Al Jazeera launches new integrative AI model, 'The Core' Al Jazeera Media Network is launching a new integrative artificial intelligence (AI) model in collaboration with Google Cloud. Al Jazeera said on Sunday that it was expanding its collaboration with Google Cloud on the network's new initiative, dubbed "The Core", that will integrate AI into its news operations. "The Core" aims to shift the role of AI "from a passive tool to an active partner in journalism", Al Jazeera said. Relying on six pillars, the initiative will integrate AI systems to help Al Jazeera journalists process complex data, produce immersive content, gain access to analytical context and automate internal workflows, among other things. "Al Jazeera is committed to establishing a global technological ecosystem that cements our leadership in the AI era," said Sheikh Nasser bin Faisal Al Thani, director general of Al Jazeera Media Network.

As the use of facial recognition technology is expanding in different domains, ensuring its responsible use is gaining more importance. This paper conducts a comprehensive literature review of existing studies on facial recognition technology from the perspective of privacy, which is one of the key Responsible AI principles. Cloud providers, such as Microsoft, AWS, and Google, are at the forefront of delivering facial-related technology services, but their approaches to responsible use of these technologies vary significantly. This paper compares how these cloud giants implement the privacy principle into their facial recognition and detection services. By analysing their approaches, it identifies both common practices and notable differences. The results of this research will be valuable for developers and businesses by providing them insights into best practices of three major companies for integration responsible AI, particularly privacy, into their cloud-based facial recognition technologies.

Ever get your McDonald's order mixed up at an AI-powered drive-through? The experiment behind the fast food giant's current automated order taker will soon be coming to a close. McDonald's confirmed Monday that it decided to end a global partnership with IBM, which has been testing this artificial intelligence technology at select McDonald's drive-throughs since 2021. That doesn't mean you'll never encounter some sort of chatbot while picking up fries on your car ride home again. While the IBM partnership for McDonald's current automated order taker test is winding down, the Chicago-based company suggested that it wasn't ruling other any other potential AI drive-throughs plans down the road -- pointing to "an opportunity to explore voice ordering solutions more broadly."

Astronomers and data scientists working with a boost in computer power on loan from Google have discovered 27,500 new asteroids, some perilously close to Earth. Their collaboration hopes to speed up the development of'a comprehensive map of the solar system' needed for'planetary defense,' according to one Harvard astrophysicist, Matthew Holman, who helped develop the asteroid-hunting software. Nearly 1.7 billion points of light, documented in 412,000 infrared images from the US National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIRLab) archives, were scanned by the project's novel'killer asteroid'-hunting algorithm. 'This is super important,' as one former NASA astronaut leading the project put it. 'This is the key to protecting the Earth from being hit by asteroids: knowing where all these are.'

Shares in Alphabet, the owner of Google and YouTube, surged after it issued its first ever dividend and revealed that profits had surged in the last quarter. Sundar Pichai, CEO, hailed the transition to artificial intelligence as a "once-in-a-generation opportunity" as his company races to integrate the technology across its business. Investors cheered the firm's earnings, and news of a 70bn stock buyback. Google posted 80.5bn in revenue for the first quarter of 2024, up 15% on the same period last year, and reported 1.89 in earnings per share, up from 1.17 – surpassing analysts' expectations on both counts. Shares in Alphabet were up roughly 15% in after-hours trading.

In midtown Manhattan on March 4, Google's managing director for Israel, Barak Regev, was addressing a conference promoting the Israeli tech industry when a member of the audience stood up in protest. "I am a Google Cloud software engineer, and I refuse to build technology that powers genocide, apartheid, or surveillance," shouted the protester, wearing an orange t-shirt emblazoned with a white Google logo. The Google worker, a 23-year-old software engineer named Eddie Hatfield, was booed by the audience and quickly bundled out of the room, a video of the event shows. After a pause, Regev addressed the act of protest. "One of the privileges of working in a company which represents democratic values is giving space for different opinions," he told the crowd.

The battle between AI chatbots is more than a two-horse race. Anthropic, the company formed by several ex-OpenAI employees, claims its new Claude 3 language model outperforms ChatGPT and Google's Gemini in several key industry benchmarks. It even hit "near-human" levels on some tasks, the company wrote in a blog. There are three new chatbots under the Claude 3 umbrella, including Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus. Meanwhile, Opus is the largest and most powerful LLM and will be available with a 20 per month subscription via the "Claude Pro" service. It's also multi-modal, so it can work with both text and image inputs, unlike past versions.

Last year Stack Overflow became one of the first websites to announce it would charge AI giants for access to content used to train chatbots. Now the popular Q&A service for coders has signed up its first customer--Google--in what CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar says is the start of a "meaningful" new stream of revenue. The deal is significant, because it remains unclear how broadly Google and other AI developers will pay for content needed for AI projects. Millions of books and websites have fueled the development of AI systems, but most publishers have not been compensated, and some are suing over what they allege is misuse. Many publishers, including Stack Overflow, appear threatened by ChatGPT and other generative AI products, which can answer queries that would have previously sent coders their way.

In the rapidly evolving landscape of medical documentation, transcribing clinical dialogues accurately is increasingly paramount. This study explores the potential of Large Language Models (LLMs) to enhance the accuracy of Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) systems in medical transcription. Utilizing the PriMock57 dataset, which encompasses a diverse range of primary care consultations, we apply advanced LLMs to refine ASR-generated transcripts. Our research is multifaceted, focusing on improvements in general Word Error Rate (WER), Medical Concept WER (MC-WER) for the accurate transcription of essential medical terms, and speaker diarization accuracy. Additionally, we assess the role of LLM post-processing in improving semantic textual similarity, thereby preserving the contextual integrity of clinical dialogues. Through a series of experiments, we compare the efficacy of zero-shot and Chain-of-Thought (CoT) prompting techniques in enhancing diarization and correction accuracy. Our findings demonstrate that LLMs, particularly through CoT prompting, not only improve the diarization accuracy of existing ASR systems but also achieve state-of-the-art performance in this domain. This improvement extends to more accurately capturing medical concepts and enhancing the overall semantic coherence of the transcribed dialogues. These findings illustrate the dual role of LLMs in augmenting ASR outputs and independently excelling in transcription tasks, holding significant promise for transforming medical ASR systems and leading to more accurate and reliable patient records in healthcare settings.

Would you eat a burger cooked by a robot? It might not sound enticing but McDonald's claims implementing artificial intelligence (AI) in the kitchen will result in'hotter, fresher food'. The fast food giant has partnered with Google to bring cloud computing and AI solutions into the kitchen. While there won't be robots operating the grills quite yet, thousands of restaurants will soon be powered by high-powered computing. Brian Rice, McDonald's executive vice president says the upgrade means that'tools get sharper, models get smarter, restaurants become easier to operate, and most importantly, the overall experience for our customers and crew gets even better.'