Meta is introducing a virtual assistant today to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT that can serve up answers to questions from Microsoft’s Bing search engine and generate images from text commands. Meta AI, as the assistant is called, is powered by the company’s large language model Llama 2. As well as chatting …
Read More »AI Hurricane Predictions Are Storming the World of Weather Forecasting
Hurricane Lee wasn’t bothering anyone in early September, churning far out at sea somewhere between Africa and North America. A wall of high pressure stood in its westward path, poised to deflect the storm away from Florida and in a grand arc northeast. Heading where, exactly? It was 10 days …
Read More »Immersive Tech Obscures Reality. AI Will Threaten It
Last week, Amazon announced it was integrating AI into a number of products—including smart glasses, smart home systems, and its voice assistant, Alexa—that help users navigate the world. This week, Meta will unveil its latest AI and extended reality (XR) features, and next week Google will reveal its next line …
Read More »FedEx’s New Robot Loads Delivery Trucks Like It’s Playing 3D Tetris
FedEx unveiled a two-armed robot called DexR this week that’s designed to automate one of the trickiest tasks facing the company’s human employees—loading a truck with packages. The new robot aims to use artificial intelligence to stack rows of differently sized boxes inside a delivery truck as efficiently as possible, …
Read More »Hollywood Writers Reached an AI Deal That Will Rewrite History
Back in May, just a week into the the Writers Guild of America’s strike, John August, a member of the union’s negotiating committee and writer of Charlie’s Angels, described his personal dystopia: “the Nora Ephron problem”—a world in which artificial intelligence evolves to become a writer so profound it can …
Read More »What If the Robots Were Very Nice While They Took Over the World?
The Morrissey had the right melodrama in his limbs, and his voice was strong and pained. I was at Gramercy Theatre in Manhattan to see a Smiths tribute band. I tried to get Morrissey’s acid yodel in my throat, to sing along. I am human and I need to be …
Read More »This New Autonomous Drone for Cops Can Track You in the Dark
Nearly 1,500 US police departments operate drones but only about a dozen routinely dispatch them in response to 911 calls, according to ACLU research. Drone maker Skydio aims to see that change, with a new model launched last week called the X10. The goal, cofounder and CEO Adam Bry said …
Read More »Why Tech Bros and Politicians Can’t Really Connect
Every few months we get to see a tech dude offer excruciating testimony to grumpy members of Congress. The tech dude tries, with varying degrees of arrogance, to explain his world; the congresspeople recite their questions; in the end, no one seems notably changed by the experience. There are many …
Read More »FBI Agents Are Using Face Recognition Without Proper Training
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has done tens of thousands of face recognition searches using software from outside providers in recent years. Yet only 5 percent of the 200 agents with access to the technology have taken the bureau’s three-day training course on how to use it, a …
Read More »ChatGPT Can Now Talk to You—and Look Into Your Life
OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company that unleashed ChatGPT on the world last November, is making the chatbot app a lot more chatty. An upgrade to the ChatGPT mobile apps for iOS and Android announced today lets a person speak their queries to the chatbot and hear it respond with its …
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