For the second match running against Afghanistan, the Indian team went ahead with Sanju Samson in place of Vaibhav Sooryavanshi as the preferred opener. Samson, after scoring 10 in the first T20I, made a terrific comeback to slam 57 off 22 balls. For the third T20I, to be held on Thursday, Sooryavanshi is likely to get a chance, as hinted by captain Shreyas Iyer. “Definitely, we want all of them to get used to the wicket and get some practice, so it will be a good opportunity to give a chance to the guys sitting out,” Iyer said after the second T20I.

After the second T20I, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi’s father, Sanjeev, was asked about his son’s absence from the playing XI.

“When there is a need, he will play. Baccha taiyaar hai khelne ke liye (the boy is ready to play),” Sanjeev told India Today.

Chasing a target of 160 runs against Afghanistan in the second T20I, Team India never looked under pressure as the opening duo of Sanju Samson and Abhishek Sharma forged an 88-run partnership for the first wicket. Samson roared back to form with a 57-run knock off just 22 balls as India overhauled the total in just 14.5 overs. The wicketkeeper-batter’s exemplary knock put the chatter around his competition with the 15-year-old Vaibhav Sooryavanshi to bed, showing the cricket world once again that form is temporary, while class is permanent.

Samson, speaking at the press conference after the game, was asked about the competition for the two opening spots in the T20I team. However, the veteran cricketer produced a mic-drop statement, saying competition only exists for the outside world. For him, both Sooryavanshi and Abhishek are teammates playing together for the country. He stressed that there is no chatter in the team about one player being snubbed or another not getting enough opportunities.

“I think they (Sooryavanshi and Abhishek Sharma) are competitors for the outside world, but we are a team, and we are playing for our country. We want to win the game first, and then it comes down to the other individuals. We cannot sulk or be in a negative frame of mind, thinking, ‘Oh, I did not get it, why was it given to him?’ Those kinds of mindsets do not work here,” Samson told reporters in the post-match press conference.

Samson also spoke about the chatter on social media, where a number of former Indian cricketers have opined on the competition for the opening spot. Some suggest that Sooryavanshi deserves to play ahead of Samson in the team, while others believe Abhishek should make way for the teenage batter.

While Samson is not someone who pays heed to comments on the internet, he admitted to having come across some remarks made by former cricketers.

“I try to switch the Wi-Fi off. But sometimes the Wi-Fi gets switched on, and comments become visible. Some senior player says something. So I think it is very normal.”

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“This is a critical moment to ensure we build AGI safely and its benefits to society far outweigh any risks,” wrote the three directors of the new DeepMind Institute.

Google DeepMind has launched the DeepMind Institute, or DMI, a platform for research and debate on artificial general intelligence, according to its launch essay.

Its directors are Shane Legg, co-founder and Chief AGI Scientist at Google DeepMind, and Demis Hassabis, the lab’s co-founder and chair. Hassabis is also Alphabet’s chief scientist. The third director is James Manyika, Google’s president of research, labs, technology and society.

Legg is also the managing editor. The institute says its pieces reflect their authors’ ideas and “should not be read as Google’s official view.”

What the institute says

The launch essay defines AGI as a system that shows all the cognitive capabilities of the human brain. It says today’s systems still fail at some basic tasks, but “we expect those gaps to be closed soon.”

It names cybersecurity and biorisks as current concerns, and “the potential for loss of control in future self-improving systems.” In August, a DeepMind executive tied AI spending to machines that improve themselves.

Researchers from Google DeepMind, Google and the wider research community will publish on the platform. The essay says they “will not always agree.”

“Worth considering”

Legg told the Financial Times that AI capabilities must not outrun safety controls. He called Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei’s call to slow, but not pause, frontier model releases “interesting directionally” and “worth considering.”

Amodei said on 12 September that the industry must slow down.

Legg also told the FT it was premature to declare that AGI had been achieved. Nvidia’s Jensen Huang said AGI has arrived on 7 September.

OpenAI made its own AGI claim on 4 September. Legg remains “comfortable” with his forecast of a 50% chance of “minimal” AGI by 2028, the FT reported.

Bilal Chughtai, who left DeepMind’s AGI safety team in July, posted a warning this week.

The first essays

Alongside the launch essay, the site lists four pieces:

• “The case for reasoning transparency”, by Rohin Shah and Anca Dragan
• “Economic policy for AGI”, by Julian Jacobs and Alex Imas
• “Principles for a new utopianism”, by Stephen Cave
• “A framework for frontier AI and the dawning of a new age”, by Hassabis

Eleven policies for an AGI economy

Jacobs, an economist and research scientist at Google DeepMind, and Imas, its Director of AGI Economics, rated 11 policies in their essay. They used literature reviews, surveys and 51 AI agent raters built from survey data on 51 real economists.

The authors write that “no single initiative is the answer to everything.” They match three “least-regret” responses to three scenarios:

• Mild disruption: expanded unemployment insurance, a wider Earned Income Tax Credit and employer-led retraining
• Moderate displacement: turning the tax credit into a negative income tax
• Labour and capital decoupling: a universal basic capital backstop, used if labour’s share of GDP falls for a sustained period

They call universal basic income “an expensive and blunt instrument that may fail to concentrate sufficient relief where it is needed most.”

In their survey, 85% of Americans backed publicly funded retraining and 72% backed unemployment insurance. Support for universal basic capital was 54%.

Universal basic capital scored highest of the 11 policies on agency, at 76.3 out of 100. It scored 33.1 on feasibility, second lowest after a federal jobs guarantee.

The body has been found in the search for three-year-old Noah Woods who vanished after a visit to a village playground.

Several hundred volunteers as well as teams from the police, fire, coastguard and search and rescue had joined the desperate hunt for the toddler, who ran down an alleyway in Brantham, Suffolk on Tuesday afternoon and disappeared.

He told them: “You will have heard the news.

“First and foremost our thoughts are with Noah’s family and all those who knew him.”

He said that the agencies involved in the search, and Noah’s family, “have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of public support, people putting on their boots and helping us with the search and that, ladies and gentlemen, is yourselves”.

The officer’s voice cracked with emotion at times as he addressed the crowd of volunteers.

Superintendent Pearse, from Suffolk Constabulary, said in a statement on Wednesday evening: “Police and fire teams this afternoon sadly recovered the body of a child from Decoy Pond in Brantham.

“Formal identification has yet to take place, but the family of Noah Woods have been informed of this development. The discovery of the body is currently being treated as not suspicious, but unexplained.

“The coroner will be informed of this development.


“Since Noah was reported as missing, officers have carried out multiple inquiries, including the deployment of special search officers and dog units, and received support from various agencies, including helicopters from the National Police Air Service and HM Coastguard.

“Additional assistance on the ground has been provided by HM Coastguard, Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service. Suffolk Lowland, Search and Rescue, and over 1,300 members of the public supporting the search.

“First and foremost, our thoughts are with Noah’s family and all those who knew them. Since Noah was reported missing, vast number of our officers and staff have been deployed in numerous functions in the search for Noah, and the support for his family.

“We have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of public support and people putting on their boots to help us with the search.

“As a parent myself, I completely understand why people would want to help, and such a response is one that typifies the strong sense of community and the heartwarming nature of Suffolk people that make the county such a special place.

“I’m sure you appreciate that the family now need time, space, and privacy, and I thank you for your understanding of this.”

Horror continues to have a banger of a year, and now, as we gear up to head into the spooky season, fans of the genre are excited to see what new terrifying twists and turns await in the fall months. One new horror movie coming our way is Littermates, by Scott Tinkham and Michael Woloson. The film puts two survivors in an impossible situation, and Collider is thrilled to bring you an exclusive first look at the trailer ahead of its Fantastic Fest debut. The film introduces us to Liam (Joey Bader) and Mel (Kaylee McGregor), two survivors who find themselves in the cottage of Chester (Oliver Woolf) in the English countryside. He takes care of them, teaching them to communicate, and as they test Chester and his rules, they begin to understand what actually happened to them.

Littermates is described as follows: “As sirens, smoke, and distant threats press closer, Liam and Mel go about their days relearning the simplest tasks inside Chester’s carefully controlled world, while earning “nifties” for good behavior that can be traded for small comforts like karaoke, hot tub time, dance parties, and favorite meals. However, unlike Liam, Mel is far less willing to accept the boundaries of the cottage, growing increasingly drawn to the woods, the locked gate, and the larger world Chester insists is too dangerous to enter. When Mel’s curiosity pushes past Chester’s rules, the fragile order of the cottage is tested, exposing the fear, loyalty, and unanswered questions holding their makeshift family together.”

The new trailer for the film features Bader and McGregor continually looking at each other, saying repeatedly, “I’m sorry this happened to you,” with a flash of scenes from the film. A tennis court, both of the two survivors fighting for their lives, lots of shots of the wilderness, and more. Will Mel and Liam make it out? How did they get to Chester’s to begin with? All of that is left up to our imagination in the trailer for Littermates, and it does keep you on edge!

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The film was executive produced by Haley Nicole Johnson, who is one of the reasons why we have the new film Obsession. Much like Littermates, the film had its United States premiere at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas, last year. With Johnson producing both, could this be setting up Littermates to be the next big thing in horror? We don’t know yet, but the trailer does have enough to have us intrigued by what Tinkham and Woloson have in store for us.

You can see what happens to Liam and Mel in Littermates, in theaters on November 6. More information on each entry can be found on the official Fantastic Fest film guide.