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NYT ‘Connections’ Hints And Answers For November 25
BOONE, N.C. (AP) — Myles Tate led Appalachian State with 20 points and Dior Conners hit the game-winning 3-pointer with one second left as the Mountaineers defeated William & Mary 79-76 on Sunday. Tate had five rebounds and 10 assists for the Mountaineers (3-2). Conners went 5 of 9 from the field (5 for 8 from 3-point range) to add 15 points. CJ Huntley shot 6 of 9 from the field and 1 for 4 from the line to finish with 14 points. Noah Collier led the Tribe (3-5) in scoring, finishing with 19 points and eight rebounds. William & Mary also got 13 points from Malachi Ndur. Kyle Pulliam also had 12 points. Appalachian State went into the half leading William & Mary 42-30. Jamil Muttilib put up 12 points in the half. Tate led Appalachian State with 15 points in the second half. NEXT UP Appalachian State plays Wednesday against Sam Houston, and William & Mary visits Old Dominion on Monday. The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar .Qatar tribune PA Media/dpa London Car production in Britain fell by almost a third in November, the ninth consecutive month of decline, according to new figures. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) said 64,216 cars rolled off factory lines, 27,711 fewer than in November last year. Reasons for the reduction included weakness in global markets and the fact that production grew significantly in November last year, said the SMMT. Car makers are also retooling factories to make electric vehicles. More than 19,000 battery electric, plug-in hybrid and hybrid electric cars were made in November representing almost a third of output. In the year to date, total UK car output has fallen by just under 13% to 734,562 units - 108,787 fewer than the same period in 2023 and almost half a million short of 2019 volumes, said the SMMT. Mike Hawes, SMMT chief executive, said: “These figures offer little Christmas cheer for the sector. “While a decline was to be expected given the extensive changes under way at many plants, manufacturing is under pressure at home and abroad, with billions of pounds committed to new technologies, new models and new production tooling. “Government can help by supporting consumers in the transition, fast tracking its industrial strategy for advanced manufacturing and, most urgently, reviewing the market regulation which is putting enormous strain on the sector.” Copy 22/12/2024 10
PLAINS, Ga. (AP) — Newly married and sworn as a Naval officer, left his tiny hometown in 1946 hoping to climb the ranks and see the world. Less than a decade later, the death of his father and namesake, a merchant farmer and local politician who went by “Mr. Earl,” prompted the submariner and his wife, Rosalynn, to return to the rural life of Plains, Georgia, they thought they’d escaped. The lieutenant never would be an admiral. Instead, he became commander in chief. Years after his presidency ended in humbling defeat, he would add a Nobel Peace Prize, awarded not for his White House accomplishments but “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.” The life of James Earl Carter Jr., the 39th and longest-lived U.S. president, ended Sunday at the age of 100 where it began: Plains, the town of 600 that fueled his political rise, welcomed him after his fall and sustained him during 40 years of service that redefined what it means to be a former president. With the stubborn confidence of an engineer and an optimism rooted in his Baptist faith, Carter described his motivations in politics and beyond in the same way: an almost missionary zeal to solve problems and improve lives. Carter was raised amid racism, abject poverty and hard rural living — realities that shaped both his deliberate politics and emphasis on human rights. “He always felt a responsibility to help people,” said Jill Stuckey, a longtime friend of Carter’s in Plains. “And when he couldn’t make change wherever he was, he decided he had to go higher.” Carter’s path, , pitted moral imperatives against political pragmatism; and it defied typical labels of American politics, especially caricatures of one-term presidents as failures. “We shouldn’t judge presidents by how popular they are in their day. That’s a very narrow way of assessing them,” Carter biographer Jonathan Alter told the Associated Press. “We should judge them by how they changed the country and the world for the better. On that score, Jimmy Carter is not in the first rank of American presidents, but he stands up quite well.” Later in life, Carter conceded that many Americans, even those too young to remember his tenure, judged him ineffective for failing to contain inflation or interest rates, end the energy crisis or quickly bring home American hostages in Iran. He gained admirers instead for his work at The Carter Center — advocating globally for public health, human rights and democracy since 1982 — and the decades he and Rosalynn wore hardhats and swung hammers with Habitat for Humanity. Yet the common view that he was better after the Oval Office than in it annoyed Carter, and his allies relished him living long enough to see historians reassess his presidency. “He doesn’t quite fit in today’s terms” of a left-right, red-blue scoreboard, said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who visited the former president multiple times during his own White House bid. At various points in his political career, Carter labeled himself “progressive” or “conservative” — sometimes both at once. His most ambitious health care bill failed — perhaps one of his biggest legislative disappointments — because it didn’t go far enough to suit liberals. Republicans, especially after his 1980 defeat, cast him as a left-wing cartoon. It would be easiest to classify Carter as a centrist, Buttigieg said, “but there’s also something radical about the depth of his commitment to looking after those who are left out of society and out of the economy.” Indeed, Carter’s legacy is stitched with complexities, contradictions and evolutions — personal and political. The self-styled peacemaker was a war-trained Naval Academy graduate who promised Democratic challenger Ted Kennedy that he’d “kick his ass.” But he campaigned with a call to treat everyone with “respect and compassion and with love.” Carter vowed to restore America’s virtue after the shame of Vietnam and Watergate, and his technocratic, good-government approach didn’t suit Republicans who tagged government itself as the problem. It also sometimes put Carter at odds with fellow Democrats. The result still was a notable legislative record, with wins on the environment, education, and mental health care. He dramatically expanded federally protected lands, began deregulating air travel, railroads and trucking, and he put human rights at the center of U.S. foreign policy. As a fiscal hawk, Carter added a relative pittance to the national debt, unlike successors from both parties. Carter nonetheless struggled to make his achievements resonate with the electorate he charmed in 1976. Quoting Bob Dylan and grinning enthusiastically, he had promised voters he would “never tell a lie.” Once in Washington, though, he led like a joyless engineer, insisting his ideas would become reality and he’d be rewarded politically if only he could convince enough people with facts and logic. This served him well at Camp David, where he brokered peace between Israel’s Menachem Begin and Epypt’s Anwar Sadat, an experience that later sparked the idea of The Carter Center in Atlanta. Carter’s tenacity helped the center grow to a global force that monitored elections across five continents, enabled his freelance diplomacy and sent public health experts across the developing world. The center’s wins were personal for Carter, who hoped to outlive the last Guinea worm parasite, and nearly did. As president, though, the approach fell short when he urged consumers beleaguered by energy costs to turn down their thermostats. Or when he tried to be the nation’s cheerleader, beseeching Americans to overcome a collective “crisis of confidence.” Republican Ronald Reagan exploited Carter’s lecturing tone with a belittling quip in their lone 1980 debate. “There you go again,” the former Hollywood actor said in response to a wonky answer from the sitting president. “The Great Communicator” outpaced Carter in all but six states. Carter later suggested he “tried to do too much, too soon” and mused that he was incompatible with Washington culture: media figures, lobbyists and Georgetown social elites who looked down on the as “country come to town.” Carter carefully navigated divides on race and class on his way to the Oval Office. , Carter was raised in the mostly Black community of Archery, just outside Plains, by a progressive mother and white supremacist father. Their home had no running water or electricity but the future president still grew up with the relative advantages of a locally prominent, land-owning family in a system of Jim Crow segregation. He wrote of President Franklin Roosevelt’s towering presence and his family’s Democratic Party roots, but his father soured on FDR, and Jimmy Carter never campaigned or governed as a New Deal liberal. He offered himself as a small-town peanut farmer with an understated style, carrying his own luggage, bunking with supporters during his first presidential campaign and always using his nickname. And he began his political career in a whites-only Democratic Party. As private citizens, he and Rosalynn supported integration as early as the 1950s and believed it inevitable. Carter refused to join the White Citizens Council in Plains and spoke out in his Baptist church against denying Black people access to worship services. “This is not my house; this is not your house,” he said in a churchwide meeting, reminding fellow parishioners their sanctuary belonged to God. Yet as the appointed chairman of Sumter County schools he never pushed to desegregate, thinking it impractical after the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board decision. And while presidential candidate Carter would hail the 1965 Voting Rights Act, signed by fellow Democrat Lyndon Johnson when Carter was a state senator, there is no record of Carter publicly supporting it at the time. Carter overcame a ballot-stuffing opponent to win his legislative seat, then lost the 1966 governor’s race to an arch-segregationist. He won four years later by avoiding explicit mentions of race and campaigning to the right of his rival, who he mocked as “Cufflinks Carl” — the insult of an ascendant politician who never saw himself as part the establishment. Carter’s rural and small-town coalition in 1970 would match any victorious Republican electoral map in 2024. Once elected, though, Carter shocked his white conservative supporters — and landed on the cover of Time magazine — by declaring that “the time for racial discrimination is over.” Before making the jump to Washington, Carter befriended the family of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., whom he’d never sought out as he eyed the governor’s office. Carter lamented his foot-dragging on school integration as a “mistake.” But he also met, conspicuously, with Alabama’s segregationist Gov. George Wallace to accept his primary rival’s endorsement ahead of the 1976 Democratic convention. “He very shrewdly took advantage of his own Southerness,” said Amber Roessner, a University of Tennessee professor and expert on Carter’s campaigns. A coalition of Black voters and white moderate Democrats ultimately made Carter the last Democratic presidential nominee to sweep the Deep South. Then, just as he did in Georgia, he used his power in office to appoint more non-whites than all his predecessors had, combined. He once acknowledged “the secret shame” of white Americans who didn’t fight segregation. But he also told Alter that doing more would have sacrificed his political viability – and thus everything he accomplished in office and after. King’s daughter, Bernice King, described Carter as wisely “strategic” in winning higher offices to enact change. “He was a leader of conscience,” she said in an interview. Rosalynn Carter, who at the age of 96, was identified by both husband and wife as the “more political” of the pair; she sat in on Cabinet meetings and urged him to postpone certain priorities, like pressing the Senate to relinquish control of the Panama Canal. “Let that go until the second term,” she would sometimes say. The president, recalled her former aide Kathy Cade, retorted that he was “going to do what’s right” even if “it might cut short the time I have.” Rosalynn held firm, Cade said: “She’d remind him you have to win to govern.” Carter also was the first president to appoint multiple women as Cabinet officers. Yet by his own telling, his career sprouted from chauvinism in the Carters’ early marriage: He did not consult Rosalynn when deciding to move back to Plains in 1953 or before launching his state Senate bid a decade later. Many years later, he called it “inconceivable” that he didn’t confer with the woman he described as his “full partner,” at home, in government and at The Carter Center. “We developed a partnership when we were working in the farm supply business, and it continued when Jimmy got involved in politics,” Rosalynn Carter told AP in 2021. So deep was their trust that when Carter remained tethered to the White House in 1980 as 52 Americans were held hostage in Tehran, it was Rosalynn who campaigned on her husband’s behalf. “I just loved it,” she said, despite the bitterness of defeat. Fair or not, the label of a disastrous presidency had leading Democrats keep their distance, at least publicly, for many years, but Carter managed to remain relevant, writing books and weighing in on societal challenges. He lamented widening wealth gaps and the influence of money in politics. He voted for democratic socialist Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton in 2016, and later declared that America had devolved from fully functioning democracy to “oligarchy.” Yet looking ahead to 2020, with Sanders running again, Carter warned Democrats not to lest they help re-elect President Donald Trump. Carter scolded the Republican for his serial lies and threats to democracy, and chided the U.S. establishment for misunderstanding Trump’s populist appeal. He delighted in yearly convocations with Emory University freshmen, often asking them to guess how much he’d raised in his two general election campaigns. “Zero,” he’d gesture with a smile, explaining the public financing system candidates now avoid so they can raise billions. Carter still remained quite practical in partnering with wealthy corporations and foundations to advance Carter Center programs. Carter recognized that economic woes and the Iran crisis doomed his presidency, but offered no apologies for appointing Paul Volcker as the Federal Reserve chairman whose interest rate hikes would not curb inflation until Reagan’s presidency. He was proud of getting all the hostages home without starting a shooting war, even though Tehran would not free them until Reagan’s Inauguration Day. “Carter didn’t look at it” as a failure, Alter emphasized. “He said, ‘They came home safely.’ And that’s what he wanted.” Well into their 90s, the Carters greeted visitors at Plains’ Maranatha Baptist Church, where he taught Sunday School and where he will have his last funeral before being buried on . Carter, who made the congregation’s collection plates in his woodworking shop, still garnered headlines there, calling for women’s rights within religious institutions, many of which, he said, “subjugate” women in church and society. Carter was not one to dwell on regrets. “I am at peace with the accomplishments, regret the unrealized goals and utilize my former political position to enhance everything we do,” he wrote around his 90th birthday. The politician who had supposedly hated Washington politics also enjoyed hosting Democratic presidential contenders as again. Carter sat with Buttigieg for the final time March 1, 2020, hours before the Indiana mayor ended his campaign and endorsed eventual winner Joe Biden. “He asked me how I thought the campaign was going,” Buttigieg said, recalling that Carter flashed his signature grin and nodded along as the young candidate, born a year after Carter left office, “put the best face” on the walloping he endured the day before in South Carolina. Never breaking his smile, the 95-year-old host fired back, “I think you ought to drop out.” “So matter of fact,” Buttigieg said with a laugh. “It was somehow encouraging.” Carter had lived enough, won plenty and lost enough to take the long view. “He talked a lot about coming from nowhere,” Buttigieg said, not just to attain the presidency but to leverage “all of the instruments you have in life” and “make the world more peaceful.” In his farewell address as president, Carter said as much to the country that had embraced and rejected him. “The struggle for human rights overrides all differences of color, nation or language,” he declared. “Those who hunger for freedom, who thirst for human dignity and who suffer for the sake of justice — they are the patriots of this cause.” Carter pledged to remain engaged with and for them as he returned “home to the South where I was born and raised,” home to Plains, where that young lieutenant had indeed become “a fellow citizen of the world.” —-Bristol's 21 lead Hampton past Loyola (MD) 76-68
Jimmy Carter: Many evolutions for a centenarian ‘citizen of the world’
Jimmy Carter: Many evolutions for a centenarian ‘citizen of the world’LONDON — Olivia Hussey, the actor who starred as a teenage Juliet in the 1968 film "Romeo and Juliet," died, her family said on social media Saturday. She was 73. Hussey died Friday "peacefully at home surrounded by her loved ones," a statement posted to her Instagram account said. Hussey was 15 when director Franco Zeffirelli cast her in his adaptation of the William Shakespeare tragedy after spotting her onstage in the play "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," which also starred Vanessa Redgrave. "Romeo and Juliet" won two Oscars and Hussey won a Golden Globe for best new actress for her part as Juliet, opposite British actor Leonard Whiting, who was 16 at the time. Decades later Hussey and Whiting brought a lawsuit against Paramount Pictures alleging sexual abuse, sexual harassment and fraud over nude scenes in the film. They alleged they were initially told they would wear flesh-colored undergarments in a bedroom scene, but on the day of the shoot Zeffirelli told the pair they would wear only body makeup and the camera would be positioned in a way that would not show nudity. They alleged they were filmed in the nude without their knowledge. The case was dismissed by a Los Angeles County judge in 2023, who found their depiction could not be considered child pornography and the pair filed their claim too late. Whiting was among those who paid tribute to Hussey on Saturday. "Rest now my beautiful Juliet no injustices can hurt you now," he wrote. "And the world will remember your beauty inside and out forever." Hussey was born April 17, 1951, in Bueno Aires, Argentina, and moved to London as a child. She studied at the Italia Conti Academy drama school. She also starred as Mary, the mother of Jesus, in the 1977 television series "Jesus of Nazareth," as well as the 1978 adaptation of Agatha Christie's "Death on the Nile" and horror movies "Black Christmas" and "Psycho IV: The Beginning." She is survived by her husband, David Glen Eisley, her three children and a grandson.
JE Cleantech Holdings Limited ( NASDAQ:JCSE – Get Free Report ) was the target of a large growth in short interest in December. As of December 15th, there was short interest totalling 55,400 shares, a growth of 1,285.0% from the November 30th total of 4,000 shares. Based on an average daily trading volume, of 375,200 shares, the short-interest ratio is currently 0.1 days. Currently, 3.1% of the shares of the stock are short sold. JE Cleantech Price Performance JE Cleantech stock opened at $1.37 on Friday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.27, a quick ratio of 1.02 and a current ratio of 2.06. JE Cleantech has a twelve month low of $0.60 and a twelve month high of $2.39. The company’s 50-day moving average price is $1.37 and its 200-day moving average price is $1.20. JE Cleantech Dividend Announcement The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Friday, December 20th. Shareholders of record on Tuesday, December 10th were given a dividend of $0.09 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Tuesday, December 10th. This represents a $0.36 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 26.28%. About JE Cleantech JE Cleantech Holdings Limited, an investment holding company, designs, develops, manufactures, and sells cleaning systems for various industrial end-use applications in Singapore, Malaysia, and internationally. It provides various cleaning systems and other equipment, including aqueous washing systems, plating and cleaning systems, train cleaning systems, and filtration units, as well as equipment parts and components. Read More Receive News & Ratings for JE Cleantech Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for JE Cleantech and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter .
TALLAHASSEE — Matt Gaetz’ knack for courting controversy has finally caught up with him. The right-wing firebrand, political prankster, steadfast Trump defender and party animal stepped down as the president-elect’s choice for Attorney General once it was made clear to him he didn’t have the needed support in the U.S. Senate. Senators on both sides of the aisle had reacted to the former Florida congressman’s nomination with shock, with one calling him “a not serious candidate” and others demanding more details about the sex scandals swirling around him for the past few years. After being asked Thursday to comment on a report that a 17-year-old girl had sex with him twice at a former lawmaker’s house party in Seminole County in 2017, Gaetz bowed out so he would not “unfairly become a distraction” for President-elect Donald Trump. Even without the allegations of sexual misconduct, Gaetz was an unusual choice for attorney general, experts said. He had the least amount of legal experience of any nominee since the end of World War II. “His background doesn’t look anything like other attorney generals going back to Eisenhower. It makes no sense,” said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond and expert on federal courts and the judicial selection process. Most presidents have picked attorney generals with vast professional and legal experience because they run an agency of 40 separate divisions, including the Office of Solicitor General, FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Marshals Service, Bureau of Prisons, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Tobias said. “I don’t think he even appreciates how the DOJ works,” Tobias said. Gaetz’s reputation for trolling enemies on social media and insulting fellow members of Congress on conservative talk shows left him with few allies in Washington, D.C. In one of his most high-profile actions, Gaetz wore a gas mask on the House floor while Congress voted on a multi-billion dollar bill to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. “The big picture for Gaetz is that all his questionable behavior, actions and statements have caught up with him finally,” said Aubrey Jewett, a political science professor at the University of Central Florida. “For a long time it seemed like they would not because he had the president elect’s ear.” And now, his political future depends on Trump’s continued support. Trump didn’t waste any time replacing Gaetz with fellow Floridian Pam Bondi, a former state attorney general who is a more likable yet equally dedicated Trump loyalist without the same amount of baggage as Gaetz. But Trump took to his own Truth Social platform to praise Gaetz, saying he had “much respect” for his decision to step down. “Matt has a wonderful future, and I look forward to watching all of the great things he will do!” Trump said. U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a fellow Republican from Florida and Trump supporter, posted on X that Gaetz was the victim of a media smear, and feared facing the same kind of brutal grilling as Justice Brett Kavanaugh endured six years ago. Gaetz ended speculation Friday that he would return to his Florida District 1 Congressional seat when the new session begins in January by saying that eight years was enough and it was time to move on to new things. “Usually at some point the president or nominee realizes it is not going to happen,” Jewett said. “Instead of forcing the issue and airing dirty laundry out in public they withdraw. That appears to be what happened.” Typically, presidents nominate attorney generals who have extensive experience, often as judges or prosecutors, as they will be overseeing the world’s largest law office, with more than 115,000 employees. Gaetz graduated from the College of William and Mary law school in 2007 and started working at the Fort Walton Beach law firm of Larry Keefe, who was Trump’s appointee as U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Florida during his first term and is Florida’s public safety czar for Gov. Ron DeSantis. As a junior lawyer, Gaetz handled mostly run-of-the-mill cases. The Okaloosa County court records show him handling about two cases a year in his home county. His first two cases were traffic infractions, and he also worked on debt and contract disputes, negligence and workers compensation claims. One case involved a homeowners association in its dispute against Walton County over the location of a beach volleyball net, records show. After less than a year as a lawyer, Gaetz was pulled over for speeding in his father’s BMW and arrested for drunk driving. He refused to take a breathalyzer test and the charges against him were dropped. He’s been casual about maintaining his practice, Florida Bar records show. He had his license suspended for failing to pay his fees in 2021 but it was reinstated when he paid up. He also was cited for not keeping up with his continuing legal education requirements in 2023. And he was cited two years in a row for not being up to date on his trust account reports. In 2010, Gaetz ran as a Tea Party Republican and was elected to the Florida House of Representatives. His financial disclosure form said he earned $29,000 from his legal practice that year. He spent his time defending Florida’s controversial “stand-your-ground” law and railing against the Affordable Care Act and Medicare. But he was instrumental in getting Florida’s medical marijuana law passed. He quickly got a reputation for lashing out against his political enemies in Florida and that expanded when he went to D.C. He was investigated by the Florida Bar for an incendiary tweet accusing Michael Cohen, a former Trump attorney and head of the Trump Organization, of infidelity. The House Ethics Committee admonished Gaetz for his comments. He also received a letter from the Florida Bar advising him that a comment he made about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, was inappropriate. He took down the post and apologized. When Gaetz criticized former Florida Rep. Chris Latvala, a fellow Republican, for meeting with the Rev. Al Sharpton in 2020, Latvala accused Gaetz of starting a sex game where lawmakers earned points for sleeping with aides, interns, lobbyists and married lawmakers. The game had been reported by the Miami Herald in 2017 but it wasn’t until 2020 that Latvala connected the game to Gaetz – who denied the accusation. As a freshman congressman in 2017, he raised eyebrows when he cast the lone vote against an anti-human trafficking bill. And his decision to wear the gas mask on the floor earned him condemnation from many quarters. Even more bizarre, in 2020 an unmarried Gaetz at the time shocked fellow members of Congress with the revelation that he had an “adopted” son, a Cuban immigrant whose mother had died of cancer and was the brother of Gaetz’ girlfriend at the time. “His temperament or personality just doesn’t fit the role. He’s never been a serious guy,” Jewett said. “His thing is firing up the base, getting media attention and likes on social media. That is not typically what you want in an Attorney General. That doubled with the ethical and legal clouds are a terrible fit.” ©2024 Orlando Sentinel. Visit orlandosentinel.com . Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
USDA Seeks Top Minds to Revolutionize Food Safety—Step Up to Protect America’s FamiliesJoin our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Two years on from the public release of ChatGPT, conversations about AI are inescapable as companies across every industry look to harness large language models (LLMs) to transform their business processes. Yet, as powerful and promising as LLMs are, many business and IT leaders have come to over-rely on them and to overlook their limitations. This is why I anticipate a future where specialized language models, or SLMs, will play a bigger, complementary role in enterprise IT. SLMs are more typically referred to as “small language models” because they require less data and training time and are “ more streamlined versions of LLMs .” But I prefer the word “specialized” because it better conveys the ability of these purpose-built solutions to perform highly specialized work with greater accuracy, consistency and transparency than LLMs. By supplementing LLMs with SLMs, organizations can create solutions that take advantage of each model’s strengths. Trust and the LLM ‘black box’ problem LLMs are incredibly powerful, yet they are also known for sometimes “losing the plot,” or offering outputs that veer off course due to their generalist training and massive data sets. That tendency is made more problematic by the fact that OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other LLMs are essentially “black boxes” that don’t reveal how they arrive at an answer. This black box problem is going to become a bigger issue going forward, particularly for companies and business-critical applications where accuracy, consistency and compliance are paramount. Think healthcare, financial services and legal as prime examples of professions where inaccurate answers can have huge financial consequences and even life-or-death repercussions. Regulatory bodies are already taking notice and will likely begin to demand explainable AI solutions , especially in industries that rely on data privacy and accuracy. While businesses often deploy a “human-in-the-loop” approach to mitigate these issues, an over-reliance on LLMs can lead to a false sense of security. Over time, complacency can set in and mistakes can slip through undetected. SLMs = greater explainability Fortunately, SLMs are better suited to address many of the limitations of LLMs. Rather than being designed for general-purpose tasks, SLMs are developed with a narrower focus and trained on domain-specific data. This specificity allows them to handle nuanced language requirements in areas where precision is paramount. Rather than relying on vast, heterogeneous datasets, SLMs are trained on targeted information, giving them the contextual intelligence to deliver more consistent, predictable and relevant responses. This offers several advantages. First, they are more explainable, making it easier to understand the source and rationale behind their outputs. This is critical in regulated industries where decisions need to be traced back to a source. Second, their smaller size means they can often perform faster than LLMs, which can be a crucial factor for real-time applications. Third, SLMs offer businesses more control over data privacy and security, especially if they’re deployed internally or built specifically for the enterprise. Moreover, while SLMs may initially require specialized training, they reduce the risks associated with using third-party LLMs controlled by external providers. This control is invaluable in applications that demand stringent data handling and compliance. Focus on developing expertise (and be wary of vendors who overpromise) I want to be clear that LLMs and SLMs are not mutually exclusive. In practice, SLMs can augment LLMs, creating hybrid solutions where LLMs provide broader context and SLMs ensure precise execution. It’s also still early days even where LLMs are concerned, so I always advise technology leaders to continue exploring the many possibilities and benefits of LLMs. In addition, while LLMs can scale well for a variety of problems, SLMs may not transfer well to certain use cases. It is therefore important to have a clear understanding upfront as to what use cases to tackle. It’s also important that business and IT leaders devote more time and attention to building the distinct skills required for training, fine-tuning and testing SLMs. Fortunately, there is a great deal of free information and training available via common sources such Coursera, YouTube and Huggingface.co . Leaders should make sure their developers have adequate time for learning and experimenting with SLMs as the battle for AI expertise intensifies. I also advise leaders to vet partners carefully. I recently spoke with a company that asked for my opinion on a certain technology provider’s claims. My take was that they were either overstating their claims or were simply out of their depth in terms of understanding the technology’s capabilities. The company wisely took a step back and implemented a controlled proof-of-concept to test the vendor’s claims. As I suspected, the solution simply wasn’t ready for prime time, and the company was able to walk away with relatively little time and money invested. Whether a company starts with a proof-of-concept or a live deployment, I advise them to start small, test often and build on early successes. I’ve personally experienced working with a small set of instructions and information, only to find the results veering off course when I then feed the model more information. That’s why slow-and-steady is a prudent approach. In summary, while LLMs will continue to provide ever-more-valuable capabilities, their limitations are becoming increasingly apparent as businesses scale their reliance on AI. Supplementing with SLMs offers a path forward, especially in high-stakes fields that demand accuracy and explainability. By investing in SLMs, companies can future-proof their AI strategies, ensuring that their tools not only drive innovation but also meet the demands of trust, reliability and control. AJ Sunder is co-founder, CIO and CPO at Responsive. DataDecisionMakers Welcome to the VentureBeat community! DataDecisionMakers is where experts, including the technical people doing data work, can share data-related insights and innovation. If you want to read about cutting-edge ideas and up-to-date information, best practices, and the future of data and data tech, join us at DataDecisionMakers. You might even consider contributing an article of your own! Read More From DataDecisionMakersStudents surprised with Christmas cheer; Salvation Army receives donations
Calais Campbell nearly returned to the Ravens at the trade deadline. Here's why he stayedErin Andrews told “some a–hole” off for saying she was having hot flashes while covering the 49ers-Buccaneers in Tampa on Nov. 10. According to New York Post report, during a recent installment of her and Charissa Thompson’s “Calm Down” podcast, the Fox Sports NFL sideline reporter said she had enough of the negative comments and explained she was sweating due to the humidity in Tampa. “Somebody said ‘Erin Andrews you look so great, you have this glow. What’re you using? And I said, ‘It’s called sweat.’ We were outside... like 90 degrees on the field for four hours,” Andrews said. “... I wrote back and I said, ‘It’s was called sweat and I need a shower,’ and some a–hole wrote, ‘It’s hot flashes.’ “Shut the — shut up! It’s outside for five hours, enough!” The WEAR by EA founder mentioned the exchange while she and Thompson were answering fan questions, specifically one about responding to critics. “Don’t worry about those losers, you just keep doing you,” said Thompson, who is a studio host for Fox Sports NFL and “Thursday Night Football” on Amazon. “People that try and poke Erin and I on stuff, every now and then we’ll respond, just because it’s just like, we had enough... But for every 100 bad comments we may respond to one.” The “Calm Down” podcast posted a clip of the cohosts discussing the negative comment, and wrote, “Menopause jokes aren’t funny” with an angry face emoji.