Software Development

 Phishing attacks were so well-orchestrated that they fooled some of the best in the business.  [[{“value”:” Federal prosecutors have charged five men with running an extensive phishing scheme that allegedly allowed them to compromise hundreds of companies nationwide, gain non-public information, and steal millions of dollars in cryptocurrency. The charges, detailed in court documents unsealed …

5 charged in “Scattered Spider,” one of the most profitable phishing scams ever Read More »

 If you’ve noticed strange sites on “Best” product searches, so has Google.  [[{“value”:” “Updating our site reputation abuse policy” is how Google, in almost wondrously opaque fashion, announced yesterday that big changes have come to some big websites, especially those that rely on their domain authority to promote lucrative third-party product recommendations. If you’ve searched …

Google cracks down on “Parasite SEO,” punishing established publishers Read More »

 SpaceX’s Starlink doesn’t have enough capacity for everyone who wants it.  [[{“value”:” The Starlink waitlist is back in certain parts of the US, including several large cities on the West Coast and in Texas. The Starlink availability map says the service is sold out in and around Seattle; Spokane, Washington; Portland, Oregon; San Diego; Sacramento, …

A year after ditching waitlist, Starlink says it is “sold out” in parts of US Read More »

 Visual scans of the world have helped Niantic build what it calls a “Large Geospatial Model.”  [[{“value”:” Last week, Niantic announced plans to create an AI model for navigating the physical world using scans collected from players of its mobile games, such as Pokémon Go, and from users of its Scaniverse app, reports 404 Media. …

Niantic uses Pokémon Go player data to build AI navigation system Read More »

 AI won’t replace human artistry, says actor, but it will wildly drive down costs.  [[{“value”:” Last week, actor and director Ben Affleck shared his views on AI’s role in filmmaking during the 2024 CNBC Delivering Alpha investor summit, arguing that AI models will transform visual effects but won’t replace creative filmmaking anytime soon. A video …

AI-generated shows could replace lost DVD revenue, Ben Affleck says Read More »

 A co-author of Attention Is All You Need reflects on ChatGPT’s surprise and Google’s conservatism.  [[{“value”:” In 2017, eight machine-learning researchers at Google released a groundbreaking research paper called Attention Is All You Need, which introduced the Transformer AI architecture that underpins almost all of today’s high-profile generative AI models. The Transformer has made a …

ChatGPT’s success could have come sooner, says former Google AI researcher Read More »

 Incremental improvements across the hardware and software stacks add up.  [[{“value”:” There’s a general consensus that we won’t be able to consistently perform sophisticated quantum calculations without the development of error-corrected quantum computing, which is unlikely to arrive until the end of the decade. It’s still an open question, however, whether we could perform limited …

IBM boosts the amount of computation you can get done on quantum hardware Read More »

 FrontierMath’s difficult questions remain unpublished so that AI companies can’t train against it.  [[{“value”:” On Friday, research organization Epoch AI released FrontierMath, a new mathematics benchmark that has been turning heads in the AI world because it contains hundreds of expert-level problems that leading AI models solve less than 2 percent of the time, according …

New secret math benchmark stumps AI models and PhDs alike Read More »

 On Nov. 19, join Benj Edwards and Simon Willison’s live YouTube chat about the “Great Bing Chat Fiasco of 2023.”  [[{“value”:” In the short-term, the most dangerous thing about AI language models may be their ability to emotionally manipulate humans if not carefully conditioned. The world saw its first taste of that danger in February …

Ars Live: Our first encounter with manipulative AI Read More »

 Anthropic’s new hire is preparing for a future where advanced AI models may experience suffering.  [[{“value”:” A few months ago, Anthropic quietly hired its first dedicated “AI welfare” researcher, Kyle Fish, to explore whether future AI models might deserve moral consideration and protection, reports AI newsletter Transformer. While sentience in AI models is an extremely …

Is “AI welfare” the new frontier in ethics? Read More »