Commissioner says existential threat unlikely, but ‘guardrails’ needed for decisions affecting livelihoodsDiscrimination is a bigger threat posed by artificial intelligence than possible extinction of the human race, according to the EU’s competition commissioner.Margrethe Vestager said although the existential risk from advances in AI may be a concern, it was unlikely, whereas discrimination from the technology was a real problem. Continue reading...
Some delivery and storage costs for European vendors more than doubled in 2017-23, analysis showsAmazon has been accused of being “no friend of the small business” after a report discovered evidence that the online marketplace has ramped up fees and advertising costs for sellers.It found that between 2017 and 2022 Amazon had tripled the amount it earned from fees for independent sellers in Europe, including for listings, deliveries and digital support. That growth far outstripped the rise in sales, which doubled over the same period. Continue reading...
Federal Trade Commission secures delay of $69bn deal which it argues would be anti-competitiveA US district judge has granted the Federal Trade Commission’s request to temporarily block Microsoft’s $69bn buyout of video game maker Activision Blizzard and set a hearing next week.Microsoft’s bid to acquire the Call of Duty video game maker has been approved by the EU but blocked by British competition authorities, while the FTC, a US authority, has argued the transaction would give Microsoft’s video game console Xbox exclusive access to Activision games, leaving Nintendo consoles and Sony’s PlayStation out in the cold. Continue reading...
by Johana Bhuiyan and Nick Robins-Early on (#6C5YZ)
Everyone accepts that AI is dangerous. Agreeing on what to do about it is a different storyLast month, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI and face of the artificial intelligence boom, sat in front of members of Congress urging them to regulate artificial intelligence (AI). As lawmakers on the Senate judiciary subcommittee asked the 38-year-old tech mogul about the nature of his business, Altman argued that the AI industry could be dangerous and that the government needs to step in.“I think if this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong,” Altman said. “We want to be vocal about that.” Continue reading...
Regulators have launched two big lawsuits against Binance and Coinbase, and Rishi Sunak could mine the benefits• Don’t get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up for the full article hereRishi Sunak’s techno-moment has come. Unfortunately for him, it might be too late.Last week, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) launched a pair of lawsuits against the country’s biggest cryptocurrency exchanges, Binance and Coinbase.The SEC complaint alleges that [CEO Changpeng Zhao] directed Binance to conceal the access of high-spending US customers to Binance.com. In one piece of evidence included in the lawsuit, the Binance chief compliance officer messaged a colleague saying: “We are operating as a fking unlicensed securities exchange in the USA bro.” Elsewhere in the lawsuit, Binance’s CCO is quoted as saying: “We do not want [Binance].com to be regulated ever.”“Since at least 2019, through the Coinbase platform, Coinbase has operated as an unregistered broker … an unregistered exchange … and an unregistered clearing agency,” the SEC said in its complaint. “Coinbase has for years defied the regulatory structures and evaded the disclosure requirements that Congress and the SEC have constructed for the protection of the national securities markets and investors.”Paul Grewal, the chief legal officer and general counsel of Coinbase, said: “The SEC’s reliance on an enforcement-only approach in the absence of clear rules for the digital asset industry is hurting America’s economic competitiveness and companies like Coinbase that have a demonstrated commitment to compliance.California-based Andreessen Horowitz (A16Z) said Britain was on “the right path to becoming a leader in crypto regulation”. The venture capital firm’s new office will open later this year and will be dedicated to investing in crypto and tech startups in the UK and Europe.Chris Dixon, the head of crypto investing at Andreessen Horowitz, wrote in a blogpost: “While there is still work to be done, we believe that the UK is on the right path to becoming a leader in crypto regulation.As we cement the UK’s place as a science and tech superpower, we must embrace new innovations like Web3, powered by blockchain technology, which will enable start-ups to flourish here and grow the economy.“That success is founded on having the right regulation and guardrails in place to protect consumers and foster innovation. While there’s still work to do, I’m determined to unlock opportunities for this technology and turn the UK into the world’s Web3 centre. Continue reading...
Company said vehicle never obstructed access to scene in San Francisco even as police in video say it blocked first respondersA Cruise self-driving car appeared to hinder first responders as they tried to access the scene of a mass shooting in San Francisco’s Mission District on Friday night, raising concerns about robotaxis’ ability to safely offer rides throughout the city.Emergency crews were responding to a shooting on 24th Street shortly after 9pm in which nine people were injured. In a video posted to Twitter, a Cruise self-driving car is seen in the road as an officer approaches it and says it’s “blocking emergency medical and fire. I’ve got to get it out of here now.” In a statement, Cruise maintained that the car did not block emergency access to the scene “at any point”. Continue reading...
Report says British state is poorly prepared for radical changes that AI could unleashArtificial intelligence could represent the most substantial policy challenge ever faced by the UK and urgent action is needed to avoid falling behind rival powers such as the US, according to a report co-authored by Tony Blair and William Hague.The former prime minister and the former Conservative party leader, who co-wrote the foreword to the report, said society was about to be “radically reshaped” by the technology, resulting in a “fundamental change in how we plan for the future”. The report warns that the state is poorly prepared for the changes that AI could unleash. Continue reading...
Federal Trade Commission opposes purchase, which would be largest in video-game industry history, on antitrust groundsThe Federal Trade Commission asked a court to temporarily block Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard on Monday, seeking to halt the deal from closing before the government’s case against the $69bn deal is heard.The FTC said Microsoft and Activision had signaled the deal could close as soon as Friday, and asked a federal judge to block any final agreement before 11.59pm ET on 15 June. Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#6C5HA)
Thin and light M2 Mac has fast performance, a very long battery life and one of the best screens on the marketApple’s much-rumoured 15in MacBook Air is here, marking the firm’s return to this part of the market and adding more screen to what is arguably the best consumer laptop available.The 15in MacBook Air starts at £1,399 ($1,299/A$2,199) – £250 more than the excellent 13in version, which has been given a £100 price cut since its launch. Continue reading...
California-based venture capitalist firm says UK now on ‘right path to becoming a leader in crypto regulation’A leading US tech investment firm that counts Facebook and Twitter among its successful bets has backed the UK’s approach to crypto regulation as it announced plans to open a London office that will be its first outside the US.California-based Andreessen Horowitz said Britain was on “the right path to becoming a leader in crypto regulation”. The venture capital firm’s new office will open later this year and will be dedicated to investing in crypto and tech startups in the UK and Europe. Continue reading...
Be warned: you will be sucked in to the cosmic new worlds, its ‘Nasa punk’ aesthetic and the rich narrative details Bethesda always addsIt’s the game Bethesda has been thinking about and dreamily planning for 25 years: a massive role-playing adventure, set not just on one world like the multimillion- selling Fallout and Skyrim titles, but across an entire galaxy of more than 1,000 detailed planets. In a 40-minute video presentation given as part of Sunday’s Xbox Showcase in LA, the development team working under director Todd Howard spelt out its wildly ambitious project in detail – so, so much detail.You play as a member of the Constellation, a famed group of space explorers who have stumbled across a strange artefact that hints at an ancient alien intelligence, or perhaps even god. That’s the main quest-line, but players can also discover myriad side quests and mini-missions handed out by a vast number of non-player characters. The game starts in the sprawling utopian city of New Atlantis on Alpha Centauri, but as play progresses, you move farther away from the peaceful United Colonies, and into the territory of the Independent Coalition of Star Systems, a ragtag frontier of cyberpunk worlds. Outside those lies uncharted space, teeming with hostile factions. Continue reading...
Silicon Valley wants to make us believe humans are predictable and our skills replaceable. I’ve learned that’s nonsenseI spent the best part of the 2010s working in new media, which – if you enjoyed being repeatedly laid off and then being inundated with jeering messages inveigling you to “learn to code” because your industry was doomed – was a great big laugh. Eventually, the fun began to wear off and in an act of subversive defiance (or cowardly resignation), I took their goading advice, learned to code and pivoted to what I’d hoped would be a far more secure career in “web development”, only for recent advances in AI to supposedly render coding jobs a waste of time, too. It seems I have accidentally timed my career change to coincide with a mass rollout of AI chatbots that have also learned to code, and that are – in many respects – already far better at it than me.Code can appear alarming to the uninitiated: inscrutable “languages” that mostly read like a calculator having a stroke, but, according to AI’s most fervent evangelists, they no longer need represent any barrier at all. Why bother wrapping your head around the needlessly convoluted nerdspeak required to display white text on a black background, when you can now simply ask a chatbot to do this in layperson’s terms and it will promptly serve up your code, complete with instructions?Tristan Cross is a Welsh writer based in London Continue reading...
Coventry workers determined to keep going despite setback in push for unionisation“Jeff Bezos has got more money than he could spend in a hundred lifetimes. He built the company up, but we’ve kept it going.” On a sunny shingle beach in Brighton, Darren Westwood and his colleagues are reflecting on the yearlong battle to make their voices heard at Amazon.The three men have received a warm welcome here at the GMB’s annual congress, where they have shared their story with fellow activists – and won the support of the Labour leader, Keir Starmer. Continue reading...
Thousands of subreddits to become ‘private’ after plans to charge other companies for access to dataSome of the largest communities on Reddit will lock their doors in protest at the social news site’s decision to try to monetise access to its data.More than 3,000 subreddits have joined the protest, and will go “private” on Monday, preventing anyone outside the community from seeing their posts. Continue reading...
The president of the not-for-profit messaging app on how she believes existential warnings about AI allow big tech to entrench their power, and why the online safety bill may be unworkableMeredith Whittaker is the president of Signal – the not-for-profit secure messaging app. The service, along with WhatsApp and similar messaging platforms, is opposing the UK government’s online safety bill which, among other things, seeks to scan users’ messages for harmful content. Prior to Signal, Whittaker worked at Google, co-founded NYU’s AI Now Institute and was an adviser to the Federal Trade Commission.After 10 years at Google you organised the walkout over the company’s attitude to sexual harassment accusations, after which in 2019 you were forced out. How did you feel about that?
We blame technology for decisions really made by governments and corporationsLast November, a young African American man, Randal Quran Reid, was pulled over by the state police in Georgia as he was driving into Atlanta. He was arrested under warrants issued by Louisiana police for two cases of theft in New Orleans. Reid had never been to Louisiana, let alone New Orleans. His protestations came to nothing, and he was in jail for six days as his family frantically spent thousands of dollars hiring lawyers in both Georgia and Louisiana to try to free him.It emerged that the arrest warrants had been based solely on a facial recognition match, though that was never mentioned in any police document; the warrants claimed “a credible source” had identified Reid as the culprit. The facial recognition match was incorrect, the case eventually fell apart and Reid was released. Continue reading...
Artificial intelligence will be the main talking point at the coming London Tech Week but investment and skills problems remainFor some companies attending London Tech Week this Monday, just being there is an achievement. The sudden failure in March of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), a financial cornerstone for the UK and US tech industries, had left many British companies wondering how they were going to see out that month.Ashley Ramrachia, chief executive of Academy, a tech company with headquarters in Manchester, said the first he knew of SVB’s troubles was on Wednesday 8 March. By Thursday, Ramrachia and others were trying, unsuccessfully, to withdraw funds. By Friday, the Bank of England said it planned to put SVB’s UK operation into insolvency and Ramrachia was one of 3,500 customers in Britain scrambling to deal with the consequences. Continue reading...
Silicon chip transistors are so small they are approaching their physical limits. And the firm that makes many of them may be somewhat hampered if Xi Jinping decides to invade TaiwanIn the 1950s I spent a significant chunk of my pocket money buying a transistor. It was a small metal cylinder (about 5mm in diameter and 7mm deep) with three wires protruding from its base. I needed it for a little radio I was building, and buying it was a big deal for a lad living in rural Ireland. My baffled parents couldn’t understand why this gizmo their son was holding between finger and thumb could be interesting; and, to be honest, you couldn’t blame them.Now spool forward six decades. The A13 processor that powers the iPhone that I used to find a photograph of that first transistor has 8.5 billion of them etched on to a sliver of silicon no bigger than a fingernail – a “chip”. The next generation of these chips will have transistors almost as small as the diameter of a human chromosome. Continue reading...
Mark Zuckerberg’s grand vision for an online existence has been laughed off as a corporate folly. Meanwhile, those still existing happily on a virtual world launched 20 years ago may be wondering what all the fuss is about …On 14 November 2006, 5,000 IBM employees assembled in a digital recreation of the 15th-century Chinese imperial palace known as the Forbidden City. They had come to hear IBM’s CEO, Sam Palmisano, deliver a speech. Palmisano’s physical body was in Beijing at the time, but he addressed most of his audience inside Second Life, the online social world that had launched three years earlier. Palmisano’s trim avatar wore tortoiseshell-frame glasses and a tailored pinstripe suit. He faced a crowd of digital, animated dolls dressed in the business attire of the day: black heels, pencil-line shirts, Windsor-knotted ties. Looming out of the throng at the back stood a 10ft IBM employee, his digital face plastered in Gene Simmons-style white makeup, with shoulder-length, Sonic-blue hair.It was a historic moment, a journalist for Bloomberg reported at the time: Palmisano was “the first big-league CEO” to stage a company-wide meeting in Second Life – “the most popular of a handful of new-fangled 3D online virtual worlds”. IBM, just like any other denizen of Second Life, paid ground rent to own a “region” of the game, one region representing 6.5 hectares of digital turf, currently rented at $166 (£134) a month. Renters could build whatever they wanted on their turf. Continue reading...
The national park ranger recalls capturing the landscape created by an eruption in La PalmaWhen the Cumbre Vieja volcano in La Palma, the Canary Islands, erupted in September 2021, it caused more than £760m of damage, forcing the evacuation of 6,000 people and killing one, an elderly man who died after inhaling toxic gases. It would be 83 days before officials declared the eruption over, on Christmas Day 2021.David del Rosario Dávila has been a national park ranger in La Palma since 2016. A self-described mountain man, he took this shot in the area surrounding the eruption in late October 2022, just over a year after it had begun. “The location and landscape were created by the eruption, making it one of the youngest areas on the planet,” Del Rosario Dávila says. “Everything you see in this photograph is new. The dead trees are from a pine forest that used to exist there; the mountain is made from ash from the volcano.” Continue reading...
Meeting is expected to discuss ‘internationally coordinated action’ to mitigate risks posed by artificial intelligenceRishi Sunak has announced that the UK will host a global summit on safety in artificial intelligence in the autumn, as fears grow that the technology’s rapid advancement could spin out of control.Safety concerns are mounting after breakthroughs in generative AI, which can produce convincing text, images and even voice on command, with tech executives such as Elon Musk among the figures expressing alarm. Here is a look at what the summit might achieve. Continue reading...
A new wave of sex toys is designed to combine orgasmic joy with relief from dryness, tension and painAt first glance, it could be mistaken for a chunky bracelet or hi-tech fitness tracker. But the vibrations delivered by this device will not alert you to a new message or that you have hit your daily step goal. Neither are they strictly intended for your wrist.Welcome to the future of vibrators, designed not only for sexual pleasure, but to tackle medical problems such as vaginal dryness, or a painful and inflamed prostate gland in men. Continue reading...
Meta targeting Oprah Winfrey and Dalai Lama as potential users of ‘sanely run’ social networking platformMark Zuckerberg’s Meta is pushing ahead with plans to launch a rival to Twitter because public figures reportedly want a similar platform that is “sanely run”, with the Dalai Lama and Oprah Winfrey on the target list for users.The standalone app is codenamed Project92 and its public name could be Threads, according to a report by the tech news site the Verge. Continue reading...
Regulators have been confused about whether cryptocurrency is a security or a commodity, but clarity appears imminentFor years, US financial regulators couldn’t agree on what to do about cryptocurrency. They wanted to do something, but couldn’t agree on what crypto was – a security, like a stock or bond, or a commodity, like a raw material or agricultural product, or neither? – and which agency would have jurisdiction.This week, Gary Gensler, a longtime critic of crypto and the chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), appears to have found the answer – by launching a crackdown on crypto exchanges, the platforms on which investors buy and sell digital currencies. Continue reading...
Under the proposal, service providers would have to prevent the dissemination of harmful and illegal information, save records and report their discoveriesChina is planning to restrict and scrutinise the use of wireless filesharing services between mobile devices, such as airdrop and Bluetooth, after they were used by protesters to evade censorship and spread protest messages.The Cyberspace Administration of China, the country’s top internet regulator, has released draft regulations on “close-range mesh network services” and launched a month-long public consultation on Tuesday. Continue reading...
Employees get preview of chatbots similar to ChatGPT for Messenger and WhatsAppFacebook’s owner, Meta, announced new artificial intelligence-focused tools in an internal company meeting on Thursday and outlined its plan after months of financial struggle.The company confirmed a New York Times report that employees were given a sneak peek of new products it has been building, including ChatGPT-like chatbots planned for Messenger and WhatsApp that could converse using different personas. Continue reading...
Tech companies remain secretive over the amount of energy and water it takes to train their complex programs and modelsOne question that ChatGPT can’t quite answer: how much energy do you consume?“As an AI language model, I don’t have a physical presence or directly consume energy,” it’ll say, or: “The energy consumption associated with my operations is primarily related to the servers and infrastructure used to host and run the model.” Continue reading...
Amazon denies union claim it drafted in 1,300 extra workers to thwart push for formal recognition at Coventry warehouseThe GMB has reluctantly withdrawn its attempt to win formal union recognition at Amazon’s Coventry warehouse, accusing the firm of drafting in more than 1,000 extra workers to skew the decision.GMB members at the site made a formal request for recognition to the independent central arbitration committee (CAC) last month after a concerted recruitment drive for members that it believed took it past the necessary threshold of support. Continue reading...
by Alexi Duggins, Hannah Verdier, Hollie Richardson a on (#6C3TW)
In this week’s newsletter: From ‘lab leak’ theories to market stalls rumours, former BBC China correspondent John Sudworth investigates in Fever. Plus: five of the best podcasts for fathers
But whistleblower says 2013 surveillance ‘child’s play’ compared to technology todayEdward Snowden has warned that surveillance technology is so much more advanced and intrusive today it makes that used by US and British intelligence agencies he revealed in 2013 look like child’s play.In an interview on the 10th anniversary of his revelations about the scale of surveillance – some of it illegal – by the US National Security Agency and its British counterpart, GCHQ, he said he had no regrets about what he had done and cited positive changes. Continue reading...
From October, firms will also have to offer new buyers a ‘cooling off’ period before they investCrypto firms must warn customers they should not expect protection if their investment goes wrong and introduce a “cooling off” period for first-time investors, under new rules imposed by the UK financial watchdog.The Financial Conduct Authority said that from 8 October firms promoting crypto products or services would need to carry a clear risk warning in their adverts. Continue reading...
The Stanford Internet Observatory documented how a web of social media accounts advertises and distributes abuse materialsMark Zuckerberg’s Meta has set up a taskforce to investigate claims that Instagram is hosting the distribution and sale of self-generated child sexual abuse material, with the platform’s algorithms helping advertise illicit content.The move by the Facebook parent comes after a report from the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) that found a web of social media accounts, which appear to be operated by minors, advertising self-generated child sexual abuse material (SG-CSAM). Continue reading...
PM uses Washington visit to push Britain as global centre for technology and seek US involvement in safety summitRishi Sunak has used a trip to Washington to push the UK as a global centre for artificial intelligence regulation, insisting its record in the sector will make others listen to “this mid-sized country”.Downing Street is hopeful that Joe Biden, whom Sunak was to meet at the White House on Thursday, will agree to US involvement in a UK-hosted global summit on AI safety in the autumn. Continue reading...
A cybercrime group has exploited a flaw in MOVEit software and is demanding a ransomBritish Airways, Boots and the BBC have been hit with an ultimatum to begin ransom negotiations from a cybercrime group after employees’ personal data was stolen in a hacking attack.It emerged on Wednesday the gang behind a piece of ransomware known as Clop had posted the demand to its darkweb site, where stolen data is typically released if payments are not made by the victims. Continue reading...
Zelda opens up an endless world of possibility, Street Fighter delivers another KO and Star Wars finally gets the game it deserves. We round up the top releases of the past six monthsNintendo Switch
Ruling party accessed user data including Sim card ID and IP addresses, former executive alleges in legal filingA former executive at TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has alleged that the Chinese Communist party accessed user data from the social video app belonging to Hong Kong protesters and civil rights activists.Yintao Yu, a former head of engineering at ByteDance’s US operation, claimed in a legal filing that a committee of Communist party members accessed TikTok data that included the users’ network information, Sim card identifications and IP addresses in a bid to identify the individuals and their locations. Continue reading...
The whistleblower forced US intelligence agencies to admit extensive spying on their own citizens. Some reforms were enacted but Snowden still faces potentially 30 years in prisonIt was the day his life changed forever. When Edward Snowden blew the whistle on mass surveillance by the US government, he traded a comfortable existence in Hawaii, the paradise of the Pacific, for indefinite exile in Russia, now a pariah in much of the world.But 10 years after Snowden was identified as the source of the biggest National Security Agency (NSA) leak in history, it is less clear whether America underwent a similarly profound transformation in its attitude to safeguarding individual privacy. Was his act of self-sacrifice worth it – did he make a difference? Continue reading...
Sam Altman is among the most vocal supporters of artificial intelligence, but is also leading calls to regulate it. He outlines his vision of a very uncertain futureWhen I meet Sam Altman, the chief executive of AI research laboratory OpenAI, he is in the middle of a world tour. He is preaching that the very AI systems he and his competitors are building could pose an existential risk to the future of humanity – unless governments work together now to establish guide rails, ensuring responsible development over the coming decade.In the subsequent days, he and hundreds of tech leaders, including scientists and “godfathers of AI”, Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, as well as Google’s DeepMind CEO, Demis Hassabis, put out a statement saying that “mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war”. It is an all-out effort to convince world leaders that they are serious when they say that “AI risk” needs concerted international effort. Continue reading...
The new product is far ahead of its competition; however, it is not clear that there is a pressing need for it or that most people can afford itAs people begin to report on their hands-on time with Apple’s Vision Pro VR headset, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the company has produced an incredible piece of hardware.Even in limited demonstrations, users have praised the company’s extraordinary work producing the two postage-stamp-sized screens that sit in each eyepiece and pack in more pixels than a 4K TV; they’ve been stunned by the quality of the “passthrough” video, which shows wearers what’s happening in the outside world in enough detail that they can even use their phones while wearing the headset; and they’ve been impressed by the casual ease with which the gesture controls on the new hardware work, with an array of infrared cameras letting users make small and subtle hand movements to select and scroll rather than relying on bulky controllers. Continue reading...
Securities and Exchange Commission sues platform for allegedly operating as unregistered brokerThe US Securities and Exchange Commission has sued Coinbase, the largest American cryptocurrency exchange, for operating as an “unregistered broker, exchange and clearing agency” in violation of US securities regulations.The lawsuit follows a similar action against Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, launched by the regulator on Monday. Continue reading...
There’s a disconnect between the eye-watering price of Apple’s new ‘spatial computing’ gadget and the promise of it – but it has some genuinely novel features• Don’t get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up for the full article hereYesterday, Apple finally confirmed the worst-kept secret in Silicon Valley, and announced the Vision Pro, its $3,499 virtual reality headset. From our story:The headset allows users to interact with “apps and experiences”, the Apple vice-president of human interface design, Alan Dye, said, in an augmented reality (AR) version of their own surroundings or in a fully immersive virtual reality (VR) space.“Apple Vision Pro relies solely on your eyes, hands and voice,” Dye said. “You browse the system simply by looking. App icons come to life when you look at them; simply tap your fingers together to select, and gently flick to scroll.”EyeSight, which sounded so ridiculous, could actually … work? A curved, outward-facing OLED screen displays the wearer’s eyes to the outside world, giving the impression of the headset as a simple piece of translucent glass. The screen mists over if the wearer is in a fully immersive VR space, while allowing people to have (simulated, at least) eye contact when in AR mode.An array of downward and outward-pointing IR cameras let the headset keep track of your position and gestures at all times, allowing the company to build a controller-free experience without requiring the wearer to hold their hands in their eye-line when using the headset.An AI-powered “persona” (don’t call it an avatar) stands in for you when you make a video call using the Vision Pro. It’s a photorealistic attempt to animate a real picture of you, using the data the headset captures of your eye, mouth and hand movements while you talk. Even in the staged demos, it looked slightly uncanny, but it seems a far smaller hurdle to introduce into the world than trying to encourage people to have business meetings with their Memoji.Should VR headsets have a bulky battery mounted on your head, or should they rely on a tethered cable to a separate PC? Apple thinks there’s a third option: slip the bulky battery in your back pocket, and run the cable up to a lighter, more comfortable set of goggles. It could work. Or it could be the worst of both worlds: a cable that still inhibits movement and comfort, with none of the power of a real tethered VR system. Hey, not all novelty is a slam-dunk. Continue reading...
Cries of ‘stupid autocorrect!’ will be banished as a result of an AI-powered upgrade that will let users swear if they want toApple has announced it will upgrade its autocorrect feature that annoyingly corrects one of the most common expletives to “ducking”.“In those moments where you just want to type a ducking word, well, the keyboard will learn it, too,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s software chief at the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference in Cupertino on Monday. Continue reading...
by Kiran Stacey Political correspondent on (#6C2EN)
Exclusive: party calls for developers without a licence to be barred from working on advanced AI toolsThe UK should bar technology developers from working on advanced artificial intelligence tools unless they have a licence to do so, Labour has said.Ministers should introduce much stricter rules around companies training their AI products on vast datasets of the kind used by OpenAI to build ChatGPT, Lucy Powell, Labour’s digital spokesperson, told the Guardian. Continue reading...
Headset priced at $3,500 allows users to ‘browse the system simply by looking’ and tapping their fingers to select, says AppleApple has lifted the lid on the worst kept secret in Silicon Valley and revealed the Vision Pro, a $3,499 VR headset.“With Vision Pro, you’re no longer limited by a display. Your surroundings become an infinite canvas,” the Apple chief executive, Tim Cook, said. “Vision Pro blends digital content into the space around us. It will introduce us to Spatial Computing.” Continue reading...
Hack attributed to criminal gang hit MOVEit software used by third-party payroll provider ZellisBritish Airways, Boots and the BBC are investigating the potential theft of personal details of staff after the companies were hit by a cyber-attack attributed to a Russia-linked criminal gang.BA confirmed it was one of the companies affected by the hack, which targeted software called MOVEit used by Zellis, a payroll provider. Continue reading...
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