artificial intelligence - CybAI news

21 Nov

The Red Elephant in the Room at AfroTech

stp2y0 CommentsAIartificial intelligence, diversity in tech, silicon valley, social media

Under a Trump administration, the outcomes for 2025 appear inevitably bleaker. He’s promised to invest in an economy that is anti-woke, bolstering his cabinet with agitators—such as Brendan Carr, his choice for chair of the Federal Communications Commission—that have promised to end DEI. Project 2025, the 900-page conservative policy agenda Trump is likely to base much of his governing on, takes aim at organizations that employ “racial classifications and quotas” and pledges to rescind an executive order that calls for federal contractors to guarantee equal opportunity. (And big tech companies were already cutting DEI programs, even without the threats of…

21 Nov

Relevant! Relevant! Relevant! At 50, Microsoft Is an AI Giant, Open-Source Lover, and as Bad as Ever

stp2y0 CommentsAIantitrust, artificial intelligence, longreads, microsoft, openai, satya nadella

No question about it: Nadella’s Microsoft is a triumph. Finally, in the 2020s, Microsoft has centered on the most innovative tech since the PC itself. And though revenues from AI products haven’t begun to offset Microsoft’s huge investments, it has the confidence—and the resources—to wait until the products improve and users find them useful.But can Microsoft really avoid the hubris that set it so far back before? Consider what happened in May of this year with a product called Recall.The feature was supposed to epitomize Microsoft’s integration of AI into its hardware, software, and infrastructure. The idea was to give…

21 Nov

The AI Reporter That Took My Old Job Just Got Fired

stp2y0 CommentsAIartificial intelligence, media

James and Rose, the bizarre AI bots who were recently installed as news broadcasters at local Hawaii paper The Garden Island, have been terminated.Employee retention is always a bit of a problem at local newspapers, and The Garden Island newspaper on the Hawaiian island of Kauai is no exception. Many reporters—usually mainland transplants like myself—would stick around for just a couple years before moving on, and some only lasted months.After a two-month run, James and Rose have joined our ranks, as their broadcast has been discontinued, according to a representative for The Garden Island’s parent company, Oahu Publications (OPI). The…

21 Nov

Nvidia Says Its Blackwell Chip Is Fine, Nothing to See Here

stp2y0 CommentsAIartificial intelligence, chips, finance, nvidia, semiconductors

A large portion of Nvidia’s growth this quarter was driven by data center revenue, totaling $30.8 billion for the quarter, which was up 112 percent from last year. The company’s gross profit margin was 74.5 percent, essentially flat from a year ago. But analysts expect that Nvidia’s margins could shrink as the company shifts to producing more Blackwell chips, which cost more to make than their less advanced predecessors.Nvidia’s earnings reports are seen as an important bellwether for the AI industry as a whole. The chip architect’s advanced GPUs, which power complex neural network processing, are what made the current…

20 Nov

The Man Behind Amazon’s Robot Army Wants Everyone to Have an AI-Powered Helper

stp2y0 CommentsAIamazon, artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics, robots

Unlike other robots, Proxie’s battery can be swapped out to avoid downtime charging. Cobot declined to say how much Proxie costs to buy or lease, but mobile robots often cost tens of thousands of dollars a piece.The robots work alongside humans, taking turns moving carts and navigating busy spaces without running into anyone. Porter says the idea is for the robots to level up as AI becomes more capable, allowing for more sophisticated manipulation and communication.Cobot has a version of Proxie that will respond to voice commands using a large language model to parse utterances, Porter says. When a worker…

20 Nov

Inside the Booming ‘AI Pimping’ Industry

stp2y0 CommentsAIartificial intelligence, deepfakes, instagram, social media

AI-generated influencers based on stolen images of real-life adult content creators are flooding social media. Source link lol

19 Nov

The US Patent and Trademark Office Banned Staff From Using Generative AI

stp2y0 CommentsAIartificial intelligence, google, machine learning, openai, regulation, tech policy

The US Patent and Trademark Office banned the use of generative artificial intelligence for any purpose last year, citing security concerns with the technology as well as the propensity of some tools to exhibit “bias, unpredictability, and malicious behavior,” according to an April 2023 internal guidance memo obtained by WIRED through a public records request. Jamie Holcombe, the chief information officer of the USPTO, wrote that the office is “committed to pursuing innovation within our agency” but are still “working to bring these capabilities to the office in a responsible way.”Paul Fucito, press secretary for the USPTO, clarified to WIRED…

18 Nov

Why the US Government Banned Investments in Some Chinese AI Startups

stp2y0 CommentsAIai lab, algorithms, artificial intelligence, china, machine learning, regulation

The more certain short-term impact is that US investors who are still interested in Chinese AI startups will have to do a whole lot more due diligence. The Treasury Department is not setting up a new government committee like CFIUS that will review every transaction investors submit, and is instead asking them to do their own homework and report whether they believe a Chinese AI company would be covered.Under the new rules, even if a Chinese startup’s AI model is smaller than the 1025-flops size threshold, a US investor might still have the responsibility to notify the Treasury Department about…

16 Nov

Bitfinex Hacker Gets 5 Years for $10 Billion Bitcoin Heist

stp2y0 CommentsAIartificial intelligence, bitcoin, cryptocurrency, cybersecurity, hacking, hacks, north korea, security, security roundup

In perhaps the most adorable hacker story of the year, a trio of technologists in India found an innovative way to circumvent Apple’s location restrictions on AirPod Pro 2s so they could enable the earbuds’ hearing aid feature for their grandmas. The hack involved a homemade Faraday cage, a microwave, and a lot of trial and error.On the other end of the tech-advancements spectrum, the US military is currently testing an AI-enabled machine gun that is capable of auto-targeting swarms of drones. The Bullfrog, built by Allen Control Systems, is one of several advanced weapons technologies in the works to…

15 Nov

Some of Substack’s Biggest Writers Rely On AI Writing Tools

stp2y0 CommentsRAG modelsartificial intelligence, chatgpt, machine learning, openai

Substack does not have an official policy governing the use of AI. One of Substack’s cofounders, Hamish McKenzie, has described the generative AI boom as a sea change that writers will need to confront, regardless of their personal views on the tech: “Whether you’re for or against this development ultimately doesn’t matter. It’s happening,” he wrote in a Substack post last year.Several of the Substack authors WIRED spoke to emphasized that they used AI to polish their prose rather than to generate entire posts whole cloth. David Skilling, a sports agency CEO who runs the popular soccer newsletter Original Football…