Mustafa Suleyman was at the center of an artificial intelligence revolution once before. As a cofounder of DeepMind, a British company acquired by Google in 2014, he helped devise a new way for computers to tackle seemingly impossible problems by combining practice with positive and negative feedback. DeepMind demonstrated the approach by developing a superhuman Go-playing program, AlphaGo, which defeated the world's best Go player in 2016. Now the CEO of Microsoft AI, Suleyman is talking up a new kind of AI breakthrough. As CEO of Microsoft AI, Suleyman oversees efforts to integrate the same AI that powers ChatGPT into software--including the Windows operating system--that runs most of the world's personal computers.

If a robot vacuum is the big purchase on your radar this Prime Day, you're clearly someone who sees the value in automating one of the most tedious chores. Consider stretching that convenience past the vacuuming itself with a self-emptying robot vacuum -- there are already a handful on sale at Amazon ahead of July 16 (the official kickoff of Prime Day), including a Shark, Eufy, and Narwal model at 50% off. Your self-emptying options at Amazon currently range from budget models at 300 or 400 to more premium robot vacuum and mop combos dropping from their usual near 1,000 price point to a more digestible 500-ish price tag. A few of those premium self-empty docks are also decked out with the ability to self-wash and self-dry the mopping pads -- the ultimate automation experience, now much more affordable than usual. If you're not ready to make a move quite yet, keep checking back to this list -- we'll be updating it accordingly as Amazon inevitably drops new robovac discounts in the coming weeks. For now, all newly-added deals are marked with a, while deals marked with a have dropped to an all-time low price.

We all want to be able to speak our minds online--to be heard by our friends and talk (back) to our opponents. At the same time, we don't want to be exposed to unpleasant speech. Technology companies address this conundrum by setting standards for free speech, a practice protected under federal law, hiring in-house moderators to examine individual pieces of content and removing them if posts violate predefined rules. The approach clearly has problems: harassment, misinformation about topics like public health, and false descriptions of legitimate elections run rampant. But even if content moderation were implemented perfectly, it would still miss a whole host of issues. We need a new strategy: treat social media companies as potential polluters of the social fabric, and directly measure and mitigate the effects their choices have on us.

I like to think of my robot vacuum as an electronic pet -- one who pitches in around the house, never barks too loudly, and doesn't even need to be fed. As with all pets, though, I need to care for my vacuum, and a commitment to cleaning and maintenance can boost its longevity and performance. The average lifespan of a typical vacuum cleaner is about eight years, but with some mindful maintenance, you can aspire to keep your device working for a decade or more. Even if you don't have a pet-like affinity for your autonomous cleaner, these tips are useful for keeping your robot vacuum in top condition. Regardless of how powerful a robot vacuum is or whether it's a budget model or high-end, its cleaning tools can get filthy.

We improve the proofs of the lower bounds of Coquelin and Munos (2007) that demonstrate that UCT can have $\exp(\dots\exp(1)\dots)$ regret (with $\Omega(D)$ exp terms) on the $D$-chain environment, and that a `polynomial' UCT variant has $\exp_2(\exp_2(D - O(\log D)))$ regret on the same environment -- the original proofs contain an oversight for rewards bounded in $[0, 1]$, which we fix in the present draft. We also adapt the proofs to AlphaGo's MCTS and its descendants (e.g., AlphaZero, Leela Zero) to also show $\exp_2(\exp_2(D - O(\log D)))$ regret.

Emails from the Department of Justice's antitrust case against Google revealed how Microsoft executives were alarmed by and even envious of Google's AI lead. In an email thread, CTO Kevin Scott wrote he was "very, very worried" about Google's rapidly growing AI capabilities. He said he initially dismissed the company's "game-playing stunts," likely referring to Google's AlphaGo models. The emails reference Gmail's autocomplete features, which execs called "scary good." Microsoft struggled to copy Google's BERT-large, an AI model that deciphers the meaning and context of words in a sentence.

If you've been thinking about picking up a new supercomputer but were waiting on a good price, now might be a good time to put in your bid. Right now, the US government, via GSA Auctions, is auctioning off the Cheyenne Supercomputer to the highest bidder with three days remaining. While we haven't tested this one ourselves, we assume its 145,152 CPU cores will easily out-perform our current top pick for a laptop. You also won't need to upgrade the memory anytime soon, as there's a full 313,344GB of RAM currently installed, and the storage capacity tallies up to around 36 petabytes. No need to delete files to make room for new games or other media downloads. The deal was spotted by Ars Technica, who also point out that the fiber optic and CAT5/6 cabling are not included in the sale.

Almost 11 years after Boston Dynamics revealed the Atlas humanoid robot, it's finally being retired. The DARPA-funded robot was designed for search-and-rescue missions, but it rose to fame thanks to videos showing off its dance moves and--let's be honest--rudimentary parkour skills. Atlas is trotting off into the sunset with one final YouTube video, thankfully including plenty of bloopers -- which are the best parts. Boston Dynamics, of course, has more commercially successful robots in its lineup, including Spot. Meta's Oversight Board will rule on AI-generated sexual images Motorola's Edge 50 phone series includes a wood option You can get these reports delivered daily direct to your inbox.

One of the most difficult challenges in creating successful human-AI collaborations is aligning a robot's behavior with a human user's expectations. When this fails to occur, a robot may misinterpret their specified goals, prompting it to perform actions with unanticipated, potentially dangerous side effects. To avoid this, we propose a new metric we call Goal State Divergence $\mathcal{(GSD)}$, which represents the difference between a robot's final goal state and the one a human user expected. In cases where $\mathcal{GSD}$ cannot be directly calculated, we show how it can be approximated using maximal and minimal bounds. We then input the $\mathcal{GSD}$ value into our novel human-robot goal alignment (HRGA) design problem, which identifies a minimal set of environment modifications that can prevent mismatches like this. To show the effectiveness of $\mathcal{GSD}$ for reducing differences between human-robot goal states, we empirically evaluate our approach on several standard benchmarks.

Edifier is a popular speaker choice among desktop PC enthusiasts. Its R1280T bookshelf speakers are a staple on /r/battlestations and the top of Amazon's best-seller list, and there's a pair sitting a couple of feet away on my own desk. But the company's new QR65 design might just be a new favorite, especially if you like a bit of RGB with your audio tech. The Edifier QR65 includes a laundry list of audiophile goodies for direct, USB, and Bluetooth wireless audio, with roomy 2.75-inch primary drivers, 1.25-inch silk diaphragm tweeters, and MazeTube reflex channels for a bit of thumping bass despite their small size and lack of subwoofer. There's a sub-out port in the rear if you want to add one yourself.