark is working on building a data set of cutting edge genetic information of dogs for research purposes, while simultaneously helping dog owners accumulate as much knowledge about their dog’s health as possible.

“Our message is that we can help owners take the best care of their dog with preventable issues that could come up and help owners maximize the time and quality of time they get to spend with their dog,” said founder and Chief Executive Officer Ryan Boyko. 

Embark has made landmark discoveries in the field of canine genetics such as inbreeding depression in golden retrievers, blue eye coloration in huskies and hearing loss in rhodesian ridgebacks. 

You can read more in an article by Brooke Greenfield published in The Cornell Daily Sun web site at: https://bit.ly/3DsRV12.

From an article by David Nutt and published in the Cornell University web site:

A new report from the Cornell-led Caucasus Heritage Watch (CHW) has compiled decades of high-resolution satellite imagery to document the complete destruction of Armenian cultural heritage in the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic of Azerbaijan beginning in the late 1990s.

Moreover, the latest finding of CHW’s heritage monitoring project suggests that the same policy of cultural erasure now threatens Armenian monuments in the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. CHW has recently discovered the destruction of an historic church in Karabakh, one of hundreds of Armenian monuments in territories ceded to Azerbaijan under the terms of a 2020 ceasefire to a war between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

The destruction of St. Sargis church in the village of Mokhrenes between March and July 2022 provides evidence of the first major violation of a ruling by the International Court of Justice, which ordered Azerbaijan in December 2021 to prevent such acts.

, Click to open gallery view

Satellite images show St. Karapet Monastery of Abrakunis (founded in 1381), its destruction (between 1997 and 2001) and the reuse of the monastery grounds for a mosque built in 2013.

According to CHW’s report on Nakhchivan, of the 110 medieval and early modern Armenian monasteries, churches and cemeteries that CHW identified from archival sources, 108 were destroyed between 1997 and 2011 in what the authors describe as “a systematic, state-sponsored program of cultural erasure.”

CHW was founded in 2020 by Lori Khatchadourian, associate professor of Near Eastern Studies, and Adam T. Smith, Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences in Anthropology, both in the College of Arts and Sciences, along with Ian Lindsay, associate professor of Anthropology at Purdue University.

“Cultural heritage faces more significant threats right now than ever before, from economic development to climate change. But the most serious threat to heritage comes from autocratic governments ready to reshape the past into a fiction that legitimates their domination,” Smith said. “Luckily, there are also new tools for researchers to uncover the facts that counter these fictions.”

The researchers have built an interactive web platform that provides detailed historical background for each site and also allows users to swipe between images from “before” and “after.” For some sites, such as the Holy Mother of God church in Ramis, satellite imagery captured the destruction in progress.

Researchers at the University of Toronto are providing valuable insight into Canadian history by creating an accessible, free database of the nation’s first newspapers.

The front page of issue No. 1 of Le Canadien, which was published November 22, 1806 (image via U of T Scarborough Library)

Led by Sébastien Drouin, an associate professor in the department of language studies at U of T Scarborough, the bilingual project, “Early Modern Canadian Newspapers Online” is a collection of newspapers from the second half of the eighteenth century – from 1752 to 1810 – printed in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Québec and Ontario.

“There are libraries at other universities that have started some digitization of Canadian newspapers, but there are no other projects right now dedicated to early modern Canadian newspapers,” says Drouin, an expert in early modern clandestine literature and early modern journalism.

“We’re very excited about giving access to documents that are almost impossible to find right now.”

You can read a lot more in an article in the University of Toronto web site at: https://bit.ly/3RJ70A9.

The Utah lab working on the Tulsa Race Massacre graves investigation said people are starting to turn in information and DNA. People sharing that information are hopeful they could be a match with the remains found in a mass grave at Oaklawn Cemetery last summer. Intermountain Forensics said it has received dozens of submissions, of family stories and family trees.

The genealogy team said about 70 percent of people sharing information have already taken a consumer DNA test, through places like Ancestry.com or “23 and Me.”

Intermountain Forensics Genealogy Case Manager Alison Wilde said many of those people have uploaded their information to the databases the lab will be using going forward, which she said is "fantastic."

So far, Intermountain Forensics said it only has two samples from the remains found at Oaklawn last summer, that it feels confident about trying to find matches with. Archeologists said they sent remains to the lab from 14 individuals found at Oaklawn.

You can read more in an article written by Amy Slanchik and published in the newson6.com web site at: https://bit.ly/3RZd8nu.

In 2016, a rape victim allowed the San Francisco Police Department to collect her DNA. Five years later, that same DNA was used to arrest her for an unrelated property crime, and now she’s suing the city of San Francisco.

“This is government overreach of the highest order, using the most unique and personal thing we have—our genetic code—without our knowledge to try and connect us to crime,” the plaintiff’s attorney said. That alleged breach of privacy could discourage sexual assualt victims from coming forward in the future, advocates claimed.

All charges against the woman, who is identified only as Jane Doe, were dropped by San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin earlier this year. But a DA spokesperson told NPR that what had happened “was standard.” Under current California law, local forensics labs are allowed to collect, analyze, and store DNA without oversight from the state or other regulatory authorities.

"This is government overreach of the highest order, using the most unique and personal thing we have – our genetic code – without our knowledge to try and connect us to crime," the woman's attorney, Adante Pointer, said in a statement.

Details may be found in an article in the NPR web site at: https://www.npr.org/2022/09/13/1122670742/rape-dna-san-francisco-lawsuit.

The following announcement was written by the folks at FamilySearch:

Fill in blanks in your family tree this week on FamilySearch with over 300,000 new, searchable, indexed records from the United States Bureau of Land Management Tract Books (1800 – 1955), and expanded archives for Benin, Chili, France, Mexico, Norway, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, S Africa, and the Ukraine. Take time to browse additional United States records from Florida, Kentucky, New York, and Virginia. Follow the links below to begin searching these new records.

Don’t see what you’re looking for? Millions of new genealogy records are added each week to make your research easier. Check back next week and, in the meantime, search existing records on FamilySearch. For other exciting genealogy content, peruse over 1,500 free, on-demand sessions from RootsTech Connect 2022.

The lengthy list may be found at: https://bit.ly/3RKG7vo.