Google has laid off hundreds of employees working on its hardware, voice assistance and engineering teams as part of cost-cutting measures. The cuts come as Google looks towards "responsibly investing in our company's biggest priorities and the significant opportunities ahead", the company said in a statement. "Some teams are continuing to make these kinds of organizational changes, which include some role eliminations globally," it said. Google earlier said it was eliminating a few hundred roles across engineering, hardware and the Assistant teams, though most of the impact hit the company's augmented reality hardware division. The cuts follow pledges by executives of Google and its parent company, Alphabet, to reduce costs.

Google has announced that it will eliminate at least 17 features from its Assistant product, following news that it had laid off "hundreds" of employees from the division. The company is cutting "underutilized features" to "focus on quality and reliability, it wrote in a blog post, even though a good number of people may still rely on those functions. "Beginning on January 26, when you ask for one of these features, you may get a notification that it won't be available after a certain date," wrote Google Assistant VP Duke Dukellis. The company didn't specify how removing certain commands will improve Assistant, nor did it describe any specific quality and reliability problems. It did say, though, that improvements in the past were aided by user feedback, so it may have been receiving complaints about Assistant's core usability of late.

Building agents with adaptive behavior in cooperative tasks stands as a paramount goal in the realm of multi-agent systems. Current approaches to developing cooperative agents rely primarily on learning-based methods, whose policy generalization depends heavily on the diversity of teammates they interact with during the training phase. Such reliance, however, constrains the agents' capacity for strategic adaptation when cooperating with unfamiliar teammates, which becomes a significant challenge in zero-shot coordination scenarios. To address this challenge, we propose ProAgent, a novel framework that harnesses large language models (LLMs) to create proactive agents capable of dynamically adapting their behavior to enhance cooperation with teammates. ProAgent can analyze the present state, and infer the intentions of teammates from observations. It then updates its beliefs in alignment with the teammates' subsequent actual behaviors. Moreover, ProAgent exhibits a high degree of modularity and interpretability, making it easily integrated into various of coordination scenarios. Experimental evaluations conducted within the Overcooked-AI environment unveil the remarkable performance superiority of ProAgent, outperforming five methods based on self-play and population-based training when cooperating with AI agents. Furthermore, in partnered with human proxy models, its performance exhibits an average improvement exceeding 10% compared to the current state-of-the-art method. For more information about our project, please visit~\url{https://pku-proagent.github.io}.

The annual CES convention in Las Vegas has a reputation for showcasing the wildest gear that the tech industry has to offer. Wandering the floor of the consumer electronics show can be overwhelming and entertaining, as small scrappy startups display their products alongside the established tech giants. But we've kept an eye on some of the coolest and strangest technology products on display at the show. WeHead's AI head is made up of several screens. I tried speaking with the WeHead device, but it kept calling me'bro.'

Google is expanding its smart home integration at CES 2024. The company said Tuesday that, in the future, LG TVs and some Google TV (and other Android TV) products will work as Google Home hubs. Considering Google's support for the Matter smart home standard, the move could make it easier for customers to set up and control their smart homes without buying a Nest device. "In the future, LG TVs and select Google TV and other Android TV OS devices will act as hubs for Google Home," Google Android VP Sameer Samat wrote in today's announcement blog post. "So if you have a Nest Hub, Nest Mini or compatible TV, it's easy to add Matter devices to your home network and locally control them with the Google Home app."

The holidays are over, but there's one winter tradition left. CES is back, once again turning Las Vegas into a haven for the tech-obsessed. Samsung is holding its annual CES press conference on January 8 at 2PM PT / 5PM ET, a day before exhibitions officially open. Engadget will have a dozen staffers on the ground in Las Vegas, and you can follow along from home by watching the livestream on Samsung's Global Newsroom site. Samsung is, of course, a big company with its hands in just about every cookie jar, so you may wonder what the press conference will focus on.

The annual CES trade show in Las Vegas is upon us and NVIDIA is holding a major press conference that will offer details regarding "a spectrum of cutting-edge technologies." It goes down on Monday, January 8, at 8AM PT / 11AM ET, the day before CES 2024 officially kicks off. You can watch it directly on NVIDIA's website, or you can hit up the company's YouTube page or Twitch channel. We are unveiling the latest generative AI breakthroughs at #CES2024. Stay tuned to our livestreamed special address on Monday, Jan. 8, at 8 a.m. PT and explore 14 conference sessions to keep up with the newest #AI, robotics, and gaming technologies.

AMD always brings something interesting to CES -- hopefully CES 2024 is no different. It will feature AMD's chair and CEO, Dr. Lisa Su, and the company's senior vice president and GM of computing and graphics, Jack Huynh. Like many companies, AMD says its focus for the press conference on AI -- in this case, as it pertains to personal computers. The livestream's landing page says that "AMD is powering the end-to-end infrastructure that will define the AI era, from cloud installations to enterprise clusters, AI-enabled intelligent embedded devices and PCs." If all of that sounds very vague and boring, don't fret: While we don't know exactly what AMD plans to unveil at CES 2024, it's usually the time that the company unveils the CPUs and GPUs that will be in laptops through the coming year.

Fox News correspondent CB Cotton reports on how predators are allegedly targeting children on social media on'The Faulkner Focus.' A 31-year-old Florida man was arrested and faces charges after police say he hid a missing Ohio teen and planned to have sex with her. Detective Henrick Osthed arrested Thomas Ebersole on Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2024, the Marion County Sheriff's Office said in a news release. An FBI special agent had reached out to Det. Investigators found the girl after she logged into World of Warcraft, an online video game, from Ebersole's home address in Dunnellon, police said.

Fujitsu aims to jumpstart stalled negotiations to sell a $730 million stake in its air-conditioning business, a deal that may help propel its expansion into a hot nascent market for AI services. The Japanese icon, which is disposing of consumer-oriented businesses, remains in talks with multiple parties for a speedier sale of Fujitsu General, Chief Executive Officer Takahito Tokita said in an interview. The urgency to close has grown against the backdrop of escalating geopolitical and economic uncertainty, which is roiling company valuations. Fujitsu has held talks with potential buyers including Bain Capital and KKR & Co. for the sale of its 44% stake. But the negotiations have bogged down over price.