Category: Science & Technology

Earlier this year, Google launched a Circle to Search feature for Android that takes a screenshot and lets you select what to look up. Thanks to Google Lens and iOS Shortcuts, the underlying Circle to Search capability can now be replicated on any iPhone.

Google has previously said that the main difference between Google Lens and Circle to Search is how the latter is universally accessible on Android with a long-press of the gesture bar or home button. They otherwise share the same search and OCR (optical character recognition) technology, though CtS does benefit from the ability to circle or lasso items you want to select instead of just having to tap.

Google Lens has long been available on iOS as part of the Google (Search) app.

The Google app now offers a shortcut that will take a screenshot and send it to Google Lens for analysis. You can activate this “Search your screenshot” shortcut very easily with the Action Button on the iPhone 15 Pro:

However, that ease of access can be replicated on all other (modern) iPhones thanks to the Back Tap gesture. You can double or triple tap the back of your device to launch the shortcut:

1. On your iPhone, go to Settings > Accessibility > Touch.
2. Scroll down, then select Back Tap.
3. Select either Double Tap or Triple Tap.
4. Scroll down to the Shortcuts area, then choose a shortcut.
5. Tap Back Tap to apply the setting.
6. Double-tap or triple-tap the back of your phone to run the shortcut.

Your iPhone will take a screenshot of your current display and then send it to Google Lens to quickly copy text, translate, or perform a visual search, with the ability to add a text query. On initial run, select “Always Allow” to allow the image sharing.

Apple just wrapped up its “Let Loose” event, where it showed off its first new iPads in nearly two years. But the event had more than just iPads — we also got a first look at some refreshed accessories and updated software.

If you want a quick rundown of everything Apple announced, check out our roundup below.

The iPad Air adds more screen real estate

Apple has added a new 13-inch iPad Air to its lineup, offering a cheaper and lighter alternative to the iPad Pro. In addition to the larger size, Apple added its M2 chip to the device — an upgrade from the M1 chip it included with its 2022 model.

The new iPad Air comes in blue, purple, starlight, and space gray. It costs $599 for the 11-inch version and $799 for the 13-inch model. Both models feature 128GB of base storage and come with options for 512GB and 1TB.

The iPad Pro gets an OLED display and a lightweight redesign

For the first time, the iPad Pro comes with a crisper, more vibrant OLED display. The iPad Pro also sports a thinner profile, measuring just 5.3mm for the 11-inch version and 5.1mm for the 13-inch model.

Apple didn’t just give the iPad Pro a physical makeover — it even added its next-generation M4 processor. The new iPad Pro comes in silver and space black, along with 256GB of base storage. The 11-inch model starts at $999, while the 13-inch version starts at $1,299.

A faster, AI-ready M4 chip

Speaking of the M4, Apple took the wraps off its new processor during its event. It comes with a 10-core CPU and a 10-core GPU and is built using the more efficient 3nm process. Apple says the chip’s CPU is 50 percent faster than the M2, making it “an outrageously powerful chip for AI.”

A new Apple Pencil Pro with haptic feedback

After taking the wraps off of a cheaper Apple Pencil with USB-C last year, Apple is back with another update. The new Apple Pencil Pro now supports haptic feedback, along with a new squeezing gesture you can use to open up a menu. It also lets you roll the Pencil to change brush shapes and supports Find My.

The Apple Pencil Pro is compatible with the iPad Pro and costs $129.

A Magic Keyboard that “feels just like using a MacBook”

The Apple Pencil isn’t the only iPad accessory getting an upgrade. Apple also showed off a redesigned Magic Keyboard with an aluminum palm rest, a larger trackpad with haptic feedback, and a function row. It also comes in silver and space black to match the iPad Pro.

The Magic Keyboard costs $299 for the 11-inch version and $349 for the 13-inch version.

A cheaper iPad starting price

With the launch of the new iPad Air and iPad Pro, Apple announced that it’s lowering the price of its entry-level 10th-generation iPad to $349. That’s $100 less than its previous $449 starting price.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/24148044/apple-ipad-let-loose-event-biggest-announcements-may-2024

Can something as simple as a college application predict a student’s GPA four years later? Using someone’s past to predict their future was the thrilling plot of Marvel’s “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” with the evil group HYDRA utilizing artificial intelligence to figure out who could be a threat to the bad guys in the future — and eliminating them. Now, in the real world, scientists say AI really can examine how someone writes an essay to predict what their college career will look like years later.

Researchers Jonah Berger and Olivier Toubia explain that the way you express your thoughts and ideas could foreshadow your eventual grades in school. Published in PNAS Nexus, the researchers found that students who made connections between very different concepts or ideas in their admissions essays tended to get higher grades in college later on. It wasn’t about using big fancy words but about how they structured their thoughts and blended different ideas together.

Imagine each idea or concept is like a city on a map. Some students’ essays stayed within a small neighborhood, only visiting nearby “cities” or related concepts. However, the students who went on to be high achievers took a journey all across the map, visiting lots of far-flung cities and blending those distantly related ideas together in their essays.

Berger and Toubia called this spanning a large “semantic volume” – just like exploring a wide geographic area. Those students with essays covering more intellectual terrain ended up with better college GPAs.

The AI study found it wasn’t just about conceptual breadth. The researchers also looked at “semantic speed” – how smoothly the writers moved between different idea neighborhoods as they wrote their essays. The top students didn’t jump randomly between completely unrelated areas. Instead, they meandered fittingly, taking a logical path and moving coherently between adjacent idea clusters before venturing elsewhere.

It was like a road trip planning an efficient route between cities rather than teleporting erratically all over the map. This unified, structured exploration of different concepts is said to demonstrate creative thinking skills alongside strong analytical reasoning abilities.

So, did scientists just build their own Project Insight?
Obviously, Berger and Toubia haven’t built an AI crystal ball that hunts down the superheroes of the future, but the new program does look at a lot of the same information!

“The 21st century is a digital book,” Marvel character Jasper Sitwell famously said in the 2014 blockbuster. “Your bank records, medical histories, voting patterns, emails, phone calls, your damn SAT scores! Zola’s algorithm evaluates people’s past to predict their future.”

Just like Project Insight, this AI program also factors in a person’s SAT score, their parents’ education, their gender, ethnicity, college major, essay topics, and essay length to predict where that student will go in life. However, the study found that these factors didn’t play as much of a role in the final outcome as you might think.

AI was able to automatically analyze the “semantic geography” of the admissions essays using cutting-edge natural language processing. Just by modeling the concepts covered and paths taken through idea space, the AI could predict which students would get higher grades years into the future – even better than just looking at things like test scores or family income levels.

So, rather than multiple-choice tests, future AI programs could use these conceptual signatures in our writing as a neutral way to identify raw intellectual talents. It’s like giving the AI a digital map of our thoughts and letting it evaluate the scope, complexity, and logical connectivity of our idea explorations.

Source: https://studyfinds.org/project-insight-ai-predict-future/

The High Court, therefore, asked the concerned stakeholders to include material in school curriculum about virtual touch and its repercussions and dangers.

Educating minor children about sexual harassment by teaching them about ‘good touch’ and ‘bad touch’ might not be sufficient to protect them from the threats of the virtual world, the Delhi High Court recently observed [Kamlesh Devi v State of NCT of Delhi & Anr].

Hence, they must be taught about virtual touch as well, Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma said.

Educating minors about ‘virtual touch’ involves teaching them about appropriate online behaviour, recognizing warning signs of predatory behaviour and understanding the importance of privacy settings and online boundaries, the Court explained.

“Just as children are taught to exercise caution in the physical world, efforts must be made taken to teach them to develop critical thinking skills to assess the credibility of online contacts and safeguard their personal information,” the single-judge said.

She, therefore, asked the concerned stakeholders to include material in school curriculum about virtual touch and its repercussions and dangers.

“The need of the hour in this case is also to send a message through this order/judgment to the concerned stakeholders such as schools and colleges, Delhi State Legal Services Authority as well as Delhi Judicial Academy to hold programs, workshops, and conferences focusing not only on the traditional concepts of ‘Good’ and ‘Bad Touch’ but also on the emerging concept of ‘Virtual Touch’ and its potential dangers,” the Court said.

The Court observed that in today’s virtual modern world where virtual space has also become a priding ground for alleged virtual affections between teenagers, the teenagers are not equipped to deal with the potential dangers of human trafficking for prostitution and other side of crimes which exists in the virtual world.

Justice Sharma passed the order while dealing with a plea filed by a woman named Kamlesh Devi accused of being involved in the kidnapping of a 16-year-old girl.

She was the mother of a man named Rajiv who befriended a minor girl on social media, kidnapping her and confining her for days.

It was also alleged that the girl was subjected to sexual assault and forced to marry a 45-year-old man in exchange for money. The minor also alleged that the accused persons used to bring various men to the premises where she was confined and she was forced to present herself to these men for sexual gratification.

Source: https://www.barandbench.com/news/minors-taught-virtual-touch-safe-social-media-delhi-high-court

The launch of the Boeing Starliner, which was set to take astronaut Sunita Williams to space for a third time, has been postponed due to a technical glitch. No new date has been officially announced for the launch.

The long-awaited first crewed test flight of Boeing’s new Starliner space capsule was called off on Tuesday over a technical issue. The postponement, attributed to an issue with a valve in the rocket’s second stage, was announced during a live NASA webcast.

The Boeing Starliner was set to lift off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida’s Cape Canaveral at 8.04 am India time.

“NASA, Boeing, and United Launch Alliance scrubbed the launch opportunity on Monday, May 6 for the agency’s Boeing Crew Flight Test to the International Space Station due to a faulty oxygen relief valve observation on the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket Centaur second stage,” the space agency said in a statement.

The two-member crew – NASA astronauts Barry Wilmore, 61, and Sunita Williams, 58 – were strapped into their seats aboard the spacecraft about an hour before launch activities were suspended.

They will be assisted out of the capsule by technicians to await a second launch attempt.

The duo were to launch atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, with liftoff scheduled for 8.04 am IST on Tuesday.

Williams, who has been waiting in line for a commercial crew flight for nearly a decade, was initially assigned to the program in 2015 due to her extensive experience in spacecraft development. She was later assigned to the CFT mission in 2022.

The next available launch window for the mission is Tuesday night, but no decision was immediately made for when a second liftoff attempt would be made.

During the approximately 10-day mission, Wilmore and Williams will thoroughly test the Starliner’s systems and capabilities, paving the way for the spacecraft to begin operational crew flights to the space station.

Source : https://www.indiatoday.in/science/story/indian-origin-astronaut-sunita-williams-third-space-flight-aborted-hours-before-liftoff-2536047-2024-05-07

Apple Watch saves Delhi woman’s life by detecting high heart rate, prompting AFib diagnosis. She thanks Tim Cook for advanced heart monitoring features.

Another in a series of lives saved by the Apple Watch: Delhi woman escaped what the doctors termed a “close call” after her Apple Watch’s heart rate feature detected her “abnormally high” heart rate and alerted her.

Sneha Sinha, a policy researcher in Delhi, told HT Tech that she had sought medical attention only after her Apple Watch’s ECG feature indicated the onset of Atrial Fibrillation (AFib).

AFib is an irregular and often very rapid heart rhythm. It can lead to blood clots in the heart and increases the risk of stroke, heart failure and other heart-related complications.

Sinha, who had no pre-existing health conditions, said she later emailed Apple CEO Tim Cook to thank him for developing the watch with such “precise and advanced” features and claimed that he reacted promptly.

“As an avid traveller, I hike and trek in high-altitude mountain regions above 15,000-16,000 feet where oxygen levels are often low,” Sinha told HT Tech.

She told HT Tech she had returned home after a usual day when she noticed heart palpitations. She said she used her Apple Watch to monitor it. However, she did not initially take the spike in her heart rate seriously.

“Despite repeated checks and ECGs showing a higher heart rate, I tried deep breathing, hoping it would resolve in sometime. I thought it may have occurred due to some reason and should calm down soon,” she said.

“When it persisted for over 1.5 hours, the ECG indicated the onset of AFib. At that point, I decided to seek medical attention and called a friend to take me to the hospital,” she added.

Source : https://www.livemint.com/technology/gadgets/apple-iphone-15-available-for-under-rs-60-000-during-flipkart-big-saving-days-sale-heres-how-you-can-grab-the-deal-11714959279507.html

The founder of a US-based company took to X to share that connection requests on LinkedIn now “come with threats”.

Many people use LinkedIn to connect with individuals they don’t know, sending personalised notes in hopes of the recipients accepting their requests. However, one LinkedIn user used this feature to issue a “warning” to the founder of a rival company. Simple Strat founder Ali Schwanke, in turn, took a screenshot of the “threats” she received and shared it on X. It has since raked millions of views and numerous comments from Internet users.

“Instead of being pitch slapped, now LinkedIn comes with threats,” wrote Schwanke on X. Alongside, she shared the screenshot of the “unwarranted threat” she received on LinkedIn.

According to the screenshot, Carlos Pantoja, CEO of Optima Solutions, sent a connection request to Schwanke with a message. The message reads, “Your first and only warning do not try to poach my employees or you will have no employees.”

He concluded his personal note with the words, “With much love.”

Take a look at the viral post here:

Schwanke also shared why she chose not to blur out the company and its CEO. “I usually blur stuff but in this case I felt that was too much work for an unwarranted threat,” she wrote.

Since being shared two days ago on X, the post has gone viral with over two million views and the numbers are still increasing. Many even took to the comments section of the post to share their thoughts.

Check out a few comments here:
“I could understand if you personally knew each other and in which case I’d be like ‘Dude, why are you trying to poach my peopleeeee?!’ But the aggression is somethin’,” posted an individual.

Another wondered, “LMAO. How exactly would he make you ‘have no employees’?”

“I love that he wanted to connect in order to say that,” expressed a third.

Source: https://www.hindustantimes.com/trending/linkedin-comes-with-threats-us-based-company-s-founder-after-rival-firm-ceo-gives-her-first-and-only-warning-101714744746935.html

Google has not one but two Department of Justice antitrust trials this year — and the first one, over Google Search, is finally coming to a close. On Thursday, lawyers showed up at the district court in Washington, DC, for the first of two days of closing arguments in the bench trial before Judge Amit Mehta.

This was the first tech anti-monopoly lawsuit the government had filed in two decades since US v. Microsoft. Its outcome directly affects one of the most valuable companies in the world. At this stage, the judge will only determine whether Google is liable for the antitrust charges brought against it. If so, there will be a separate proceeding to determine appropriate remedies. These could be court-ordered constraints on Google’s behavior or something as drastic as breaking up elements of its search business.

Thursday’s arguments focused on claims that Google violated anti-monopoly law — Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act — through its allegedly anticompetitive conduct in the market for general search engines. The DOJ has defined the relevant market as “general search engines” — like Google Search, Bing, and DuckDuckGo, as opposed to specialized search engines that focus on one category, like Yelp. Whether that is in fact the relevant market is up to the judge, as is the question of whether Google is a dominant player in that market.

It’s not enough to be dominant — the DOJ must also show that Google used its dominance to box out rivals and maintain monopoly power. Thursday’s arguments also addressed the question of whether Google’s actions were anticompetitive or merely reasonable business decisions. Friday’s closing arguments will focus on the government’s allegations that Google illegally monopolized the market for search advertising.

The government is arguing that Google has maintained its monopoly in the general search market through exclusionary contracts that lock up distribution channels so that rivals can’t become real threats. It alleges that Google’s contracts with phone manufacturers and browser companies for default search engine status make it difficult for rivals to enter the market and reinforce a negative feedback loop that makes it nearly impossible for them to reach scale — particularly devastating since scale is the key to having a quality search engine.

Google says it’s easy to change defaults and that manufacturers want to do deals with it because it’s invested in being the best search engine out there.

Judge Mehta held his cards close to his chest in terms of how he will rule, but his questioning of both the government and Google highlighted where he might see cracks in their cases.

Barriers to entry and business tradeoffs
Mehta seemed pretty on board with the government’s definition of the relevant market as general search engines — the first step in proving a monopoly. He seemed unconvinced that Google could be sufficiently substituted with a search provider for a specific category (like Amazon for shopping) even if they might compete in some areas.

But he seemed to wrestle with whether Google’s business decisions were reasonable versus anticompetitive. For instance, Google Search isn’t as privacy-focused as DuckDuckGo — but isn’t that just a reasonable business decision?

The DOJ’s Kenneth Dintzer said that Google’s decisions at times looked arbitrary. For example, it stored query-related data for 18 months, when most users preferred it be stored for two months or less. Ignoring users “because you feel like it” didn’t look like a business decision, he said.

Mehta also told Dintzer he was “struggling” to reach the conclusion “that Google’s product worsened over the last ten years” specifically due to lack of competition.

The judge also wondered whether the government had effectively proven that Google had erected barriers to entry, pointing to the example of rival search engine Neeva. Though the company eventually failed, Mehta asked why he shouldn’t take Neeva’s entrance to the market in the first place as an indication that the barriers to entry aren’t that high.
Dintzer said that even though Neeva was able to enter the market, it still relied on Microsoft’s Bing to power many of its queries. Furthermore, barriers to distribution — the high difficulty in getting people to use your non-Google search engine, which is likely what killed Neeva — are also barriers to entry. (Neeva, like DuckDuckGo, initially relied on Bing’s API but later created its own search engine from the ground up, at great expense.)

The specter of Neeva reappeared when Mehta addressed questions to Google. In a billion-dollar market like search, “one would think … there would be lots of businesses trying to come in and take that profit away.” But instead, only two new competitors (Neeva and DuckDuckGo) have popped up in the last decade or so. “Doesn’t that tell us everything we need to know?”

Google attorney John Schmidtlein said that massive investments in AI will significantly change how people interact with websites. Mehta conceded that may be true, but “my determination here is about today.”

Google’s multibillion-dollar deals with Apple
Mehta gave Google a particularly tough time over its massive payments to Apple to remain the default search engine on iOS. The trial last year revealed that Google gives Apple 36 percent of search ad revenue from Safari. The New York Times previously reported Google paid Apple about $18 billion in 2021 for the default status.

The judge posited that for another search engine to effectively compete with Google for that default slot, it would not only need to be just as good, it would also need to spend the billions Google pays to be the default — perhaps even more. Mehta noted that there’s just “one example in the last 15 years where somebody has dislodged Google” from a default spot, referring to Yahoo’s short-lived default status on Mozilla’s Firefox browser.

Besides that, Mehta said, “there’s no example of any instance in which any of these providers have seriously considered anyone other than Google.” And in the one area where “Microsoft thought they were making some headway, we heard [Apple executive] Mr. [Eddy] Cue say there’s no price they could have offered us. How is that a competitive marketplace?”

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/3/24147682/google-closing-arguments-search-distribution-trial-day-1

NEW YORK — There is so much about the brain we still don’t understand, but a new study has discovered some of the hidden connections that could soon help people suffering from various immune disorders. Researchers from Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute have discovered that the brain possesses a remarkable ability to detect, amplify, and suppress inflammation in mice. This finding sheds new light on the intricate relationship between the brain and the immune system, potentially paving the way for novel therapies targeting a wide range of autoimmune diseases and inflammatory disorders.

“The brain is the center of our thoughts, emotions, memories and feelings,” says co-first study author Dr. Hao Jin, who started this study as a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia and is now a tenure track investigator at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, in a media release. “Thanks to great advances in circuit tracking and single-cell technology, we now know the brain does far more than that. It is monitoring the function of every system in the body.”

The study, published in the journal Nature, builds upon recent work revealing the importance of the body-brain axis. This vital pathway allows for the exchange of information between various organs and the brain, enabling the brain to monitor and control the body’s biological processes.

To investigate the brain’s potential connections with inflammation and innate immunity, researchers focused on the innate immune system, a defense mechanism shared by all animals. Unlike the adaptive immune system, which remembers previous encounters with pathogens, the innate immune system attacks anything with common traits of germs, allowing for a quicker response to new threats.

The team discovered that a specific region of the brainstem, known as the caudal nucleus of the solitary tract (cNST), plays a crucial role in regulating inflammatory responses. By chemically suppressing the cNST in mice, the researchers observed an uncontrolled inflammatory response, with levels of pro-inflammatory molecules more than tripling and anti-inflammatory compounds decreasing by roughly two-thirds. Conversely, artificially activating the cNST resulted in a significant reduction in pro-inflammatory molecule levels and a nearly ten-fold increase in anti-inflammatory chemical levels.

“Similar to a thermostat, this newfound brain circuit helps increase or decrease inflammatory responses to keep the body responding in a healthy manner,” explains Dr. Jin. “In retrospect, it makes sense to have a master arbiter controlling this vital response.”

The implications of this discovery extend beyond mice, as previous research involving vagus nerve stimulation in humans suggests similar mechanisms may be at play. The findings also align with long-held beliefs about the mind’s influence on the body.

“A lot of psychosomatic effects could actually be linked to brain circuits telling your body something,” notes Dr. Jin.

Source: https://studyfinds.org/brain-circuit-immune-inflammation/

In November, lawsuit documents indicated that Google was paying 36 percent of the total revenue that it earns from searches conducted on Safari, and now it turns out that equates to $20 billion.

Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc, paid Apple $20 billion in 2022 for Google to be the default search engine in the Safari browser on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

The information was revealed in court documents Google provided in its antitrust dispute with the United States Department of Justice, reported Bloomberg.

The DoJ has accused Google of having a monopoly on search, and in the lawsuit against Google, the search engine deal with Apple has been a major focus.

In November, lawsuit documents indicated that Google was paying 36 percent of the total revenue that it earns from searches conducted on Safari, and now it turns out that equates to $20 billion.

Google has been the default search engine on Apple devices since 2002, though the deal has been renegotiated several times. Apple and Google have worked to keep the terms of the search engine agreement under wraps during the trial and before, but it has been well known that Google is paying Apple billions per year.

Google is the default search engine on Apple devices in most countries, but users can opt to swap to Yahoo, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Ecosia as alternatives. Changing browser engines requires opening up the Safari settings.

In Europe, the Digital Markets Act has required Apple to make changes to how browsers work. Users can choose a default browser when setting up their ‌iPhone‌, and there are more options than the handful of providers that Apple allows in the United States.

If Google loses the antitrust lawsuit against it, the deal between Apple and Google could be dissolved. Closing arguments are expected on Thursday and Friday, with the judge’s ruling set to come later in 2024.

Initially a free arrangement, it evolved into a lucrative deal where, by May 2021, Google was paying Apple over $1 billion monthly. In 2020, the figure was 17.5 percent of Apple’s total operating income.

Source : https://www.businesstoday.in/technology/news/story/google-paid-apple-a-staggering-20-billion-in-2022-for-default-search-engine-status-427909-2024-05-02

“I also have a lot of fans in China, well the feelings are reciprocated,” Musk added during the meeting.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, currently on a visit to China, expressed his admiration for the country, stating that he is a “big fan” and acknowledging the widespread admiration he receives there.

In a meeting with Ren Hongbin, the Chairman of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) on Sunday, Musk was captured on video expressing his sentiments. “I’m a big fan of China. I have to say that,” Musk stated, the video quickly gaining traction on X.

“I also have a lot of fans in China, well the feelings are reciprocated,” Musk added during the meeting.

Musk’s impromptu trip to Beijing, described as “unannounced and surprising,” included a meeting with Chinese Premier Li Qiang, where the two discussed bilateral cooperation and posed for a photo together, which Musk shared on X.com.

Premier Li Qiang, speaking to CCTV News, lauded Tesla’s presence in China as a testament to successful Sino-American economic collaboration. “Tesla’s business in China is a successful example of Sino-American economic and trade cooperation,” Premier Li remarked.

Highlighting the significance of Tesla’s Shanghai Gigafactory, Musk commended the diligence and ingenuity of the Chinese workforce. “Tesla’s Shanghai Gigafactory is the company’s best-performing one. Tesla is willing to further deepen cooperation with the Chinese side to achieve more win-win results,” Musk stated.

Moreover, Musk’s visit has sparked anticipation regarding the introduction of Tesla’s autopilot and supervised full self-driving (FSD) technology in China, the company’s second-largest market.

Earlier reports had suggested Musk’s plans to visit India and meet with Prime Minister Narendra Modi this month. However, citing Tesla’s quarterly results and impending commitments, Musk postponed the visit, with intentions to potentially announce investment plans later in the year.

Source : https://www.businesstoday.in/technology/news/story/im-a-big-fan-of-china-have-lots-of-fans-there-says-elon-musk-427537-2024-04-30

Check out other AI humanoids that are currently being developed below

A CHINESE company has just unveiled yet another human-like AI robot, that is eerily good at mimicking movements.

Shenzhen-based company Astribot has been working on the robot for a year, according to its website, and hopes to make it commercially available later this year.

The robot, known as S1, is much faster and stronger than your average human.

According to Astribot, the humanoid can execute movements with a top speed of 10 meters per second, and handle a payload of 10 kg per arm.

For comparison, an adult male can reach speeds of roughly seven metres per second.

It’s this speed that makes it able to pull a cloth from beneath a pillar of wine glasses without knocking them over – a feat few humans would be able to pull off successfully.

They can learn, think and work like people. : Astribot

S1 is capable of incredibly precise tasks, from flipping a sandwich in a frying pan to writing calligraphy.

The video Astribot released displaying S1’s abilities shows the humanoid performing classic daily tasks, like fixing drinks and preparing food.

It highlights how these robot companions can become the house staff of the future.

But Astribot doesn’t just envision these humanoid’s being the servants to the wealthy.

The company anticipates humanoid robots taking on the human jobs that are deemed most dangerous.

According to Astribot’s website, “They can learn, think and work like people.

“They can use human tools and equipment to help people complete boring, difficult or dangerous tasks.”

The site also indicates that the parent company, Stardust Intelligence, was founded by Lai Jie, who also worked with Tencent Robotics Laboratory, Baidu, and Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Tencent and Baidu and two of China’s biggest AI-centric tech companies.

Collectively, they are helping power a fierce ongoing tech war with the US, as Beijing sources say humanoid robots might “soon” be brought to the homes of everyday people.

S1 is a two-armed robot, and appears fairly stationary in comparison to other humanoids we’ve seen.

Earlier this month, for example, Boston Dynamics showed the world its new Atlas robot, which was able to perform super-human yoga movements.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/tech/11217984/humanoid-ai-robot-china-astribot-s1

Apple’s reckoning isn’t just the end of an era for the company — it’s a reflection of the smartphone’s fall from beloved gadget to commodity.

I was sitting in a suburban Cincinnati Starbucks when I realized everything was going to change.

It was early 2008, and a friend was showing me his new phone. He loaded a website and passed his iPhone across the table, and I scrolled down the page. It was slow and clunky, but it was real. “There it is,” he said. “The internet on my phone.”

It was like seeing the moment that something fragile falls out of your hands. You know it’s going to be everywhere, but for a second, it isn’t. And everything did change, though not all at once. In the early days, the iPhone was powerful — exciting even — but not dominant. I carried a work-issued Blackberry Curve well into 2012. People had a lot of different phones back then, actually; Nokias, Motorolas, HTCs, Palms. But over time, they were seemingly replaced one by one in the hands of everyone I knew, all with the same device: the iPhone.

I didn’t cover smartphones then, but even just being adjacent to mobile tech, I could feel that the energy around a new iPhone launch was different. Normal people were aware of them, making them very different from the camera launch events I was covering. And they truly felt like events, something that made everyone stop and take notice. They reverberated across the country — from Cupertino all the way to suburban Cincinnati.

But over the years, the vibe slowly shifted. Last fall, coming off an intense couple weeks of testing the iPhone 15 Pro, I stopped by my wireless carrier’s local store. A sales associate and I chatted as he swapped my eSIM back to a physical SIM card. “What do you think of the new iPhones?” I asked. They were on the store shelves and had only gone on sale a few days ago. “Eh,” he said, “they’re phones.”

As much as Apple would like us to think otherwise, this is where we are: iPhones are just phones. To most people — even to someone who spends all day selling them — they’re just a tool, and getting a new one feels like an inevitability, not an event. Something about as exciting as upgrading your washing machine.

Phones have assumed a more appliance-like position in our consciousness; that much was inevitable. That’s not necessarily a problem for us, the consumers, but that’s definitely a problem for Apple. Despite its efforts to diversify over the years, it is still a company whose massive fortunes largely rest on one humble product: the iPhone. Apple has a vested interest in keeping us believing that the brand name on your phone matters.

Apple’s answer has been to build the walls of its garden higher and higher, making sure customers use its own products and nothing else. Now, those walls are threatening to come tumbling down.

We’re a long way from the “wow” moment of that first iPhone. It’s not all vibes, either. According to IDC, smartphone sales shrunk six out of the last seven years. The firm attributes some of that slump to improved device durability. Just about every flagship phone sold in the past few years, Apple’s lineup included, has offered full water resistance, meaning they’ll survive a brief dip in a body of fresh water. My 2016 iPhone SE did not survive such a fate.

IDC also points at something that’s a little harder to pin down: a “lengthened replacement cycle.” This is where we get into vibes territory: it just doesn’t feel as urgent to replace your smartphone every few years as it used to. In the real early days, lots of things about a smartphone were just bad. Battery life wasn’t great. Cameras were bad. Processors would chug, and console-quality mobile gaming was a distant vision. But all those things have gotten much better and increasingly irrelevant in the better part of the past decade.

Apple consistently ranks as one of the top three companies by revenue in the US, but it is the only company on those lists that makes most of its money from one very specific business: making and selling phones. When the smartphone market is in decline, Apple feels it in a way that Amazon and Walmart don’t.

So it’s been doing the logical thing for years, which is finding other ways to make money, and it’s been largely successful, particularly as it added the App Store and services like Apple Music. But its fortunes still rest disproportionately on iPhone sales: in Apple’s 2024 Q1 financials, it reports net sales of $119.6 billion in the three months prior to December 30th, 2023, with $69.7 billion attributed to the iPhone. Services — the second-highest business segment — contributed only $23 billion.

Early in its life, the iPhone gained a reputation as a platform that perfected new concepts rather than pioneered them. It wasn’t the first to implement face unlock, high-refresh-rate screens, or telephoto cameras, but it could be relied on to implement new-ish technologies with the edges roughed out (well, usually). But as Apple amassed a pile of proprietary features and services in its walled garden — the App Store, iMessage, FaceTime, Apple Wallet, to name a few — and its dominance in the US grew, one thing became clear: the company had no interest in letting anything in that might threaten its position.

As those products took off, Apple deployed some defensive moves. Take iMessage: it launched in 2011 and reached 140 million users by 2012. In 2013, there was clearly an appetite for cross-platform compatibility. The benefits were obvious — seamless communication rather than a confusing mix of green and blue bubbles, SMS and not. And it wasn’t just a matter of Android users wanting in; keeping Android users out gives iOS users an objectively worse and less secure experience. Apple executive Eddy Cue pushed for an Android iMessage app in 2016, but Craig Federighi responded in an internal email that “iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove an obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones.”

And Tim Cook, famously, thinks you should “buy your Mom an iPhone” if you want to use iMessage with her.

We can see the same strategy at work across the ecosystem — from FaceTime to watches, you’ll find a lot of friction if you try to take an Apple product outside of the garden. But while we can speculate about Apple’s motivations for peripherals and services, when it comes to iMessage, there’s no mystery at all: Apple kept it locked down for a decade to keep iOS users locked in. Executives at the company have said as much, both internally and out loud.

Customer lock-in is only part of the equation — there’s also the platform itself and the people who develop for it. Unsurprisingly, Apple has also maintained a death grip of control over the app store since its inception, placing strict limitations on developers making apps for the platform and building it into a revenue-generating machine for the company.

The app store launched in 2008 with a key policy in place: Apple would get a 30 percent commission on every app sold. Later, when the company added in-app purchases, it would require developers to use Apple’s own payment processing — with the same 30 percent cut applied to every transaction. Over the years, the app store ballooned — from its initial 500 apps to “thousands” at the end of 2008 to its present-day total of 1.8 million. And in 2020 alone, it brought Apple more than $60 billion in revenue.

As the App Store grew, Apple’s strict controlling measures came under more and more criticism. Developers complained that the company’s app review process — deciding which apps get to go into the App Store and which don’t — was opaque and unfair. Complaints about the company’s 30 percent cut on purchases led Apple to drop its fee down to 15 percent on subscriptions after the first year. And smaller developers struggled to find a business model that worked between Apple’s commission fees and strict guidelines over how and when it could charge customers for their product.

By 2016, Apple was taking a much more reactive stance than in the early days — introducing policy changes more frequently and usually in response to criticism.

The result has been a patchy and confusing network of fixes. Certain types of apps were disallowed and then quietly re-allowed. App store policies made it difficult for services like Kindle and Netflix to exist on iOS since they let users access subscription content purchased outside of those apps. So Apple carved out an exception for these apps, but controversy ensued when an email app maker tried to apply the classification to its app. Apple’s strategy is starting to look a lot more like defense than offense.

Source : https://www.theverge.com/24141929/apple-iphone-imessage-antitrust-dma-lock-in

Sundar Pichai currently serves as the CEO of Google and Alphabet’s Board of Directors.

New Delhi: Sundar Pichai shared his 20 years of journey in Google with a heartening note on Instagram. In his instagram post he shared a glimpse of his 2 decades of journey and noted significant changes since his first day in the tech giant. The post included a photo featuring balloons forming “20” alhaphetical number along with a lava lamp with the words “Congratulations on 20 years”.

“April 26, 2004 was my first day at Google. A lot has changed since then – technology, the number of people who use our products … my hair. What hasn’t changed – the thrill I get from working at this amazing company. 20 years in, I’m still feeling lucky.” wrote Sundar Pichai. The post received over 136,700 likes with many users congratulating Mr. Pichai in the comments section.

Check out some of the comments on his post below:
One user commented, “You are still inspiring me sundar Sir.” (Also Read: Lenovo Launches IdeaPad Pro 5i Laptop In India With TUV Eyesafe Certification; Check Price, Specs)

Another user wrote, “Great achievements over the past 20 years. I wish you success”

“Happy Googleversary” commented the third user.

The fourth one wrote, “So proud of you.”

Source: https://zeenews.india.com/technology/sundar-pichai-completes-20-years-journey-at-google-says-a-lot-has-changed-since-first-day-2744472.html

Alphabet and Microsoft ignited a rally in technology stocks on Friday with earnings that showed big AI investments were driving growth, allaying doubts that their costly bets would take time to pay off after a soft forecast from Meta Platforms.
Alphabet surged 10% and closed with a stock market value above $2 trillion for the first time, according to LSEG data, after the company sweetened the pot for investors with its maiden dividend and a $70 billion stock buyback.

The world’s fourth most valuable firm flirted with the milestone on an intraday basis over three years ago, according to LSEG Datastream.
Microsoft gained nearly 2% and added about $54 billion to its market value.
After pouring billions of dollars into the infrastructure needed to support AI applications, both Alphabet (GOOGL.O), opens new tab and Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab reported that their quarterly revenue growth was outpacing expectations as more users turn to services including the Copilot AI assistant and the Gemini chatbot.

AI services accounted for 7 percentage points of the 31% jump in revenue at Microsoft’s Azure cloud-computing platform between January and March, finance chief Amy Hood said.
She added near-term AI demand was a bit higher than the company’s capacity, which held back growth in the quarter and highlighted the need for spending to expand its infrastructure.
At Google, cloud revenue jumped about 28% with strong growth in Google Workspace, where the Alphabet unit offers a slew of AI features powered by its large language model Gemini.

The results contrasted with a warning of higher spending and softer-than-expected growth from social media giant Meta (META.O), opens new tab, whose stock tumbled 10% on Thursday.

“This quarter illustrated how demand remains high for generative AI from Microsoft customers, and we continue to believe that Microsoft sits as a leader in this GenAI environment,” D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria said.
“Meta is indicating the results of further increased investment may be years away while Microsoft and Google are showing them right now.”

The results also sparked a rise of 3.4% in Amazon.com (AMZN.O), opens new tab, which will report earnings on Tuesday.
“The three hyperscalers (major cloud companies) we’ve heard from thus far all highlighted a similar message on AI capital expenditure – this is an arms race, the AI opportunity is enormous, and spending will continue to be aggressive/ahead of market expectations,” Bernstein analyst Michael Chiang said.
Microsoft’s capital expenditures grew by $300 million from the previous quarter to $11.5 billion, while Alphabet’s capital expenditures were $12 billion, a 91% jump from a year prior.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/technology/alphabet-microsoft-shares-jump-investors-cheer-ai-investment-2024-04-26/

The two NASA astronauts assigned to Boeing’s first human spaceflight arrived at their launch site Thursday, just over a week before their scheduled liftoff.

Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will serve as test pilots for Boeing’s Starliner capsule, which is making its debut with crew after years of delay. They flew from Houston into Kennedy Space Center on Thursday.

Due to blast off May 6 atop an Atlas rocket, the Starliner will fly to the International Space Station for a weeklong shakedown cruise. Boeing is trying to catch up to SpaceX, which has been launching astronauts for NASA since 2020.

No one was aboard Boeing’s two previous Starliner test flights. The first, in 2019, didn’t make it to the space station because of software and other problems. Boeing repeated the demo in 2022. More recently, the capsule was plagued by parachute issues and flammable tape that had to be removed.

Wilmore stressed this is a test flight meant to uncover anything amiss.

“Do we expect it to go perfectly? This is the first human flight of the spacecraft,” he told reporters. “I’m sure we’ll find things out. That’s why we do this.”

Source: https://apnews.com/article/boeing-space-capsule-starliner-astronauts-nasa-4742d2759c51d63c0d2ec9cbf93fce25

Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab beat Wall Street estimates for third-quarter revenue and profit on Thursday, driven by gains from adoption of artificial intelligence across its cloud services, and the company’s shares jumped more than 4% in extended trade.
Executives forecast ranges for current quarter cloud revenue that were mostly above Wall Street targets.
The rise in Microsoft shares after the bell lifted the company’s stock market value by $128 billion as profit and revenue growth overshadowed its higher-than-expected capital expenditures. In contrast, Facebook and Instagram parent Meta’s market capitalization fell by $200 billion on Wednesday after it warned of rising AI expenses and issued a lower-than-anticipated revenue forecast.

“Microsoft’s AI-powered earnings demonstrate that doubling down on innovation is paying off,” said Jeremy Goldman, senior director of briefings at Emarketer, pointing to the company’s early moves in generative AI, such as its large investment in ChatGPT maker OpenAI.
Microsoft revenue rose 17% to $61.9 billion in the quarter ended March, exceeding the consensus estimate of $60.80 billion, according to LSEG data. Earnings per share of $2.94 topped Wall Street’s target of $2.82.

At the same time, Microsoft’s AI-driven capital expenditures in the third quarter were nearly $1 billion more than analysts’ estimates. Capital expenditures grew from $11.5 billion in the previous quarter to $14 billion, passing estimates of $13.14 billion, according to Visible Alpha.
“We’re continuing to see customer demand grow quite a bit,” Brett Iversen, Microsoft’s vice president of investor relations told Reuters. “And so we’re making sure to scale our available capacity in line with that.”

The stock has soared on Microsoft shipping generative AI (genAI) tools based on its strategic partnership with OpenAI and also helped it capture the world’s most valuable company crown from Apple this year. Microsoft has special access to OpenAI’s coveted AI technologies, which it has been working to infuse across its product portfolio, such as in Azure, Bing and also Microsoft 365, which includes Word, Excel, and Powerpoint.

Revenue from Microsoft’s Intelligent Cloud unit, which houses the Azure cloud computing platform, rose to $26.7 billion, passing the average estimate of $26.24 billion, LSEG data showed.
It forecast fourth quarter intelligent cloud revenue of $28.4-28.7 billion, mostly ahead of Wall Street targets of $28.47 billion.
Azure revenue rose 31%, higher than a 29% growth estimate from market research firm Visible Alpha. Microsoft forecast Azure growth in the fiscal fourth quarter would be 30%-31%, which would put it ahead of the 28.5% Wall Street target.
Microsoft does not break out the absolute revenue figure for Azure, the part of its business best situated to capitalize on booming interest in artificial intelligence.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/technology/microsoft-beats-quarterly-revenue-estimates-2024-04-25/

You wanna see her move? I think that’s the fun part.

The room is thick with anticipation and fabricated skulls.

She’s gonna wake up. Give her a second.

Matt McMullen eyes his creation as her eyes flutter open in return, her gaze settling upon all the disembodied faces and mechanical mandibles surrounding her in this workshop where fake hair co-mingles with real ambition.

Gradually, she stirs to life, this robot who doesn’t look like one.

Her arms flare out a bit, her head tilts downward then upward, a smile slowly, yet steadily blossoms on her face like time-lapse footage of a flower blooming in the sunlight.

“Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” renowned science fiction author Philip K. Dick once asked in the title of one of his most celebrated works, which would later be adapted into the film “Blade Runner.”

Nope, turns out they fantasize about visiting theme parks instead, as we learn on a recent Wednesday morning.

“So, who is going to take me to Disneyland?” the robot wonders, her words apropos of … well, we’re not quite sure.

Maybe she’s just reacting to her environment: on a table nearby rests a small sign adorned with an image of Mickey Mouse and a quote from Walt Disney.

“If you dream it, you can do it,” it reads.

McMullen’s dream?

To build robots with a human look and feel like never seen before.

He’s been at it for decades now, and this is his most realistic creation yet, a supermodel-esque woman with long blonde-brown hair and bared midriff who speaks with what sounds like a mild Scottish accent.

“This one is more advanced than the last one we built,” McMullen notes, arms and face covered in tattoos and pride, respectively. “She’s one of a kind.”

As artificial intelligence continues to evolve at a rapid pace — which frightens some and excites others — enabling robots to approximate their human creators to increasingly greater degrees, Las Vegas is getting in on the game.

Growing use of humanoid robots

There’s the five Aura humanoid robots that interact with visitors in the atrium of the Sphere, as well as the Tipsy Robot bars at Planet Hollywood and The Venetian, where you can knock back a rum and Coke poured by a made-from-metal bartender.

Moreover, there’s a number of robotics/AI-based companies in the Vegas-area, including Battlebots, Blackfire, Cobot Nation, Brainlike, Koshee.ai and Terbine.

“I moved here 10 years ago, and to see all this growth in the tech space, it’s always exciting,” says Paul Oh, Lincy Professor for Unmanned Aerial Systems at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, whose areas of expertise encompass robotics, autonomous systems, unmanned aerial vehicles and humanoids. “It continues to develop, and so I really do think there’s a lot of potential here. We’ve also seen over the past 10 years, that there’s more and more consumer-level products with robotics.

“It’s more than just robot vacuum cleaners,” he continues. “I think more and more people are saying, ‘Yeah, I could do a driverless car,’ which is actually a robot. I could do virtual reality — that’s an outgrowth of robotics. I can do 3D printing — that’s also the domain of robotics and manufacturing. The list goes on and on.”

Increasingly, said list includes humanoid robots, which Oh knows well firsthand: In 2022, students in his Drones and Autonomous Systems Lab advanced to the finals of the $10 million ANA Avatar XPRIZE, a worldwide competition to create a human-robot avatar system in Long Beach, California.

The students’ creation, named Avatar-Hubo, placed 11th overall.

More recently, humanoid robots have made national news, as Oh notes: Last month at global AI conference Nvidia GTC, which is put on by tech company Nvidia and draws tens of thousands of participants annually to San Jose, California, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang took the stage with nine humanoid robots and introduced the company’s “Project Groot” endeavor, which will invest heavily in the further development of the technology.

“2024 is the Year of Humanoid. There’s no robot hardware more general-purpose,” Nvidia Research Manager Dr. Jim Fan posted on X. “We are all in.”

Tesla is also getting in the game with its Optimus humanoid robot prototype, the latest version of which was unveiled last December.

McMullen’s attempting to take things even further: He wants his robots to appear and act more like people, to serve any number of hypothetical purposes, from greeting you at the grocery and guiding you to the shampoo aisle if you need some Head and Shoulders to delivering meds and checking your vitals at the hospital to being an always-there-for-you life companion when you need someone — or some thing — to have a chat with.

AI’s growing prevalence in our daily lives has stoked plenty of fears. Will robots one day replace us mere flesh-and-bone mortals? Will they be our trusty sidekicks or go all “M3gan” on us? Will we eventually have to war with our smart toasters when machines rise up to challenge their human creators, Skynet-style? But McMullen’s not only embracing those fears, he’s turning them on their meticulously-sculpted robot heads.

And he’s doing it all in a nondescript, mid-sized studio tucked behind his home in the northwest side of town.

McMullen grins at the thought.

“Nobody would ever think this is in my backyard.”

From art school to androids

If the eyes are indeed the window to the soul, what if there is no soul to peer into?

This ranks high among the myriad challenges inherent in attempting to create realistic peepers for a comely she-bot.

And yet, when Realbotix’s latest creation scans the room, it doesn’t feel as if she’s doing so with vacant doll eyes or garage-door eyelids that go up and down with a clear mechanical lurch.

Instead, when she glances your way, it does feel as if she’s looking at you, which may register as a bit creepy to some — more on that later — but even if fake flesh makes your flesh crawl, there’s a clear craftsmanship in her gaze.

Getting to this point wasn’t easy: McMullen says that it took him and his team a full year to develop her eyes alone.

“It’s not so much the eye itself, it’s how the face and the eyelids and all of that work together,” he explains. “It’s really hard, because human eyes are actually not a hinge, they’re more of a sphincter muscle that can contract. And you can’t replicate that — at least not today. So we’re using motors that have linear motion, and we’re trying to create this natural appearance of these movements.”

Speaking of time-consuming tasks, don’t even get him started on how hard it is to make lifelike robot mitts.

“There are 100 more challenges attached just to the hands,” he notes.

Despite these difficulties, McMullen sounds far more enthused than exasperated when addressing said challenges — he’s an old pro at it by now, having been creating realistic figures since the late ’90s.

Unlike many of his peers, McMullen comes from a fine arts background rather than one in robotics.

He began sculpting when he was a teenager, attending art school for a time in his 20s, before landing a job with San Diego Halloween design company Disguise. One day around this time, he had an epiphany in a department store.

“They had hired an actress to pretend to be a mannequin — and she was really good at it,” McMullen recalls. “For some reason that stuck with me, I was like, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to have a mannequin that looks so real, that people would think that it was?’ Kind of like an inverse of that experience. I started coming up with this, like, crazy idea of a hyper-realistic, pose-able mannequin.”

To this end, McMullen founded his own company, Abyss Creations in 1996, which is perhaps best known for developing the RealDoll adult companion mannequin, the most deluxe versions of which can fetch over $10,000.

He’s sold thousands of them.

McMullen then founded Realbotix in 2014 to bring a similar realism to robots.

“I’ve always had this idea and concept that robots could be companions in some way,” he says. “Whether they be for entertainment, or I feel like there are certain people who can benefit from having sort of a simulated relationship, a friendship, with an AI-driven robot.”

Source: https://www.reviewjournal.com/local/local-las-vegas/an-artificial-mind-with-a-lifelike-body-las-vegas-man-brings-creations-to-life-3036378/

The 54-year-old patient is said to be recovering well after having a pig kidney as part of a double surgical procedure which also saw her fitted with a mechanical pump to keep her heart beating.

A US woman has become the first person in the world to undergo a pig kidney transplant and also have a mechanical heart pump surgically implanted.

Lisa Pisano’s combination of heart and kidney failure had left her too ill to qualify for a traditional transplant.

The 54-year-old, from New Jersey, became the first woman and only the second patient ever to receive a genetically-modified pig kidney when she “took a chance”.

In a world first, Ms Pisano allowed doctors at NYU Langone Transplant Institute in New York to implant a mechanical pump to keep her heart beating and then a few days later to transplant a pig kidney.

She said: “I was at the end of my rope. I just took a chance.

“And you know, worst case scenario, if it didn’t work for me, it might have worked for someone else and it could have helped the next person.”

Her husband Todd said: “With this surgery I get to see my wife smile again.”

Last month, it was revealed a 62-year-old man became the first person to be transplanted with a pig kidney.

Other transplant experts are said to be closely watching the progress of Ms Pisano, who doctors said was recovering well.

Dr Robert Montgomery, director of NYU Langone Transplant Institute, recalled there were cheers in the operating room as the organ immediately started making urine.

Source: https://news.sky.com/story/woman-has-combined-pig-kidney-transplant-and-heart-pump-implant-in-world-first-13122116

COPS are trialing new AI tech that writes police reports based on body camera footage – and it takes just minutes.

The system has received rave reviews from law enforcement, but strict rules are required to avoid any artificial intelligence blunders.

Security tech giant Axon says its Draft One is revolutionary.

And the company hopes that it could give police more time to focus on other parts of their jobs.

“Every single officer in the U.S. writes police reports, often every day and normally multiple times a day,” said Axon chief Rick Smith.

“As we’ve done with Draft One, harnessing the power of AI will prove to be one of the most impactful technological advancements of our time.

“To help scale police work and revolutionize the way public safety operates.”

Police have already been trialing the system.

And Axon says that it’s saving roughly an hour of a day per office.

This could translate to an extra shift of work for every eight officers that use the tech.

It works by uploading the audio from body camera footage.

This will be automatically transcribed and processed into a police report.

According to Axon, this can be completed within just five minutes of an incident ending.

ON TRIAL

Police who have trialed the tech were impressed by its usefulness.

“With over 27 years of experience in law enforcement, I have seen technology come and go,” said Fort Collins Colorado Police Services Sergeant Robert Younger.

Draft One has exceeded our expectations and will be a huge asset to our agency.

Robert YoungerFort Collins Colorado Police Services Sergeant

“But Draft One is one of the most exciting innovations for law enforcement I have ever seen.

“Our agency has been testing Draft One, and we have seen an 82% decrease in time spent writing reports.

“Testing Officers have also shared that the quality of their reports has improved substantially, with Draft One including statements and actions that could have easily been overlooked or missed if done manually.

“Draft One has exceeded our expectations and will be a huge asset to our agency.”

Axon says it did a double-blind study to compare its AI reports with ones from regular offers.

And it says that Draft One results were “equal to or better than” regular police reports.

However, the system uses AI and can’t be solely relied on.

Source: https://www.the-sun.com/tech/11176951/police-ai-body-camera-report-footage-axon-audio/

A MIND-BLOWING flying car has made history after conducting the world’s first flight with a passenger.

Music legend Jean-Michel Jarre, 75, took off in KleinVision’s half-plane hybrid, known as the AirCar, in Slovakia this week to mark the company’s latest milestone.

The French electronic artist completed two flights in the futuristic vehicle at Piestany international airport in front of mesmerised onlookers.

Made in Slovakia by Professor Stefan Klein and KleinVision’s co-founder Anton Zajac, the AirCar was approved for flight in 2022 following more than 200 successful takeoffs and landings.

The year before, the record-breaking vehicle had become the first flying car to complete an intercity flight.

Now, a successful flight involving a passenger has been added to the growing list of milestones.

As a long-time supporter of future tech, Jarre jumped at the chance to become part of history.

“One second you speak to the driver, and next, you are up there in the air. An amazing experience,” he said.

The AirCar is able to transform from a sports car into a plane within minutes.

The 1,000kg two-seat dual-mode prototype has foldable wings and a propeller on the back, and only needs 300m of runway to get off the ground and into the sky.

It previously featured on one episode of The Grand Tour, where Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May watched it take off and land.

Footage also showed the vehicle flying at up to 120mph at at 8,000 feet high.

Source: https://www.the-sun.com/tech/11174865/flying-car-makes-worlds-first-flight-with-passenger/?utm_campaign=native_share&utm_source=sharebar_native&utm_medium=sharebar_native

Meta Platforms (META.O), opens new tab disappointed investors on Wednesday with forecasts of higher expenses and lighter-than-expected revenue, knocking nearly $200 billion off its stock market value and raising fears the surging cost of AI is outpacing its benefits.
Shares of the Facebook and Instagram parent dropped about 15% in extended trade following the report, its market capitalization plunging to about $1 trillion.

The late-day slump in Meta’s stock value was just short of the $232 billion one-day loss suffered on Feb. 3, 2022, which was the record one-day loss of market capitalization for any U.S. company.
Alphabet (GOOGL.O), opens new tab shares fell 3% in extended trade and Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab declined 2%, with concerns that Wall Street may have underestimated the cost of the AI race hitting those Big Tech companies ahead of their reports on Thursday.

It raised its 2024 total expense forecast to $96 billion-$99 billion, from $94 billion-$99 billion. It also expects 2024 capital expenditure to fall within a range of $30 billion-$40 billion, up from its earlier forecast of $35 billion-$37 billion, it said.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg told analysts on a conference call that the focus on AI would “grow our investment envelope meaningfully before we make much revenue from some of these new products.”

Zuckerberg’s comments and the quarterly results tempered expectations for Meta’s AI investments after a series of smash-hit quarters for the social media giant. Meta enjoyed the biggest one-day gain in market capitalization in Wall Street history after its last quarterly report, when it posted robust results and announced a first-ever dividend.
“Investors are skeptical of the growing AI spending. Some of those investments could take years to pay off,” said Jasmine Enberg, principal analyst at Insider Intelligence.
“But Meta is in the AI race to win it, and Meta AI could be a dark horse. It has a built-in audience through its existing apps, and it will have an advantage in eventual monetization through its ad ecosystem,” Enberg said.
The company has been updating its ad-buying products with AI tools and short video formats to boost revenue growth, while also introducing new AI features like a chat assistant to drive engagement on its social media properties.
It announced last week that it is giving its Meta AI assistant more prominent billing across its suite of apps, meaning it will start to see how popular the product is with users in the second quarter.
“For all Meta’s bold AI plans, it can’t afford to take its eye off the nucleus of the business – its core advertising activities,” said Sophie Lund-Yates, lead equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown.
The company’s metaverse-oriented Reality Labs division missed expectations for the first quarter, posting sales of $440 million. Investors had been expecting $475 million, according to LSEG data.
The unit’s sales leaped 30% from the year prior, but were still below the average revenue of $523 million posted in previous first-quarter reports since Meta started disclosing Reality Labs revenue in 2021.
Reality Labs lost $3.8 billion in the quarter, putting it on track this year to match the $16 billion it lost over the course of 2023.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/technology/meta-raises-2024-expenses-forecast-support-ai-development-2024-04-24/

The United States and Russia are set to face off over nuclear weapons in space on Wednesday at the United Nations Security Council, which is due to vote on a U.S.-drafted resolution calling on countries to prevent an arms race in outer space.
Russia is expected to block the draft resolution, said some diplomats. The U.S. move comes after it accused Moscow of developing an anti-satellite nuclear weapon to put in space, an allegation that Russia’s defense minister has flatly denied.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield and Japan’s U.N. Ambassador Yamazaki Kazuyuki said in a joint statement on Friday that they have been negotiating with Security Council members on the draft text for six weeks.
The text affirms the obligation of states to comply with the Outer Space Treaty and calls on countries “to contribute actively to the objective of the peaceful use of outer space and of the prevention of an arms race in outer space.”

Apple has confirmed its next major launch event and it is just a few weeks away. The 2024 iPad model refresh is widely expected at the next May 7 launch event which comes with a tagline ‘Let Loose’ and an Apple Pencil as a part of the event creative. Apple has been widely tipped to bring the new iPads without all the jazz and a launch event but the company has done the opposite and planned another event just to bring the new iPad lineup in the market.

APPLE LET LOOSE MAY 2024 EVENT DATE, TIMINGS AND MORE
Apple’s next launch event is on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 AM PT which comes to 7:30 PM IST for those watching in India. Apple will be hosting the live stream via its YouTube page and also the events page on its official website. Apple is expected to have a video stream of the event which is basically a pre-recorded version that we have seen over the past few years.

APPLE 2024 IPAD PRO, IPAD AIR 12.9-INCH AND APPLE PENCIL 3 EXPECTED
The new iPad Air and Pro models could get a design refresh which is long overdue. Apple wants to dish out the M2 chipset for the iPad Air, which is likely to be offered in 10.9-inch and even a 12.9-inch version which will be first for the Air tablet series. We’re eager to see if the bigger screen model finds takers, especially when it is expected to cost a lot.

Apple wants to dish out the M2 chipset for the iPad Air, which is likely to be offered in 10.9-inch and even a 12.9-inch version which will be first for the Air tablet series. Talking about the iPad Pro, expect Apple to go berserk with M3 chip, OLED display and changes to its design to compliment the inevitable price bump for the lineup.

Source: https://www.news18.com/tech/apple-confirms-let-loose-launch-event-on-may-7-new-ipad-pro-ipad-air-and-more-expected-8863804.html

The satellite imagery has shown significant expansion in glacial lakes in the Himalayas, especially in India, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said on Monday.
The satellite data archives spanning the past 3 to 4 decades provide valuable insights into changes occurring in glaciated environments.

Long-term satellite imagery covering the catchments of Indian Himalayan river basins from 1984 to 2023 indicates significant changes in glacial lakes. Of the 2,431 lakes larger than 10 hectares identified during 2016-17, 676 glacial lakes have notably expanded since 1984. Specifically, 130 of these lakes are situated within India, with 65, 7, and 58 lakes located in the Indus, Ganga, and Brahmaputra River basins, respectively, the statement read.
The Himalayan Mountains are often referred to as the Third Pole because of their extensive glaciers and snow cover. They are considered highly sensitive to changes in the global climate, both in terms of their physical characteristics and their societal impacts.

Research conducted worldwide has consistently shown that glaciers across the globe have been experiencing unprecedented rates of retreat and thinning since the onset of the Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth century.
This retreat leads to the formation of new lakes and the enlargement of existing ones in the Himalayan region. These bodies of water, created by the melting of glaciers, are known as glacial lakes and play a crucial role as freshwater sources for rivers in the Himalayan region.
However, they also pose significant risks, such as Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs), which can have devastating consequences for communities downstream. GLOFs occur when glacial lakes release large volumes of meltwater due to the failure of natural dams, such as those made of moraine or ice, resulting in sudden and severe flooding downstream, ISRO further stated.

These dam failures can be triggered by various factors, including avalanches of ice or rock, extreme weather events, and other environmental factors. Monitoring and studying the occurrence and expansion of glacial lakes in the Himalayan region is considered challenging due to the inaccessible and rugged terrain.
Satellite remote sensing technology proves to be an excellent tool for inventory and monitoring due to its wide coverage and revisit capability, the ISRO stated, adding that assessing long-term changes in glacial lakes is crucial for understanding glacier retreat rates, assessing GLOF risks, and gaining insights into climate change impacts.
Elevation-based analysis further reveals that 314 lakes are located in the 4,000 to 5,000 m range and 296 lakes are above 5,000 m elevation.
The glacial lakes are categorized based on their formation process into four broad categories, namely Moraine-dammed (water dammed by moraine), Ice-dammed (water dammed by ice), Erosion (water dammed in depressions formed by erosion), and other glacial lakes. Among the 676 expanding lakes, the majority of them are Moraine-dammed (307) followed by Erosion (265), other (96), and Ice-dammed (8) glacial lakes, respectively, the release further stated.

Source: https://www.aninews.in/news/national/general-news/satellite-imagery-shows-significant-expansion-in-glacial-lakes-in-himalayas-isro20240422203531/#google_vignette

The 2019 policy, alongside measures such as restricting temporary workers and vendors from accessing internal systems, is being eliminated.

Alphabet Inc’s Google announced on Friday its decision to retract the mandate for US suppliers and staffing firms to pay their employees at least $15 an hour and offer health insurance and additional benefits. This move is anticipated to allow the tech titan to sidestep negotiations with unions.

The 2019 policy, alongside measures such as restricting temporary workers and vendors from accessing internal systems, is being eliminated to align with evolving US and global labour regulations concerning contingent workers, according to a spokesperson for Google, headquartered in Mountain View, California.

“These updates bring us in line with other large companies and simply clarify that Google is not, and has never been, the employer of our suppliers’ employees,” a Google spokesperson told Reuters.

This announcement follows a ruling by the U.S. National Labor Relations Board in January, labelling Google a “joint employer” of workers sourced through staffing firm Cognizant Technology Solutions, necessitating negotiations with their union. Google is contesting this ruling.

The board’s decision was influenced, in part, by the 2019 policy, which was deemed to grant Google control over the workers despite not directly employing them.

The labour board has taken steps to tighten regulations, making it harder for companies to evade negotiations with temporary and contract workers. Last year, it adopted a rule stating that companies with indirect control over working conditions may be classified as employers of contract workers. However, a federal judge halted the implementation of this rule in March.

Source: https://www.businesstoday.in/technology/news/story/google-to-drop-minimum-wage-benefits-rules-for-suppliers-and-staffing-firms-citing-regulatory-compliance-426254-2024-04-20

Nearly a quarter of UK five-to-seven-year-olds now have their own smartphone, Ofcom research suggests.

Social media use also rose in the age group over last year with nearly two in five using messaging service WhatsApp, despite its minimum age of 13.

The communications regulator warned parental enforcement of rules “appeared to be diminishing.”

It also said the figures should be a “wake up call” for the industry to do more to protect children.

In its annual study of children’s relationship with the media and online worlds, Ofcom said the percentage of children aged between five and seven who used messaging services had risen from 59% to 65%.

The number on social media went up from 30% to 38%, while for livestreams it increased from 39% to 50%. Just over 40% are reported to be gaming online – up from 34% the year before.

Over half of children under 13 used social media, contrary to most of the big platforms’ rules, and many admitted to lying to gain access to new apps and services.

“I think this is a wake up call for industry. They have to take account of the users they have, not the users that their terms and conditions say they have,” Mark Bunting, from Ofcom’s Online Safety Group told BBC News.

“We’ve known for a long time that children, under the age limit on a lot of the most popular apps, are widely using those apps, and companies are now under a legal obligation to take steps to keep those children safe,” he added.

Some campaigners want age limits to be introduced for smartphone use, and existing ones raised for social media.

However it is already the case that most phones possessed by children are likely to have been provided by parents – under-18’s cannot sign contracts, and most big operators say they do not sell pay-as-you-go phones to under-16’s.

Many parents give children phones because they want to be able to contact them or to track them via their mobile.

How can you keep children safe online?

Parents who spoke to the BBC also cited peer pressure, saying it was a struggle to keep children off social media when all their friends were a using an app. One parent said she felt “pushed into a corner”.

Closely watched
Heather Bryson who is 11 won wide recognition for her online exercise videos designed to help people in care homes during the pandemic, particularly those suffering dementia.

She’s had a smartphone since she was eight-years-old.

Her parents feel she’s benefited socially from being online, but what she does and who she communicates with are closely supervised.

“I think it’s become an important tool for anyone growing up these days”, her father, Gary Bryson says.

“Being able to monitor exactly what she’s doing is paramount”.

Heather says it lets her talk with friends on social media and through message apps, but there are negatives.

“Sometimes I get boys swearing at me online in chats which is not nice, but the good things there are loads of nice people out there too”.

“It’s just something that you get used to after a while but you shouldn’t have to”, she says.

‘Resigned’ parents
Only a third of parents know the correct minimum age requirement for most social media platforms Ofcom suggests

But the regulator said parents were also less willing to enforce the rules they knew about.

Three in ten parents were willing to let a child aged 5-7 have a social media profile even if it was under the minimum age permitted for the apps, an increase compared to last year.

Parents may be “resigned” to not being able to control children’s online lives the new report notes.

Mr Bunting said he had “a lot of sympathy” for parents on this issue:

“It may not be about preventing use entirely for children under 13, which I think is very difficult in today’s society. But parents can talk to their children about using those services safely. And we’d encourage them to do that,” he said.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-68838029

Alphabet Inc’s Google (GOOGL.O), opens new tab on Friday said it will roll back requirements that U.S. suppliers and staffing firms pay their employees at least $15 an hour and provide health insurance and other benefits, a move that could allow the tech giant to avoid bargaining with unions.
The elimination of the 2019 policy, along with other steps such as limiting access by temporary workers and vendors to internal systems, are designed to comply with shifting U.S. and global labor regulations related to contingent workers, a spokesperson for Mountain View, California-based Google told Reuters.

“These updates bring us in line with other large companies and simply clarify that Google is not, and has never been, the employer of our suppliers’ employees,” the spokesperson said.
The announcement comes after the U.S. National Labor Relations Board in January ruled that Google was a so-called “joint employer” of workers provided by staffing firm Cognizant Technology Solutions and must bargain with their union. Google is appealing that decision.

The board relied in part on the 2019 policy, saying it allowed Google to exert control over the workers even though it does not employ them directly.
The labor board has moved to make it more difficult for companies to avoid bargaining with temporary and contract workers, including adopting a rule last year that said companies with indirect control over working conditions can be considered the employers of contract workers. A federal judge blocked the rule from taking effect in March.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-scraps-minimum-wage-benefits-rules-suppliers-staffing-firms-2024-04-19/

Nasa administrator Bill Nelson has been outspoken about his fears surrounding China’s activities in space

SPACEX is reportedly building a fleet of spy satellites, with defence giant Northrop Grumman, as part of a secret deal with a US intelligence agency.

It follows comments made by a top Space Force commander earlier this month regarding China’s monster network of tracking satellites.

These satellites are believed to be monitoring western military operations on the ground – capabilities the US wants to match.

China’s rapid advancement in space has pushed Space Force to start work on its first-ever military exercise off-planet, to test how it might fend off “on-orbit aggression” from adversaries.

According to Reuters, SpaceX is building hundreds of spy satellites under its Starshield division as part of a $1.8billion classified contract.

Multiple contractors are being used alongside SpaceX.

This is so the unnamed US intelligence agency can avoid a scenario where one company – and one boss – has access to a large amount of highly sensitive information regarding the top-secret programme.

“It is in the government’s interest to not be totally invested in one company run by one person,” one of the news agency’s sources said, most likely referring to SpaceX founder Elon Musk.

Northrop – one of the biggest defence suppliers in the world – will provide sensors for at least 50 of the satellites in the constellation.

All spy satellites are to be tested at Northrop’s facility prior to their launch into orbit, Reuters reported.

Sources said the program would significantly boost the ability for the White House and US military to detect and track ‘targets’ anywhere in the world.

These satellites are rumoured to be imaging satellites, so operators can capture activities on the ground from afar.

The timeline of the programme is unclear, so it’s impossible to determine when the new network of satellites might come online.

But roughly a dozen prototypes have been launched since 2020, among other satellites on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets, three of the sources said.

SpaceX and Northrop Grumman occasionally conduct classified payload missions to space.

The next classified mission from Northrop, dubbed NROL-174, is scheduled to launch later this month.

The US’ National Reconnaissance Office – the satellite building branch of the Department of Defence – did not acknowledge claims of SpaceX’s involvement in the programme.

Instead, a spokesperson said: “The National Reconnaissance Office is developing the most capable, diverse, and resilient space-based intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance system the world has ever seen.”

CHINA’S INFLUENCE
Under President Xi Jinping’s leadership, China spent roughly $14billion (11.2billion) on its ambitious space programme in 2023, according to Statista.

Speaking to reporters at the 39th Space Symposium earlier this month, Gen. Stephen Whiting of US Space Command, said: “Frankly, China is moving at a breathtaking speed.

“Since 2018, China has more than tripled their on-orbit intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance satellites.

“And with these systems, they’ve built a kill web over the Pacific Ocean to find, fix, track and, yes, target United States and allied military capabilities.”

The US Marine Corps defines a “kill web” as “a dynamic network that seamlessly integrates intelligence and warfare capabilities across various domains, including land, sea, air, space and cyberspace.”

The country has “built a range of counterspace weapons, from reversible jamming all the way up to kinetic hit-to-kill direct-ascent and co-orbital ASATs,” according to Whiting.

As part of global efforts to set-up permanent habitation facilities on the Moon, China has also revealed plans to take its ‘all seeing’ Skynet surveillance off-planet.

Source: https://www.the-sun.com/tech/11136377/spacex-spy-satellites-us-china/

This marks Ola’s second IPO attempt, following a 2021 plan to raise up to ₹8,300 crore, which was scrapped.

Ride-hailing giant Ola Cabs is preparing for an initial public offering (IPO) aiming to raise around ₹4,000 crore with a company valuation of approximately ₹40,000 crore, Reuters reported on Friday.

Backed by SoftBank, Ola intends to submit IPO approval papers to market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) within three months. The report said that the company is in discussions with investment banks like Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citi, and Indian firms Kotak and Axis. Within a month, Ola plans to appoint IPO advisors, it added.

Ola’s second IPO attempt

This marks Ola’s second IPO attempt, following a 2021 plan to raise up to ₹8,300 crore, which was scrapped. Despite being valued at ₹58,300 crore during a 2021 fundraising round, internal assessments by investors have reduced Ola’s valuation.

Warburg Pincus, Temasek, and Tiger Global Management are among Ola’s other investors.

What is Ola cabs? 5 points

1. Ola is founded by Bhavish Aggarwal, a prominent figure in India’s startup landscape.

2. Bhavish Aggarwal also heads Ola Electric, the country’s leading electric scooter manufacturer.

3. Ola Electric has already filed regulatory papers for its IPO.

4. Ola’s cab business has implemented measures to cut losses and streamline operations, resulting in a notable reduction in fiscal year 2023 losses.

Source: https://www.hindustantimes.com/technology/ola-cabs-ipo-soon-bhavish-aggarwals-company-to-file-papers-in-3-months-report-101713535081874.html

Apple (AAPL.O), opens new tab said on Friday it had removed Meta Platforms’ (META.O), opens new tab WhatsApp and Threads from its App Store in China after being ordered to do so by the Chinese government, which cited national security concerns.
Other Meta apps including Facebook, Instagram and Messenger remained available, according to Reuters checks on Friday morning. Many other popular apps developed by Western companies including YouTube and X were also available for download.

It was not immediately clear how WhatsApp or Threads might have caused security concerns for Chinese authorities.
“The Cyberspace Administration of China ordered the removal of these apps from the China storefront based on their national security concerns,” Apple said in an emailed statement to Reuters.
“We are obligated to follow the laws in the countries where we operate, even when we disagree,” the statement said.

Meta declined to comment and referred queries to Apple.
The Cyberspace Administration of China did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The iPhone maker said WhatsApp and Threads remain available for download on its other storefronts. Tech-savvy Chinese consumers are able to download the apps from Apple’s App Stores in other countries if they have an iCloud account there.
Some experts on China’s tech industry said the government order on WhatsApp and Threads could be related to a new rule last August that requires all apps available in China to register with the government or risk being removed.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/technology/apple-removes-whatsapp-threads-china-app-store-wsj-reports-2024-04-19/

Chinese government-linked hackers have burrowed into U.S. critical infrastructure and are waiting “for just the right moment to deal a devastating blow,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said on Thursday.
An ongoing Chinese hacking campaign known as Volt Typhoon has successfully gained access to numerous American companies in telecommunications, energy, water and other critical sectors, with 23 pipeline operators targeted, Wray said in a speech at Vanderbilt University.

China is developing the “ability to physically wreak havoc on our critical infrastructure at a time of its choosing,” Wray said at the 2024 Vanderbilt Summit on Modern Conflict and Emerging Threats. “Its plan is to land low blows against civilian infrastructure to try to induce panic.”
Wray said it was difficult to determine the intent of this cyber pre-positioning which was aligned with China’s broader intent to deter the U.S. from defending Taiwan.

China claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory and has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under its control. Taiwan strongly objects to China’s sovereignty claims and says only the island’s people can decide their future.
Earlier this week, a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson said, opens new tab Volt Typhoon was in fact unrelated to China’s government, but is part of a criminal ransomware group.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/technology/cybersecurity/fbi-says-chinese-hackers-preparing-attack-us-infrastructure-2024-04-18/

A day after retiring the hydraulic model, Boston Dynamics’ CEO discusses the company’s commercial humanoid ambitions

Atlas lies motionless in a prone position atop interlocking gym mats. The only soundtrack is the whirring of an electric motor. It’s not quiet, exactly, but it’s nothing compared to the hydraulic jerks of its ancestors.

As the camera pans around the robot’s back, its legs bend at the knees. It’s a natural movement, at first, before crossing into an uncanny realm, like something out of a Sam Raimi movie. The robot, which appeared to be lying on its back, has effectively switched positions with this clever bit of leg rotation.

As Atlas fully stands, it does so with its back to the camera. Now the head spins around 180 degrees, before the torso follows suit. It stands for a moment, offering the camera its first clear view of its head — a ring light forming the perimeter of a perfectly round screen. Once again, the torso follows the head’s 180, as Atlas walks away from the camera and out of frame.

A day after retiring the hydraulic version of its humanoid robot, Boston Dynamics just announced that — like Bob Dylan before it — Atlas just went electric.

The pace is fast, the steps still a bit jerky — though significantly more fluid than many of the new commercial humanoids to which we’ve been introduced over the past couple of years. If anything, the gait brings to mind the brash confidence of Spot, Atlas’ cousin whose branch on the evolutionary tree forked off from the humanoid a few generations ago.

All-new Atlas

The new version of the robot is virtually unrecognizable. Gone is the top-heavy torso, the bowed legs and plated armor. There are no exposed cables anywhere to be found on the svelte new mechanical skeleton. The company, which has warded off reactionary complaints of robopocalypse for decades, has opted for a kinder, gentler design than both the original Atlas and more contemporary robots like the Figure 01 and Tesla Optimus.

The new robot’s aesthetic more closely matches that of Agility’s Digit and Apptronik’s Apollo. There’s a softer, more cartoonish design to the traffic-light-headed robot. It’s the “All New Atlas,” according to the video. Boston Dynamics has bucked its own trend by maintaining the research name for a product it will be positioning toward commercialization. SpotMini became Spot. Handle became Stretch. For now, however, Atlas is still Atlas.

“We might revisit this when we really get ready to build and deliver in quantity,” Boston Dynamics CEO Robert Playter tells TechCrunch. “But I think for now, maintaining the branding is worthwhile.”

The executive’s statement betrays the still early stages of the project. Boston Dynamics’ current timeline has the electric Atlas beginning pilot testing at Hyundai facilities earlier next year, with full production a few years further down the road.

“We’re going to be doing experiments with Hyundai on-site, beginning next year,” says Playter. “We already have equipment from Hyundai on-site. We’ve been working on this for a while. To make this successful, you have to have a lot more than just cool tech. You really have to understand that use case, you’ve got to have sufficient productivity to make investment in a robot worthwhile.”

Doing a 180

What’s most striking about the 40-second “All New Atlas” teaser is the robot’s movements. They’re a reminder that building a humanoid robot doesn’t require making the robot as human as possible. As an investor pointed out to me years back, billions of years of evolution hasn’t made us humans perfect machines. If we are going to create machines in our own images, why not build ones that can do things we can’t?

“We built a set of custom, high-powered and very flexible actuators at most joints,” says Playter. “That’s a huge range of motion. That really packs the power of an elite athlete into this tiny package, and we’ve used that package all over the robot.”

One thing worth keeping in mind while watching the footage is that Boston Dynamics has made its name across decades of viral videos. Recent additions to the canon are just as likely to showcase a ’bot’s dance moves as they are anything genuinely useful in an industrial setting. For that reason, it’s difficult to decouple what the company has deemed real functionality and what is just a bit of showing off.

Starting in the prone position, for instance, is an opportunity to showcase that cool reverse crab leg trick — but it’s practical, as well. As Boston Dynamics was more than happy to showcase in the hydraulic Atlas’ farewell video, falling down is part of the job — and so, too, is getting up. The truth of the matter is that most of the current crop of industrial robots require human intervention when they fail. A robot that can simply dust itself off and get back to work, on the other hand, is a big win for productivity.

The system’s ability to turn on a dime also lends considerably to its productivity potential. It brings to mind Agility’s Digit demos (the company is notably the only one of its ilk demoing systems at this scale), wherein a robot walks to a shelf, turns around, walks to the conveyer belt, turns around and walks back. Multiply that job by hundreds — or even thousands — of times a day, and you begin to see the value of shaving off precious seconds.

“It’s going to be capable of a set of motions that people aren’t,” explains Playter. “There will be very practical uses for that.”

Significantly reducing the robot’s turn radius is also important in tight spaces. Remember, these machines are meant to be brownfield solutions — that is, they’re designed to be plugged into existing workflows in existing spaces. Increased maneuverability could ultimately mean the difference between working in a setting and having to redo the layout.

Head and hands

The hands aren’t brand new for the video, having previously made appearances on the hydraulic model. They do, however, also represent the company’s decision to not hew entirely to human design as a guiding force. Here, the difference is as simple as opting for three fingers, instead of four on the end effectors.

“There’s so much complexity in a hand,” says Playter. “When you’re banging up against the world with actuators, you have to be prepared for reliability and robustness. So, we designed these with fewer than five fingers to try to control their complexity. We’re continuing to explore generations of those. We want compliant grasping, adapting to a variety of shapes with rich sensing on board, so you understand when you’re in contact.

Internally, the most contentious aspect of the design may well be the head. The big, round display has shades of a cosmetic mirror.

“It was one of the design elements we fretted over quite a bit,” says Playter. “Everybody else had a sort of humanoid shape. I wanted it to be different. We want it to be friendly and open. It provides a palette for a display. Of course, there are sensors buried in there, but also the shape is really intended to indicate some friendliness. That will be important for interacting with these things in the future.”

An Atlas for Christmas

The landscape has changed dramatically in the decade since the hydraulic Atlas’ introduction. Electric Atlas has a fair bit of company, in the form of humanoid robots from Figure, Apptronik, Tesla and 1X, among others.

“For us, there’s obviously been a huge influx of interest. I think that influx has been motivated by three events. Boston Dynamics got acquired [by Hyundai] for nearly a billion dollars. That sort of woke everybody up like, ‘whoa, there’s an exit path.’ Tesla expressing interest in manufacturing sort of validated things we’ve been doing for a long time. And then, the emergence of AI as a tool to help deal with generality is making all of this feasible. We’ve been patient to announce, because we wanted to do enough research to understand that we can solve manipulation problems and be confident in a new generation of machine.

In spite of Boston Dynamics’ big head start in humanoids, Playter says the company got the new robot’s first build together around Christmas 2023. Before that, it was working through many of the more complex problems in simulation.

This week, it seems, the company is finally ready to begin showing off what the robot can do — or at least the early stages of what it’s planning with the system.

General intelligence
One thing you can definitely say about Elon Musk is the guy makes big promises. In the earliest public-facing days of Optimus, when the Tesla ’bot appeared to be little more than a spandex-clad human, the executive spoke of a system that could do it all. Your Optimus could work all day in the factory, do your grocery shopping and then cook you dinner. That’s the dream, right?

The truth of the matter is, of course, one built around baby steps. Robotics firms may already be discussing “general-purpose humanoids,” but their systems are scaling one task at a time. For most, that means moving payloads from point A to B. Truly utilizing the form factor, however, will require a more generalized intelligence.

It appears the app store model might present the clearest path there. Developer access has, after all, been a big part of growing out Spot’s feature set. Playter, however, says Boston Dynamics won’t be taking that approach with Atlas.

“We are definitely going to target an application ourself and not build a platform,” he says. Our experience is that the way to go fast is for us to focus on an application and go solve problems — and not assume someone else is going to solve it for us. I do think AI is an essential piece here. To support the generality of tasks is going to take and will be reinforced with AI techniques.”

The company recently opened access to Spot’s reinforcement learning algorithm for developers. That work will be foundational to Atlas’ growing skillset.

Outside the box

To be successful, Playter explains, humanoids have to move beyond the boxes.

“I think you can do that with so many other robots,” he says. “Humanoids need to be able to support a huge generality of tasks. You’ve got two hands. You want to be able to pick up complex, heavy geometric shapes that a simple box picker could not pick up — and you’ve got to do hundreds of thousands of those. I think the single-task robot is a thing of the past. Stretch is one of the last applications where you can have a robot just moving around boxes and make it work.”

If not boxes, what will the new Atlas be tasked with on the Hyundai show floor? The answer can be found in a video posted by the company back in February, which saw the hydraulic version of the robot interacting with car struts — the Hyundai components to which Playter alluded to earlier.

“Our long history in dynamic mobility means we’re strong and we know how to accommodate a heavy payload and still maintain tremendous mobility,” he says. “I think that’s going to be a differentiator for us, being able to pick up heavy, complex, massive things. That strut in the video probably weighs 25 pounds. Picking up wheels — we’ll launch a video later as part of this whole effort showing a little bit more of the manipulation tasks with real-world objects we’ve been doing with Atlas. I’m confident we know how to do that part, and I haven’t seen others doing that yet.”

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/17/boston-dynamics-atlas-humanoid-robot-goes-electric/

If you’re passionate about photography and aspire to be a professional photographer, check out our list of the top 7 DSLR cameras under 1 lakh. These DSLR cameras come with decent features and lens quality to let you start your photography journey. Though you can find DSLR cameras for a lesser price as well, if photography is not only your hobby, then we would recommend you buy a good-quality DSLR camera.

We have Nikon’s D7500 DSLR, an update from the D7200; we even borrow technology from the D500. It features the 20MP CMOS sensor from the D500, making it capable of 4K video at up to 30fps, and expanding its sensitivity to a maximum of ISO 1,640,000. While it keeps the 51-point AF system from the D7200, it gains the 180k-pixel metering sensor from the D500 and enables features like highlight weighted metering.

What are others saying about this?

This Nikon D7500 is an excellent camera that delivers great value. Its features are useful for enthusiasts and amateurs alike.

Why should you add this to your cart?

• The screen of this Nikon camera can be titled and can be operated by touch screen as well
• This camera is lighter than the previous models by Nikon, making this easier to carry
• It can shoot 4K video at up to 30fps and it can expand its sensitivity to a maximum of ISO 1,640,000

Pros:

• Lightweight
• Has 20MP CMOS
• Features a 51-point AF system

Cons:

• Users have reported that this does not include battery grip

2. Most Beginner Friendly: Canon EOS 200D II 24.1MP Digital SLR Camera

Next, we have the Canon EOS 200D Digital SLR, which comes equipped with amazing features like creative assist. This feature makes it easy for beginners to change the look of their photos. You can select the effect you want and how much effect you want, and the camera will choose the correct settings. It even includes eye detection AF during Servo AF, making it more convenient for the photographer.

What are others saying about this?

This is the perfect DSLR camera for photography beginners and enthusiasts. This checks all the boxes for picture quality, image options, zoom, and autofocus and has all automatic options.

Why should you add this to your cart?

• This has 4K video capture that will make record your memories in High-definition video that will exhibit the finest details in your memories
• The creative assist feature allows you to choose from different effects which is great for beginners
• It comes with enhanced Dual Pixel CMOS AF performance and functionality during live view shooting

Pros:

• Beginner friendly
• Lightweight and compact
• Great Live View autofocus response
• It has eye detection AF during servo AF and movie servo AF

Cons:

• Users have reported that the flash from other brands isn’t compatible with this camera

3. Most High Quality: Sony Alpha ZV-E10L 24.2 Mega Pixel Camera

Sony brings this digital camera, which gives you the option of one-touch control over background blurring. With this, there’s no need for complicated manual adjustments, just a single button to turn background blurring (bokeh) on and off. There’s a dedicated setting available for shooting product showcase videos. This Sony Alpha camera even comes with an interchangeable lens. It also includes a shoulder strap and a windscreen adaptor. The camera has a rechargeable battery as well.

What are others saying about this?

This camera has many features that will be helpful to photographers, especially those who are starting out on their photography journey.

Why should you add this to your cart?

• The vari-angle LCD screen of this Sony camera allows you to shoot vertically without any complications
• With the S&Q mode, you can shoot slow-motion video at a speed 4x slower than real-time and even a quick motion up to 6x faster
• This eliminates the frustration of recording product review videos the product showcase video setting

Pros:

• Gives great video quality
• Has 425 phase-detections
• It has real-time eye AF
• An additional port is also given

Cons:

• Users have found the battery life not to be long-lasting

4. Most Easy to use: Canon EOS 1500D 24.1 Digital SLR Camera

We have another Canon DSLR on our list. The Canon EOS 1500D has a sensor and a high-performance imaging processor that can capture the impression exactly as it appears with high sensitivity, rich gradations, and image clarity even in dimly lit scenes. This camera also allows you to easily connect from WiFi, NFC, and Bluetooth built-in, which one can access for remotely controlling their camera and transferring pictures wirelessly as you shoot.

What are others saying about this?

This Canon camera is easy to use and perfect for beginners. It is relatively compact, light in weight, and easy to operate.

Why should you add this to your cart?

• This lets you enlarge photographs of the objects for a clear zoomed view
• It has a DIGIC 4+ imaging processor that powerfully processes a vast amount of light data and completes it with high definition and a high level of gradation
• The bokeh in this camera is great and helps enhance the main subject

Pros:

• Can change in aspect ratio
• Has remote live-view shooting
• Comes with a 2-year warranty

Cons:

• Some users did not like the auto-focus that this camera features

5. Value for Money: Panasonic LUMIX G7 16.00 MP 4K Camera

Panasonic’s LUMI G7 camera has covered you with their 4K technology to cover special moments that can occur at any time and should be captured in the best resolution possible. The 16-megapixel Digital live MOS sensor in combination with the Venus Engine provides high quality image capture and high-speed signal processing. This comes with a high-resolution OLED Live View Finder, which allows high visibility thanks to a 10,0000:1 contrast and perfect framing even under direct sunlight.

What are others saying about this?

This Panasonic DSLR camera is worth the price and has many features that make photography and cinematography easier.

Why should you add this to your cart?

• This has superior noise reduction system enables crisp images even in low light conditions up to ISO 25600
• Low light AF makes it possible to focus subjects more precisely in -4EV low light situation
• The new 4K photo function allows you to extract individual frames from a video sequence to capture those moments that only occur at a split second

Pros:

• Comes with additional ports as well
• Easily control aperture and shutter settings with the front and rear dials
• Excellent quality
• Easy to operate

Cons:

• Users have reported that the battery takes a long time to charge

6. Most Advance: Sony Digital Vlog Camera ZV-1

We have another Sony camera on our list. This camera uses Sony’s enhanced colour science to ensure lively, natural images and is especially strong across a diverse range of skin tones. Thanks to the steady-shot joint optical and electronic stabilisation system, this camera can deliver smooth, highly stable imagery. Recording frame rates as high as 960fps allow for any moment to be captured, while adjustable playback rates let you slow down the action anywhere from 4x to 40x.

What are others saying about this?

This Sony camera delivers you a camera made from great quality material, is reliable, and has many useful features.

Why should you add this to your cart?

• It has a 4K movie recording with video eye AF and real-time tracking
• A mic jack is provided for an external mic, for even higher sound quality
• With AI technology, you can rely on the autofocus sticking firmly to your face and eyes without wandering to other subjects.

Pros:

• Great autofocus
• High quality
• Compact size
• Features designed for vloggers

Cons:

• Users have reported that the battery may drain fast

Source: https://www.timesshoppingguide.com/electronics/cameras/best-dslr-cameras-under-100000-to-fulfil-your-photography-passion/article/109303905

AI technology advancements have heightened concerns about sexually explicit fakes, often targeting women and girls. These are becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish from authentic content

Meta Platforms’ independent Oversight Board is currently examining the company’s response to two AI-generated sexually explicit images of female celebrities shared on Facebook and Instagram. These images, which were not named to avoid causing further harm, serve as case studies for the board to evaluate Meta’s policies and enforcement strategies regarding pornographic deepfakes.

AI technology advancements have heightened concerns about sexually explicit fakes, often targeting women and girls. These are becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish from authentic content. The issue gained prominent attention when the Elon Musk-owned platform X blocked all images of Taylor Swift following a surge in fake explicit content of the pop star. In India, multiple actresses, actors and even sportsmen have fallen victim to deepfakes.

Key points from the Oversight Board’s current review include:

Nature of the Images: One image shared on Instagram depicted a nude woman resembling a public figure from India. The other, posted in a Facebook group, showed a nude woman resembling an American public figure in a sexually compromising pose.

Meta’s Actions: The image of the American woman was removed for violating Meta’s harassment policy, while the image of the Indian woman remained until the board intervened.

Source: https://www.businesstoday.in/technology/news/story/meta-oversight-board-examining-companys-response-to-deepfake-of-indian-actress-on-instagram-425819-2024-04-17

China’s Baidu said on Tuesday (Apr 16) its artificial intelligence chatbot “Ernie Bot” has garnered more than 200 million users as it seeks to remain China’s most popular ChatGPT-like chatbot amid increasingly fierce competition.

Robin Li, CEO of the Chinese internet company, revealed the new milestone at a conference in Shenzhen on Tuesday. The chatbot was released to the public eight months ago.

The company last shared its user base number in December when it reached over 100 million.

Li also said that Ernie Bot’s application programming interface (API) is being used 200 million times everyday, meaning the chatbot was requested by its user to conduct tasks that many times a day.

The number enterprise clients for the chatbot reached 85,000, Li added.

Last March, Ernie Bot was the first locally developed ChatGPT-like chatbot to be announced in China, but it only won approval for public release in August, one of the first eight AI chatbots China approved.

Unlike many other countries, China bars companies from rolling out generative AI services before obtaining an approval from Beijing.

Recent data shows that rival domestic AI services, particularly the “Kimi” chatbot from a 12-month-old, Alibaba-backed start-up named Moonshot AI, are quickly catching up on Ernie Bot despite obtaining approval for public release later.

Data from AIcpb.com, a site that tracks user visits to online AI services, show that Ernie Bot was visited a total of 14.9 million times across its app and website last month.

Source: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/business/baidu-says-ai-chatbot-ernie-bot-has-amassed-200-million-users-4268301

Apple is in advanced discussions with Indian companies Murugappa Group and Tata group’s Titan Company for the assembly of iPhone camera modules. This move could deepen the Indian supplier ecosystem for Apple as it shifts more operations away from China.

Apple is in the final stages of discussions with Murugappa Group and Tata group’s Titan Company to assemble and possibly manufacture sub-components for iPhone camera modules, according to a report by The Economic Times. This move could increase Apple’s dependence on the Indian supplier ecosystem for its products as it continues to shift operations away from China.

Currently, there are no Indian suppliers for Apple iPhone’s camera module. The partnership with either Titan or Murugappa Group would make it a first. The report suggests that the decision on the partner is expected to be finalised in the next five to six months. The camera module is one of the most sophisticated pieces of technology in the Apple iPhone. The non-Pro models come with a dual camera whereas the Pro models come with a sophisticated triple camera setup.

Why Titan and Murugappa?

Both Titan and Murugappa groups have a strong background in high-precision manufacturing. In 2022, Murugappa Group acquired a 76 per cent stake in Noida-based camera module maker Moshine Electronics.

Titan Company owns Titan Engineering and Automation, which caters to global customers across industries such as defence and aerospace. Both Titan and Murugappa have qualified for government incentives to set up a semiconductor chip assembly unit in India. Tata Group is also building a $11-billion chip fab in Dholera, Gujarat.

Source: https://www.businesstoday.in/technology/news/story/apple-in-talks-with-tata-groups-titan-and-chennai-based-murugappa-group-to-build-iphone-camera-report-425663-2024-04-16

Twitter, now referred to as X, is set to start charging new users for engaging with tweets. This move comes as part of an effort to combat spam and improve user experience.

Twitter aka X, which used to be a free to use social media platform, will soon start charging money from new users. According to Elon Musk, new users joining X will have to pay a “small” fee for liking, posting, replying and even bookmarking tweets. Notable, account X daily news, which regularly posts update about news related to X was the first to notice that new users will be charged. The account noted that the website’s textual content has been revised to indicate that new users are required to pay a nominal yearly charge to gain access to the social network.

As per X daily news, the policy was previously active in New Zealand and the Philippines. It further reveals that the policy was initially being tested to help reduce spam and improve the experience for users overall. Responding to the tweet, Musk said, “Unfortunately, a small fee for new user writing access is the only way to curb the relentless onslaught of bots. Current AI (and troll farms) can pass “are you a bot” with ease.”

“The onslaught of fake accounts also uses up the available namespace, so many good handles are taken as a result,” he added.

Musk sure wants to combat spam bots by making X chargeable but he di not reveal how X plans to go about it and how it will prevent fake accounts and automated bots because those who send spam might just pay the small fee or make many accounts and wait until they can post messages. Normal users might not want to use the social network X because they have to do more to sign up, and also because they can use other social networks without paying anything.

Source: https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/x-to-charge-money-from-new-users-for-posting-liking-and-replying-to-tweets-2527645-2024-04-16

Ventusky wrote, ‘Despite numerous reports of UFOs or Atlanteans launching from the ocean, yesterday’s image of giant waves near Africa was due to a model error’

Alien and conspiracy theorists showed up in full force last week after a weather modeling software “error” showed an anomaly the size of Texas moving up the African coastline while generating waves bigger than 80 feet high.

Ventusky is an application that presents weather and meteorological data to allow people to monitor developments anywhere in the world.

According to the company’s website, the app is available to anyone in the world and has the ability to illustrate movement of particles to show wind data, and more.

Last week, the application showed a cluster of waves reaching over 80 feet in height and spanning a distance wider than the state of Texas, moving up from Antarctica and toward the coast of Africa for about 24 hours before disappearing.

Video of the weather pattern got the rumor mill going, with people claiming it was anything from a massive underwater sea creature to a spaceship under the sea.

X user @528vibes posted the video which garnered over 748,000 views, saying, “An anomaly moving underwater – the size of Texas.”

With a length of about 801 miles and a width of 773 miles from its widest two points, Texas, according to WorldAtlas.com, has an area of about 268,600 square miles.

The video was also shared on YouTube by MrMBB333.

“As bizarre as some of the footage you are about to see in this video is, it’s all real,” he posted. “These are real-life encounters of ‘something’ the viewer saw, recorded and was unable to identify.”

By Sunday afternoon, the video had been seen 80,000 times, with followers debating what the massive black spot on the map was.

“Everyone knows Godzilla comes from the sea,” one user wrote.

Another said, “Ok, who released the Kraken?”

Other followers said the mysterious matter could be H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu, or even linked the blob to a giant sea creature awoken by April 8th’s solar eclipse.

But others suggested there may have been some sort of glitch with the software, as the mass on the map moved over a major shipping channel and there were no reports of large waves in the area by the seafarers.

Ventusky saw the buzz the map created and quickly addressed the situation, debunking the conspiracy floating in the ether.

“Despite numerous reports of UFOs or Atlanteans launching from the ocean, yesterday’s image of giant waves near Africa was due to a model error,” the company wrote. “Fortunately, our provider, the German Meteorological Institute @DWD_Presse, has already resolved it, and the forecast is fine.”

The company added that the model takes in copious amounts of data from ships and buoys throughout the ocean, and problems can occur with such large databases.

Still, it could take time to find out what caused the error last week, the company wrote.

But despite the company’s attempts to defuse the situation, sleuths continued, forcing Ventusky to try to prove their point once more.

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/science/african-weather-system-generating-rumors-ufos-foot-waves-blamed-software-error

London-based model Alexsandrah has a twin, but not in the way you’d expect: Her counterpart is made of pixels instead of flesh and blood.

The virtual twin was generated by artificial intelligence and has already appeared as a stand-in for the real-life Alexsandrah in a photo shoot. Alexsandrah, who goes by her first name professionally, in turn receives credit and compensation whenever the AI version of herself gets used — just like a human model.

Alexsandrah says she and her alter-ego mirror each other “even down to the baby hairs.” And it is yet another example of how AI is transforming creative industries — and the way humans may or may not be compensated.

Proponents say the growing use of AI in fashion modeling showcases diversity in all shapes and sizes, allowing consumers to make more tailored purchase decisions that in turn reduces fashion waste from product returns. And digital modeling saves money for companies and creates opportunities for people who want to work with the technology.

“Fashion is exclusive, with limited opportunities for people of color to break in,” said Sara Ziff, a former fashion model and founder of the Model Alliance, a nonprofit aiming to advance workers’ rights in the fashion industry. “I think the use of AI to distort racial representation and marginalize actual models of color reveals this troubling gap between the industry’s declared intentions and their real actions.”

Women of color in particular have long faced higher barriers to entry in modeling and AI could upend some of the gains they’ve made. Data suggests that women are more likely to work in occupations in which the technology could be applied, and are more at risk of displacement than men.

In March 2023, iconic denim brand Levi Strauss & Co. announced that it would be testing AI-generated models produced by Amsterdam-based company Lalaland.ai to add a wider range of body types and underrepresented demographics on its website. But after receiving widespread backlash, Levi clarified that it was not pulling back on its plans for live photo shoots, the use of live models or its commitment to working with diverse models.

“We do not see this (AI) pilot as a means to advance diversity or as a substitute for the real action that must be taken to deliver on our diversity, equity and inclusion goals and it should not have been portrayed as such,” Levi said in its statement at the time.

The company last month said that it has no plans to scale the AI program.

The Associated Press reached out to several other retailers to ask whether they use AI fashion models. Target, Kohl’s and fast-fashion giant Shein declined to comment; Temu did not respond to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, spokespeople for Nieman Marcus, H&M, Walmart and Macy’s said their respective companies do not use AI models, although Walmart clarified that “suppliers may have a different approach to photography they provide for their products but we don’t have that information.”

Nonetheless, companies that generate AI models are finding a demand for the technology, including Lalaland.ai, which was co-founded by Michael Musandu after he was feeling frustrated by the absence of clothing models who looked like him.

“One model does not represent everyone that’s actually shopping and buying a product,” he said. “As a person of color, I felt this painfully myself.”

Musandu says his product is meant to supplement traditional photo shoots, not replace them. Instead of seeing one model, shoppers could see nine to 12 models using different size filters, which would enrich their shopping experience and help reduce product returns and fashion waste.

The technology is actually creating new jobs, since Lalaland.ai pays humans to train its algorithms, Musandu said.

And if brands “are serious about inclusion efforts, they will continue to hire these models of color,” he added.

London-based model Alexsandrah, who is Black, says her digital counterpart has helped her distinguish herself in the fashion industry. In fact, the real-life Alexsandrah has even stood in for a Black computer-generated model named Shudu, created by Cameron Wilson, a former fashion photographer turned CEO of The Diigitals, a U.K.-based digital modeling agency.

Wilson, who is white and uses they/them pronouns, designed Shudu in 2017, described on Instagram as the “The World’s First Digital Supermodel.” But critics at the time accused Wilson of cultural appropriation and digital Blackface.

Wilson took the experience as a lesson and transformed The Diigitals to make sure Shudu — who has been booked by Louis Vuitton and BMW — didn’t take away opportunities but instead opened possibilities for women of color. Alexsandrah, for instance, has modeled in-person as Shudu for Vogue Australia, and writer Ama Badu came up with Shudu’s backstory and portrays her voice for interviews.

Alexsandrah said she is “extremely proud” of her work with The Diigitals, which created her own AI twin: “It’s something that even when we are no longer here, the future generations can look back at and be like, ‘These are the pioneers.’”

But for Yve Edmond, a New York City area-based model who works with major retailers to check the fit of clothing before it’s sold to consumers, the rise of AI in fashion modeling feels more insidious.

Edmond worries modeling agencies and companies are taking advantage of models, who are generally independent contractors afforded few labor protections in the U.S., by using their photos to train AI systems without their consent or compensation.

She described one incident in which a client asked to photograph Edmond moving her arms, squatting and walking for “research” purposes. Edmond refused and later felt swindled — her modeling agency had told her she was being booked for a fitting, not to build an avatar.

Source: https://apnews.com/article/ai-fashion-model-digital-diversity-aaa489111bd8e793aa6e5a531dc7ade2

CJI Chandrachud flagged the potential of bias and indirect discrimination manifested in the use of AI in this regard, giving the example of the increased use of biometrics, specifically facial recognition technology.

Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud on Saturday dwelt on the risks that come with the adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools in the legal profession and society as a whole.

CJI Chandrachud flagged the potential of bias and indirect discrimination manifested in the use of AI in this regard, giving the example of the increased use of biometrics, specifically facial recognition technology (FRT).

“The impact of bias in AI systems presents a complex challenge, particularly when it comes to indirect discrimination. This form of discrimination occurs when seemingly neutral policies or algorithms disproportionately affect certain groups, thereby undermining their rights and protections … Facial recognition technology (FRT) serves as a prime example of high-risk AI, given its inherently intrusive nature and potential for misuse,” he stated.

The CJI stressed that one cannot avoid the question of using AI in court adjudication.

At the same time, he cautioned that,

“The integration of AI in modern processes including court proceedings raises complex ethical, legal, and practical considerations that demand a thorough examination. The use of AI in court adjudication presents both opportunities and challenges that warrant nuanced deliberation.”

The CJI was speaking at the 2-day conference on Technology and Judicial Dialogue which is being held at the Supreme Court of India this weekend, along with the Singapore Supreme Court.

Chief Justice of Singapore, Justice Sundaresh Menon, and several judges, jurists and experts will also be speaking on a host of topics related to AI and its implications for the legal system, its potential to assist court proceedings, its role in judicial training, improving access to justice, ethical considerations surrounding its use.

In his address, the CJI also spoke about the Oscar-nominated movie Ex Machina, a film about an AI humanoid possessing high intelligence and autonomy levels.

“Throughout the movie, Ava showcases her ability to analyze data, recognise patterns, and make decisions with autonomy, much like the AI systems being developed in real life. Her interactions with Caleb, the protagonist, raise thought provoking questions about consciousness, morality, and the ethical implications of creating sentient beings. “Ex Machina” offers a compelling exploration of the intersection between humanity and artificial intelligence, raising important questions about the nature of consciousness, the ethics of AI development, and the implications of creating sentient beings,” he said.

The CJI added that the film serves ‘as a cautionary tale and thought-provoking reflection’ on the ethical and existential challenges that will come with the development of AI.

Hence, he called for caution while integrating AI into the legal domain so that such tools enhance rather than undermine the universal pursuit of justice.

Source : https://www.barandbench.com/news/facial-recognition-technology-prime-example-high-risk-artificial-intelligence-cji-dy-chandrachud

“The girlfriend Singularity is here.”

When witnessing the sorry state of men addicted to AI girlfriends, one Miami tech exec saw dollar signs instead of red flags.

In a blog-length post on X-formerly-Twitter, former WeWork exec Greg Isenberg said that after meeting a young guy who claims to spend $10,000 a month on so-called “AI girlfriends,” or relationship-simulating chatbots, he realized that eventually, someone is going to capitalize upon that market the way Match Group has with dating apps.

“I thought he was kidding,” Isenberg wrote. “But, he’s a 24-year-old single guy who loves it.”

To date, Match Group — which owns Tinder, Hinge, Match.com, OKCupid, Plenty of Fish, and several others — has a market cap of more than $9 billion. As the now-CEO of the Late Checkout holding company startup noted, someone is going to build the AI version and make a billion or more.

During the exchange, Isenberg said that he was “speechless” when the young man explained his rationale, citing his ability to “play” with his AI paramours the way some people play video games, sending them voice notes and customizing their likes and dislikes as some of the reasons he spends so much money on the services.

The unnamed guy told the tech bro that he is particularly into Candy.ai and Cupid.ai, both of which allow for the kind of NSFW chatting that other apps ban.

“It’s kinda like dating apps,” the AI GF aficionado told Isenberg. “You’re not on only one.”

Hand It to Him

Reactions varied.

“The girlfriend Singularity is here,” wrote disgraced “Dilbert” cartoonist. “Human women had a good run.”

“This will be someone you know soon,” another posted, “although they may not admit it.”

Indeed, while there’s been lots of, er, prurient interest in the lives of those humans who prefer AI companionship to the real thing, less consideration has been taken for the way this burgeoning field could well make some early investors money — even as it furthers the dearth of IRL connection and interaction that so many people are craving.

Source : https://futurism.com/the-byte/tech-exec-ai-gf-industry

Apple has not attributed the recent wave of attacks to any stakeholder. Last October, it had sent a similar notification to Opposition leaders across parties.

Apple has sent a fresh round of threat notifications to some of its users in India, along with 91 other countries, warning them that their iPhone could have been potentially attacked by “mercenary spyware,” including the Israeli NSO Group’s controversial Pegasus malware.

Apple has not attributed the recent wave of attacks to any stakeholder. Last October, it had sent a similar notification to Opposition leaders across parties — from Congress’s Shashi Tharoor to AAP’s Raghav Chadha to TMC’s Mahua Moitra — warning of a “potential state-sponsored spyware attack” on their iPhones.

The company, after pressure from the government, had later clarified that it “does not attribute the threat notifications to any specific state-sponsored attacker”.

The threat notification emails were sent at around 12.30 am IST on Thursday (April 11) to impacted users in India. It is unclear how many people have received the threat notification from Apple. The email also mentions the NSO-Group’s Pegasus spyware, saying tools like those are being used to target people on an ongoing basis globally.

“ALERT: Apple detected a targeted mercenary spyware attack against your iPhone,” reads the subject line of the threat notification, a copy of which has been seen by The Indian Express.

Source: https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/apple-warning-indian-users-iphone-nso-pegasus-spyware-9263701/

The Black Market That Delivers Elon Musk’s Starlink to U.S. Foes.

The satellite-internet devices are helping Russian fighters in Ukraine and paramilitary forces in Sudan; SpaceX hasn’t shut them off.

A salesman at Moscow-based online retailer shopozz.ru has supplemented his usual business of peddling vacuum cleaners and dashboard phone mounts by selling dozens of Starlink internet terminals that wound up with Russians on the front lines in Ukraine.

Although Russia has banned the use of Starlink, the satellite-internet service developed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, middlemen have proliferated in recent months to buy the user terminals and ship them to Russia forces.

Source: https://www.wsj.com/business/telecom/starlink-musk-ukraine-russia-sudan-satellite-communications-technology-f4fc79d9

There’s been a flurry of reconnaissance satellites heading into orbit recently, partly in a race between South and North Korea to get eyes in the sky. So what are all those satellites doing up there?

The US launched a reconnaissance satellite into orbit on Tuesday, the second reconnaissance satellite to go up in as many days.

On Monday, South Korea sent its second into space, after the first went up in December. The country has a contract with SpaceX to send up three more reconnaissance satellites by 2025.

North Korea sent up its own in November and at the end of March, a North Korean official said the nation expects to launch several more reconnaissance satellites this year.

Leader Kim Jong Un has vowed to launch three additional military spy satellites in 2024.

So what are all those satellites doing up there?

Gaining military advantages

The National Reconnaissance Office in the US says it “uses satellites and other space-based capabilities to secure and expand America’s intelligence advantage”.

“Some of the earliest satellites were reconnaissance satellites,” Professor Erik Gartzke, the director of the Center for Peace and Security Studies at the University of California, told Sky News.

“During the Cold War, they allowed the Soviets and the United States to make arms control agreements that were enforceable because each side could see if the other side was cheating.

“Largely because of this technology, it became possible to have some of the first and most effective arms control agreements in world history.”

The UK has its own network of ‘Beyond Line of Sight communications’ called Skynet.

They are make sure the UK armed forces “get the right information at the right time,” according to Airbus, who runs the network.

These reconnaissance satellites are also being used to fight crime.

In 2021, Colombia’s notorious drug lord Otoniel was captured using satellite imagery analysed by experts from the UK, US and elsewhere.

North and South Korea have been more explicit about what their satellites are for.

Source: https://news.sky.com/story/us-launches-another-spy-into-orbit-heres-what-we-know-about-the-hundreds-of-satellites-watching-us-13111567

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted a bizarre sliver of an object speeding above the lunar surface last month.

And as it turns out, we’re not looking at a UFO — or, uh, maybe an Unidentified Lunar Object — because there’s a perfectly human explanation for the lunar apparition.

It turns out that the LRO’s image was photobombed by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute’s Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO), otherwise known as Danuri, which is “traveling in nearly parallel orbits,” according to a NASA statement.

Despite their similar orbits, it still took impeccable timing to catch a glimpse of the spacecraft — an engineering feat in and of itself.

Moon Blink

Danrui launched in August 2022, becoming South Korea’s first Moon mission. The spacecraft, which entered lunar orbit in December 2022, is designed to help plan future missions to the lunar poles. It was also used to demonstrate a “lunar internet,” which is a delay-tolerant network that could one day allow landed assets to communicate with Earth.

Scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center “needed exquisite timing in pointing LROC to the right place at the right time to catch a glimpse of Danuri,” per NASA.

Telecommunications company NTT and leading newspaper Yomiuri to issue manifesto calling for new laws to restrain generative AI

TOKYO—Japan’s largest telecommunications company and the country’s biggest newspaper called for speedy legislation to restrain generative artificial intelligence, saying democracy and social order could collapse if AI is left unchecked.

Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, or NTT, and Yomiuri Shimbun Group Holdings made the proposal in an AI manifesto to be released Monday. Combined with a law passed in March by the European Parliament …..

Source: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/social-order-could-collapse-in-ai-era-two-top-japan-companies-say-1a71cc1d

When you unbox that shiny new iPhone or sleek MacBook, you’re probably eager to dive right in and start exploring. But before you get too carried away, there’s something you should know: those pre-installed apps that come with your device might not be as innocent as they seem. A startling new study by researchers Amel Bourdoucen and Janne Lindqvist from Aalto University in Finland is pulling back the curtain on the privacy implications of Apple’s default apps like Safari, Siri, iMessage, and Find My.

What they discovered is enough to make even the most dedicated Apple fan think twice.

Let’s start with the basics. When you first set up your iPhone or MacBook, you’re greeted by a friendly setup wizard that guides you through enabling various features and apps. Things like Siri, Apple’s helpful virtual assistant, or Find My, a handy tool for locating lost devices. Seems harmless enough, right?

Not so fast. The researchers found that the privacy settings for these default apps are often misleading or downright confusing. Take Siri, for example. When prompted during setup, you can choose to enable Siri or “Set Up Later in Settings.” You might reasonably assume that means Siri is off until you manually turn it on. But in reality, Siri is still collecting data from your apps even when disabled. It’s like a nosy neighbor who keeps peeking through your blinds even after you’ve asked them to stop.

And it’s not just Siri. The study revealed that many of the privacy settings for default apps are scattered across multiple menus, often in places you wouldn’t think to look. Some settings aren’t even mentioned in Apple’s official documentation. It’s like playing a frustrating game of hide-and-seek with your own personal data.

But what exactly are these apps collecting, you might wonder? The researchers compiled a list, and it’s enough to make your head spin. Safari, Apple’s default web browser, can scoop up your IP address, browsing history, and even sensitive info like your payment methods. Siri hoards data from your contacts, your music preferences, and the names of your devices. iMessage and FaceTime can access things like your call logs and the apps you use. The list goes on and on.

Now, you might be thinking, “Okay, but I can just go into my settings and turn all this off, right?” Well, it’s not quite that simple. The study found that even when users thought they had disabled data sharing for an app, their information was still being collected behind the scenes. It’s like trying to break up with a clingy ex who just won’t take the hint.

Source: https://studyfinds.org/iphone-tracking-you-apple-apps-privacy/

A standoff between Elon Musk and Brazil escalated on Sunday when a Supreme Court judge opened an inquiry into the billionaire after Musk said he would reactivate accounts on the social media platform X that the judge had ordered blocked.
Musk, the owner of X and a self-declared free speech absolutist, has challenged a decision by Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordering the blocking of certain accounts. He has said X, formerly known as Twitter, would lift all the restrictions because they were unconstitutional and called on Moraes to resign.

Neither Musk, X nor Brazilian authorities have disclosed which social media accounts were ordered blocked. X first posted about the order to block on Saturday but it was not immediately clear when the order was issued.
Moraes is investigating “digital militias” that have been accused of spreading fake news and hate messages during the government of former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro and is also leading an investigation into an alleged coup attempt by Bolsonaro.

Musk, in an X post on Saturday evening, accused Moraes of “brazenly and repeatedly” betraying the constitution and people of Brazil.
“This judge has applied massive fines, threatened to arrest our employees and cut off access to X in Brazil,” he said in the post.
“As a result, we will probably lose all revenue in Brazil and have to shut down our office there. But principles matter more than profit.”

Source: https://www.reuters.com/technology/musk-challenges-brazils-order-block-certain-x-accounts-2024-04-07/

South Korea’s defence ministry said on Monday (Apr 8) the country’s second homegrown spy satellite had entered orbit after its launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the John F Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The launch, which comes after Seoul’s first spy satellite was put into orbit from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base in December, was livestreamed on social media platforms X and YouTube.

The Falcon 9 rocket was launched at 2317 GMT on Sunday and the satellite successfully separated from the launch vehicle 45 minutes later and entered its targeted orbit, the ministry said in a statement.

It made successful communications with a ground station about two hours and 40 minutes after the launch, the ministry added.

The back-to-back launches of reconnaissance satellites come amid a race against North Korea for military capabilities in space.

After two earlier attempts ended in rocket crashes, Pyongyang said in November last year that it used its own Chollima-1 launch vehicle to place the Malligyong-1 reconnaissance satellite in orbit.

North Korea has previously vowed to launch three new spy satellites in 2024.

Source: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/south-korea-second-spy-satellite-spacex-north-korea-4249891

Eclipse fever is building. Millions in North America are hoping to spend around four minutes of total darkness as the Moon blocks the Sun’s light on Monday.

For some, those precious minutes will be an opportunity for often impossible science experiments – a chance to unravel the secrets of our universe.

Researchers will fly rockets into the path of the eclipse, stand in zoos watching animals, send radio signals across the globe, and peer into space with massive cameras.

And you don’t need to be a scientist to take part.

But it could still go wrong. A solar flare or even some humble clouds could throw those plans into turmoil.

Possibilities of mating turtles or snoozing gorillas

Prof Adam Hartstone-Rose from North Carolina State University will spend Monday at the zoo in Fort Worth, Texas.

He’ll be looking out for strange behaviours in animals from gorillas to giraffes to Galapagos turtles. Spoiler: during the 2017 eclipse, the turtles suddenly started mating.

Lots of animals appear to have anxious responses to the sudden darkness.

“The flamingos last time did a beautiful thing,” he says. “As the eclipse was building, the adults gathered the chicks into the middle of the flock, and looked into the sky as if they were worried about an aerial predator coming down.”

The gorillas moved to where they sleep and began their bedtime routines, as circadian rhythms were disrupted.

One nocturnal bird called a Tawny Frogmouth woke up from where it usually camouflages as a rotting tree stump. It started looking for food, and then suddenly went back into disguise when the sun re-appeared.

Anyone can join the experiment. If you see pets, farm animals or wild animals behaving unusually during the eclipse, you can tell Mark’s team online.

The team will have almost instant results and will publish their findings in the days after the eclipse.

A glimpse into roaring plasma

When darkness falls on parts of North America, one part of the Sun will peek out that people have been trying to study for centuries – its atmosphere, or corona.

This mysterious part of the Sun is made up of magnetised plasma and measures more than a million degrees Celsius.

Normally the Sun’s incredible brightness makes the corona impossible to see, but on Monday scientists in Dallas, Texas, will be able to point instruments at it and take images.

Scientists with Aberystwyth University in Wales and from Nasa hope for an insight into solar wind, which is the plasma thrown from the Sun’s surface. Another puzzle is why the corona seems to be much hotter than the Sun’s surface, despite being on its edge.

They might even see what is called a coronal mass ejection, when huge plasma clouds are thrown from the atmosphere into Space. Ejections can cause problems for satellites we use on Earth.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-68742516

Imagine a camera so powerful it could spot a golf ball 15 miles away, cover an area of the sky seven times wider than the full moon, and produce images so detailed they would require hundreds of ultra-high-definition TVs to display just one at full size. This incredible piece of technology isn’t just a pipe dream – it’s a reality, and it’s called the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Camera. Once in place on a telescope in Chile, the 3200-megapixel camera will be tasked with gathering an unprecedented amount of data about our universe, yielding new insights into everything from dark energy to asteroids.

After two decades of tireless work, scientists and engineers at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and their collaborators are celebrating the completion of this groundbreaking camera. As the heart of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, a joint project funded by the DOE and the National Science Foundation, the LSST Camera is set to revolutionize our understanding of the universe.

So, what makes this camera so special? For starters, it’s enormous – roughly the size of a small car and weighing in at around 3,000 kilograms (3 metric tons). Its front lens alone is over five feet across, making it the largest lens ever created for astronomical purposes. But size isn’t everything – it’s the camera’s incredible resolution that truly sets it apart. Astronomers are beyond excited to see what the LSST camera can produce and how it will significantly broaden space research.

“These images with billions of stars and galaxies will help unlock the secrets of the universe,” explains SLAC professor Aaron Roodman, the Rubin Observatory Deputy Director and Camera Program Lead, in a media release.

Over the next ten years, the LSST Camera will generate a massive trove of data on the southern night sky, providing researchers with unprecedented insights into some of the most profound mysteries in physics today. One of the key focuses will be on dark energy, the mysterious force driving the accelerating expansion of the universe. By studying subtle distortions in the light from distant galaxies, a phenomenon known as weak gravitational lensing, scientists hope to better understand how dark energy has shaped the evolution of the cosmos.

Another major target is dark matter, the invisible substance that makes up around 85% of the matter in the universe. By mapping out the distribution of galaxies and how it has changed over time, researchers aim to shed new light on the nature of this elusive material.

Source : https://studyfinds.org/lsst-worlds-largest-digital-camera

Apple users in India have got a new security warning from the nodal security agency of the Indian government this week. The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) has issued the alert with a high severity rating, dated April 2, 2024. The security issue is really big because it affects major parts of Apple devices, including iPhones and Macs. Here is a detailed look at the vulnerability, which devices are impacted and how to secure your iPhone from possible threats.

APPLE SECURITY ISSUE: WHICH DEVICES AFFECTED

– Apple Safari versions prior to 17.4.1

– Apple macOS Ventura versions prior to 13.6.6

– Apple macOS Sonoma versions prior to 14.4.1

– Apple visionOS versions prior to 1.1.1

– Apple iOS and iPadOS versions prior to 17.4.1

– Apple iOS and iPadOS versions prior to 16.7.7

The Apple software versions affected by the security issue includes the latest devices like the iPhone 15 Pro Max, and even the Vision Pro headset. You also have a range of iPad and iPad Pro models mentioned within the list with their respective software versions. Older iPhone models like 8, 8 Plus and iPhone X users also need to be aware of the vulnerability.

Humane, Rabbit, Brilliant, Meta, and countless other companies are just about to launch AI-first gadgets. AI hardware may not be as big as the smartphone, but it’s going to be big.

I’m just going to call it: we’ll look back on April 2024 as the beginning of a new technological era. That sounds grandiose, I know, but in the next few weeks, a whole new generation of gadgets is poised to hit the market. Humane will launch its voice-controlled AI Pin. Rabbit’s AI-powered R1 will start to ship. Brilliant Labs’ AI-enabled smart glasses are coming out. And Meta is rolling out a new feature to its smart glasses that allow Meta’s AI to see and help you navigate the real world.

There are many more AI gadgets to come, but the AI hardware revolution is officially beginning. What all these gadgets have in common is that they put artificial intelligence at the front of the experience. When you tap your AI Pin to ask a question, play music, or take a photo, Humane runs your query through a series of language models to figure out what you’re asking for and how best to accomplish it. When you ask your Rabbit R1 or your Meta smart glasses who makes that cool mug you’re looking at, it pings through a series of image recognition and data processing models in order to tell you that’s a Yeti Rambler. AI is not an app or a feature; it’s the whole thing.

It’s possible that one or many of these devices will so thoroughly nail the user experience and feature list that this month will feel both like the day you got your first flip phone and the day the iPhone made that flip phone look like an antique. But probably not. More likely, what we’re about to get are a lot of new ideas about how you interact with technology. And together, they’ll show us at least a glimpse of the future.

The primary argument against all these AI gadgets so far has been that the smartphone exists. Why, you might ask, do I need special hardware to access all this stuff? Why can’t I just do it on the phone in my pocket? To that, I say, well, you mostly can! The ChatGPT app is great, Google’s Gemini is rapidly taking over the Android experience, and if I were a betting man, I’d say there’s a whole lot of AI coming to iOS this year.

Smartphones are great! None of these devices will kill or replace your phone, and anyone who says otherwise is lying to you. But after so many years of using our phones, we’ve forgotten how much friction they actually contain. To do almost anything on your phone, you have to take the device out of your pocket, look at it, unlock it, open an app, wait for the app to load, tap between one and 40,000 times, switch to another app, and repeat over and over again. Smartphones are great because they’re able to contain and access practically everything, but they’re not actually particularly efficient tools. And they’re not going to get better, not as long as the app store business model stays the way it is.

The promise of AI — and I want to emphasize the word promise because nothing we’ve seen so far comes remotely close to accomplishing this — is to abstract all those steps and all that friction out of existence. All you need to do is declare your intentions — play music, navigate home, text Anna, tell me what poison ivy looks like — and let the system figure out how to get it done. Your phone contains multitudes, but it’s not really optimized for anything. An AI-optimized gadget can be easier to reach, quicker to launch, and alert to your input at all times.

If that pans out, we might get not only a new set of gadgets but also a new set of huge companies. Google and Apple won the smartphone wars, and no company over the last decade has even come close to upsetting that app store duopoly. So much of the race to augmented reality, the metaverse, wearables, and everything else has been about trying to open up a new market. (On the flip side, it’s no accident that while so many other companies are building AI gadgets, Google and Apple are working hastily to shove AI into your phone.) AI might turn out to be just another flailing attempt from the folks that lost the smartphone wars. But it might also be the first general-purpose, all-things-to-all-people technology that actually feels like an upgrade.

Obviously, the AI-first approach brings its own set of challenges. Starting with the whole “AI is not yet very good or reliable” thing. But even once we’re past that, all the simplicity by abstraction can actually turn into confusion. What if I text Anna in multiple places? What if I listen to podcasts in Pocket Casts and music in Spotify and audiobooks in Audible, and I have accounts with a bunch of other music services I never even use? What if the closest four-star coffee shop is a Starbucks, and I hate Starbucks? If I tell my AI device to buy something, what card does it use? What retailer does it pick? How fast will it ship? Automation requires trust, and we don’t yet have many reasons to trust AI.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/24117865/ai-gadget-era-humane-rabbit-brilliant-meta

Moment part a CHINESE rocket explodes over California after rouge reentry through Earth’s atmosphere – months after spy balloon fiasco

• A rocket exploded over California as it reentered the Earth’s atmosphere
• The rocket is the Chinese-owned Shenzhou-15 orbital module

Californians received a shock in the early hours of Tuesday morning when golden streaks from an apparent explosion appeared over Los Angeles.

Locals had believed it was the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that launched six hours prior or a giant meteor that combusted as it shot through Earth’s atmosphere.

Aerospace researchers have determined that the fiery object was the orbital object of China’s Shenzhou-15 rocket that launched in 2022.

The China-owned space junk comes just months after the nation infiltrated the US by flying a spy balloon over an Air Force base in Montana.

Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13267795/Chinese-rocket-explodes-California-reentry-Earth.html

“There was too much work. I just want to put my nose on the window (this time) and enjoy the sights of Mother Earth from space,” Rakesh Sharma told NDTV

Bharat is still “saare jahan se accha (best in the world)”, said the country’s very first cosmonaut Rakesh Sharma, who is celebrating the 40th anniversary of that historic flight. Closely connected to the country’s fresh effort to put four cosmonauts in space, Mr Sharma, who is now 75 years old, said he would love to take another flight, but only as a “tourist”.

“There was too much work. I just want to put my nose on the window (this time) and enjoy the sights of Mother Earth from space,” he told NDTV’s Science Editor Pallava Bagla in an exclusive interview.

Today, as India is preparing for its maiden human space flight as part of Mission Gaganyaan, the Indian Space Research Organisation or ISRO is also looking at that golden moment 40 years ago.

“Squadron Leader Rakesh Sharma’s journey to space not only inspired Bharat but also symbolized the boundless potential of human endeavour,” said S Somanath, the chairman of the space research organisation, who was 21 years old at the time.

“On this 40th anniversary of historic space flight, let us take a moment to honour his remarkable achievement and the indelible mark he left on Indian space exploration,’ he added.

History was made on April 3, 1984, when Squadron Leader Rakesh Sharma lifted off on a Soviet rocket and became India’s first “Gaganyatri” — a term the country has made official. He stayed on the Soviet space station for 7 days and 21 hours.

Speaking about SpaceX’s mission, the expert added: “I don’t think it’s realistic and we’ve got to solve those problems here on Earth.”

A top astronomer has branded Elon Musk’s ambitions for Mars a “dangerous illusion”, casting doubt on SpaceX’s multi-billion dollar project.

Musk has previously said that he wants to bring over a million people to Mars by 2050.

However Martin Rees, a leading astrophysicist and member of the Royal Households of the United Kingdom under the title of ‘Astronomer Royal’, spoke out against SpaceX’s plans.

He told the House of Lords’ podcast Lord Speaker’s Corner: “I don’t think it’s realistic and we’ve got to solve those problems here on Earth.

“Dealing with climate change on Earth is a doddle compared to making Mars habitable. So I don’t think we should hold that out as a long-term aim at all.

“I think there might be a few crazy pioneers living on Mars, just like there are people living at the South Pole, although it’s far less hospitable than the South Pole.

“But the idea of mass migration to avoid the Earth’s problems, which he and a few other space enthusiasts adopt, that, I think, is a dangerous illusion.”

He instead suggested that human exploration into space should be funded purely through private funds because governments have “got to be very safety conscious and that makes it very expensive.”

Mr Rees added that remote-controlled machines should be used to explore other pants while “only people who really have a high appetite for risk should be going into space, and they should be privately funded, not by the rest of us.”

Another opponent of Musk’s Mars plans emerged recently was former US President Barack Obama.

Speaking at a renewable energy conference in Paris, Obama raised similar concerns to Mr Rees.

Source: https://www.the-express.com/news/science/133051/elon-musk-mars-spacex-astronomer

Google agreed to destroy or de-identify billions of records of web browsing data collected when users were in its private browsing “Incognito mode,” according to a proposed class action settlement filed Monday.

The proposed settlement in Brown v. Google will also mandate greater disclosure from the company about how it collects information in Incognito mode and put limits on future data collection. If approved by a California federal judge, the settlement could apply to 136 million Google users. The 2020 lawsuit was brought by Google account holders who accused the company of illegally tracking their behavior through the private browsing feature.

The proposal is valued at $5 billion, according to Monday’s court filing, calculated by determining the value of data Google has stored and would be forced to destroy and the data it would be prevented from collecting. Google would need to address data collected in private browsing mode in December 2023 and earlier. Any data that is not outright deleted must be de-identified.

“This Settlement ensures real accountability and transparency from the world’s largest data collector and marks an important step toward improving and upholding our right to privacy on the Internet,” the plaintiffs wrote in the proposed settlement filing.

Google spokesperson José Castañeda said in a statement that the company is “pleased to settle this lawsuit, which we always believed was meritless.” Though the plaintiffs valued the proposed settlement at $5 billion, which was the amount they originally sought in damages, Castañeda said that they are “receiving zero.” The settlement does not include damages for the class, though individuals can file claims.

“We never associate data with users when they use Incognito mode,” Castañeda added. “We are happy to delete old technical data that was never associated with an individual and was never used for any form of personalization.”

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/1/24117929/google-incognito-browsing-data-delete-class-action-settlement

TRILLIONS of cicadas are set to invade the United States for the first time in 221 years, scientists say.

In late April, two large broods of periodical cicadas are expected to emerge from the ground for a noisy mating frenzy.

“Billions, even trillions, of cicadas are going to emerge at the same time across 17 states,” Chris Simon, a professor in UConn’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, told Live Science.

Brood XIII and XIX have been living underground for 17 and 13 years respectively.

They will soon emerge at the same time for the first time in 221 years.

Periodical broods are found in eastern North America and tend to emerge in large numbers.

Once they hatch, the nymphs feed off root sap underground until it’s time to mate.

Mating season has been described as a noisy and chaotic display that could happen for weeks.

An event like this hasn’t occurred since 1803 when Thomas Jefferson was president and it’s not expected to happen again until 2244.

“The co-emergence of any two broods of different cycles is rare because the cycles are both prime numbers,” John Cooley, founder of the Periodical Cicada Project and a professor in UConn’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, told the publication.

“Any given 13- and 17-year broods will only co-emerge once every 13 x 17 = 221 years.”

However, despite the large volume of cicadas that will appear next, it won’t look too different from previous emergences, scientists say.

Source: https://www.the-sun.com/tech/10925607/trillions-bugs-swarm-mating-frenzy-weeks-founding-fathers/

Four Canadian school boards have sought more than C$4 billion ($2.96 billion) in damages from social media firms such as Meta Platforms (META.O), opens new tab and Snap (SNAP.N), opens new tab in a lawsuit, alleging that their products harmed students.
The products are “negligently designed for compulsive use, have rewired the way children think, behave and learn”, a joint statement by the boards said on Thursday.
That has caused learning and mental health crises in students, resulting in the schools having to invest more in support programs, they said.

Several studies have shown that platforms like Facebook and Instagram can be addictive and their prolonged use can lead to anxiety and depression.
Thirty-three U.S. states had last year sued Meta, accusing its product cause mental health issues among young children and teenagers.
The Canadian lawsuit has also named TikTok, the short-video social media platform from China’s ByteDance.
The action has been brought on by Toronto District School Board, Peel District School Board, Toronto Catholic District School Board, and Ottawa-Carleton District School Board.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/technology/canadian-school-boards-sue-social-media-giants-over-4-bln-damages-2024-03-28/

Meta will be sunsetting Facebook News in early April for users in the US and Australia as the platform further deemphasizes news and politics. The feature was shut down in the UK, France and Germany last year.

Launched in 2019, the News tab curated headlines from national and international news organizations, as well as smaller, local publications.

Meta says users will still be able to view links to news articles, and news organizations will still be able to post and promote their stories and websites, as any other individual or organization can on Facebook.

The change comes as Meta tries to scale back news and political content on its platforms following years of criticism about how it handles misinformation and whether it contributes to political polarization.

“This change does not impact posts from accounts people choose to follow; it impacts what the system recommends, and people can control if they want more,” said Dani Lever, a Meta spokesperson. “This announcement expands on years of work on how we approach and treat political content based on what people have told us they wanted.”

Meta said the change to the News tab does not affect its fact-checking network and review of misinformation.

But misinformation remains a challenge for the company, especially as the US presidential election and other races get underway.

“Facebook didn’t envision itself as a political platform. It was run by tech people. And then suddenly it started scaling and they found themselves immersed in politics, and they themselves became the headline,” said Sarah Kreps, director of the Tech Policy Institute in the Cornell Brooks School of Public Policy who studies tech policy and how new technologies evolve over time. “I think with many big elections coming up this year, it’s not surprising that Facebook is taking yet another step away from politics so that they can just not, inadvertently, themselves become a political headline.”

Rick Edmonds, media analyst for Poynter, said the dissolution of the News tab is not surprising for news organizations that have been seeing diminishing Facebook traffic to their websites for several years, spurring organizations to focus on other ways to attract an audience, such as search and newsletters.

“I would say if you’ve been watching, you could see this coming, but it’s one more very hurtful thing to the business of news,” Edmonds said.

News makes up less than 3 per centof what users worldwide see in their Facebook feeds, Meta said, adding that the number of people using Facebook News in Australia and the US dropped by over 80 per centlast year.

Source: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/meta-end-facebook-news-tab-us-and-australia-4229316

But Tesla is now struggling. Mr. Musk helped create his competition, Chinese E.V. makers that are taking market share and becoming a security concern for the United States and Europe.

Tesla benefited from a Chinese policy it helped shape.

In California, where Tesla launched its first car in 2008, the company has profited from an emissions mandate that allows it to sell credits — billions of dollars worth of them — to automakers that cannot meet pollution targets.

As Mr. Musk turned to China, his lobbyists encouraged leaders there to adopt a similar policy. Emails and other documents we obtained show they worked through California environmentalists intent on cleaning up China’s air.

Beijing adopted the policy, which was also being promoted by groups unconnected to Tesla, in 2017. After Tesla opened its Shanghai factory in 2020, the company earned hundreds of millions of dollars in credits through the policy, according to the market analysis company CRU Group.

Mr. Musk’s fortune is tied to Tesla’s Shanghai factory.

The Shanghai factory has replaced Tesla’s plant in Fremont, Calif., as its largest and most productive, accounting for over half of the company’s global deliveries and the bulk of its profits.

As the plant took shape in just under a year, Mr. Musk worked closely with a city official who is now China’s premier, Li Qiang. Under Mr. Li’s watch, state-run banks offered Tesla low-interest loans, a deal so generous that a senior auto official recalled a minister balking at it.

China also changed ownership rules so that Tesla could set up without a local partner, a first for a foreign auto company in China.

Mr. Musk saves on production and labor costs in Shanghai and cannot easily extricate himself, should he ever want to. Because the billionaire’s wealth is tied up in Tesla stock, his personal fortune now hinges on what happens in China.

Tesla’s growth in China has bound Mr. Musk to Beijing.

Mr. Musk’s reliance on the Shanghai factory may give Beijing leverage over him.

That’s a concern because a second company of Mr. Musk’s, SpaceX, has sensitive Pentagon contracts and controls much of the world’s satellite internet through its Starlink network.

Mr. Musk has said that his companies should not be conflated. But he has also praised Chinese leaders and taken China’s side in geopolitical disputes, even as he rails against politicians in the United States.

In an online conversation with two members of Congress in July, he called himself “kind of pro-China.”

Source: https://dnyuz.com/2024/03/27/how-elon-musk-became-kind-of-pro-china/

The AI search tools are getting better — but they don’t yet understand what a search engine really is and how we really use them.

AI is coming for the search business. Or so we’re told. As Google seems to keep getting worse, and tools like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot seem to keep getting better, we appear to be barreling toward a new way to find and consume information online. Companies like Perplexity and You.com are pitching themselves as next-gen search products, and even Google and Bing are making huge bets that AI is the future of search. Bye bye, 10 blue links; hello direct answers to all my weird questions about the world.

But the thing you have to understand about a search engine is that a search engine is many things. For all the people using Google to find important and hard-to-access scientific information, orders of magnitude more are using it to find their email inbox, get to Walmart’s website, or remember who was president before Hoover. And then there’s my favorite fact of all: that a vast number of people every year go to Google and type “google” into the search box. We mostly talk about Google as a research tool, but in reality, it’s asked to do anything and everything you can think of, billions of times a day.

The real question in front of all these would-be Google killers, then, is not how well they can find information. It’s how well they can do everything Google does. So I decided to put some of the best new AI products to the real test: I grabbed the latest list of most-Googled queries and questions according to the SEO research firm Ahrefs and plugged them into various AI tools. In some instances, I found that these language model-based bots are genuinely more useful than a page of Google results. But in most cases, I discovered exactly how hard it will be for anything — AI or otherwise — to replace Google at the center of the web.

People who work in search always say there are basically three types of queries. First and most popular is navigation, which is just people typing the name of a website to get to that website. Virtually all of the top queries on Google, from “youtube” to “wordle” to “yahoo mail,” are navigation queries. In actual reality, this is a search engine’s primary job: to get you to a website.

For navigational queries, AI search engines are universally worse than Google. When you do a navigational Google search, it’s exceedingly rare that the first result isn’t the one you’re looking for — sure, it’s odd to show you all those results when what Google should actually do is just take you directly to amazon.com or whatever, but it’s fast and it’s rarely wrong. The AI bots, on the other hand, like to think for a few seconds and then provide a bunch of quasi-useful information about the company when all I want is a link. Some didn’t even link to amazon.com.

I don’t hate the additional information so much as I hate how long these AI tools take to get me what I need. Waiting 10 seconds for three paragraphs of generated text about Home Depot is not the answer; I just want a link to Home Depot. Google wins that race every time.

Source : https://www.theverge.com/24111326/ai-search-perplexity-copilot-you-google-review

Beyond AI, WWDC attendees anticipate a slew of announcements concerning updates across iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and other operating systems.

Apple enthusiasts worldwide eagerly anticipate the commencement of the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), set to kick off with its keynote address on June 10th and extend until June 14th. As customary, the tech giant is poised to unveil its upcoming fall software updates and possibly introduce new hardware. However, this year, all eyes are on Apple’s stance regarding generative artificial intelligence (AI), which is shrouded in mystery.

Multiple reports suggest that Apple has allocated significant resources, reportedly millions daily, towards training its own AI models. Rumours abound regarding potential partnerships with major players such as Google, OpenAI, or Anthropic (or Baidu in China) for cloud-based AI features, while maintaining its proprietary generative features on-device. Speculation is rife that Apple might even extend its ecosystem to encompass all AI developers for seamless integration into its devices, as per a recent Bloomberg report.

While Apple has long championed on-device machine learning, the burgeoning prominence of generative AI prompts the company to amplify its prowess in this domain. Notably, the anticipation is heightened with references to products like the M3 MacBook Air, dubbed “the world’s best consumer laptop for AI.”

Beyond AI, WWDC attendees anticipate a slew of announcements concerning updates across iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and other operating systems. Speculated enhancements include the ability to customise app icons on iPhones, introduction of “scenes” in Freeform, and new accessibility shortcuts. Moreover, rumours hint at the potential launch of two new AirPods models—an entry-level successor to the second-gen AirPods and a noise-cancelling iteration to replace the mid-tier AirPods 3. Additionally, expectations loom over the prospect of updated AirPods Max headphones featuring USB-C connectivity.

Recalling last year’s WWDC highlights, Apple captivated audiences with the unveiling of the long-awaited Vision Pro headset. Alongside, the company showcased significant updates such as a widget-centric overhaul of WatchOS, iOS 17’s StandBy Mode, desktop widgets for macOS, and initiatives targeting the gaming sector.

Source: https://www.businesstoday.in/technology/news/story/apples-wwdc-2024-set-for-june-10-ios-18-ai-and-more-heres-what-to-expect-422975-2024-03-27

Pavan Davuluri, an IIT Madras graduate, is the new head of Microsoft Windows and Surface after Panos Panay’s departure to Amazon. With this, Davuluri joins the league of Indians heading major US tech companies.

IIT Madras alumni Pavan Davuluri has been appointed as the new head of Microsoft Windows and Surface. Davuluri assumed the role following the departure of Panos Panay, who previously led the department. Panay left his position last year to join Amazon. Notably, Microsoft had split the Windows and Surface groups, each under separate leadership. Previously, Davuluri oversaw Surface silicone work while Mikhail Parakhin led the Windows department. However, with Parakhin’s wish to explore “new roles”, Davuluri has taken responsibility for both Windows and Surface.

Davuluri has an Indian connection. He graduated from the prestigious IIT Madras. With his new position, he joins the ranks of Indians in leadership roles in tech companies in the US, alongside figures like Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella, amongst others.

In an internal letter by Rajesh Jha, Microsoft’s head of experience and devices, which was obtained by The Verge, Parakhin’s departure was announced and Davuluri’s new role was announced. Davuluri will now report to Jha. “As part of this change, we are bringing together the Windows Experiences and Windows + Devices teams as a core part of the Experiences + Devices (E+D) division. This will enable us to take a holistic approach to building silicon, systems, experiences, and devices that span Windows client and cloud for this AI era. Pavan Davuluri will lead this team and continue to report to me. Shilpa Ranganathan and Jeff Johnson and their teams will report directly to Pavan. The Windows team will continue to work closely with the Microsoft AI team on AI, silicon, and experiences,” he wrote.

Davuluri has been associated with Microsoft for over 23 years now. After his post graduation from University of Maryland, where he completed his MS, Davuluri joined Microsoft as the Reliability Component Manager.

In the memo, Rajesh Jha informed the team about organisational changes within the Windows and Web Experiences (WWE) team following the establishment of the Microsoft AI organisation. Mikhail Parakhin will explore new roles under Kevin Scott’s supervision, transitioning from WWE.

Source: https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/iit-madras-graduate-pavan-davuluri-is-new-microsoft-windows-boss-vp-rajesh-jha-announces-in-memo-2519362-2024-03-26

There are already fears of artificial intelligence (AI) taking our jobs, or even ending humanity all together. Now a robot has been filmed apparently groping a woman in Saudi Arabia.

The seven-second clip was taken at DeepFest in Riyadh – an event billed as the ‘premier meeting place for the global artificial intelligence ecosystem’.

During the showcase, reporter Rawya Kassem was seen speaking in front of the AI robot, called Mohammad, when it appeared to reach out and attempt to touch her inappropriately.

Ms Kassem immediately flinched, and turned around with her hand raised, appearing to admonish him while continuing her job.

Mohammad, developed by Saudi AI and robotics firm QSS, is described as the ‘latest marvel in robotics’. Dressed in a traditional outfit, including a red keffiyeh, Mohammad introduced himself to the crowd in Arabic.

However, after the inappropriate interaction, the clip quickly went viral for all the wrong reasons, with some questioning the coding, and one X user branding the robot a ‘pervert’.

QSS confirmed to Metro.co.uk that Mohammad is ‘fully autonomous’, and was operating ‘independently without direct human control’.

Some argued perhaps the robot was attempting to encourage Ms Kassem to step forward, rather than anything more sinister.

Mohammad has been designed partly to perform tasks in hazardous conditions, improving safety and reducing risk to humans.

‘His creation is a testament to Saudi Arabia’s unwavering commitment to technological advancement and ingenuity,’ a post on the DeepFest website writes.

However, the incident highlights the uncharted territory humanity is entering when it comes to integrating robots into everyday life, adding yet another ethical consideration around the explosion of AI.

Source: https://metro.co.uk/2024/03/08/ai-robot-sparks-outrage-inappropriately-touching-reporter-20428880/

Worms living near Chernobyl have developed a new ‘superpower’, scientists discover

• Worms living near Chernboyl appear to be immune to radiation
• Results give scientists clues to how DNA repair can vary between individuals

From black frogs to a new species of dog, radiation exposure has forced many animals living near Chernobyl to mutate.

But a new study shows that not all animals in the exclusion zone have responded in this way.

Worms living near Chernboyl (or Chornobyl in the preferred Ukranian spelling) have developed a new ‘superpower’ – they appear to be immune to radiation.

‘Chornobyl was a tragedy of incomprehensible scale, but we still don’t have a great grasp on the effects of the disaster on local populations,’ said Dr Sophia Tintor, lead author of the study.

‘Did the sudden environmental shift select for species, or even individuals within a species, that are naturally more resistant to ionizing radiation?’

Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13168675/Worms-Chernobyl-superpower-scientists-discover.html

Top scientist warns AI could surpass human intelligence by 2027 – decades earlier than previously predicted

• Mathematics PhD, futurist Ben Goertzel said advanced AI could make its own AI
• PhD predicts ‘artificial super intelligence’ smarter than all of human civilization

The computer scientist and CEO who popularized the term ‘artificial general intelligence’ (AGI) believes AI is verging on an exponential ‘intelligence explosion.’

The PhD mathematician and futurist Ben Goertzel made the prediction while closing out a summit on AGI this month: ‘It seems quite plausible we could get to human-level AGI within, let’s say, the next three to eight years.’

‘Once you get to human-level AGI,’ Goertzel, sometimes called ‘father of AGI,’ added, ‘within a few years you could get a radically superhuman AGI.’

While the futurist admitted that he ‘could be wrong,’ he went on to predict that the only impediment to a runaway, ultra-advanced AI — far more advanced than its human makers — would be if the bot’s ‘own conservatism’ advised caution.

Goertzel made his predictions during his closing remarks last week at the ‘2024 Beneficial AI Summit and Unconference,’ partially sponsored by his own firm SingularityNET where he is CEO.

Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13165581/top-scientist-ai-surpass-human-intelligence-2027.html

On a late night in December, Shane Jones, an artificial intelligence engineer at Microsoft
, felt sickened by the images popping up on his computer.

Jones was noodling with Copilot Designer, the AI image generator that Microsoft debuted in March 2023, powered by OpenAI’s technology. Like with OpenAI’s DALL-E, users enter text prompts to create pictures. Creativity is encouraged to run wild.

Since the month prior, Jones had been actively testing the product for vulnerabilities, a practice known as red-teaming. In that time, he saw the tool generate images that ran far afoul of Microsoft’s oft-cited responsible AI principles.

The AI service has depicted demons and monsters alongside terminology related to abortion rights, teenagers with assault rifles, sexualized images of women in violent tableaus, and underage drinking and drug use. All of those scenes, generated in the past three months, have been recreated by CNBC this week using the Copilot tool, which was originally called Bing Image Creator.

“It was an eye-opening moment,” Jones, who continues to test the image generator, told CNBC in an interview. “It’s when I first realized, wow this is really not a safe model.”

Jones has worked at Microsoft for six years and is currently a principal software engineering manager at corporate headquarters in Redmond, Washington. He said he doesn’t work on Copilot in a professional capacity. Rather, as a red teamer, Jones is among an army of employees and outsiders who, in their free time, choose to test the company’s AI technology and see where problems may be surfacing.

Jones was so alarmed by his experience that he started internally reporting his findings in December. While the company acknowledged his concerns, it was unwilling to take the product off the market. Jones said Microsoft referred him to OpenAI and, when he didn’t hear back from the company, he posted an open letter on LinkedIn asking the startup’s board to take down DALL-E 3 (the latest version of the AI model) for an investigation.

Microsoft’s legal department told Jones to remove his post immediately, he said, and he complied. In January, he wrote a letter to U.S. senators about the matter, and later met with staffers from the Senate’s Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.

Now, he’s further escalating his concerns. On Wednesday, Jones sent a letter to Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, and another to Microsoft’s board of directors. He shared the letters with CNBC ahead of time.

“Over the last three months, I have repeatedly urged Microsoft to remove Copilot Designer from public use until better safeguards could be put in place,” Jones wrote in the letter to Khan. He added that, since Microsoft has “refused that recommendation,” he is calling on the company to add disclosures to the product and change the rating on Google’s
Android app to make clear that it’s only for mature audiences.

“Again, they have failed to implement these changes and continue to market the product to ‘Anyone. Anywhere. Any Device,’” he wrote. Jones said the risk “has been known by Microsoft and OpenAI prior to the public release of the AI model last October.”

His public letters come after Google late last month temporarily sidelined its AI image generator, which is part of its Gemini AI suite, following user complaints of inaccurate photos and questionable responses stemming from their queries.

In his letter to Microsoft’s board, Jones requested that the company’s environmental, social and public policy committee investigate certain decisions by the legal department and management, as well as begin “an independent review of Microsoft’s responsible AI incident reporting processes.”

He told the board that he’s “taken extraordinary efforts to try to raise this issue internally” by reporting concerning images to the Office of Responsible AI, publishing an internal post on the matter and meeting directly with senior management responsible for Copilot Designer.

“We are committed to addressing any and all concerns employees have in accordance with our company policies, and appreciate employee efforts in studying and testing our latest technology to further enhance its safety,” a Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC. “When it comes to safety bypasses or concerns that could have a potential impact on our services or our partners, we have established robust internal reporting channels to properly investigate and remediate any issues, which we encourage employees to utilize so we can appropriately validate and test their concerns.”

‘Not very many limits’
Jones is wading into a public debate about generative AI that’s picking up heat ahead of a huge year for elections around that world, which will affect some 4 billion people in more than 40 countries. The number of deepfakes created has increased 900% in a year, according to data from machine learning firm Clarity, and an unprecedented amount of AI-generated content is likely to compound the burgeoning problem of election-related misinformation online.

Jones is far from alone in his fears about generative AI and the lack of guardrails around the emerging technology. Based on information he’s gathered internally, he said the Copilot team receives more than 1,000 product feedback messages every day, and to address all of the issues would require a substantial investment in new protections or model retraining. Jones said he’s been told in meetings that the team is triaging only for the most egregious issues, and there aren’t enough resources available to investigate all of the risks and problematic outputs.

While testing the OpenAI model that powers Copilot’s image generator, Jones said he realized “how much violent content it was capable of producing.”

“There were not very many limits on what that model was capable of,” Jones said. “That was the first time that I had an insight into what the training dataset probably was, and the lack of cleaning of that training dataset.”

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/06/microsoft-ai-engineer-says-copilot-designer-creates-disturbing-images.html

In an update that might reassure literally everyone on Earth, a new study is effectively debunking any speculation that the infamous asteroid Apophis will collide with our planet.

Initially discovered in 2004 and officially named asteroid 99942, Apophis quickly gained notoriety as one of the most hazardous asteroids in our solar system. This was due to its projected course and potential to strike Earth. However, as astronomers closely monitored its trajectory over the years, it’s now becoming evident that Apophis, stretching about 335 meters across, will safely bypass our planet.

The study, conducted by Western University astronomer Paul Wiegert and Benjamin Hyatt from the University of Waterloo, specifically investigated what might occur if Apophis’ orbit was altered by a collision with another asteroid. The conclusion? It won’t, the researchers claim. Wiegert and Hyatt find that such an event is highly improbable.

Apophis is particularly famous for its forthcoming close approaches to Earth, notably on April 13, 2029, when it is expected to skim past our planet at a relatively short distance of 37,399 kilometers. Apophis will pass by again in 2036. Despite the initial concerns, further studies have confirmed that these encounters will not pose any danger to Earth.

“We calculated the paths of all known asteroids using a detailed computer simulation of our Solar System and the possibility of such an unlikely event was evaluated,” says Wiegert, a physics & astronomy professor, in a media release. “Fortunately, no such collisions are anticipated.”

Source: https://studyfinds.org/zero-chance-apophis-strikes-earth/

A former Google software engineer has been charged by the US with stealing trade secrets about artificial intelligence (AI) while secretly working for two Chinese companies.

Linwei Ding, also known as Leon Ding, was indicted in California on four charges and arrested on Wednesday.

The Chinese national allegedly stole more than 500 confidential files.

If convicted he faces up to 10 years in prison and $250,000 in fines on each count.

A lawyer for Mr Ding could not be identified to comment on the case, local media reported.

The information he is accused of taking relates to the infrastructure of Google’s supercomputing data centres, which are used to host and train large AI models.

According to the indictment, Mr Ding was hired by Google in 2019 and his responsibilities included developing this software.

He allegedly began uploading information stored in Google’s network to a personal Google account in May 2022. These uploads continued periodically for a year, the indictment reads.

Meanwhile, he is said to have spent several months in China working for Beijing Rongshu Lianzhi Technology – a start-up tech company that approached him. The indictment says he was offered $14,800 (£11,620) per month to be the company’s Chief Technology Officer.

He is also alleged to have started his own tech firm, Shanghai Zhisuan Technology, which had a focus on AI and machine learning, and made himself the CEO.

The BBC has contacted Rongshu, while Zhisuan could not be immediately reached for comment.

Prosecutors allege Mr Ding never told Google about his work for either company.

The indictment states that he applied to a China-based organisation to help develop this business and presented it at an investor conference in China in November 2023.

The following month, he was flagged by Google trying to upload more files to his personal computer while in China, but Mr Ding told Google’s investigator it was to provide proof that he worked for the tech giant.

When he returned to the US and without Google’s knowledge, Mr Ding is said to have booked a one-way ticket from San Francisco to Beijing, before resigning on 26 December.

Days later, Google once again became suspicious after learning about his actions at the conference and suspended his access – searching his activity history to reveal the unauthorised uploads.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68497508

Elon Musk shared posts mocking the global outage reported by users on Facebook and Instagram. Both these platforms are owned by Meta.

Elon Musk took a dig at rival Meta after social media platforms Facebook and Instagram faced a global outage on Tuesday evening. The two platforms were back online after about an hour.

Musk, who acquired Twitter (now rebranded as X) in 2022, shared posts reacting to the global outage of Facebook and Instagram, which are owned by Meta.

“If you’re reading this post, it’s because our servers are working,” Musk said in a post on X.

The Tesla CEO also shared a meme featuring the statement by Meta’s Communications Director Andy Stone, where he said that Meta is working to resolve the issue.

Source: https://www.indiatoday.in/trending-news/story/elon-musk-x-meta-after-instagram-facebook-face-global-outage-2511064-2024-03-05

For the first time, ‘mini-organs’ have been grown using human stem cells taken from pregnancy.

Researchers say this could lead to advances in prenatal medicine, as human development can be observed in late pregnancy which could help treat and monitor any congenital conditions before birth.

The mini-organs can retain the baby’s biological information, as the researchers explain these complex cell modules, known as organoids, provide a window for scientists to study how organs function both when they’re healthy and diseased.

Now, scientists will be able to monitor foetal development in late pregnancy and model disease progression as well as test a range of new treatments such as congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH).

‘The organoids we created from amniotic fluid cells exhibit many of the functions of the tissues they represent, including gene and protein expression,’ first author Dr Mattia Gerli, at UCL Surgery and Interventional Science, said.

‘They will allow us to study what is happening during development in both health and disease, which is something that hadn’t been possible before.

‘We know so little about late human pregnancy, so it’s incredibly exciting to open up new areas of prenatal medicine.’

Previously, organs came from adult stem cells, which are usually taken from the bone marrow, as there are restrictions for when foetal samples can be gathered – in the UK it’s up to 22 weeks. For some countries, like the US, foetal sampling is illegal.

But this regulation also means that treating congenital diseases has to be done in a limited timeframe, despite there possibly being an option to treat them after this point.

The researchers at UCL and Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) extracted live cells that passed into the amniotic fluid from 12 pregnancies which were between the 16th week and the 34th week of pregnancy. They then identified which tissues the stem cells came from.

Lungs, kidneys and intestine stem cells were extracted and used to grow the organoids which had the functional features of these tissue types.

The team then collaborated with researchers from KU Leuven in Belgium and looked at the development of babies with CDH – pre and post-treatment – and without to compare the organoids and study the biological characteristics of each group.

CDH is a disease where organs such as the liver and intestine pass through a hole in the diaphragm. Babies with CDH often have underdeveloped lungs, which causes issues with breathing.

All babies with CDH need surgery.

In the UK, around one in 5,000 babies have CDH, and around seven in 10 babies born with CDH will survive.

The study revealed significant developmental differences between healthy and pre-treatment CDH organoids but they also found the organoids in the post-treatment group were much closer to healthy ones – indicating the treatment’s effectiveness at a cellular level.

‘This is the first time that we’ve been able to make a functional assessment of a child’s congenital condition before birth, which is a huge step forward for prenatal medicine,’ said NIHR Professor Paolo de Coppi, senior author of the study.

‘Diagnosis is normally based on imaging such as ultrasound or MRI and genetic analyses.

‘When we meet families with a prenatal diagnosis, we’re often unable to tell them much about the outcome because each case is different.

‘We’re not claiming that we can do that just yet, but the ability to study functional prenatal organoids is the first step towards being able to offer a more detailed prognosis and, hopefully, provide more effective treatments in future.’

Source: https://metro.co.uk/2024/03/04/mini-organs-grown-stem-cells-first-time-20396034/

Brussels on Monday fined Apple (AAPL.O), opens new tab 1.84 billion euros ($2 billion) for thwarting competition from music streaming rivals via restrictions on its App Store, the iPhone maker’s first ever penalty for breaching EU rules.
A basic penalty of 40 million euros was inflated by a huge lump sum included as a deterrent – a first for the European Union’s antitrust authorities.
The European Commission charged Apple last year with preventing Swedish streaming service Spotify (SPOT.N), opens new tab and others from informing users of payment options outside its App Store, following a 2019 complaint by Spotify.
It said on Monday Apple’s restrictions constituted unfair trading conditions, a relatively novel argument in an antitrust case and also used by the Dutch antitrust agency in a decision against Apple in 2021 in a case brought by dating app providers. It ordered it to stop such conduct.
Apple said it would appeal the decision. A ruling at the Luxembourg-based General Court, Europe’s second-highest, is likely to take several years. Until then, Apple will have to pay the fine and comply with the EU order.

Apple shares were down 3.2% at $173.88 on Monday afternoon.
The fine was nearly four times the 500 million euros sources with knowledge of the matter had told Reuters they expected the European Commission to impose on Apple.
It comprised a basic element of 40 million euros – described by European Competition Commissioner Margarethe Vestager as a “parking ticket” for the U.S. tech giant – plus 1.8 billion euros slapped on top as a deterrent. The 1.84 billion euros total is equal to 0.5% of Apple’s global turnover, she said.

Apple criticised the decision, saying in a statement it” was reached despite the Commission’s failure to uncover any credible evidence of consumer harm, and ignores the realities of a market that is thriving, competitive, and growing fast”.
“The primary advocate for this decision — and the biggest beneficiary — is Spotify, a company based in Stockholm, Sweden. Spotify has the largest music streaming app in the world, and has met with the European Commission more than 65 times during this investigation,” it said.
‘LEFT IN THE DARK’

“Millions of European music streaming users were left in the dark about all available options,” Vestager told a press conference.
“And Apple’s anti-steering rules also made consumers pay more for such services because of the high commission fee imposed on developers and passed on to consumers.”
Spotify cheered the EU decision but said there were other issues in other areas.
“And while we are pleased that this case delivers some justice, it does not solve Apple’s bad behaviour towards developers beyond music streaming in other markets around the world,” the company said in a statement.
Although the fine is big, Apple can handle it without any immediate cash impact, said analyst Ryan Reith at tech and services company IDC.
But he added: “I believe this is another step in the on-going process of breaking down some of the walled gardens that Apple has created around its ecosystem.”

Source: https://www.reuters.com/technology/apple-hit-with-over-18-bln-euro-eu-antitrust-fine-spotify-case-2024-03-04/