Greg Brockman, President and Co-Founder of OpenAI, gives a 25 minute developer demo showcasing GPT-4 and some of its capabilities/limitations. At about 18 minutes he shows how it takes a drawn diagram and turns it into a working website. Around 19 minutes in he shows how it can help you complete your taxes. Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=outcGtbnMuQ
The European Union’s implementation of the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA) is poised to trigger worldwide changes on familiar platforms like Google, Instagram, Wikipedia and YouTube. The DSA addresses consumer safety while the DMA deals with antitrust issues. Proponents say the new laws will help end the era of self-regulating tech companies. Although as in the U.S., the DSA makes clear that platforms aren’t liable for illegal user-generated content. Unlike U.S. law, the DSA does allow users to sue when tech firms are made aware of harmful content but fail to remove it. ...
For Big Tech “companies to decide what is and what isn’t forbidden without any separation of power, without any accountability, without any reporting, without any possibility to contest, it’s very dangerous,” Henri Verdier, the French ambassador for digital affairs, told Technology Review. ...
Politicoconfirms that “TikTok, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have now confirmed they will face the strictest rules under the EU’s content-moderation law, the Digital Services Act.” The European Commission can impose fines of up to 6 percent of a company’s annual global revenue if it finds that VLOPs violate DSA rules.
... The panel discussion turned toward AI’s potential application in Hollywood. When asked if they could see if AI could be incorporated in the writers room, Lindelof responded, “For sure. My guess is, it starts as a lark. Fundamentally, no writer that I am aware of wants to be replaced by generative artificial intelligence. But at the same time, if you think of it more as a tool, you can have a lot of fun with it if it bolsters the process.” Hernandez guessed that Hollywood isn’t far away from an AI-generated feature. ...
Ultimately, Lindelof noted, Mrs. Davis is a comedy and while it does tackle larger moral and ethical quandaries surrounding the tech, “the show is fundamentally hopeful. It asks, ‘What do we do with this tool?'”
... The conference’s SXSW Interactive program has become a mecca for cannabis and psychedelics advocates in recent years, giving them an opportunity to reach a wider audience despite federal prohibitions on drugs and an inability to market any legal products. ...
“VR technologies are going to be a powerful adjunct to support psychedelic therapy,” said Walter Greenleaf, a neuroscientist and medical technology developer at Stanford University. “And it’s emerging pretty fast.” ...
The psychedelics industry is advancing on two parallel tracks. On one, companies test drugs such as psilocybin, MDMA, LSD and ayahuasca in clinical trials, seeking regulatory approval to sell them for ailments including depression, PTSD and anxiety. On the other path, places such as Oregon, Seattle and Colorado are decriminalizing or legalizing use — and in some cases creating standards for therapists to oversee hallucinogenic trips.
Both tracks have sparked questions about how to optimize the malleable brain state the drugs create while avoiding risks of improper influence (think brainwashing on steroids) or psychosis (when the patient loses long-term touch with reality). One solution that’s been proposed is talk therapy to “integrate” a hallucinogenic experience; but there are concerns that this could be cost-prohibitive. ...
Some academics and entrepreneurs are pitching VR as a solution. ...
... One example of how AR can increase engagement is the Lush “Snow Fairy” WebAR campaign that featured three unique experiences: a personalized gifting flow, a holiday-themed face filter and a fully immersive portal environment. Leveraging the cross-channel power of WebAR, the experience was distributed as both an in-store retail experience and across a variety of online channels. Each unique experience featured a connection to the next, delivering a fully immersive journey through snow-laden forests and into the enchanted world of the Snow Fairy.
While Lush made headlines last year for its decision to step back from major social media platforms, the immersive Snow Fairy experience provided an opportunity for digital brand engagement that isn’t reliant on social media. ...
A little over 50% of the votes in Estonia's parliamentary elections over the weekend were cast online — marking what appears to be the first mostly online nationwide election in the world.
Estonia has been a pioneer in "i-voting," first offering it as an option in 2005. The number of citizens taking advantage of internet voting has crept up since then.
Still, the Baltic state remains a global outlier when it comes to online voting. ...
Despite Estonia's success with internet voting, it could be hard for other countries to implement it on a large scale, according to Steve Kremer of the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation. ...
The results are so ultra-realistic it’s going to become harder and harder to distinguish what’s real from what’s not. ...
Rather than answering our questions, a TikTok spokesperson provided a statement that read, “Being true to yourself is celebrated and encouraged on TikTok. Creative Effects are a part of what makes it fun to create content, empowering self-expression and creativity. Transparency is built into the effect experience, as all videos using them are clearly marked by default.”
But there’s a fraught debate about whether filters enable self-expression or cause users, particularly young girls, to hold themselves to unattainable ideals. ...
“It’s good that people are freaking out. It’s raising awareness. Is that really beauty? Do we really want young girls to dream about becoming the clone of a clone?” she asks.
...you are firmly grounded in a time and place. There are waves rippling around you, orange cones to indicate the boundaries of where you can go, and tiny little people on the island of La Kalma talking to you. Why are the people so tiny? Well, because you’re an enormous sea kraken. But to these people, who saw you grow up from an adorable, teeny-tiny kraken, you are just a person. And now that you’re 16, it’s time for you to get to work. ...
Sticking and building with your tentacles is full of feedback that feels completely real. If you try to pick up something huge with the tip, your tentacle streeeeeeetches until it unsticks and thwaps someone right into the sea. ...
Look, I get it: Reading is boring. ... Tentacular does give you the option of using the O button to rapidly click through dialog. But every time I slowed down, I caught something sly and funny, like a villager shrieking “Mommy!” when I accidentally shot a cannon at her. ...
The PSVR 2’s comfort also makes that much easier to achieve. I love the accessibility of the Meta Quest 2 (getting it set up and switching between users is much easier), but the PSVR 2 is just much, much easier to wear. The headset’s balance is better. I don’t feel like I have something huge and sweaty hanging off my face, and the controllers are much more comfortable and stable, better able to cope with Tentacular’s tactile challenges. ...
Government should not “abdicate” its responsibilities and leave the future path of artificial intelligence solely to Big Tech, Aleksander Mądry, the Cadence Design Systems Professor of Computing at MIT and director of the MIT Center for Deployable Machine Learning, told a Congressional panel on Wednesday.
Rather, Mądry said, government should be asking questions about the purpose and explainability of the algorithms corporations are using, as a precursor to regulation, which he described as “an important tool” in ensuring that AI is consistent with society’s goals. If the government doesn’t start asking questions, then “I am extremely worried” about the future of AI, Mądry said in response to a question from Rep. Gerald Connolly.
Mądry, a leading expert on explainability and AI, was testifying at a hearing titled “Advances in AI: Are We Ready for a Tech Revolution?” before the House Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation, a panel of the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight. The other witnesses at the hearing were former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, IBM Vice President Scott Crowder, and Center for AI and Digital Policy Senior Research Director Merve Hickok. ...
... Mądry raised three overarching points. First, he noted that AI is “no longer a matter of science fiction” ...Second, he said AI exposes us to “interactions that go against our intuition.” ... Finally, he said too little attention has been paid to problems that will result from the nature of the AI “supply chain” — the way AI systems are built on top of each other. ... the mix of AI tools makes it difficult to know whom to hold responsible when a problem results — who should be legally liable and who should address the concern. ...
... That's because the work - one of several fan recreations replacing the 1665 original while it's on loan for a huge Vermeer show at Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum - was made using artificial intelligence (AI).
Its presence has sparked a fierce debate, with questions over whether it belongs in the hallowed halls of the Mauritshuis - and whether it should be classed as art at all....
"The people who selected this, they liked it, they knew that it was AI, but we liked the creation. So we chose it, and we hung it."...
The Mauritshuis then chose it as one of five images out of 3,482 submitted by fans that would be printed and physically hung in the room where "Girl with a Pearl Earring" is normally housed. ...
