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 CNET - News


AI as Lawyer: It's Starting as a Stunt, but There's a Real Need - CNET

CNET - News

Next month, AI will enter the courtroom, and the US legal system may never be the same. An artificial intelligence chatbot, technology programmed to respond to questions and hold a conversation, is expected to advise two individuals fighting speeding tickets in courtrooms in undisclosed cities. The two will wear a wireless headphone, which will relay what the judge says to the chatbot being run by DoNotPay, a company that typically helps people fight traffic tickets through the mail. The headphone will then play the chatbot's suggested responses to the judge's questions, which the individuals can then choose to repeat in court. But it also has the potential to change how people interact with the law, and to bring many more changes over time.


Why Drones Delivering Your Pizza Isn't That Far Away - CNET

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On a bluff south of San Francisco overlooking the Pacific Ocean, an electric motor whips a drone built by startup Zipline off a catapult launch ramp beside me and into the air on a test flight. The aircraft, with a fixed-wing design resembling that of a conventional airplane, pilots itself north, plans its approach based on the wind direction, makes a sweeping turn and drops a box of Band-Aids, Advil and Tums by parachute onto the grass a few yards in front of me. Drone deliveries could be dropping into your life, too, as the technology involved matures and expands beyond isolated test projects. In 2023, drones could replace vans and your own trip to the store when you need medicine, takeout dinners, cordless drill batteries or dishwasher soap. Today, Alphabet Wing drones reach hundreds of thousands of people in Australia, Finland and Texas and will expand its service in 2023, according to Jonathan Bass, who runs marketing for the business.


Watch a Creepy-Cute Four-Legged Robot Defy Gravity With Magnetic Feet - CNET

CNET - News

It's Marvel, a four-legged robot that can quickly climb walls and walk across ceilings. The name stands for "magnetically adhesive robot for versatile and expeditious locomotion." One caveat: It only works on metal surfaces. A team of researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) developed the robot and published a paper on its abilities in the journal Science Robotics last month. KAIST said it "climbs steel walls and crawls across metal ceilings at the fastest speed that the world has ever seen."


Nvidia Partners With Foxconn to Build Drive Orin Chips for Future Self-Driving Cars - CNET

CNET - News

Nvidia has inked a new partnership with Foxconn, the world's largest tech manufacturer, to produce its Nvidia Drive Orin processors for use in highly automated (and eventually autonomous) vehicles. Foxconn will also use Nvidia Drive Orin hardware and Drive Hyperion sensor suite in its own future lineup of electric vehicles. Foxconn, perhaps best known for building iPhones, will serve as a tier-one supplier of electronic control units based on the Nvidia Drive Orin system-on-a-chip processors globally, bringing large-scale volume manufacturing to meet the demands of various automakers (such as Mercedes-Benz and Volvo) with plans to use Drive's artificial intelligence tech in their next-generation driver aid systems and automated cars. Foxconn's recent entry into the electric vehicle race is beginning to pick up speed. In 2021, it announced that it would be building an EV factory in the US by 2023 before debuting an EV platform and three electric vehicles -- the Model E luxury sedan, Model C SUV and the Model T electric bus -- under its new "Foxtron" brand.


Why Everyone's Obsessed With ChatGPT, a Mind-Blowing AI Chatbot - CNET

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The tool, from a power player in artificial intelligence called OpenAI, lets you type questions using natural language, to which the chatbot gives conversational, if somewhat stilted, answers. The bot remembers the thread of your dialogue, using previous questions and answers to inform its next responses. Its answers are derived from huge volumes of information on the internet. The tool seems pretty knowledgeable in areas where there's good training data for it to learn from. It's not omniscient or smart enough to replace all humans yet, but it can be creative, and its answers can sound downright authoritative.


ChatGPT Caused 'Code Red' at Google, Report Says - CNET

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ChatGPT, an AI chatbot developed by OpenAI that went viral because it can give people direct answers to just about any query possible, apparently has alarm bells ringing at Google, according to a report by the New York Times Wednesday. A Google executive the Times spoke to but didn't name said AI chatbots like ChatGPT could upend the search giant's business, which relies heavily on ads and e-commerce found in Google Search. In a memo and audio recording obtained by the Times, the publication says CEO Sundar Pichai has been in meetings to "define Google's AI strategy" and has "upended the work of numerous groups inside the company to respond to the threat that ChatGPT poses." Google didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. ChatGPT is an AI chatbot that uses available data found online to give users conversational answers to a host of questions.


Why Everyone's Obsessed With ChatGPT, the Mind-Blowing AI Chatbot - CNET

CNET - News

You'd better pay attention, because this one is a doozy. The tool, from a power player in artificial intelligence, lets you type questions using natural language that the chatbot answers in conversational, if somewhat stilted, language. The bot remembers the thread of your dialog, using previous questions and answers to inform its next responses. Its answers are derived from huge volumes of information on the internet. The tool seems pretty knowledgeable if not omniscient.


Yandex and Uber spin-off self-driving division - Roadshow

CNET - News

Yandex is basically the Google of Russia. Russian technology company Yandex has been working on self-driving vehicles since 2017. Similarly, it partnered with American firm Uber to form a ridesharing and food-delivery joint-venture. On Friday, the two companies announced they're spinning the autonomous-vehicle portion of the business off as a separate entity. Once the financial dust settles, the unimaginatively named Yandex Self Driving Group, or SDG, will be directly owned by both businesses, with Yandex holding about 73% of SDG and Uber around 19%.


Police use of facial recognition gets reined in by UK court - CNET

CNET - News

A close-up of a police facial recognition camera used in Cardiff, Wales. Since 2017, police in the UK have been testing live, or real-time, facial recognition in public places to try to identify criminals. The legality of these trials has been widely questioned by privacy and human rights campaigners, who just won a landmark case that could have a lasting impact on how police use the technology in the future. In a ruling Tuesday, the UK Court of Appeal said South Wales Police had been using the technology unlawfully, which amounted to a violation of human rights. In a case brought by civil liberties campaigner Ed Bridges and supported by human rights group Liberty, three senior judges ruled that the South Wales Police had violated Bridges' right to privacy under the European Convention of Human Rights.


In China, facial recognition, public shaming and control go hand in hand - CNET

CNET - News

A screen shows a demonstration of SenseTime Group's SenseVideo pedestrian and vehicle recognition system at the company's showroom in Beijing. Facial recognition supporters in the US often argue that the surveillance technology is reserved for the greatest risks -- to help deal with violent crimes, terrorist threats and human trafficking. And while it's still often used for petty crimes like shoplifting, stealing $12 worth of goods or selling $50 worth of drugs, its use in the US still looks tame compared with how widely deployed facial recognition has been in China. A database leak in 2019 gave a glimpse of how pervasive China's surveillance tools are -- with more than 6.8 million records from a single day, taken from cameras positioned around hotels, parks, tourism spots and mosques, logging details on people as young as 9 days old. The Chinese government is accused of using facial recognition to commit atrocities against Uyghur Muslims, relying on the technology to carry out "the largest mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today."