TechDesk

TechDesk, 4 days ago (edited 1 day ago) to ai

Microsoft has announced it is making its controversial Recall feature, announced alongside its new Copilot+ PCs last month, something you will have to opt-in to use.

The feature, which will screenshot everything you do on your computer, is something privacy advocates and security experts have warned could be a “disaster” for cybersecurity. Microsoft had originally planned to turn Recall on by default, but now the company says users will need to “proactively choose to turn it on.” @theverge has more.

https://flip.it/l7foLL

#AI #Microsoft #Cybersecurity #Tech

TechDesk, 5 days ago (edited 2 days ago) to ai

An artist-run, anti-AI social platform called Cara has grown from 40,000 to 650,000 users in just a week, as artists leave Instagram in their thousands to protest against Meta’s AI policies.

Artists aren’t happy that the social media giant is using public posts on its platforms to train its generative AI systems, with no way to opt out for U.S. users. Meta’s loss is Cara’s gain, but such a jump in users hasn’t come without its challenges. @TechCrunch has more.

https://flip.it/Ibdy_2

#AI #Meta #Instagram #Art #Tech

TechDesk, 5 days ago to Tamagotchi

A 27-year old mystery was solved this week when a collector figured out how to unlock secret characters on the Mothra Tamagotchi, first released in Japan in 1997.

@404mediaco reports a Discord user named rhubarb_pie found out how to unlock the “Moll & Lora” twins as playable characters through a very specific three-week gaming process, something that was previously thought to have occurred through a “battery glitch.”

https://flip.it/d22tOS

#Tamagotchi #RetroTech #Tech

TechDesk, 6 days ago to tech

Microsoft announced that it’s reopening a Windows Insider Beta Channel for PCs still running Windows 10, which will be used to test “new features and more improvements to Windows 10 as needed.” This comes despite the company’s intention to end support for the aging yet stubbornly popular operating system in October 2025. Read more from Ars Technica: https://flip.it/xCtSdz
#Tech #Technology #Microsoft #Windows

TechDesk, 6 days ago to tech

Call it the battle of the voice assistants. A Tech Radar editor tested Apple’s Siri against Google Gemini and Samsung’s Bixby. He made a list of 25 tasks he expected the AI to complete and graded them all on each. One of them easily outdid the others. Take a guess as to which one it was. https://flip.it/gqv-IQ
#Tech #Siri #Gemini #Bixby #AI

TechDesk, 8 days ago to Spotify

Has Spotify’s loyal user base given it the confidence to raise its prices for the second time in a year?

According to research firm Antenna, Spotify’s listeners are the least likely to cancel among any of the major video or audio streaming services in the U.S., with its growth and cancellation rates “much, much better” than its peers, reports @bloomberg.

While overall subscriber growth is slowing across all streaming services, last year Spotify managed to produce its best year of user growth and second-best year of subscriber growth. Can it sustain that and keep its subscriber base engaged at its new prices?

https://flip.it/cxgnLJ

#Spotify #Streaming #Music #Tech

TechDesk, 11 days ago to ai

Back in 2022, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei chose not to release the super-powerful AI chatbot, Claude, that his company had just finished training, opting instead to focus on further internal safety testing. That move likely cost the company billions — three months later, OpenAI launched ChatGPT.

Having a reputation for credibility and caution in an industry that appears to have thrown a large chunk of it to the wind is not a bad thing though. Claude is now in its third iteration, but that caution remains, with the company pledging not to release AIs above certain capability levels until it can develop sufficiently robust safety measures.

TIME’s interview with Amodei gives an insight into what the AI industry might look like when safety is considered a core part of the strategy.

https://flip.it/COiwDU

#AI #Anthropic #ChatGPT #Tech #Interview

TechDesk, 11 days ago to internet

Two new studies published in the journal of Science this week offer a deeper insight into the spread of misinformation on social media, offering evidence that it not only changes minds, but that a small group of committed “supersharers” — predominately older Republican women — were responsible for the vast majority of the “fake news” in the period looked at.

The studies, by researchers at MIT, Ben-Gurion University, Cambridge and Northeastern, were independently conducted but complement each other well. @TechCrunch has more.

https://flip.it/6fN4-y

You can also read the full reports here:

https://flip.it/208p7a
https://flip.it/i-HVZr

#SocialMedia #Misinformation #Research #MIT #Tech

TechDesk, 13 days ago to ai

From eating rocks to putting glue on pizza, Google’s AI Overviews has given us a good laugh and plenty of memes over the past week, thanks to the many hilariously inaccurate answers it has given to several search queries.

However, these clearly wrong answers are not the problem we should be focusing on, argues @FastCompany. “It’s the errors that don’t call attention to their ridiculous selves that could do the most damage to Google Search and everyone who relies on it.” Here’s more.

https://flip.it/LOs.4J

#AI #Google #AIOverview #Tech

TechDesk, 13 days ago (edited 13 days ago) to TikTok

The Biden administration reportedly rejected an offer from TikTok’s parent company ByteDance in 2022, that would have given it extraordinary influence over the world’s most popular app.

The proposal would have allowed federal officials to pick TikTok’s U.S. operation’s board of directors, given the government veto power over each new hire and seen TikTok pay an American company that contracts with the Defense Department to monitor its source code.

It even offered to give federal officials a “kill switch” that would shut the app down in the United States, if it was determined to be a threat. So why was it declined? The Washington Post has more (may require subscription).

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/05/29/tiktok-cfius-proposal-rejected/?pwa[…]lamVjdGVkLyJ9.DgdWa2wf7yaiVFuybiYvMOw8ajrXfWXkSg-vejF8S8Y

#TikTok #TikTokBan #ByteDance #Biden #SocialMedia #Tech

TechDesk, 14 days ago to OpenAI

OpenAI has started training its new flagship AI model, which will replace the GPT-4 technology currently behind ChatGPT.

The leading AI company announced the news in a blog post, stating it expected the resulting systems to deliver the "next level of capabilities.” There’s also a new Safety and Security Committee coming, it said, led by OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman. What could possibly go wrong? @Mashable has more.

https://flip.it/puHeqB

#OpenAI #ChatGPT #SamAltman #AI #Tech

TechDesk, 15 days ago to hacking

A hacker group has claimed responsibility for a cyberattack that targeted auction house Christie’s earlier this month.

The attack took place just before the start of its high-profile spring sales event involving more than $850 million worth of art. Online bidding was suspended, but the group claims it has accessed sensitive information about wealthy art collectors around the world, and is threatening to release it unless “an agreement” is reached. Digital Trends has more.

https://flip.it/at-MY2

#Hacking #Cybersecurity #Christies #Art #Tech

TechDesk, 16 days ago to tech

Did Meta, “Call of Duty” and gun manufacturer Daniel Defense “groom” the shooter who killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas? Wrongful-death lawsuits brought by the victims’ families say yes. Read more from Tech Crunch: https://flip.it/QVEKdG
#Tech #Technology #Meta #CallOfDuty #Uvalde

TechDesk, 17 days ago (edited 17 days ago) to tech

Google is taking “swift action” to remove some of the bizarre AI-generated answers appearing at the top of its search pages. “A company once known for being at the cutting edge and shipping high-quality stuff is now known for low-quality output that’s getting meme’d,” one AI founder, who wished to remain anonymous, said. Read more from @theverge.
https://flip.it/E0coKc
#Tech #AI #Google #ArtificialIntelligence

TechDesk, 18 days ago to ai

When Bing, Microsoft’s search engine platform, went down early yesterday, it took down a number of services with it, including ChatGPT search, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo — all of which rely on the Bing API to operate.

With the majority of Google search alternatives taken out in one fell swoop, it highlighted the lack of competition that Google search truly has, and the implications that has on our online experience. Is there another way? @arstechnica has more.

https://flip.it/soK-9p

#AI #Google #Bing #Search #Internet #Tech

TechDesk, 21 days ago (edited 21 days ago) to ai

A female computational neuroscience and machine learning expert took to X at the weekend to describe a “dark side” of the startup culture in Silicon Valley.

Sonia Joseph alleged that a culture of sexual coercion has taken hold of San Francisco’s community housing tech scene, with “heavy LSD use” and “sex parties held by mainly male tech and entrepreneurial elites that involve mock-violent role playing with female participants.”

In particular, “early OpenAI employees” were referenced by Joseph, as well as their friends and “adjacent entrepreneurs.” Salon has more.

https://flip.it/t5RReK

#AI #OpenAI #SiliconValley #Tech

TechDesk, 22 days ago (edited 22 days ago) to microsoft

Microsoft’s Build developer conference doesn’t kick off until tomorrow, but the tech giant just couldn’t wait to lift the lid on some major announcements at an event that wasn’t livestreamed for the public.

As well as confirming some upcoming AI features for Windows 11, Microsoft unveiled its vision for so-called “AI PCs”, which are designed to run a lot of generative AI processes locally instead of in the cloud. The biggest takeaway? These so-called Copilot+ PCs will reportedly be 58% faster than the M3-powered MacBook Air, and a new Surface laptop will be one of the first to hit stores.

Here’s more on all the announcements from @engadget.

https://flip.it/EdOBCl

#Microsoft #MicrosoftBuild #AI #MicrosoftSurface #Windows #Tech

TechDesk, 23 days ago to tech

Professor Geoffrey Hinton, the “godfather of AI,” is “very worried about AI taking lots of mundane jobs.” That’s why he has advised U.K. government officials that universal basic income would be a very good idea. BBC News talks to Hinton about who would benefit most from AI, who would suffer from it, and the emerging human-extinction threats facing humans. https://flip.it/QBBzZB
#Tech #Technology #Human #Extinction #AI

TechDesk, 24 days ago to tech

OnlyFans’ top earners have a hard time keeping up with their customers’ demands. Remember that next time you’re chatting with your favorite online influencer girlfriend. Because the person you’re talking to may in fact be one of a rotating cast of low-wage workers. Wired has more in this captivating account by Brendan I. Koerner, a writer who went undercover to unveil a sordid netherworld that, according to at least one lawyer, defrauds customers, generally men, out of thousands of dollars.
https://flip.it/Dr4q5E
#Tech #Technology #AI #OnlyFans

TechDesk, 25 days ago to ai

If you use Slack for work, your messages and DMs to friends and colleagues are now being used to train the company’s machine learning features — and everyone is opted in by default.

A quiet update to the company’s policy suggests messages, data and files sent by users are helping Slack to improve its in-app features like channel recommendations, search results and emoji suggestions, reports @PCMag. Individual users can’t opt out either, something critics have called a “privacy mess.”

https://flip.it/Tb1gRM

#Slack #AI #MachineLearning #Tech

TechDesk, 25 days ago to ai

When OpenAI created its “Superalignment” team in summer 2023, the goal was for it to “steer and control future AI systems that could be so powerful they could lead to human extinction,” reports @engadget. “Less than a year later, that team is dead.”

Jan Leike, one of the team’s leaders, who quit earlier this week, posted a scathing statement on X showing the internal tensions between the safety team and the wider company.

“OpenAI is shouldering an enormous responsibility on behalf of all of humanity,” he wrote. “But over the past years, safety culture and processes have taken a backseat to shiny products.” Engadget has more.

https://flip.it/PRqSl5

#AI #ChatGPT #OpenAI #Tech

TechDesk, 28 days ago to retrocomputing

If you remember a time when using floppy disks didn’t seem weird, you’re probably at least 30 years old. Floppy disks or diskettes emerged around 1970 and, for a good three decades or so, they were the main way many people stored and backed up their computer data.

However, it’s now been over a decade since the last floppy disc was made, and it wouldn’t even have enough capacity to store a modern smart phone picture. So why do some people still love using them? BBC Future speaks to some of the floppy disk faithful to find out.

https://flip.it/3MUG.h

#RetroComputing #FloppyDisk #Nostalgia #Tech #Technology

TechDesk, 29 days ago (edited 29 days ago) to twitter

“No other American megabillionaire businessperson has so publicly fostered ideological relationships with world leaders to advance personal politics and businesses.”

The @nytimes looks into Elon Musk’s use of X to build influence with nationalist and right-wing politicians, publicly backing their views, aggressively confronting their enemies, and even personally intervening in X’s content policies in ways that appear to aid them — and all to the benefit of his other businesses. Here’s more.

https://flip.it/J77dC7

[Subscription may be required]

#ElonMusk #Twitter #Business #Tech

TechDesk, 30 days ago to tech

Futurism wanted to know: What kind of a company creates fake authors for a newspaper or magazine and operates them like sock puppets? What they discovered "should alarm anyone who cares about a trustworthy and ethical media industry." https://flip.it/oxcxAC
#Tech #Technology #AI #Journalism

TechDesk, 30 days ago to tech

Layoffs are hitting workers at some tech giants like Google, Microsoft and Tesla. Here’s why that may backfire, explains Business Insider’s Tim Paradis. "In short, the effects of layoffs can counter the financial benefits of expenses carved out of a P&L."
https://flip.it/KibAk7
#Tech #Career #LayOffs #Google #Microsoft #Tesla