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Move over, Copilot! ChatGPT can now analyze OneDrive files in real time

PCWorld

In addition to gobbling up most of the internet, ChatGPT now wants access to your OneDrive and SharePoint files, too. One of the earliest uses of AI was to summarize documents and folders of documents, and there's only so many times you can ask it whether Spider-Man would beat Wonder Woman in a fair fight. It would be more productive for AI to collate and make sense of your own personal information, assuming you want to grant access to it. According to OpenAI, ChatGPT can now connect to your OneDrive or SharePoint document libraries, assuming you're a paid ChatGPT Plus, Pro, or Team user who lives outside the EEA, Switzerland, and the UK (via Windows Central). You'll obviously have to connect ChatGPT and give it permission to start poring over your cloud documents.


Googles AI Mode reportedly replacing iconic Im feeling lucky button

Mashable

It might be time to say your goodbyes to the iconic "I'm Feeling Lucky" button below the Google Search bar. In its place will be AI Mode, a feature that's been quietly rolling out to users this week, according to The Verge. It's part of Google's ongoing push to merge its core search engine with Gemini, its flagship AI model. First announced in March, AI Mode started as an experimental opt-in via Google Labs. Earlier this May, it became available to all Labs users.


You can make a photo come alive with TikTok's new AI tool - here's how

ZDNet

That photo you'd like to share on TikTok seems a bit blah. If only there were some way you could make it more exciting, dynamic, and visual. You can, thanks to a new AI-powered image-to-video feature known as AI Alive. Unveiled on Tuesday, AI Alive creates a brief video clip out of any still photo. Available within TikTok's Story Camera, the AI tool taps into AI to automatically add the right prompt and transform your photo.


Feathered fossil shows famed dinosaur could fly (like a chicken)

Popular Science

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Archaeopteryx represents a pivotal point in the grand evolutionary journey linking dinosaurs to their avian descendants. But paleontologists still have questions about the Jurassic era animal's anatomy and behavior roughly 165 years after its discovery. One of the most pressing lingering mysteries is how Archaeopteryx managed to fly above its fellow feathered dinosaur relatives. After more than two decades spent in a private collection, one of the most detailed and complete fossil sets arrived at the Chicago's Field Museum in 2022.


Microsoft Cuts Off Access to Bing Search Data as It Shifts Focus to Chatbots

WIRED

Microsoft quietly announced earlier this week that it plans to shut down a longstanding tool supplying search engine startups and other software developers with a raw feed of Bing search results. The Bing Search APIs, or application programming interfaces, were once vital to many niche Google alternatives, but fell out of favor more recently as Microsoft hiked fees for the service and restricted its use. The shutoff, which is scheduled to begin on August 11, still came as a surprise to several developers who spoke with WIRED. Customers learned of it on Monday via an email from Microsoft and a post on its website. They were directed to consider using "Grounding with Bing Search as part of Azure AI Agents," a Microsoft service that allows chatbots like ChatGPT to augment AI-generated responses with "real-time public web data."


Gen AI use at work saps our motivation even as it boosts productivity, new research shows

ZDNet

Since the release and viral success of ChatGPT in late 2022, generative AI has been integrated into an ever-expanding number of tech platforms and gadgets. As is often the case with powerful new technologies, generative AI's growth has outpaced our ability to build frameworks for safe and responsible use. Teachers, for example, must now contend with the fact that many (if not all) of their students are using generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini to complete assignments. The long-term implications of this sudden surge for the education system remain to be seen. Similarly, business leaders now face the challenge of managing a generative AI-powered workforce and ensuring that the technology facilitates, rather than hinders, employee performance.


Learning Two-Player Markov Games: Neural Function Approximation and Correlated Equilibrium

Neural Information Processing Systems

We consider learning Nash equilibria in two-player zero-sum Markov Games with nonlinear function approximation, where the action-value function is approximated by a function in a Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Space (RKHS). The key challenge is how to do exploration in the high-dimensional function space. We propose a novel online learning algorithm to find a Nash equilibrium by minimizing the duality gap. At the core of our algorithms are upper and lower confidence bounds that are derived based on the principle of optimism in the face of uncertainty. We prove that our algorithm is able to attain an O(\sqrt{T}) regret with polynomial computational complexity, under very mild assumptions on the reward function and the underlying dynamic of the Markov Games.


Active Learning with Safety Constraints

Neural Information Processing Systems

Active learning methods have shown great promise in reducing the number of samples necessary for learning. As automated learning systems are adopted into real-time, real-world decision-making pipelines, it is increasingly important that such algorithms are designed with safety in mind. In this work we investigate the complexity of learning the best safe decision in interactive environments. We reduce this problem to a safe linear bandits problem, where our goal is to find the best arm satisfying certain (unknown) safety constraints. We propose an adaptive experimental design-based algorithm, which we show efficiently trades off between the difficulty of showing an arm is unsafe vs suboptimal.


Scientists confirm woke change made to Barbie over the course of 35 years - so did you notice it?

Daily Mail - Science & tech

Barbie is one of the most successful children's toys in history, spawning a multimedia franchise that includes merchandise, video games and a live-action film. Since US toy giant Mattel launched the original Barbie in 1959, more than 1 billion of the dolls have been sold worldwide. Certainly, Barbie's looks have been tweaked over the years to reflect changing beauty ideals and societal shifts. But according to a new study, one subtle change to Barbie has gone largely unnoticed – until now. Scientists in Australia have found that Barbies today have flatter feet than they did in past decades.


The Reason Murderbot's Tone Feels Off

WIRED

A confession: This dispatch will not be coming to you from one of the long-devout Martha Wells faithful. I'm a convert, a curious reader who turned to Wells' The Murderbot Diaries series after reading my colleague Meghan Herbst's fantastic 2024 profile of the author, which left me questioning who would be challenged with taking on the series' title character in Apple TV's adaptation and why it was Alexander Skarsgård. Put differently, I wanted to know if the actor known for playing blood-sucker Eric Northman in True Blood and a berserker prince in The Northman would be the right fit to play a security robot, or SecUnit, struggling with social awkwardness after hacking his own "governor module" to give himself the freedom to not obey human orders. If the weird affection he forms for the scientists he's charged with protecting, and the stunted way he goes about showing it, would translate to Murderbot. After watching the first episodes of the show, which debuts Friday on Apple TV, I got my answers--and found myself asking a lot more questions.