from Louis Bouchard Gato from DeepMind was just published! It is a single transformer that can play Atari games, caption images, chat with people, control a real robotic arm, and more! Indeed, it is trained once and uses the same weights to achieve all those tasks. And as per Deepmind, this is not only a transformer but also an agent. This is what happens when you mix Transformers with progress on multi-task reinforcement learning agents. As we said, Gato is a multi-modal agent. Meaning that it can create captions for images or answer questions as a chatbot. You’d say that […]
Continue readingTag Archives: Google
Introducing The Ai Mirror Test, Which Very Smart People Keep Failing
from The Verge In behavioral psychology, the mirror test is designed to discover animals’ capacity for self-awareness. There are a few variations of the test, but the essence is always the same: do animals recognize themselves in the mirror or think it’s another being altogether? Right now, humanity is being presented with its own mirror test thanks to the expanding capabilities of AI — and a lot of otherwise smart people are failing it. The mirror is the latest breed of AI chatbots, of which Microsoft’s Bing is the most prominent example. The reflection is humanity’s wealth of language and […]
Continue readingFrom Bing to Sydney
from Stratechery Look, this is going to sound crazy. But know this: I would not be talking about Bing Chat for the fourth day in a row if I didn’t really, really, think it was worth it. This sounds hyperbolic, but I feel like I had the most surprising and mind-blowing computer experience of my life today. One of the Bing issues I didn’t talk about yesterday was the apparent emergence of an at-times combative personality. For example, there was this viral story about Bing’s insistence that it was 2022 and “Avatar: The Way of the Water” had not yet […]
Continue readingA Conversation With Bing’s Chatbot Left Me Deeply Unsettled
from NYTs Last week, after testing the new, A.I.-powered Bing search engine from Microsoft, I wrote that, much to my shock, it had replaced Google as my favorite search engine. But a week later, I’ve changed my mind. I’m still fascinated and impressed by the new Bing, and the artificial intelligence technology (created by OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT) that powers it. But I’m also deeply unsettled, even frightened, by this A.I.’s emergent abilities. It’s now clear to me that in its current form, the A.I. that has been built into Bing — which I’m now calling Sydney, for reasons […]
Continue readingChatgpt Is A Data Privacy Nightmare, And We Ought To Be Concerned
from ars technica ChatGPT has taken the world by storm. Within two months of its release it reached 100 million active users, making it the fastest-growing consumer application ever launched. Users are attracted to the tool’s advanced capabilities—and concerned by its potential to cause disruption in various sectors. A much less discussed implication is the privacy risks ChatGPT poses to each and every one of us. Just yesterday, Google unveiled its own conversational AI called Bard, and others will surely follow. Technology companies working on AI have well and truly entered an arms race. More here.
Continue readingGoogle Is Getting Caught In The Antitrust Net
from ars technica Being a global company has its perks. There’s a lot of money to be made overseas. But the biggest US tech companies are finding out that there’s also a downside: every country where you make money is a country that could try to regulate you. It’s hard to keep track of all the tech-related antitrust action happening around the world, in part because it doesn’t always seem to be worth paying close attention to. In Europe, which has long been home to the world’s most aggressive regulators, Google alone was hit with a $2.7 billion fine in 2017, […]
Continue readingTime To Clip The Wings Of NSO And Its Pegasus Spyware
from The Observer What’s the most problematic tech company in the world? Facebook? Google? Palantir? Nope. It’s a small, privately held Israeli company called NSO that most people have never heard of. On its website, it describes itself as “a world leader in precision cyberintelligence solutions”. Its software, sold only to “licensed government intelligence and law-enforcement agencies”, naturally, helps them to “lawfully address the most dangerous issues in today’s world. NSO’s technology has helped prevent terrorism, break up criminal operations, find missing people and assist search and rescue teams.” So what is this magical stuff? It’s called Pegasus and it […]
Continue readingWhat the EU Gets Right—and the US Gets Wrong—About Antitrust
from Wired THERE’S A GROWING bipartisan consensus in the US to rein in the massive power accumulated by dominant tech firms. From state capitals to Congress, officials have launched multiple investigations of whether the big four of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google are now forces more for harm than good and whether their size and scale demand government action to curtail them or potentially break them up. US regulators have not yet shown all their cards, but they should pause before arguing that too big equals anticompetitive, or seeking to break up or substantially restructure the tech giants. Instead, they […]
Continue readingHouse Lawmakers Condemn Big Tech’s ‘Monopoly Power’ and Urge Their Breakups
from NYTs House lawmakers who spent the last 16 months investigating the practices of the world’s largest technology companies said on Tuesday that Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google had exercised and abused their monopoly power and called for the most sweeping changes to antitrust laws in half a century. In a 449-page report that was presented by the House Judiciary Committee’s Democratic leadership, lawmakers said the four companies had turned from “scrappy” start-ups into “the kinds of monopolies we last saw in the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons.” The lawmakers said the companies had abused their dominant positions, […]
Continue readingThe Plain View
from Plaintext Like any good nonfiction writer, the Majority Staff (i.e., Democrats) of the House Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law has produced a long-read document distinguished by deep research and an unyielding thesis: Big Tech is too big, too bad, and fights dirty. Sixteen months ago, the subcommittee set out to expose bad behavior in Silicon Valley’s top companies. Empowered with subpoenas, it had little trouble finding it. The docket of whistle-blowing witnesses and damning exhibits uncovered a litany of bullying, self-interested, anti-competitive behavior that justified the exercise, which some thought redundant because of ongoing investigations by the […]
Continue readingAfter Ten Years, The Google vs Oracle API Copyright Mega-Battle Finally Hit The Supreme Court
from The Register The decade-long mega-battle between two of the world’s largest corporations, which will decide the future of software development, began its final showdown this morning. Yes, it was Google versus Oracle at the US Supreme Court, and two hours of wide-ranging, fast-paced legal argument: full of analogies, pointed questions, sharp responses, and virtually no missteps – it indicated just how much is at stake. At the heart of the case is this: Android, Google’s mobile operating system installed on billions of devices that contributes to making it one of the richest and most powerful corporations on the planet. […]
Continue readingSection 230 Is a Government License to Build Rage Machines
from Wired Facebook has been called the “ largest piece of the QAnon infrastructure.” The app has not only hosted plenty of the conspiracy group’s dark and dangerous content, it has also promoted and expanded its audience. QAnon is hardly the only beneficiary: Facebook promotes and expands the audience of militia organizers, racists, those who seek to spread disinformation to voters, and a host of other serious troublemakers. The platform’s basic business, after all, is deciding which content keeps people most engaged, even if it undermines civil society. But unlike most other businesses, Facebook’s most profitable operations benefit from a […]
Continue readingWhy This Author Is Taking A Stand Against Amazon’s Audiobook Monopoly
from Fast Company When science fiction writer and activist Cory Doctorow releases his new novel, Attack Surface, next month, you’ll be able to pick up a physical copy from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or your local independent bookstore. If you’d prefer an e-book, you’ll be able to download it on Amazon’s Kindle, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, and other mainstream digital book platforms. But if you’re someone who prefers an audiobook, you’ll find the novel, which deals with a corporate cybersecurity expert struggling with the morality of her work, absent from one of the biggest audiobook stores on the internet: Amazon’s […]
Continue readingEU Launching Deep Probe Into Google’s Planned $2.1 Billion Fitbit Buy
from ars technica Regulators in the European Union are launching a deep investigation into Google’s proposed acquisition of wearables maker Fitbit after expressing concerns that giving Google access to Fitbit’s user data could “distort competition.” The Commission’s in-depth investigation will examine not only the potential outcomes for the advertising market if the transaction goes through, but it will also look at the effects of the deal on the digital healthcare sector and the potential for Google to lock competitors out of access to Android users. More here.
Continue readingWhat’s This? A Bipartisan Plan For AI And National Security
from ars technica US Reps. Will Hurd and Robin Kelly are from opposite sides of the ever-widening aisle, but they share a concern that the United States may lose its grip on artificial intelligence, threatening the American economy and the balance of world power. On Thursday, Hurd (R-Tex.) and Kelly (D-Ill.) offered suggestions to prevent the US from falling behind China, especially, on applications of AI to defense and national security. They want to cut off China’s access to AI-specific silicon chips and push Congress and federal agencies to devote more resources to advancing and safely deploying AI technology. Although […]
Continue readingThink You Can’t Escape Google? You Haven’t Seen Anything Yet
from Fast Company More than any designer this side of Cupertino, Matias Duarte has made phones easy to use. During his tenure at Google — first overseeing the design of Android — the vice president of design watched Google’s operating system capture more than 85% of the global smartphone market. Duarte has likened his own work in mainstreaming these addictive devices to that of an arms dealer — “I just make the guns! I didn’t make you guys shoot each other!” — but he’s also not slowing down. After pioneering Material Design — a user interface metaphor that’s helped de-uglify […]
Continue reading