Bloomberg unveils finance-focused AI model Bloomberg GPT

 Bloomberg, a leading financial data services provider, this week unveiled a new artificial intelligence (AI) model that aims to revolutionize the finance industry in the same way programs like OpenAI's ChatGPT are set to radically transform written communications.

A research paper released by the company Thursday details the development of BloombergGPT, a new large language model (LLM) that has been trained on a massive amount of financial data to assist with a variety of natural language processing (NLP) tasks within the financial industry. In plain English, Blooomberg GPT is an advanced machine learning software that can rapidly analyze financial data to assist with making risk assessments, judge financial sentiment, and potentially even automate accounting and auditing tasks and more.

The complexity and unique terminology of the financial industry requires an AI that is specifically trained with financial datasets, Bloomberg said in a release. BloombergGPT will have access to the vast quantity of data available on the Bloomberg Terminal — a computer software system used by investors and financial professionals to access real-time market data, breaking news, financial research and powerful analytics. 

"For all the reasons generative LLMs are attractive – few-shot learning, text generation, conversational systems, etc. – we see tremendous value in having developed the first LLM focused on the financial domain," said Shawn Edwards, Bloomberg’s Chief Technology Officer. "BloombergGPT will enable us to tackle many new types of applications, while it delivers much higher performance out-of-the-box than custom models for each application, at a faster time-to-market."

To begin BloombergGPT's training, Bloomberg engineers used "a comprehensive 363 billion token dataset consisting of English financial documents" available from the company's existing data creation, collection and curation resources. 

The engineers also trained the model with general-purpose datasets, with the goal of creating a "best-in-class" financial AI that also is competitive in performing general tasks. The result was the creation, from scratch, of a new 50-billion parameter decoder-only AI program. 

"The quality of machine learning and NLP models comes down to the data you put into them," explained Gideon Mann, Head of Bloomberg’s ML Product and Research team. "Thanks to the collection of financial documents Bloomberg has curated over four decades, we were able to carefully create a large and clean, domain-specific dataset to train a LLM that is best suited for financial use cases." 

Mann added, "We’re excited to use BloombergGPT to improve existing NLP workflows, while also imagining new ways to put this model to work to delight our customers."

https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/bloomberg-unveils-finance-focused-ai-model-bloomberg-gpt

Illegal Immigration Surged At Northern US Border With Help Of Americans

 by Allan Stein via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

One night this past winter, Lynne Lamon of Plattsburgh, New York, was driving up the U.S.-9 northbound by Canada’s border when she noticed three young men walking on the side of the road.

The men were dressed poorly for the subzero temperatures and wind chill from Lake Champlain. Their down vests were tattered and leaking feathers.

Lamon pulled over, rolled down the window, and told the men to get in and warm up. 

Through broken English, she realized they were illegal immigrants from Ecuador who were on their way to the Canadian province of Quebec.

“They were happy to get a ride. I wasn’t afraid at all,” Lamon said. “They were young men that had wives and mothers at home.”

“They were so thankful. I turned on what you call an English-Spanish app on my phone so that we could talk. They were happy about that.”

Lamon drove the men to a local restaurant, bought them breakfast, and gave them water for the trip north.

The men said they wanted to go to the nearest U.S. port of entry, but Lamon said, ‘No. You will be taken in [by federal border officers] and brought back to Plattsburgh.”

Illegal migrants are caught walking through the snow in the Swanton Sector in this recent U.S. Border Patrol photograph. (U.S. Border Patrol photo)

“Why are they going to Canada? I don’t know,” Lamon said of the three men. “They didn’t have any relatives there. They walked forever, like three months. They had sneakers on that were frozen [to their] feet.”

Like many U.S. citizens, Lamon believes it’s a moral imperative to lend aid to illegal immigrants, despite the legal consequences.

“I’m an old hippie” at heart, she told The Epoch Times.

However, Federal Statute 8 U.S. Code Section 1324, makes it a crime to transport illegal immigrants in the United States.

“What this means is that if you give a ride to someone who is in the United States illegally, then you could be charged with transporting illegal aliens. Such a federal violation could lead to fines and up to five years imprisonment,” according to the law office of Abdel Jimenez based in Florida.

Regardless, there’s money to be made in transporting illegal immigrants.

Some American citizens will offer rides for hundreds of dollars, fueling a quiet passage along Canada’s 3,500-mile land border with the United States.

Some, like Lynne Lamon, do it out of kindness.

In Derby, Vermont, hotel employees Matt and George said they have seen people charge illegal immigrants as much as $500 for rides to metropolitan areas.

Sometimes, the families are so large that several vehicles are needed.

One local man told The Epoch Times he made $400 driving an individual from Derby to Boston.

Matt and George said illegal immigrants are a nuisance when they crowd into the small hotel lobby after being dropped off by Border Patrol.

Hotel manager Bob Lemieux goes over paperwork at Maurice’s Motel near the U.S.-Canada border on March 23, 2023. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

Since Border Patrol “has to drop them off somewhere, they drop them off here–or at gas stations,” George said. “They bring their luggage—garbage bags. They have little kids; they don’t have car seats. They don’t have anything.”

“They don’t want a room. They’re looking for rides to Boston, New York, or Miami. Those are the biggest places they want to go,” Matt said.

While some do spend money on a hotel room, most illegal immigrants will loiter in the warm lobby for hours for a private ride.

Few choose to stay in Derby, Matt said.

“Most go to White River Junction [Vermont] to the Greyhound Station. We have no taxis here. So many locals will make a fortune off it because they will take them to places they want to go.”

Matt said he doesn’t see giving rides to illegal immigrants as “aiding and abetting” illegal immigration. 

Not anymore.

“They’re here legally now [whereas] Border Patrol before would arrest them,” George said. “They privately find a person and pay them to get to Greyhound or Amtrak—whatever.”

In fiscal year 2020, Border Patrol agents arrested 32,376 illegal immigrants along the U.S.-Canada border, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data.

During the pandemic, border encounters plummeted to about 27,180 but surged again to 109,535 in fiscal 2022.

The two countries recently enacted an agreement to turn away asylum-seekers caught in illegal points of entry. A pre-existing agreement required that asylum-seekers must apply in the first country they arrive in, but was only applicable at official border-crossings, creating a loophole for migrants to cross at illegal points of entry from the United States into Canada to make asylum claims.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/illegal-immigration-surged-northern-us-border-help-americans

58 migrants found packed inside of truck of alleged human smuggler in Texas

 An alleged human smuggler was busted in Texas trafficking nearly 60 migrants packed into the back of a Penske box truck, according to authorities.

Texas Department of Public Safety officers saw the migrants being loaded into the rental truck on the west side of El Paso on Wednesday, the agency said.

Inside the truck, 58 migrants — 49 men and nine women — were crammed inside.

They were from Mexico, El Salvador and Guatemala, DPS said.

The driver was identified as Marquez Oviel, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, officials told Fox News.

He was arrested and faces federal human trafficking charges.

The migrants were handed over to border patrol.

The truck bust is among the latest in a string of apprehensions of illegal migrants by Texas authorities.

There were 49 men and nine women in the truck, officials said.

Texas Department of Public Safety

During a traffic stop in Kinney County, Texas, last Friday, a deputy found four migrants inside a car, including 14- and 16-year-old girls. 

Texas DPS released bodycam footage of the stop on Twitter.

“There are two kids in the back,” an officer says after opening the back seat doors, video shows.

About halfway into the 80-second video, a woman is handcuffed and told she is under arrest for human smuggling.

“You’re arresting the wrong people,” one suspect tells the officer in the clip.

The driver of the truck was arrested and the migrants were handed over to border patrol.

Texas Department of Public Safety

When the officer asks him who he should be arrested, the suspect — identified only as a San Antonio resident — responds:  “The cartels. They’re killing people and sex trafficking and everything bad.”

“Those people are the same people that sent you down here,” the officer shoots back, video shows.

Additionally, DPS aircraft located three dozen migrants all dressed in camouflage hiding in a cave in Culberson County, the governor’s office announced Friday.

Migrants have been apprehended daily since Gov. Greg Abbott launched the controversial Operation Lone Star in March 2021 in response to the surge in illegal border crossings.

According to Gov. Abbott’s office, since the launch of the initiative, there have been over 360,000 illegal immigrant apprehensions and more than 26,000 criminal arrests with more than 24,000 felony charges reported. 

https://nypost.com/2023/04/01/58-migrants-found-packed-inside-of-penske-truck-on-texas/

Drug killings soar in Costa Rica as nation becomes major cocaine exporter

 Costa Rica, known for its rich ecosystems and easygoing slogan of the “pure life,” is now besieged by drug killings thanks to its increasing role in the warehousing and shipping of cocaine.

The Central American country logged 657 homicides in 2022 — the highest number of killings recorded there since at least 1990.

The grim tally reflects a disturbing trend that has been ticking upward for the past 15 years, statistics show.

Last year’s deadly violence was centered in the country’s Caribbean port city of Limon, which had a murder rate that was five times higher than the rest of the country of 5 million, officials said.

Authorities found that 65 to 80% of the local murders were believed to be “score settling” for grievances tied to the drug market — which has used everything from pineapples to yuca to stuff coke into and smuggle out of the country.

The influx of drug crime in the region has had President Rodrigo Chaves and his security ministers scrambling for answers to combat it.

Costa Rico was once just a pass-through destination for cartels who transported coke from Colombia to Mexico and the US, a dynamic that has shifted in recent years as homegrown smuggling gangs set up shop and use local ports to ship the narcotic to Europe.

Costa Rica logged a recent record of 657 homicides in 2022 as drug crimes rise.

AP

The shift started after cartels began paying Costa Rican fishermen in cocaine in exchange for gasoline for their smuggling boats.

Martín Arias, the deputy security minister and head of Costa Rica’s Coast Guard, said the Mexican narcos decided, “We’re not going to use money; we’re not going to leave the trail that money leaves in banks, in systems; we’re going to pay in cocaine.”

Cocaine is relatively inexpensive in Costa Rica, and once the fisherman realized the value of the product was far higher overseas, they began to smuggle it out of the port themselves.

A ring that was dismantled in January found that smugglers had secreted coke into walls of steel containers and packed the drug among pineapple and yucca headed for Spain and The Netherlands.

Competition for market share of marijuana being shipped from Jamaica and Colombia also has added to the turf-war violence.

“We used to talk about Colombian cartels, Mexican cartels,” former Security Minister Gustavo Mata said.

But now gangs led by Costa Ricans are a leading cause of bloodshed in the tropical tourism destination as they control “enormous warehouses” of cocaine, he said.

“In Limon, there are four strong criminal groups competing for the drug market,” said Randall Zúñiga, director of Costa Rica’s Judicial Investigation Department. These groups clash, and “generally the people who die are sellers or members of the criminal groups.”

Police officers run a checkpoint set up in the nightclub and bar zone of San Jose, Costa Rica, on Jan 27.

AP

The violence has largely affected young unemployed men who turned to the drug trade after 7,000 port jobs were lost in a 2018 privatization foreign contract.

“If there are no jobs, it sounds terrible to say, but for many, the closest thing to a job is being a hit man,” said Antonio Wells, secretary general of the dockworkers union for Costa Rica’s Atlantic ports.

“In Limon, there are four strong criminal groups competing for the drug market,” said Randall Zúñiga, director of Costa Rica’s Judicial Investigation Department. These groups clash, and “generally the people who die are sellers or members of the criminal groups.”

The drug violence has had tragic collateral damage.

On Feb. 28, an 8-year-old boy was killed by stray bullet as he slept in San Jose. A 15-year-old was later arrested for the gang-war shooting, which Chaves labeled “outrageous, inexplicable and unacceptable.”

Security Minister Jorge Torres told national lawmakers in January that he would have a new security strategy in place by the summer.

The body of a man is illuminated by police flashlights as investigators work a crime scene where an alleged thief and a female passenger died in a shootout during a robbery on a bus in San Jose, Costa Rica, Feb. 6, 2023.

AP

He blasted the Costa Rican court system for allowing drug convicts to be released after serving only a fraction of their sentences and said more cops are needed.

“There are crimes for which you must serve the entire sentence,” Torres said.

“If we want to resolve this in the short term, we need more police in the streets,” he added.

Costa Rica’s murder rate is now 12.6 per 100,000 residents — about twice as violent as the US rate but a third of the rate in Honduras, which is due north of bordering Nicaragua, according to UN statistics.

“This isn’t the Limon I grew up in,” a retiree named David said as he sat in the city’s central square. “After 9 o’clock at night, you can’t walk, and it’s really sad.”

https://nypost.com/2023/04/02/drug-killings-soar-in-historically-safe-costa-rica/

US Biotech Firm Apellis Is Said to Attract Takeover Interest

• Larger drugmakers are eyeing $7.6 billion company: sources
• Global health-care dealmaking has remained robust this year

 

Apellis Pharmaceuticals Inc., a biotech firm focused on rare diseases and ophthalmology, is drawing takeover interest from larger drugmakers, people with knowledge of the matter said.

The company is speaking to advisers to consider its options amid the interest, they said. Apellis may also consider seeking partnerships or licensing agreements for some of its ophthalmology products, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing confidential information. 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-04-02/us-biotech-firm-apellis-is-said-to-attract-takeover-interest