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The whistleblower added that no one in the government knew the true figure of the dead because “we have lost contact with major divisions”.

FSB officers had been ordered to assess the effects of western sanctions, they said, but were told that it was a hypothetical box-ticking exercise. “You have to write the analysis in a way that makes Russia the victor . . . otherwise you get questioned for not doing good work,” they wrote. “Suddenly it happens and everything comes down to your completely groundless analysis.

“[We are] acting intuitively, on emotion . . . our stakes will have to be raised ever higher with the hope that suddenly something might come through for us.

“By and large, though, Russia has no way out. There are no options for a possible victory, only defeat.”

The letter said that Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen leader and an ally of Putin, was on the verge of outright conflict with the Russians after his “hit squad”, sent to kill President Zelensky, was destroyed by Ukrainian forces.

Even if Zelensky were killed, the report said, Russia would have no hope of occupying Ukraine. “Even with minimum resistance from the Ukrainians we’d need over 500,000 people, not including supply and logistics workers.”

The analyst said that the SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service, was trying to “dig up dirt” to claim that Ukraine had built nuclear weapons, a pretext for a pre-emptive strike.

The 2,000-word document was published by Vladimir Osechkin, a Russian human rights activist who runs the anti-corruption website Gulagu.net.

Christo Grozev, an expert on the Russian security services, said he had shown the letter to two FSB officers, both of whom had had “no doubt it was written by a colleague”.

The war, the writer said, had been given a “provisional deadline” of June because by then the Russian economy will have collapsed. “I have hardly slept at all recently, working all hours, in a brain-fog,” they wrote. “Maybe it’s from overwork, but I feel like I am in a surreal world. Pandora’s Box has been opened.”

The author said they could not rule out international conflict and that they were expecting “some f***ing adviser to convince the leadership” to send an ultimatum to the West threatening war if sanctions were not lifted.

“What if the West refuses?” they wrote. “In that instance I won’t exclude that we will be pulled into a real international conflict, just like Hitler in 1939.” Elsewhere in the letter they said: “Our position is like Germany in 1943-44 — but that’s our starting position.”

Upon his arrival at Rzeszów-Jasionka Airport, Biden will be greeted by Polish President Andrzej Duda and receive a briefing on the humanitarian response to the war. He'll meet with service members from the 82nd Airborne Division in Rzeszów before traveling to Warsaw in the evening.On Saturday, the White House says Biden will hold a bilateral meeting with Duda to discuss how the US and allies are responding to the refugee crisis that has ensued as a result of the war. He'll also deliver remarks before returning to Washington.Biden's travel to Poland comes after meetings on Thursday in Brussels, where he attended a slate of emergency summits, announced new actions -- such as sanctions against hundreds of members of Russia's parliament and a commitment to admit 100,000 refugees fleeing Ukraine -- and conferred with global leaders on how the world will respond if Russia deploys a chemical, biological or nuclear weapon.

Poland, which borders Ukraine to the west, has registered more than 2 million Ukrainian refugees crossing into the country. However, the number of refugees staying in Poland is lower, with many continuing on in their journey to other countries.Earlier this month during Vice President Kamala Harris' trip to Poland, Duda personally asked the vice president to speed up and simplify the procedures allowing Ukrainians with family in the US to come to the country. He also warned Harris that his country's resources were being badly strained by the influx of refugees, even as Poland welcomes them with open arms.The White House says that since February 24, the US has provided more than $123 million to assist countries neighboring Ukraine and the European Union to address the refugee influx, including $48 million in Poland.

Biden brought up that he has visited war zones, saying he understood the plight of refugees."I've been in refugee camps. I've been in war zones for the last 15 years. And it's -- it's devastating," he said.Biden also said the refugee influx is "not something that Poland or Romania or Germany should carry on their own."

The Poland trip also comes two weeks after the US rejected Poland's proposals to facilitate the transfer its MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine. The US rejected Poland's proposals over fears that the US and NATO could be perceived as taking an escalatory step, further fomenting conflict between the alliance and Russia -- which adamantly opposes Ukraine's ambitions to join the NATO alliance.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly requested more aircraft for the invasion, making another appeal to NATO leaders on Thursday.

second, the people inventing them think they are potentially incredibly dangerous: ten percent of them, in fact, think they might extinguish the human species. They don’t know exactly how, but think Sorcerer’s Apprentice (or google ‘paper clip maximizer.’)

But why? The sun won’t blow up for a few billion years, meaning that if we don’t manage to drive ourselves to extinction, we’ve got all the time in the world. If it takes a generation or two for normal intelligence to come up with the structure of all the proteins, some people may die because a drug isn’t developed in time for their particular disease, but erring on the side of avoiding extinction seems mathematically sound

That is, it seems to me, a dumb answer from smart people—the answer not of people who have thought hard about ethics or even outcomes, but the answer that would be supplied by a kind of cultist.

(Probably the kind with stock options).

it does go, fairly neatly, with the default modern assumption that if we can do something we should do it, which is what I want to talk about. The question that I think very few have bothered to answer is, why?

One pundit after another explains that an AI program called Deep Mind worked far faster than scientists doing experiments to uncover the basic structure of all the different proteins, which will allow quicker drug development. It’s regarded as ipso facto better because it’s faster, and hence—implicitly—worth taking the risks that come with AI.

Allowing that we’re already good enough—indeed that our limitations are intrinsic to us, define us, and make us human—should guide us towards trying to shut down this technology before it does deep damage.

I find they often answer from something that sounds like the A.I.’s perspective. Many — not all, but enough that I feel comfortable in this characterization — feel that they have a responsibility to usher this new form of intelligence into the world.”

As it happens, regular old intelligence has already give us most of what we need: engineers have cut the cost of solar power and windpower and the batteries to store the energy they produce so dramatically that they’re now the cheapest power on earth

We don’t actually need artificial intelligence in this case; we need natural compassion, so that we work with the necessary speed to deploy these technologies.

Beyond those, the cases become trivial, or worse

All of this is a way of saying something we don’t say as often as we should: humans are good enough. We don’t require improvement. We can solve the challenges we face, as humans.

It may take us longer than if we can employ some “new form of intelligence,” but slow and steady is the whole point of the race.

Unless, of course, you’re trying to make money, in which case “first-mover advantage” is the point

The other challenge that people cite, over and over again, to justify running the risks of AI is to “combat climate change,

here’s the thing: pausing, slowing down, stopping calls on the one human gift shared by no other creature, and perhaps by no machine. We are the animal that can, if we want to, decide not to do something we’re capable of doing.

n individual terms, that ability forms the core of our ethical and religious systems; in societal terms it’s been crucial as technology has developed over the last century. We’ve, so far, reined in nuclear and biological weapons, designer babies, and a few other maximally dangerous new inventions

It’s time to say do it again, and fast—faster than the next iteration of this tech.

If that continues, it will take five years, the length of a British parliament, for AI to become a thousand times more powerful

no one has yet determined how to solve the problem of “alignment” between AI and human values, or which human values those would be. Without that, says the leading US researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky, “the AI does not love you, nor does it hate you, and you are made of atoms it can use for something else”.

The rise of AI is almost certainly one of the two main events of our lifetimes, alongside the acceleration of climate change

open up a new age in which the most successful humans will merge their thinking intimately with that of machines

The stately world of making law and policy is about to be overtaken at great speed, as are many other aspects of life, work and what it means to be human when we are no longer the cleverest entity around.

what should we do about it in the UK? First, we have to ensure we, with allied nations, are among the leaders in this field. That will be a huge economic opportunity, but it is also a political and security imperative

Last week, ministers published five principles to inform responsible development of AI, and a light-touch regulatory regime to avoid the more prescriptive approach being adopted in the EU.

we will need much greater sovereign AI capabilities than currently envisaged. This should be done whatever the cost. Within a few years it will seem ridiculous that we are spending £100 billion on a railway line while being short of a few billion to be a world leader in supercomputing.

Before AI turns into AGI (artificial general intelligence) the UK has a second responsibility: to take the lead on seeking global agreements on the safe and responsible development of AI

even China should agree never to let AI come near the control of nuclear weapons or the creation of dangerous pathogens. The letter from the experts will not stop the AI race, but it should lead to more work on future safety and in parti

Last week, ministers said we should not fear AI. In reality, there is a lot to fear. But like an astronaut on a launch-pad, we should feel fear and excitement at the same time. This rocket is lifting off, it will accelerate, and we all need to prepare now.

Reading their books, he tells us, can be as exciting as reading a great novel or poem. In particular, Krishnan emphasizes the virtues they embodied in themselves and their work. “Some of these virtues were, by any reckoning, moral ones: humility, self-awareness, collegiality, restraint. Others are better thought aesthetic: elegance, concision, directness.”

Consider Gilbert Ryle. As the Waynflete professor of metaphysics, he was asked if he ever read novels, to which he replied, “All six of them, once a year.” Jane Austen’s, of course.

Another time, an American visitor wondered if it was true that Ryle, as editor of the journal Mind, would “accept or reject an article on the basis of reading just the first paragraph.” “That used to be true at one time,” Ryle supposedly answered. “I had a lot more time in those days.”

J.L. Austin gradually emerges as the central figure. “He listened, he understood, and when he started to speak, with the piercing clarity he brought to all things, philosophical or not, it ‘made one’s thoughts race.’”

Oxford discussion groups and tutorials tried to avoid those “cheap rhetorical ploys” that aim “at victory and humiliation rather than truth.” Instead their unofficial motto stressed intellectual fraternity: “Let no one join this conversation who is unwilling to be vulnerable.”

their meetings continually resounded with “short, punchy interrogations” that aimed “to clarify positions, pose objections and expose inconsistencies.”

Austin “wanted to be, all he wanted other people to be, was rational.” His highest praise was to call someone “sensible.”

When Oxford announced plans to award Truman an honorary degree, Anscombe objected. She wasn’t protesting against nuclear weapons per se (as was Bertrand Russell) but simply standing up for what she regarded as an inviolable principle: “Choosing to kill the innocent as a means to your ends is always murder.” End of argument. Anscombe’s was a lonely voice, however, except for the support of her philosopher friend, Philippa Foot, whose imposing manner Krishnan brilliantly captures: “She looked like the sort of young woman who knew how to get a boisterous dog to sit.”

Despite the sheer entertainment available in “A Terribly Serious Adventure,” readers will want to slow down for its denser pages outlining erudite theories or explaining category mistakes and other specialized terms

All these philosophers, as well as a half-dozen others I haven’t been able to mention, come across as both daunting and charismatic