When I meet Sam Altman, the chief executive of AI research laboratory OpenAI, he is in the middle of a world tour. He is preaching that the very AI systems he and his competitors are building could pose an existential risk to the future of humanity – unless governments work together now to establish guide rails, ensuring responsible development over the coming decade. In the subsequent days, he and hundreds of tech leaders, including scientists and "godfathers of AI", Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, as well as Google's DeepMind CEO, Demis Hassabis, put out a statement saying that "mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war". It is an all-out effort to convince world leaders that they are serious when they say that "AI risk" needs concerted international effort. It must be an interesting position to be in – Altman, 38, is the daddy of AI chatbot ChatGPT, after all, and is leading the charge to create "artificial general intelligence", or AGI, an AI system capable of tackling any task a human can achieve.

We're seeing artificial intelligence chatbots pop up all over the place, and soon enough you may very well have access to one in Instagram, too. Reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi claims the platform has an AI agent in the pipeline. According to screenshots he shared (as spotted by ZDNet), the chatbot will be able to answer questions and give advice. You may have as many as 30 personalities to choose from too. The chatbot could give those who find it difficult to write messages some help. It also seems you'll be able to bring the chatbot into a conversation you're having with someone by @-mentioning it.

"Vision Pro feels familiar, yet it's entirely new." That's how Apple's CEO, Tim Cook, introduced the company's new computer goggles at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday. The Vision Pro headset, which resembles a glass scuba mask with a fabric head strap, seamlessly blends the real and digital worlds, Cook said. But the product's name, which could just as easily describe a brand of contact-lens solution, hints at a challenge. Familiar yet entirely new, natural but augmented: If goggles really are the future of computing, they will have to overcome a bevy of conflicting sentiments. As you might expect, Apple's product is slick.

Meta rapidly adopted generative AI technology and incorporated it into various features across its platforms, including ads. Now, the company is testing a new feature on Instagram. Also: 7 ways you didn't know you can use Bing Chat and other AI chatbots A Tweet revealed that Instagram is testing an AI chat option for its platform. With the new feature, users would be able to chat with an AI chatbot to ask questions and get advice in their direct messages. You'll be able to choose from 30 different personalities.

Apple hopes the Vision Pro will fundamentally change how we interact with our devices--that once freed from the constraints of a smartphone or tablet screen, we'll embrace "spatial computing," as the glitzy promo video shows. Gesture and eye tracking identifies where your focus is, allowing you to interact with apps without pressing buttons or a screen. That could be great for consumers. Apple explained that existing apps designed for the iPad will work on visionOS, the operating system powering the Vision Pro, without any changes. But those iPad apps will be displayed within a metaphorical window, losing much of the functionality provided by mixed reality.

Last week, a group of tech company leaders and AI experts pushed out another open letter, declaring that mitigating the risk of human extinction due to AI should be as much of a global priority as preventing pandemics and nuclear war. So how do companies themselves propose we avoid AI ruin? One suggestion comes from a new paper by researchers from Oxford, Cambridge, the University of Toronto, the University of Montreal, Google DeepMind, OpenAI, Anthropic, several AI research nonprofits, and Turing Prize winner Yoshua Bengio. They suggest that AI developers should evaluate a model's potential to cause "extreme" risks at the very early stages of development, even before starting any training. These risks include the potential for AI models to manipulate and deceive humans, gain access to weapons, or find cybersecurity vulnerabilities to exploit.

There are, roughly speaking, two Silicon Valleys. One resembles the kind of pickup soccer game, usually with very young kids or drunk adults, where every player clusters in a panic around the ball. In 2023, this ball is generative AI, and the cluster began when everyone saw those eye-popping adoption numbers on OpenAI's ChatGPT product. Investors decided AI was hot, rewarded stocks accordingly, and hundreds of tech companies -- including most of the big guys -- began to chase the money. And then there's the second Silicon Valley, which is composed of ... Apple, pretty much.

To say that Apple's WWDC 2023 keynote was packed would be an understatement. The company introduced the Vision Pro, its first foray into mixed reality headsets, as well as a 15-inch MacBook Air. There was also an updated Mac Studio and Mac Pro, both of which use the equally new M2 Ultra chip. As you'd expect Apple announced significant upgrades to all its software platforms. It's safe to say the Vision Pro was Apple's marquee device at WWDC.

Apple's Vision Pro headset will introduce a new approach to security in the company's products: your eyes. The mixed reality device will use a previously rumored Optic ID system that studies your irises through invisible LED light exposures, and compares it against your enrolled eye data to sign you in. You can use it as a password replacement and to make purchases in the App Store or using Apple Pay. The company stresses that your eye data is encrypted and isolated in the headset's Secure Enclave. It never leaves the device and isn't available to apps.

Apple is making a small but mighty change to Siri in the new iOS 17 - users can drop the'Hey' and only need to say'Siri' to activate the virtual assistant. The change has been a sought-after feature of iOS fans, and it seems Apple has finally listened. The operating system will also see new apps geared toward your physical and mental health, along with personalized posters of a user that shows their photo or emoji to a call recipient. A live voicemail feature also transcribes messages directly on the display, allowing you to ignore or answer the call. Apple is making a small but mighty change to Siri in the new iOS 17 - users can drop the'Hey' and only need to say'Siri' to activate the virtual assistant It is only in the past 20 years that Apple has used the conference as a major launchpad for new devices, including the HomePod speaker in 2007 and the iPhone 4 in 2010.