So you bought them the big gifts that left quite a dent in your wallet, but you just can't seem to figure out what to put in their stocking. Everyone knows reaching into that holiday sock is one of the best parts of the season, so we're here to help you find some trendy, cheap, and small items perfect for the occasion. Below, we've rounded up all the best stocking stuffer deals from Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy. Merry and bright and... incredibly stressful because you can't seem to find any suitable stocking stuffer ideas for everyone on your list. After all, you deserve to kick your feet up, indulge in some spiked eggnog, and spend time with your loved ones this season -- instead of on the internet, frantically trying to find a good deal.
OpenAI's recent drama hasn't only caught UK regulators' attention. Bloomberg reported Friday that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is looking into Microsoft's investment in the Sam Altman-led company and whether it violates US antitrust laws. FTC Chair Lina Khan wrote in a New York Times op-ed earlier this year that "the expanding adoption of AI risks further locking in the market dominance of large incumbent technology firms." Bloomberg's report stresses that the FTC inquiry is preliminary, and the agency hasn't opened a formal investigation. But Khan and company are reportedly "analyzing the situation and assessing what its options are." One complicating factor for regulation is that OpenAI is a non-profit, and transactions involving non-corporate entities aren't required by law to be reported.
Next year will likely be the first year of the AI PC, and chipmakers are racing to be the ones powering it. This week, AMD launched its Ryzen 8040 series of mobile CPUs alongside new Instinct hardware for the datacenter. AMD explained it all in a special episode of The Full Nerd podcast. First up: Jason Banta, AMD's client CPU chief, who spoke to Adam Patrick Murray and myself about the Ryzen 8000 series of mobile chips and how they'll enable local chatbot and AI-powered features. Pay attention to the release of the Ryzen AI Software, which "quantizes" a ChatGPT-esque large language model AI into a format that can be used on a Ryzen CPU.
Tens of millions of people are using AI-powered'nudify' apps, according to a new analysis that shows the dark side of the technology. More than 24 million people visited nudity AI websites in September, which digitally alter images, primarily women, to make them appear naked in the photo using deep-learning algorithms. These algorithms are trained on existing images of women which allows it to overlay realistic images of nude body parts, regardless of whether the photographed person is clothed. Spam ads across major platforms are also directing people to the sites and apps increased by more than 2,000 percent since the beginning of 2023. The rise in nudity-promoted apps is particularly prevalent on social media, including Google's YouTube, Reddit, and X - and 52 Telegram groups were also found to be used to access non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII) services.
This is Atlantic Intelligence, an eight-week series in which The Atlantic's leading thinkers on AI will help you understand the complexity and opportunities of this groundbreaking technology. Earlier this year, The Atlantic published a story by Gary Marcus, a well-known AI expert who has agitated for the technology to be regulated, both in his Substack newsletter and before the Senate. Marcus argued that "this is a moment of immense peril," and that we are teetering toward an "information-sphere disaster, in which bad actors weaponize large language models, distributing their ill-gotten gains through armies of ever more sophisticated bots." I was interested in following up with Marcus given recent events. In the past six weeks, we've seen an executive order from the Biden administration focused on AI oversight; chaos at the influential company OpenAI; and this Wednesday, the release of Gemini, a GPT competitor from Google.
The Game Awards is over and done with, leaving an empty theater in Los Angeles and plenty of happy game developers placing pointy statuettes on their mantels. To that end, Larian Studios and its massively successful RPG Baldur's Gate 3 was the big winner of the night, taking home the prize for game of the year, player's choice, best multiplayer game and more. Remedy's Alan Wake 2 was also on fire, winning best game direction, best narrative and best art direction, among others. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom paraglided away with the statue for best action/adventure and the RPG Sea of Stars won for best indie game, with Cocoon being awarded best debut indie game. Now that the actual awards are out of the way, let's get to the good stuff.
Why is the little ol' Competition & Markets Authority, a UK regulator, inserting itself into the entertaining and important – but distant – drama at San Francisco-based OpenAI? Even if the CMA finds eventually that Microsoft, another US company, is pulling the strings at Sam Altman's show, what could it actually do? Doesn't it all paint the UK as an unfriendly place for tech investment, notwithstanding Rishi Sunak's eagerness to host AI summits and conduct cosy chats with Elon Musk? All fair questions, and the CMA should brace for more in that vein. It is indeed slightly odd that the UK regulator is the first out of traps in wondering, albeit in a preliminary manner, if Microsoft has gained effective control over OpenAI and, if it has, whether that amounts to a problem. But there is another way to look at developments: thank goodness a regulator somewhere is seeking clarity about what just occurred at OpenAI.
The Assured and Trustworthy Human-centered AI (ATHAI) symposium was held as part of the AAAI Fall Symposium Series in Arlington, VA from October 25-27, 2023. The symposium brought together three groups of stakeholders from industry, academia, and government to discuss issues related to AI assurance in different domains ranging from healthcare to defense. The symposium drew over 50 participants and consisted of a combination of invited keynote speakers, spotlight talks, and interactive panel discussions. On Day 1, the symposium kicked off with a keynote by Professor Missy Cummings (George Mason University) titled "Developing Trustworthy AI: Lessons Learned from Self-driving Cars". Missy shared important lessons learned from her time at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and interacting with the autonomous vehicle industry.
British researchers have trained an artificial intelligence to recognize keystrokes by sound. A smartphone placed near a laptop served as the microphone. The researchers combined the sound of each key with the corresponding letter for the training. They then typed a password into the laptop and had the AI calculate which word was heard based on the sound. The AI recognized the password with an accuracy of 95 percent.