Techno-optimism – the belief that technology will usher in a golden age for humanity – is in vogue once more. In 2022, a clutch of pseudonymous San Francisco artificial intelligence (AI) scenesters published a Substack post entitled "Effective Accelerationism", which argued for maximum acceleration of technological advancement. The 10-point manifesto, which proclaimed that "the next evolution of consciousness, creating unthinkable next-generation lifeforms and silicon-based awareness" was imminent, quickly went viral, as did follow-up posts. Effective accelerationism, or "e/acc", exploded from being a fringe movement dedicated to pushing back against AI extinction-fearing "doomers" to being namechecked by major Silicon Valley CEOs such as Garry Tan, the CEO of start-up accelerator Y Combinator; Sam Altman, head of OpenAI; Marc Andreessen, the billionaire software engineer; and Elon Musk. In 2023, Andreessen issued his Techno-Optimist Manifesto, expanding beyond the e/acc's focus on AI to encompass all questions of technological progress.

If you had asked director Jonathan Nolan what his favourite film of the year was in the late 00s, more often than not he would have given you the name of a video game instead. "Having grown up with the entire history of the medium – I started playing Pong with my brother Chris many, many years ago – that was when games started to take on this level of audacity in their storytelling, their tone, the things they were doing," he says. "That's what I felt with [2008's] Fallout 3: the audacity. Nolan, who has just finished directing the first series of Amazon Prime's Fallout TV show, is sitting next to Todd Howard, the video-game director who led development on Fallout 3 and 4, talking to me a few hours before the premiere of the first two episodes. It is evident within minutes that Nolan understands games almost as well as Todd does. He says he's drawn to games where your options are open, you decide who you want to be and your decisions have an effect on the world around you: in other words, a game like Todd Howard's. The two come across like old friends, easy in each other's company, and enthusiastic about each other's work. "I talked to a lot of people about doing a Fallout movie or TV show and I kept saying no to everybody," Howard says. "I loved the work that Jonah had done in movies and in TV, and in a couple interviews he did, he mentioned his love of games ... I said to somebody, he's perfect.

Do you, like me, have paper documents that have long since been scanned and processed, records or music cassettes that you would like to listen to on your mobile phone, and photo prints that are planned for a digital photo book? Then you will appreciate the two-step instructions in this article, with which you can convert analog media to digital and then process them further. Important insurance papers, contracts, invoices, or simply the page-long letter from your favorite aunt -- there are many paper documents that you want to scan in order to preserve them. If it's even a text that you want to search and edit, you can run OCR software over it after scanning, which recognizes the text so that you can search it and, if necessary, edit it with a standard word processor. With the freeware Not Another PDF Scanner 2 (Naps 2), you have plenty of options for editing and saving the scan after scanning a document.

In 2024, so-called "AI PCs" are popping up everywhere thanks to new chips from Intel, AMD, and (soon) Qualcomm. Don't believe the hype: AI PCs aren't what the marketing might lead you to believe they are, and the most powerful "AI PCs" you can buy today aren't what you might think. Let's cut through the marketing hype and talk about what these "AI laptops" actually are -- and what you can actually do with them today. Subscribe to my Windows Intelligence newsletter to get all the latest tips, tricks, and news sent straight to your email inbox. The AI PC marketing craze is all thanks to the of neural processing units (NPUs) appearing in modern laptops.

As AI PCs debut, one question you'll be asking yourself is: What can I do with them? Audacity has an early answer, with the release of its on-chip audio AI tools for music generation, transcription, and more. Intel used Audacity as a demo partner while describing the Meteor Lake (now rebranded as Core Ultra) architecture in Malaysia, showing off some of the tools that it formally released on Monday. The tools use OpenVINO, an open-source toolkit, but one developed by Intel and that the company has separately optimized. Audacity's new AI tools include: The issue is that these new AI tools, in addition to the CPU limitations placed upon them, require a single older version of Audacity installed: Audacity 3.4.2.

What good are AI-powered processors without apps that take full advantage of them? That seems to be the question Intel has been asking itself lately. The company just announced a new initiative, the AI PC Acceleration Program, which is meant to help developers create new AI-powered features that take advantage of Intel's upcoming Core Ultra mobile chips. Those processors, which are due to arrived on December 14th, are notable for being the company's first to include a neural processing unit (NPU). Just like how a GPU speeds up gaming tasks, an NPU accelerates AI workloads, like the background blur feature in Windows 11's video chat Studio Effects.

Explore the power of AI tools and learn how we used them to create a professional video. We'll take you through the entire process and share our results so that you can create your own amazing video. Join us as we uncover the secrets of AI-enhanced video creation! How to create image with midjourney: https://youtu.be/jdLQPsD1yo0 How to use Audacity: https://youtu.be/n4iekAolo8I

Nick Cave is a prolific Australian-born musician, author, composer, and screenwriter, among other things. He regularly answers fan questions at The Red Hand Files. Recently, Peter from Slovenia asked if AI will ever be able to write a good song. Cave's response has been republished in full, with permission, below. In Yuval Noah Harari's brilliant new book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, he writes that artificial intelligence, with its limitless potential and connectedness, will ultimately render many humans redundant in the work place.