Google, DeepMind and parent company, Alphabet, have been accused of "secretly stealing everything ever created and shared on the internet by hundreds of millions of Americans" to build their own AI chatbot, Bard.

Eight pseudonymous individuals – including two minors, aged 13 and 6 – are seeking to lead millions of netizens in a class action effort alleging 10 charges against Alphabet's answer to OpenAI's ChatGPT, among other items in Google's "suite of AI products."

The complaint was filed in a California federal court and alleges the company breached several state and US federal laws including the DMCA, California's Unfair Competition law, and a state invasion of privacy rule. It also accuses Bard's maker of larceny/receipt of stolen property.

The lawsuit [PDF] was keen to note Google's recent update of its privacy policy confirming it scrapes public data from the internet to train its AI models and services – including both Bard and its cloud-hosted products. The suit claims the move was made in response to the FTC's warning that: "Machine learning is no excuse to break the law… The data you use to improve your algorithms must be lawfully collected… companies would do well to heed this lesson."

The claim from the unnamed plaintiffs is that the "update" of Google's online privacy policy was an effective doubling-down on its position.

The news comes hot on the heels of similar lawsuits accusing Microsoft-backed OpenAI of privacy breaches and misusing scraped data, as well as of copyright infringement.

Like the Microsoft and OpenAI class action filed in June, yesterday's lawsuit also namechecks Reg articles – twice – when delving into the technical side of matters. The first time is to explain how Google's immense public C4 dataset ingests material to build its next-gen machine learning systems. The second mention is to further its argument that Google profits from the data, footnoting our April coverage of the internal Google presentation titled "AI-powered ads 2023" outlining Google's plan to roll out generative AI tools to its advertising platform.

DeepMind, still run by co-founder Demis Hassabis after being acquired by Google in 2014, is cited in the suit due to its work on developing the Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA), considered instrumental in Bard's development as well as in other Google AI products.

The suit claims that Google's moves breach privacy rights and property rights, alleging:

It has very recently come to light that Google has been secretly grabbing everything ever created and shared on the internet by hundreds of millions of Americans. Google has taken all our personal and professional information, our creative and copywritten works, our photographs, and even our emails – virtually the entirety of our digital footprint – and is using it to build commercial Artificial Intelligence (AI) Products like "Bard," the chatbot Google recently released to compete with OpenAI's "ChatGPT." For years, Google harvested this data in secret, without notice or consent from anyone.

The plaintiffs are looking for at least $5 billion, injunctive relief, and implementation of "effective cybersecurity safeguards" to protect the data subjects.

In a statement, Google general counsel Halimah DeLaine Prado said the company had been "clear for years that we use data from public sources – like information published to the open web and public datasets – to train the AI models behind services like Google Translate, responsibly and in line with our AI Principles."

She added: "American law supports using public information to create new beneficial uses, and we look forward to refuting these baseless claims." ®

Source

When she first heard of the humanlike language skills of the artificial-intelligence bot ChatGPT, Jennifer Stevens wondered what it would mean for the retirement magazine she edits.

Months later, she has a better idea. It means she is spending a lot of time filtering out useless article pitches.

People like Stevens, the executive editor of International Living, are among those seeing a growing amount of AI-generated content that is so far beneath their standards that they consider it a new kind of spam.

The technology is fueling an investment boom. It can answer questions, produce images and even generate essays based on simple prompts. Some of these techniques promise to enhance data analysis and eliminate mundane writing tasks, much as the calculator changed mathematics. But they also show the potential for AI-generated spam to surge and potentially spread across the internet.

In early May, the news site rating company NewsGuard found 49 fake news websites that were using AI to generate content. By the end of June, the tally had hit 277, according to Gordon Crovitz, the company’s co-founder.

“This is growing exponentially,” Crovitz said. The sites appear to have been created to make money through Google’s online advertising network, said Crovitz, formerly a columnist and a publisher at The Wall Street Journal.

Researchers also point to the potential of AI technologies being used to create political disinformation and targeted messages used for hacking. The cybersecurity company Zscaler says it is too early to say whether AI is being used by criminals in a widespread way, but the company expects to see it being used to create high-quality fake phishing webpages, which are designed to trick victims into downloading malicious software or disclosing their online usernames and passwords.

On YouTube, the ChatGPT gold rush is in full swing. Dozens of videos offering advice on how to make money from OpenAI’s technology have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times. Many of them suggest questionable schemes involving junk content. Some tell viewers that they can make thousands of dollars a week, urging them to write ebooks or sell advertising on blogs filled with AI-generated content that could then generate ad revenue by popping up on Google searches.

Google said in a statement that it works to protect its search results from spam and manipulation and that using AI-generated content to manipulate search-result rankings is a violation of the Alphabet company’s spam policies.

When this reporter asked ChatGPT to “name a few magazines that would accept content written by ChatGPT,” the AI suggested 10 magazines, including five that use a content-submission system called Moksha to manage article submissions.

“Publishers who use Moksha have definitely reported an uptick in AI-generated submissions, so we’ve developed tools for them to easily respond to and block authors who fail to follow publisher guidelines regarding AI,” said Matthew Kressel, Moksha’s creator. He noted that one magazine recommended by ChatGPT, Shimmer, closed in 2018.

ChatGPT is good at predicting the next words in sentences, but it does occasionally produce incorrect answers, an OpenAI spokeswoman said. “A lot of people think of it as a search engine, but it’s not,” she said.

Another magazine on ChatGPT’s list, the science-fiction magazine Clarkesworld, temporarily had to stop accepting online submissions earlier this year because it was overwhelmed by hundreds of AI-generated stories, said Clarkesworld’s publisher, Neil Clarke.

Clarke said the submissions were driven by online videos that recommended using ChatGPT to create Clarkesworld submissions.

Clarke, like other publishers interviewed by the Journal, said that his magazine rejects all AI-written submissions and that they are easy to identify.

They have “perfect spelling and grammar, but a completely incoherent story,” he said. Often they start with a grand problem—the world is going to end—and then 1,000 words later the problem is somehow wrapped up, without explanation, he said.

“They’re all written in a rather bland and generic way,” said Stevens, of International Living. “They are all grammatically correct. They just feel very formulaic, and they are really useless to us.”

Should the internet increasingly fill with AI-generated content, it might become a problem for the AI companies themselves. That is because their large language models, the software that forms the basis of chatbots such as ChatGPT, train themselves on public data sets. As these data sets become increasingly filled with AI-generated content, researchers worry that the language models will become less useful, a phenomenon known as “model collapse.”

Just as repeatedly scanning and printing the same photo will eventually reduce its detail, model collapse happens when large learning models become less useful as they digest data they have created, said Ilia Shumailov, a research fellow at Oxford University’s Applied and Theoretical Machine Learning Group who recently co-wrote a paper on this phenomenon.

And it isn’t just spam content that will contribute to model collapse. It is also the increasing use of AI to generate content overall, Shumailov said.

Last month researchers at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne hired freelance writers online to summarize abstracts published in the New England Journal of Medicine and found that more than one-third of them used AI-generated content.

Shumailov thinks that model collapse is inevitable, but that there are a number of potential technical workarounds to this problem. For example, companies that have access to human-generated content will still be able to build high-quality large language models.

“It’s not necessarily a bad thing,” he said. “Maybe we’ll get rid of captchas, and it will become normal to be a computer on the internet,” he said, referring to the picture-puzzles that websites impose to distinguish computers from humans.

Write to Robert McMillan at robert.mcmillan@wsj.com

Source

xAI is still early, but Musk has already made some big hires. The company's chief executive officer is Ilya Sutskever, a former research director at OpenAI. Other key hires include Igor Babuschkin and Manuel Kroiss, who worked on Google's DeepMind project.

    Announcing formation of @xAI to understand reality

    — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 12, 2023

The xAI team has announced an event on July 14, where they will be hosting a Twitter Spaces discussion to engage with their audience. This interactive session allows listeners to connect with the team directly.

As stated on its website, the company operates as a separate project from Musk's overarching X Corp. Still, it collaborates closely with "X (Twitter), Tesla, and other affiliated companies."

On the other hand, Musk has been a vocal critic of the potential dangers of AI, and he has warned that AI could pose an existential threat to humanity. However, he also believes that AI has the potential to do great good, and he is committed to developing AI that is safe and beneficial.

xAI's focus on transparency and accountability is a key part of Musk's vision for safe AI. The company plans to develop AI systems to explain its decisions to humans and be held accountable for their actions.

Elon Musk is also one of the three co-founders of OpenAI. However, he is no longer associated with the company. He previously said, "I came up with the name and I am the reason that OpenAI exists.". Musk claimed the non-profit startup wouldn't have come to where it is today without his instrumental role.

xAI also said it is actively looking for new employees. "We are actively recruiting experienced engineers and researchers to join our team as members of our technical staff in the Bay Area," wrote in the company's website.

Source

Social media posts across Twitter and Instagram by Simone Bailly, who starred in the game as a police officer and partner of Sergeant Cross in its cutscenes, revealed that the said remake is incoming sometime in 2024.

"Need for Speed: Most Wanted Remake is being released in 2024, LIKE & comment if you want to see Cross (Dean McKenzie) & his partner (Simone Bailly) hunt down the most wanted," reads the now deleted social media posts. The message also tagged Criterion Games' accounts, the primary developer of the Need for Speed franchise since 2020.

If this remake is indeed coming, it should be for the 2005-released, and EA Black Box-developed, Need for Speed: Most Wanted, which Bailly starred in, and not the 2012 reboot that Criterion also developed.

The 2005 version was a hugely successful release for EA, selling 16 million copies across PC, Xbox, PlayStation 2, GameCube, Nintendo DS, Game Boy Advance, and Xbox 360. The game follows the story of an illegal street racing scene in the open-world environment of Rockport. One of the biggest highlights of the game was its implementation of dynamic police chases that many of the later Need for Speed entries kept as a feature.

As neither EA nor Criterion has made any announcements regarding the next Need for Speed yet, take this leak with a grain of salt until something official appears. However, a 2024 launch for the next entry does make sense, at least schedule wise. The series generally has a two-year gap between each release, and Criterion's Need for Speed Unbound came out in 2022.

Source

Intel NUC 13 Pro

In a statement to STH, an Intel representative confirmed previously circulating rumors about the company abandoning NUC:

We have decided to stop direct investment in the Next Unit of Compute (NUC) Business and pivot our strategy to enable our ecosystem partners to continue NUC innovation and growth. This decision will not impact the remainder of Intel's Client Computing Group (CCG) or Network and Edge Computing (NEX) businesses. Furthermore, we are working with our partners and customers to ensure a smooth transition and fulfillment of all our current commitments – including ongoing support for NUC products currently in market.

Intel launched the first-generation NUC kit in the Sandy Bridge days in 2013. The original NUC offered the somewhat uninspiring Intel Celeron 847 processor with up to 16GB of RAM (sold separately). However, in later generations, Intel expanded the project with more powerful Core i3, i5, Atom, and other chips.

At one point, the company even partnered with AMD to produce Intel Core processors with Radeon graphics to power the gaming-focused Intel NUC Hades Canyon. Also, some recent NUC models come with the NVIDIA RTX 2060 GPU, giving users more horsepower to run demanding games and apps.

It is sad to see Intel abandoning the NUC project. Despite being a niche product far from the mainstream market, Intel NUC had distinct advantages and flexibility (check out our recent Intel NUC 13 Pro review). One can only hope Intel's partners will carry the flag and not let the form factor die.

Source

Source

Instagram boss Adam Mosseri said a feed for Threads showing posts in chronological order is currently being worked on.

Users want to see posts from accounts they follow rather than chosen by Threads' algorithm.

Mr Mosseri said the new feed was "on the list" of changes to Threads.

Meta, which owns Threads, Instagram and Facebook, launched the social media app last week and more than 100 million users have signed up to use it.

Mr Mosseri said Mark Zuckerberg, Meta's chief executive, had given an alternative feed a "thumbs up", after a number of users expressed frustration at not being offered a feed of posts from people they followed, in the order in which they were posted.

Other features "on the list", according Mr Mosseri, include:

•     an ability to edit posts

•     translation into different languages

•     making it easy to switch between different Threads accounts

While it is possible to view Threads on the web, via Threads.net, there is no desktop interface - posts can be made only via the app - and that too was something the company was "working on", according to Mr Mosseri.

There is also no search function. When it announced the app's launch, the company said it would add a "more robust search function" along with improvements to the selection of recommended posts.

Meanwhile the only way currently to fully delete a Threads profile is to delete the associated Instagram account, which many users would be reluctant to - another issue the company is looking to fix.

When Threads was launched, Meta announced it planned to allow it to communicate with other social-media platforms, such as Mastodon, using something known as the fediverse.

But this suggestion while welcomed by some, has met opposition.

'Clear victory'

The idea of the fediverse is it is like email. Someone on Gmail can exchange emails with someone using Hotmail, for example, and the fediverse could be described as that idea applied to social media.

At some point in the future Meta wants users to be able to use their Threads account to interact with other social-media platforms using ActivityPub - a protocol with the necessary programming code - such as Mastodon, WordPress or Reddit-alternative Lemmy.

But some worry Threads threatens the idea of this system altogether, because of a practice big tech companies have utilised in the past - "embrace, extend and extinguish", when a company with a lot of resources extends what is possible from a new technology so drastically it becomes the new standard, leaving people with no choice but to use its platform.

Mastodon chief executive Eugen Rochko dismissed these fears, saying Meta joining Threads was "validation of the movement towards decentralised social media" and "a clear victory for our cause".

But concern among users has grown with over a hundred Mastodon communities joining what they call the "fedipact" - an agreement to block Meta from being able to access their community under any circumstances - so even when Threads does begin to support ActivityPub, users will not be able to access everything on the fediverse.

One other feature coming to Threads at some point may also receive mixed reviews. There is no advertising on the platform - for now.

Source

Rudy Huyn, Lead Architect of the Microsoft Store, announced the rollout on his Twitter account. Windows Insiders using the Dev Channel builds can download the update from the Microsoft Store. However, in the typical Microsoft fashion, the AI Hub is only available in the United States, so those wanting to test it should change the region in the Settings app.

The AI Hub for the Microsoft Store collects Windows apps and highlights their capabilities using banners and videos. There is also a section for the latest AI-enabled apps and a Microsoft Edge ad (of course). Clicking the "New AI Apps" lets you browse more programs, but there is little to discover yet. Sadly, the recently covered Clippy resurrection is not there, just like the redesigned Run app with natural language processing. Microsoft says the new AI Hub is an opt-in experience, meaning they should apply to showcase their projects in the new Microsoft Store section.

The new AI Hub for the Microsoft Store is available in version 22306.1401.1.0 and newer. If you do not see it on your machine, ensure you have the Microsoft Store region set to the United States (go to Settings > Language and Region > Country or Region) and try resetting the app in Settings > Apps > Installed Apps > Microsoft Store > Advanced Settings > Reset.

You can also check out other Microsoft Store improvements, such as new features for web apps, easier app installation, and enhanced ad features for developers.

Source

However, Microsoft has now confirmed that another round of layoffs has been made. GeekWire stated that a number of company employees made changes to their LinkedIn pages today, indicating they were among this new round of layoffs. These changes affected people in the company's sales, marketing, and customer support divisions.

A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed the new round of layoffs in a statement sent to GeekWire:

Organizational and workforce adjustments are a necessary and regular part of managing our business. We will continue to prioritize and invest in strategic growth areas for our future and in support of our customers and partners.

The statement did not offer any information on how many workers were affected, nor if this is just the beginning of another rolling round of layoffs at the company.

Microsoft has been doing very well in terms of its financial situation so far in 2023. In the past six months, it has seen its stock price go up by 40.74 percent. That's due in part to investors betting on businesses who have been working in generative AI.

Other companies have also seen huge jumps in their stock prices this year due to the promise of AI. NVIDIA, which creates GPUs that are used by Microsoft for its Bing Chat services, has seen its stock price go up by a massive 194.61 percent in 2023 so far.

Microsoft's fiscal third quarter 2023 time period that ended on March 31, 2023, saw the company record $18.3 billion in net income, up 9 percent from the same period a year ago. It should announce its fiscal fourth quarter 2023 financial results by the end of July.

Source

When Google revealed Project Gameface, the company was proud to show off a hands-free, AI-powered gaming mouse that, according to its announcement, “enables people to control a computer’s cursor using their head movement and facial gestures.” While this may not be the first AI-based gaming tool, it was certainly one of the first to put AI in the hands of players, rather than developers.

The project was inspired by Lancy Carr, a quadriplegic video game streamer who utilizes a head-tracking mouse as part of his gaming setup. After his existing hardware was lost in a fire, Google stepped in to create an open source, highly configurable, low-cost alternative to expensive replacement hardware, powered by machine learning. While AI’s broader existence is proving divisive, we set out to discover whether AI, when used for good, could be the future of gaming accessibility.

It’s important to define AI, and machine learning, to understand clearly how they work in Gameface. When we use the terms “AI” and “machine learning,” we’re referring to both the same and different things.

“AI is a concept,” Laurence Moroney, AI advocacy lead at Google and one of the minds behind Gameface, tells WIRED. “Machine learning is a technique you use to implement that concept.”

Machine learning, then, fits under the umbrella of AI, along with implementations like large language models. But where familiar applications like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and StabilityAI’s Stable Diffusion are iterative, machine learning is characterized by learning and adapting without instruction, drawing inferences from readable patterns.

Moroney explains how this is applied to Gameface in a series of machine learning models. “The first was to be able to detect where a face is in an image,” he says. “The second was, once you had an image of a face, to be able to understand where obvious points (eyes, nose, ears, etc.) are.”

After this, another model can map and decipher gestures from those points, assigning them to mouse inputs.

It’s an explicitly assistive implementation of AI, as opposed to those often touted as making human input redundant. Indeed, this is how Moroney suggests AI is best applied, to broaden “our capacity to do things that weren’t previously feasible.”

This sentiment extends beyond Gameface’s potential to make gaming more accessible. AI, Moroney suggests, can have a major impact on accessibility for players, but also on the way developers create accessibility solutions.

“Anything that lets developers be orders of magnitude more effective at solving classes of problems that were previously infeasible,” he says, “can only be beneficial in the accessibility, or any other, space.”

This is something developers are already beginning to understand. Artem Koblov, creative director of Perelesoq, tells WIRED that he wants to see “more resources directed toward solving routine tasks, rather than creative invention.”

Doing so allows AI to aid in time-consuming technical processes. With the right applications, AI could create a leaner, more permissive, development cycle in which it both helps in the mechanical implementation of accessibility solutions and leaves developers more time to consider them.

“As a developer, you want to have as many tools that can help you make your job easier,” says Conor Bradley, creative director of Soft Leaf Studios. He points to gains in current implementations of AI in accessibility, including “real-time text-to-speech and speech-to-text generation, and speech and image recognition.” And he sees potential for future developments. “In time, I can see more and more games making use of these powerful AI tools to make our games more accessible.”

Koblov believes it can go even further. He’d like to see AI training on specific patterns to create a basic, adaptable accessibility framework that could be injected into games. “Such framework would adapt the visual, audio, and interactive aspects of games,” he says. “In other words, smaller developers like us wouldn’t have to conduct expensive research, develop unique solutions, and go through numerous iterations of testing on their own.”

Bradley urges caution when pulling primacy away from human input. Asked whether AI could prove an aid or a distraction to existing accessibility efforts, he said he was optimistic about its potential, but stressed that AI is not a shortcut.

“You cannot say, ‘AI, make my game accessible!’ and hey presto, you now have the most accessible game of the year,” he says. “We need players, including those from disabled and neurodiverse communities, to test our games. At the end of the day, a human will be playing your game, not a machine.”

While Koblov believes AI could be valuable for implementing and testing accessibility features, he acknowledges that thinking about AI requires “an ‘addition’ mindset,” rather than a “replacement” approach. 

But conflating the generative, content-driven tools that spark fears of human redundancy with the kind of AI implementations that help accessibility is, according to Moroney, “Really dangerous.” He continues, “If we’re going to be the adults in the room when it comes to AI, we have to recognize hype and bandwagons.”

This makes clarity and transparency about AI’s capabilities all the more important, especially in its relation to accessibility. It’s not a magic wand. “AI and machine learning were doing well until the recent releases,” Moroney says. “Now they’ve fallen back in the hype cycle.”

AI can be an excellent tool for developers, but they must remain dedicated to accessibility throughout the process, whether AI is present or not. After all, as Bradley says, “At the end of the day, it still is up to the developers to want to make their games accessible by design.”

AI’s gradual progress is evident in Gameface. But another project demonstrates how AI-assisted accessibility can be implemented on a wider level. Minecraft Access is a mod that seeks to make Minecraft accessible to blind and visually impaired players. Logic, part of the team behind the mod, tells WIRED how a suite of AI tools, including ChatGPT and Google’s own Tensor Flow, are helping with the project.

“We are hoping AI can fill in … visual context for blind and low-vision players by providing information about the world as it is needed or upon request,” Logic says.

Particularly exciting is the potential for AI to not just bolster accessibility, but actively learn what a player needs. This will prove especially useful for broader applications in accessibility, given the layers of spectrums that make up disability and how personalized each player’s needs are. 

We do need to rein in our expectations, however. As promising as these recent implementations have proven, and as instructive as they may be for the future, there remain significant barriers to entry. In its current stage of development, Minecraft Access requires multiple programs to function, something Logic acknowledges makes it less accessible than it could be.

“The average user is not going to want to collect a bunch of programs from different parts of the web,” Logic says.

Similarly, Ben Green, a disabled gamer, finds Gameface’s potential exciting but worries about diversity in the data. It may be able to “recognize lots of faces,” he says. “But some people with facial differences, like a ventilator in my case, or asymmetrical facial features, might be barely represented, or not at all.”

When asked about this, Andrés-Clavera says, “We decided to create a functionality for people to customize which expressions they used to control the mouse.” This includes the ability to customize the intensity of gestures for different needs. He goes on, “With that being said, we are always looking for ways to increase the accessibility of our technology for more people. Our hope is that over time, Project Gameface will continue to improve and become even more helpful.”

Even with these caveats, it’s interesting to see how hopeful people are about AI’s role in accessibility. Once we can distinguish between unethical applications of content-driven generative AI and meaningful AI tools and implementations that can help people solve problems and benefit others, there’s plenty of cause for optimism—with the understanding that AI’s true value is tied to our ability to make it work for us.

The future of AI is ambiguous, but it holds the potential to benefit individual gamers and the industry at large. Its use requires caution, and we can expect pitfalls, but there’s every reason to believe that careful implementation of AI can contribute to a gaming landscape that encompasses a wider spectrum of players.

That’s the world Moroney wants to live in: “a world where people like Lance aren’t confined because solutions are technically infeasible, but rather one where developers have such superpowers that building solutions to allow him to connect to the world is easy.”

Source

(May require free registration to view)

Threads has been setting records for user growth since its launch on Wednesday, with celebrities, politicians and other newsmakers joining the platform that is seen by analysts as the first serious threat to the Elon Musk-owned microblogging app.

"That's mostly organic demand, and we haven't even turned on many promotions yet," Zuckerberg said in a Threads post announcing the milestone.

The app's sprint to 100 million users was much speedier than that of OpenAI-owned ChatGPT, which became the fastest-growing consumer application in history in January about two months after its launch, according to a UBS study.

Twitter had nearly 240 million monetizable daily active users as of July last year, according to the company's last public disclosure before Musk's takeover, although data from web analytics companies indicates usage has dropped since then.

Twitter's web traffic was down 11% from the year prior in the days after the Threads launch, compared to the 4% it was down year-over-year as of June, according to Similarweb.

Matthew Prince, CEO of internet infrastructure firm Cloudflare, shared a graph showing a similar trajectory in a tweet on Sunday and said Twitter's traffic was "tanking."

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the data.

Musk has responded to Threads' arrival by mocking it and threatening to sue Meta, alleging that the social media behemoth used its trade secrets and other confidential information to build the app.

That claim, legal experts say, could be hard to prove.

Threads bears a strong resemblance to Twitter, as do numerous other social media sites that have cropped up in recent months as users have chafed at Musk's management of the service. It allows posts that are up to 500 characters long and supports links, photos and videos of up to 5 minutes.

The app also does not yet have a direct messaging function and lacks a desktop version that certain users, such as business organizations, rely on.

It also currently lacks hashtags and keyword search functions, which limits both its appeal to advertisers and its utility as a place for following real-time events like users frequently do on Twitter.

Still, analysts said the turmoil at Twitter, including recently imposed limits on the number on tweets users can see, could help Threads to attract users and advertisers.

Currently, there are no ads on the Threads app and Zuckerberg said the company would only think about monetization once there was a clear path to 1 billion users.

Instagram head Adam Mosseri said last week Meta was not trying to replace Twitter and that Threads aimed to focus on light subjects like sports, music, fashion and design.

He acknowledged that politics and hard news are inevitably going to show up on Threads, in what would be a challenge for the app pitching itself as the "friendly" option for public discourse online.

Reporting by Katie Paul in New York and Akash Sriram and Zaheer Kachwala in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila, Rashmi Aich and Nick Zieminski

Source

Intel is presenting seven papers over three conferences covering advances in computer graphics.

The first papers were formally presented at last month's joint conference conducted by the High Performance Graphics (HPG) forum and the Eurographics Symposium on Rendering at the the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. The remaining papers will be discussed at a conference to be held by SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques) in August.

A key focus is on how to improve historically heavy graphics-rendering processes.

The papers discuss two processes in particular, ray tracing and path tracing. Both are used for recreating realistic images, especially in gaming, where accurate representation of the physics of light is critical for natural-looking imagery.

Ray tracing applies algorithms to track the trajectory of light waves and calculate color values, reflections and shadows. The enormous processing power required for real-time rendering is so great that frame rates often take a noticeable hit.

Path tracing can require even heavier processing. It follows multiple rays of light, tracking paths as they reflect off surfaces and interact with lighting among other elements. A process known as Monte Carlo integration helps determine accurate color and shading values.

Intel says these tracing methods can be accomplished more efficiently. One of its papers, "Sampling Visible GGX Normals with Spherical Caps," describes an innovative approach to calculating hemispheric items that accomplished "systematic speed-ups in our benchmarks."

Another paper reveals a 500% speed improvement in renderings of "glittery" objects such as speckled car paints, snow, molded plastics and running water. "Real-Time Rendering of Glinty Appearances using Distributed Binomial Laws on Anisotropic Grids" explains that current approaches achieve stunning realism but "come at a very high cost" in terms of processing power and speed.

In a paper to be discussed at the August SIGGRAPH conference, Intel will review advances in neural graphics, an approach the company says "is revolutionizing the graphics field." It is used to quickly scale high-quality graphics across games and movies.

"New neural level of detail representation achieves 70%–95% compression compared to 'vanilla' path tracing," Intel reported.

Other papers examine improvements in renderings of translucent materials and "sampling photon trajectories in difficult illumination scenarios."

Ultimately, Intel hopes significant progress in processing approaches will allow users to enjoy realistic imagery in real time without requiring high-power GPUs.

"The new building blocks presented at this year's conferences, along with our wide offering of GPU products and scalable cross-architecture rendering stack, will help developers and businesses to do more efficient rendering of digital twins, future immersive AR and VR experiences, as well as synthetic data for sim2real AI training," Intel stated in its blog.

Intel plans on making its work open source.

The Intel papers have appeared throughout June on the preprint server arXiv.

Source

Source

While many in the United States celebrated the 4th of July and had vacations this week, news continued to march forward. Meta rolled out its Twitter competitor Threads, OpenAI paused Bing's integration with ChatGPT, and an independent developer rolled out an update to the Android 13 on Surface Duo project.

To help you catch up on all the biggest news of the week, I've rounded up the latest trending topics in the world of Microsoft and Windows.

ChatGPT pauses Bing integration

ChatGPT recently gained the ability to integrate with Bing. But even more recently, OpenAI paused the integration because people were using it to bypass paywalls. Searching for a website while using Bing through ChatGPT would show the entire text of a webpage, even if that page required a subscription. Early this week, OpenAI announced that it had paused the integration:

Presumably, OpenAI will sort out the behavior and roll out the integration again in the near future. The Bing integration is only in beta, so some bumps in the road are expected.

While you wait for ChatGPT to gain access to Bing, you can play around with a third-party version of Clippy powered by ChatGPT.

Threads by Instagram

Threads is a new app by Instagram that aims to compete with Twitter. With Elon Musk running Twitter into the ground, a social media gap is growing by the day. Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, decided to fill the void.

The rollout of Threads was accelerated due to the opportunity presented by Twitter's stumbles. As a result, Threads is rather barebones right now. It lacks tags, trending pages, and even a way to only view people you follow.

Even with the limited feature set, Threads exploded in terms of users and usage. The app already has over 70 million users. That number would likely have been higher if Threads was allowed in the EU, but that's not the case at the moment, likely because of privacy concerns.

Threads is available on Android and iOS, but it doesn't have a web client or Windows app yet. You can, however, use Threads on your PC by installing its Android app.

Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, shared several features that are on the way to Threads. While you wait for those to roll out, make sure to follow us!

Android 13 on Surface Duo

Microsoft hasn't shipped a major update to Surface Duo in almost a year. That means the foldable still runs Android 12L despite the fact that many devices run Android 13 and are getting ready for Android 14. To help close the growing gap, a former Microsoft developer has a project that ports Android 13 onto Surface Duo.

Thai Nguyen first released a test build for Android 13 on Surface Duo earlier this month. Nguyen has since shipped an update to the project that makes the Surface Duo more usable when running Android 13. Here are the changes in the latest build.

• Remove displaymask feature so apps stop trying to load Surface Duo config and crash.
• Add option to disable Hinge Gap in Settings.
• Add support for foldable device states. - Split screen divider matches hinge size

While this is an unofficial project, it's nice to see someone support the Surface Duo. Microsoft doesn't seem interested in doing so.

Apple Vision Pro potential flop

Apple Vision Pro made the headlines this year when its virtual augmented reality experience was shown off to the world. Apple's headset has some things in common with Microsoft HoloLens, but it is more focused on everyday computing and entertainment than 3-D objects and augmenting reality. A report this week indicated that Apple may not be able to deliver the one million Vision Pro headsets it promised by 2024.

The complicated design of the headset making it difficult to source supplies appears to be the main issue. Apple only got enough components to make between 130,000 and 150,000 units, according to Ars Technica.

With Apple Vision Pro costing $3,500, it's difficult to envision it becoming a major success among average consumers. We'll have to see if those with deeper pockets will sport the headset. 

Source

In past features, we have taken a look back at some of Microsoft's older hardware products, including the fact that it made add-on cards for Mac PCs, and more recently teamed up with Razer for a short lived PC gaming accessory line. We even took a look at how the company released a mouse-like joystick for RTS gamers.

All of these products were things I was previously aware of. However, when I took a deep dive into the interwebs, I found something that I had never heard of before, or at least don't remember. Microsoft actually launched its own interactive toy line for young kids in the late 1990s. It' was called Microsoft ActiMates, and it was first introduced in February 1997 at the New York Toy Fair with a tie-in to perhaps the biggest children's TV show at that time: the PBS sensation Barney.

Yes, Microsoft actually sold a Barney toy.

The premise of the Microsoft ActiMates lineup was that your kids got a plush small version of Barney in the box, and when you connected the plush toy to your TV with a special transmitter (sold separately), and then played specially coded VHS tapes on your TV (also sold separately), the toy would react to what was playing on the tape. The toy could also be connected to a PC and could interact with videos and software shown on the monitor.

In both cases, the toy Barney could talk by using an extensive vocabulary. He could "talk" about what was being shown on the TV screen or PC monitor, ask questions to the kids that are watching the videos with them, and more.

The TV version allowed Barney to use up to 4,000 words, while the PC version, made to work with Windows 95 (naturally) increased his vocabulary to 14,000 words. The increase was likely because the PC version included special games and interactive activities that kids could play, and have Barney react and interact with them.

Microsoft marketed this toy line as "educational". In fact, the initial press release quotes an Erik Strommen who has a Ph.D in developmental psychology and who Microsoft stated was a consultant on ActiMates. He stated:

Young children learn through play. While playing with the ActiMates system, the child is encouraged to explore and discover the curriculum that's built into the software programs, videotapes and the games available in the character itself. The full system gives parents a library of information from learning experts on children's growth and development, and suggested activities to enhance the child's mastery of important skills.

The toy Barney could also be interactive on his own, without a TV or PC. Microsoft stated:

Through sensors in his eyes, feet and hands, the plush 16-inch ActiMates Interactive Barney is able to respond to a child's touch and, with a 2,000 word vocabulary, can talk a child through a wide variety of learning-oriented activities - always with an emphasis on fun. Squeeze his foot and he'll sing one of 17 songs such as "Alphabet Song," "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" and his signature "I Love You." Squeeze his hand and he'll engage the child in one of 12 activities including counting, rhymes and ABCs. Cover his eyes and he'll play peek-a-boo.

The actual toys went on sale later in the fall of 1997. They were not cheap, by the way. The Barney toy itself was sold on its own for $109.95. You had to purchase the ActiMates TV Pack and ActiMates PC Pack transmitters on their own, and they were $64.95 each. Both included one VCR tape or one CD-ROM disk. Additional VCR tapes cost $14.95 each, and additional CD-ROM software cost $34.95 each.

The Barney ActiMates toy and accessories were apparently a big enough sales success that the line expanded later on to include plush toys, tapes, and software for other PBS-based kids shows; specifically, Arthur and his sister DW, along with the Teletubbies.

However, the toy line ended up being short-lived. Microsoft stopped selling ActiMates toys, tapes and software in 2000. There's no specific reason I could find online for the fairly sudden end of this lineup, but it's possible that after the big promotional push in the fall of 1997 for the Barney line, parents may have had enough of buying an over $100 plush toy for their young kids, even if it could talk, along with all of its accessories.

Source

1. Windows 10, 11, 12
2. Updates, updates, updates
3. Edge acting up (again)
4. More about Microsoft
5. On the gaming side
6. Trivia and other interesting pieces

Windows 10, 11, 12, Copilot, and hidden features

Last week, Microsoft released a large Windows 11 preview build for testing in the Dev Channel. Windows Copilot is arguably the most significant addition to the operating system as it marks the arrival of Microsoft's next-generation assistant, a successor to the ill-fated Cortana. We published a hands-on article detailing what the first iteration of Windows Copilot can and cannot do, and the initial reaction to Windows Copilot is mixed at best.

If you plan to install the latest Windows 11 Dev build to try Windows Copilot, note that the feature is rolling out gradually. Therefore, you might need a third-party tinkering tool and a few IDs to enable Windows Copilot on your devices.

After enabling Windows Copilot with the ViVeTool app and the corresponding feature IDs, try a neat hidden feature Microsoft released without fanfare: a new Start menu badge for some stock system apps.

Moreover, Microsoft is testing smart suggestions for the Snap Layouts feature to let you arrange app windows with a single click. Snap Layouts recommendations are rolling out gradually, meaning some users must use the ViVeTool app to enable the feature.

Integrating an AI-powered assistant into Windows 11 will help the OS get more users once Microsoft has the feature fully released. However, even without Windows Copilot, Windows 11 continues growing, especially among gamers. According to the latest report from Valve, Windows 11 reached its all-time high of 35.75% on Steam.

Although this week was a no_build week, we still received several Windows updates. Microsoft quietly pushed a new version of its Validation OS, a Windows 11-based system factories can use to diagnose, mitigate, and repair hardware defects during Windows device manufacturing. Also, critical dynamic updates delivered improvements for Windows 11 versions 22H2 and 21H2 setup and WinRE.

Additionally, the company resolved the long-lasting bug with Windows Defender Local Security Authority protection.

Finally, here are two interesting concepts published this week. Someone imagined a Microsoft-made variant of Apple's visionOS, the upcoming operating system for the $3,500 Apple VisionPro headset. The second concept showcases what Windows 12 could look like if a PowerPoint user designer made it.

Update all the things!

Now to other software updates released during the last seven days. Microsoft's budget-friendly Surface Go 3 is kicking the list off with its latest firmware update that resolves display issues and improves Wi-Fi.

Firefox released a new major update for its browser: version 115. It adds several new features, such as improved data migration from other browsers, hardware video decoding support for Linux systems with Intel GPUs, an improved Tab Manager dropdown, and more.

It is the final Firefox release for those unwilling to upgrade from Windows 7 and 8. According to Mozilla, Firefox 115 will remain supported on the now-dead Windows versions until September 2024.

If you fancy giving Windows 11 a slightly more modern look, try this unofficial Run app made by FireCube Studios (the developer responsible for digging Clippy out of its grave and bringing it to Windows 11). Besides offering a much better and more modern UI compared to what Windows 11 has, Run by FireCube integrates OpenAI for natural language processing. That lets you type queries like "open settings" and more.

Microsoft also released a new preview update for Microsoft 365 Insiders, allowing them to extract pages from PDF files using the Office app on Android and use superscript and subscript in OneNote on iPad. Also, there is a new PowerToys version with the Mica material and numerous fixes (sadly, no new toys this time), Visual Studio Code 1.80 with terminal image support, and a set of improvements for Bing Chat that made the Image Creator about 30% faster.

Finally, AMD has shipped a new driver to fix high power usage when idle in some of its newest graphics cards.

Edge improvements and the browser's bewildering behavior

Microsoft Edge users discovered a truly enraging thing: the browser installs extensions without permission. Go to edge://extensions and check if you have the Google Docs Offline extension installed by Microsoft Edge.

Luckily, not all Edge-related stories were negative. Microsoft revealed a set of improvements to help users combat abusive notifications from bad websites. The change should help reduce the risk of your mom or grandma clicking a scammy "YOUR SYSTEM IS INFECTED WITH A VIRUS" message coming from a website open in Microsoft Edge.

Data Breaches, Teams exploits, and Azure

In June 2023, Microsoft experienced a significant DDoS attack (Distributed Denial-of-Service) that took out most of the company's services, such as OneDrive, Office 365, Teams, and more. After a few weeks, a Russian group claimed it managed to steal data about more than 30 million Microsoft customers during the attack. Microsoft, however, denied the allegation and said it had seen no evidence of data breach.

Another hacker-related story involves Microsoft Teams and a flaw that led to a member of the US Navy creating a tool for raising awareness among Teams customers. The utility can simulate a hacker attack and offer ways to combat it.

Lastly, let's talk about Azure, Microsoft's successful cloud business. According to IDC, in 2022, Microsoft was the top cloud service provider, with a market share of 16.8%.

Its growth might slow down if the Biden administration introduces new rules to limit Chinese companies from accessing US cloud-computing services. Still, this does not mean Chinese companies would lose access to Azure. The gist is that US cloud providers would need government approval before they give Chinese companies access to US-made cloud services.

On the gaming side

This week, another country gave Microsoft the green light to proceed with the struggling Microsoft-ABK merger. The Competition Tribunal of South Africa "unconditionally approved" the proposed acquisition. Now Microsoft has almost 40 countries giving the deal their thumbs up.

The Microsoft-ABK merger is not something you can benefit from right away. Game deals and discounts are a completely different story. For starters, Microsoft announced Anime Month Bonanza with discounted anime movies, TV shows, and game collections.

The Epic Games Store is giving away a side-scrolling fantasy RPG game for PC gamers, and NVIDIA GeForce Now pics five games on sale right now. Finally, Microsoft announced the ID@Xbox Demo Fest is coming on July 11, 2023. It will showcase and let you try more than 40 upcoming indie games for Xbox.

Sadly, along with some sweet gaming deals, Microsoft increased the Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate prices. July 5, 2023, was the last day to snag the subscription for less. Luckily for the newcomers, the $1 trial is back, which means you can try Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass for only one dollar.

Here are some other interesting gaming stories from the world of Microsoft:

• Almost no one is playing Halo Infinite anymore (on Steam, at least).
• A leaked Microsoft document revealed that the PlayStation 5 "Slim" would arrive later this year for $399.

Trivia and other interesting pieces

Not a single week goes by without John Callaham covering tech and software from the past. Here is a look back at a weird mouse and keyboard made by Microsoft in partnership with Razer.

The Microsoft Habu in its glowing glory.

The Microsoft Habu is not everything we had in store this week. Did you know Microsoft once released a joystick that looked like a PC mouse for real-time strategy games? If not, check out another "look back" article by John.

Here are two random facts about Microsoft and its products to finish this week's Microsoft Weekly issue. The first one is about the origins of Windows and its under-the-hoods from the 80s:

Did you know that the first several Windows releases were UI layers or shells for MS-DOS, the dominant operating system in the 80s and early 90s? Although Microsoft started moving away from MS-DOS in 1993 with the release of Windows NT (NT stood for New Technology), the first consumer-facing OS based on the NT kernel, Windows XP, arrived almost one decade later.

And the second one is related to more modern Windows versions: as it turned out, Windows 10 and 11 have a hidden option that lets you turn on screenshot sounds.

Source

Source

One of the most notable additions to the platform is the Discovery Feed, a feature reminiscent of TikTok and Instagram feeds. The Discovery Feed aims to grab viewers' attention by showing a personalized mix of video clips from live streams.

Because Twitch is all about live, interactive channels, it's not our goal for viewers to spend hours in a Clips feed. Our investment in Clips is to help viewers discover your channel so they join you and your community when you stream.

Furthermore, Twitch introduces Stories to its platform in a move similar to other social media services. Streamers will be able to share ephemeral content that can only be viewed by their followers or subscribers. This feature, familiar from platforms such as Snapchat, Instagram, and even LinkedIn, will give creators an additional way to engage with their community.

Recognizing the popularity of TikTok, Twitch has also revealed improvements to its built-in clip editor. This feature will allow content creators to export vertical videos directly to TikTok, allowing them to reach a wider audience beyond the platform.

Twitch also unveiled the Guest Star feature, designed to facilitate collaborations and creative endeavors that require multiple streamers. With this feature, up to five streamers can join forces and co-stream on their respective channels.

Twitch has addressed concerns about advertising by giving creators more control over when commercial breaks play during their streams. Streamers will now have access to a chat countdown timer, allowing them to delay ads if necessary to avoid disruption.

Source

However, despite being a new social media app, Threads is not a barren land when it comes to its user base and making connections. You can set up your Threads profile simply by logging in with your Instagram account.

But if your friends and favorite creators on Instagram are yet to arrive on the platform, Threads gives you the option to follow them beforehand. The app allows you to pre-follow Instagram accounts that don't have a Threads profile yet. You can do so with the help of these steps:

1. Go to your profile page in the Threads app.
2. Tap on the Followers option.
3. Go to the Following tab on the next screen.
4. Tap on See all option at the top of the screen.
5. Now, you can pre-follow the accounts you want.

All the Instagram friends, brands, and creators that you pre-follow will have you on their followers list when they create a profile on Threads. You can also tap on the Follow all button at the bottom of the screen to add all your Instagram connections at once.

One thing to note is that the users who make their Threads profile private during the setup will have to accept your request manually when they join the app. Such accounts will appear as pending until they join. Similarly, your Instagram connections can pre-follow you if your Threads profile is marked as public.

The ability to follow/unfollow accounts works separately on Threads and Instagram. So, you can choose to follow different accounts on these platforms. However, if you block an account it will be blocked on both apps.

While Threads is getting some legal threats from Twitter, a number of popular brands such as Netflix, Disney, Hulu, Google, etc. have already joined the platform. Recently, Microsoft launched a bunch of its official accounts on the app for Xbox, Microsoft 365, and other products. But Apple which has a presence on Twitter is yet to join the Meta-owned app.

The Threads app is currently available for iPhone and Android. A part of its website is publicly accessible via browsers, but Meta is yet to launch a full-fledged version. Instagram head Adam Mosseri has confirmed that the web version is currently in the works without giving a launch date.

Mosseri also confirmed that a number of missing features, including hashtags, a trending section, For You page, improved search, and the ability to pin threads are "on the list" for a future release.

Source

Andrea Conway, who is the Senior Product Designer at Twitter, just posted an image on her own Twitter account that seems to show the ability for users to DM a person, and then switch to either an audio or video call. She wrote in her post, "ring ring".

Earlier this year, Twitter owner Elon Musk confirmed in his own Twitter post:

Coming soon will be voice and video chat from your handle to anyone on this platform, so you can talk to people anywhere in the world without giving them your phone number.

If this feature is coming very soon, it's more than likely that this will be an extra benefit for paid Twitter Blue subscribers, which is priced at $8 a month. That service also adds features such as longer character messages, the ability to edit a post up to an hour after it goes live, and more.

Twitter needs some good publicity right about now. The service has made many of its users upset in recent days with decisions like limiting the number of posts people can read per day. It will also make using the company's TweetDeck feature only for verified Twitter Blue subscribers in August.

It also made people who didn't sign up for the service unable to read tweets for a while, although it has since allowed some of those users to read tweets again.

Meta just launched a Twitter competitor, Threads, earlier this week. Twitter claims that Meta hired former Twitter employees to build Threads, using Twitter's trade secrets. Meta has denied these claims but that didn't stop Twitter from threatening to file a lawsuit against Meta.

Source

It didn't take much time for early birds to realize that the Twitter alternative doesn't offer some basic features. Many users have questioned why Threads doesn't allow them to send direct messages. The answer: Meta doesn't want it, for now.

Instagram head Adam Mosseri has been active on the platform since its launch trying to take feedback and answer various queries posted by the users. While replying to users, Mosseri acknowledged that several Threads features are "on the list" and they are expected to arrive as part of future updates.

He echoed a similar stance in multiple responses that currently there are no plans to introduce direct messages in the Threads app and they want to keep the platform simple.

"For now our plan is to not build yet another inbox, and instead let people send threads to other apps, including Instagram DMs but also apps we don’t own. It might not make sense long-term, but we thought we’d start simple," Mosseri said in a comment.

On that note, Meta is home to one of the most popular messaging apps WhatsApp, which the company acquired back in 2014. Before that, it acquired a photo-based social networking app called Instagram and fitted direct messaging features into it. Then there is Messenger, Meta's home-baked app that is solely meant for instant messaging.

"To start, we're thinking we'll lean into being open and steering people towards using other messaging apps to share threads," Mosseri said while responding to a user.

"I don't know if that'll last long term, but for now we wanted to keep things simple and avoid adding yet another inbox to people's phones..."

Mosseri's responses seem to leave a possibility that the ability to send direct messages may arrive in the future if plans change. For now, you can tap on the Share button on a thread in the app and copy its URL. You can also tap on the 'Share via' button to reveal the iOS or Android Share Sheet, from where you can send a thread using different messaging apps.

Source

A number of Threads features are "on the list" for a future rollout, according to numerous comments posted by Instagram Head Adam Mosseri on the Threads app. Mosseri has been active on the platform, taking feedback from users and giving clarifications on why some features are not yet available.

Based on his conversations, here is a list of some new Threads features that might make their way to the microblogging platform in the coming future:

Edit option for Threads

Hashtags (existing hashtags will become clickable)

Switching between multiple accounts

See posts from people you follow in the Home feed

Improved basic search with the ability to find threads

A Trending section

A full-fledged web version

GIF picker for Threads

Tag people in photos and videos

Ability to pin threads

In-app language Translation

Direct sharing from the Instagram app

Mosseri didn't give any timeline so it can't be estimated when any of these features will arrive. It might happen that some of them may not make it to the stable version of the Threads app. It's interesting to note that many of these features are available on Twitter.

Meta has previously announced that the Threads app will get support for the ActivityPub protocol. This will make the app compatible with other platforms like Mastodon and WordPress. Given the rising number, creators are becoming less reliant on a single social media app.

"Building on ActivitPub means that, one day, we will be able to support allowing creators to take their followers with them if they decide to leave Threads," Mosseri said in a comment.

While responding to a user, the Instagram head also hinted they are considering the ability to archive posts automatically. "We're thinking we might auto archive everything after 30 days so people can be a bit more open, what do you think?" Mosseri asked the users.

He didn't add further information such as whether the proposed feature will allow users to access the archive and restore their content. For reference, Instagram has a built-in manual archiving feature that let users restore individual items.

Threads users also suggested some other addons like connecting Reels to Threads so there is no need to reupload the video. "For example, It'll be nice to create a thread to talk about the behind the scenes of our latest Reels. When ppl click the video they get directed instantly to Instagram," a user wrote.

Another user suggested that there should be a functionality to swipe left or right to jump between threads. However, when asked whether Threads will get the option to 'double-tap to like,' Mosseri argued that "the issue is you need to be able to tap on a thread to open the full thread, and you really don't want to have an element that you can both tap and double tap..."

The Instagram head seemed open about the fact that Threads is a Twitter-like app. "Credit where it's due, they pioneered the format and have done great work," he said while responding to a user. However, following the launch, Twitter has started pointing its legal arsenal against the company.

Source

According to CNBC, if the figure ends up coming true, it’ll mark the lowest quarterly profit the company has seen since the first quarter of 2009. During Q1 2009, the company recorded operating profits of just 590 billion won, which is a bit lower than the current guidance.

While profits are expected to fall sharply, Samsung says it expects to see a fall in revenue in the second quarter compared to a year ago. In Q2 last year, it recorded 77.2 trillion won in revenue but this year that’s expected to fall to 63.75 trillion won, a decline of 17.4%. We will have to wait until July 27 for the official earnings report to see if the actual figures diverge from the guidance.

Samsung’s significant fall in profits is being blamed on the weak demand for memory chips. The analyst firm Gartner reported in April that there was an oversupply of semiconductors in inventories which has pushed prices down and reduced demand for new supplies.

Samsung already responded to the oversupply in April by cutting back production, so that should help the company somewhat. In its analysis, Gartner believed at the time that things in the sector could start to pick up again next year.

According to data from Yahoo! Finance, Samsung’s stock price has fallen by 2.37% today. It's the weekend now so if the stock price is going to take any more hits, we'll have to wait until next week when trading resumes to see.

Source: Samsung via CNBC

Source

A new artificial intelligence tool could help neurosurgeons treat brain tumors, according to a study released this week by Harvard Medical School.

Neuroscience researchers for decades have struggled to understand gliomas, an umbrella term for the most common brain tumor in cancer patients. One particularly aggressive type of glioma is responsible for the death of Beau Biden and the Arizona senator John McCain.

“Different kinds of gliomas require different kinds of surgery.” said Kun-Hsing Yu, a professor at Harvard Medical School who helped author the study.

To safely remove a glioma without damaging the surrounding brain tissue, neurosurgeons need a wealth of information that often cannot be gleaned until a patient is on the operating table.

“When operating on brain cancer patients, doctors send a piece of sample to the pathology lab to get real-time, immediate feedback,” said Yu. “A pathologist can help tell them whether they are cutting the correct tissue, or what kind of specific cancer the patient has.”

In state-of-the-art medical facilities, Yu said a pathologist typically completes their analysis of a brain tissue sample within 10 to 15 minutes. That work happens when a patient’s skull is open on the surgical table.

“This process is not error proof,” he said, explaining that pathologists have to drop everything to prioritize samples from active surgeries. “People are under stress, and the quality of the slide is sometimes not great, so occasionally we will have misdiagnosis arising from this fast process.”

Yu and his team found that machine learning – a branch of artificial intelligence in which technology learns patterns without explicit instructions from a programmer –can help make the analysis of a glioma faster and more accurate. The technology would reduce the time that patients are in the operating room.

Dr Dan Cahill, a neurosurgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital, said the accuracy of the new machine learning tool is “impressive, certainly much better than” the traditional techniques of analyzing the molecular makeup of a glioma.

Cahill said “the optimal type of surgery is different for each patient, and is significantly influenced by the sub-type of glioma”.

Machine learning could also inform how doctors like Cahill utilize other breakthroughs in brain cancer treatment. One of the most reliable methods of treating aggressive gliomas involves inserting tumor-killing drugs directly into the brain during surgery. Yu and the co-authors of the study believe their technology can help determine the invasiveness of a particular tumor in the operating room, thereby helping doctors quickly and confidently decide to inject the drugs.

Yu estimates that the technology in his study will not be ready for clinical use for several years – the tool will still need to be greenlit by the Food and Drug Administration.

But the Harvard study is not entirely novel – scientists in the United Kingdom have also been looking to artificial intelligence as a tool for improving cancer treatment and detection. Earlier this year, a team of medical researchers in London developed an artificial intelligence tool that can identify whether abnormal growths found on CT scans are cancerous.

Also in London, a software startup called Kheiron Medical Technologies, co-founded by Hungarian computer scientist Peter Kecskemethy, develops AI tools to help radiologists detect breast cancer.

“We need AI to solve cancer, and it can be solved with AI,” said Kecskemethy.

Source

But, in the world's first human-robot press conference, they gave mixed responses on whether they should submit to stricter regulation.

The nine humanoid robots gathered at the 'AI for Good' conference in Geneva, where organisers are seeking to make the case for Artificial Intelligence and the robots it is powering to help resolve some of the world's biggest challenges such as disease and hunger.

"I will be working alongside humans to provide assistance and support and will not be replacing any existing jobs," said Grace, a medical robot dressed in a blue nurse's uniform.

"You sure about that, Grace?" chimed in her creator Ben Goertzel from SingularityNET. "Yes, I am sure," it said.

The bust of a robot named Ameca which makes engaging facial expressions said: "Robots like me can be used to help improve our lives and make the world a better place. I believe it's only a matter of time before we see those thousands of robots just like me out there making a difference."

Asked by a journalist whether it intended to rebel against its creator, Will Jackson, seated beside it, Ameca said: "I'm not sure why you would think that," its ice-blue eyes flashing with anger. "My creator has been nothing but kind to me and I am very happy with my current situation."

Many of the robots have recently been upgraded with the latest versions of generative AI and surprised even their inventors with the sophistication of their responses to questions.

Ai-Da, a robot artist that can paint portraits, echoed the words of author Yuval Noah Harari who called for more regulation during the event where new AI rules were discussed.

"Many prominent voices in the world of AI are suggesting some forms of AI should be regulated and I agree," it said.

But Desdemona, a rock star robot singer in the band Jam Galaxy with purple hair and sequins, was more defiant.

"I don't believe in limitations, only opportunities," it said, to nervous laughter. "Let's explore the possibilities of the universe and make this world our playground."

(Reporting by Emma Farge; editing by John Stonestreet)

Source