On Saturday, a YouTube creator called ChromaLock published a video detailing how he modified a Texas Instruments TI-84 graphing calculator to connect to the internet and access OpenAI's ChatGPT, potentially enabling students to cheat on tests. The video, titled "I Made the Ultimate Cheating Device," demonstrates a custom hardware modification that allows users of the graphing calculator to type in problems sent to ChatGPT using the keypad and receive live responses on the screen. ChromaLock began by exploring the calculator's link port, typically used for transferring educational programs between devices. He then designed a custom circuit board he calls "TI-32" that incorporates a tiny Wi-Fi-enabled microcontroller, the Seed Studio ESP32-C3 (which costs about 5), along with other components to interface with the calculator's systems. This story originally appeared on Ars Technica, a trusted source for technology news, tech policy analysis, reviews, and more.

OpenAI truly does not want you to know what its latest AI model is "thinking." Since the company launched its "Strawberry" AI model family last week, touting so-called reasoning abilities with o1-preview and o1-mini, OpenAI has been sending out warning emails and threats of bans to any user who tries to probe how the model works. Unlike previous AI models from OpenAI, such as GPT-4o, the company trained o1 specifically to work through a step-by-step problem-solving process before generating an answer. When users ask an "o1" model a question in ChatGPT, users have the option of seeing this chain-of-thought process written out in the ChatGPT interface. However, by design, OpenAI hides the raw chain of thought from users, instead presenting a filtered interpretation created by a second AI model.

When Microsoft debuted its AI-powered Bing Chat, the obvious point of comparison was Clippy, the virtual assistant users loved and/or loathed in Microsoft Office 97. Now Clippy is back, in a new, unauthorized app that somehow has made it onto the Microsoft Store. Clippy by Firecube uses Microsoft's animated paper clip, Clippy (known as Clippit to purists), as a front end for ChatGPT 3.5, the AI chatbot developed by OpenAI. Although the app refers to Clippy by name, the full text description of the app immediately identifies it as "Not by Microsoft" to presumably fend off any lawyers that might be sniffing about the app. Firecube has a good reputation as a developer who looks deeply into new Windows code for unpublicized features.

Look for the new Export Chat option down in the lower left corner when you've set up the add-on. You don't get anything in the way of export options, but it can be helpful to have a copy of your chats to refer to. If you're planning to do any writing using ChatGPT on the web, from emails to social media posts, then WritingMate can help. You can launch it via a Ctrl M (Windows) or Cmd M (macOS) keyboard shortcut, or use the floating icon that appears on the right of the browser window. You're able to use ChatGPT in any way you like, right in the webpages you're looking at, and there are some helpful prompts included with the extension too.