Dianne Feinstein's office announced Friday morning that she has died at the age of 90, after more than 30 years representing California in the Senate. As her colleagues share memories of her, some huge, high-stakes questions are looming--namely, who will take her seat, and what will become of her spot on the powerful Judiciary Committee. Jim Newell walks us through what seems likely to happen, and what still remains unknown. Plus: The Waves reflects on the senator's legacy of fighting gun violence and conflict with her left-wing constituents. Unless Congress passes a bill to fund the government by Oct. 1, we're cruising for a government shutdown.
Microsoft's Bing Chat AI chatbot has gained much popularity because it is free, connected to the internet, powered by GPT-4, and multimodal, boasting features the accessible version of ChatGPT doesn't have. However, a new report shows that its responses may contain malware. In March, a month after releasing its chatbot, Microsoft started experimenting with ads in its Bing Chat responses. The ads were placed within the chat experience in both the footnotes and by hovering over the response. Also: Can generative AI solve computer science's greatest unsolved problem?
Google has been trying to leverage its undisputed lead in the search engine space to develop AI models that have as much success, including a generative AI-supported Search (SGE) and its Google Bard AI chatbot. Now, Google is adding new features that will optimize processes for early testers of SGE and web publisher controls regarding Google Bard. When Google announced SGE at Google I/O, it also unveiled Search Labs, a platform through which users can access the early-stage SGE, test it, and provide feedback to Google on how it can improve the experience. Since the launch of Search Labs, Google shares that younger SGE users, those between ages 18 and 24, have been finding it particularly useful and provided the most helpful feedback. As of Thursday, Google is expanding access to SGE to an even younger audience -- users between the ages of 13 and 17 in the US.
Imagine walking into work, feeling the hum of the office around you and settling into your desk, all the while unaware of the unseen eyes monitoring your every move. It's happening on a grand scale as corporations use advanced software to keep tabs on their employees. Experts fear that this extensive data collection could be a stepping stone, a way to train AI to replace human roles in the workforce. CLICK TO GET KURT'S FREE CYBERGUY NEWSLETTER WITH SECURITY ALERTS, QUICK TIPS, TECH REVIEWS AND EASY HOW-TO'S TO MAKE YOU SMARTER It's a familiar story – the experienced worker trains the newbie, only to be replaced once the newcomer is up to speed. This age-old tale is on the verge of adding a new character to its plot: artificial intelligence.
Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. Gov. Josh Shapiro on Friday remained noncommittal on a strategy to reduce planet-warming greenhouse gases after a task force the Democrat appointed came to an uncertain conclusion over how to make Pennsylvania the first major fossil fuel state to adopt carbon pricing over power plant emissions. The task force sprang from Shapiro questioning his predecessor's use of regulatory authority to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a consortium of 12 eastern states that imposes a price and declining cap on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. However, the 17-member task force -- comprised of supporters and opponents of former Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf's plan -- could come to no consensus on it. Wolf's regulation allowing Pennsylvania to join the consortium remains hung up in the courts, and Shapiro gave no sign Friday whether he would carry out the consortium's carbon pricing policy should it survive the legal challenge.
The European Summer School on Artificial Intelligence (ESSAI) is a direct product of European AI research being increasingly coordinated and scaled up across projects, research organisations and countries. ESSAI's immediate predecessors are the Advanced Course on AI (ACAI), organised since 1985 under the auspices of the European Association for Artificial Intelligence (EurAI), and the TAILOR Summer School on Trustworthy AI organised since 2021 by the European ICT-48 Network of Excellence on Trustworthy AI through Integrating Learning, Optimisation and Reasoning. Last year, these two schools were already co-located in Barcelona with two parallel tracks as well as joint events.
The rise of "generative" artificial intelligence is all about scaling, the idea of adding more resources to a computer program to get better results. As OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever has remarked, "I had a very strong belief that bigger is better" when he founded the company that would create ChatGPT. That idea of bigger and bigger compute has led to a race to develop the most powerful chips for AI, including not only new GPUs from Nvidia, but also Intel's Habana Labs, which has shown impressive results in benchmark tests; and Advanced Micro Devices, and startups such as Cerebras Systems. Also: Can generative AI solve computer science's greatest unsolved problem? That rush to develop chips has created a very practical problem: How are developers supposed to develop for an expanding universe of kinds of chips that have unique capabilities, and unique programming environments?
The National Security Agency (NSA) is starting a dedicated artificial intelligence security center, as reported by AP. This move comes after the government has begun to increasingly rely on AI, integrating multiple algorithms into defense and intelligence systems. The security center will work to protect these systems from theft and sabotage, in addition to safeguarding the country from external AI-based threats. The NSA's recent move toward AI security was announced Thursday by outgoing director General Paul Nakasone. He says that the division will operate underneath the umbrella of the pre-existing Cybersecurity Collaboration Center.
Equal parts Terminator, The Golden Child and The Matrix prequel, The Creator is yet another sci-fi epic about a war between humans and AI, one told by someone who just can't shut up about their time backpacking across Asia. Director Gareth Edwards clearly understands the power of scale and spectacle, something he demonstrated with his indie knockout Monsters, as well as his big-budget efforts, Godzilla and Rogue One. But The Creator, like those films, also suffers from a disjointed narrative, weak characters and a surprisingly shallow exploration of its (potentially interesting!) themes. It's a shame -- at times, the film also proves he can be a genuine visual poet. The Creator stars John David Washington, fresh off of Christopher Nolan's Tenet, as Joshua, an American soldier embedded among a group of AI rebels as a double-agent. When an operation goes wrong early on, he loses his rebel wife Maya (Gemma Chan) and the will to keep fighting the war between the anti-AI West and the AI-loving country of New Asia.
The Quest 3 doesn't come out for a couple of weeks, but Meta is already announcing some promising updates for prospective buyers Per UploadVR, the Quest 3 (which launches on Oct. 10) will get an update in December that delivers upper body tracking and "AI-estimated legs." The headset has some side cameras that aim down, allowing them to track your torso and other appendages for more immersive, realistic body movements in simulated environments. Before the update, Quest 3 (and pretty much all other VR hardware) could only accurately track head and hand movements. Leg-wise, things are a bit more interesting. Quest 3 will use AI to make educated guesses about where your legs are and will try to incorporate them into gameplay.