IndustryStandard

Less than a year after OpenAI quietly signaled it wanted to do business with the Pentagon, a procurement document obtained by The Intercept shows U.S. Africa Command, or AFRICOM, believes access to OpenAI’s technology is “essential” for its mission.

The document states that “OpenAI tools” are among the “unique features” offered by Microsoft “essential to ensure the cloud services provided align with USAFRICOM’s mission and operational needs.

“It is extremely alarming that they’re explicit in OpenAI tool use for ‘unified analytics for data processing’ to align with USAFRICOM’s mission objectives,” said Heidy Khlaaf, chief AI scientist at the AI Now Institute, who has previously conducted safety evaluations for OpenAI.

“Especially in stating that they believe these tools enhance efficiency, accuracy, and scalability, when in fact it has been demonstrated that these tools are highly inaccurate and consistently fabricate outputs. These claims show a concerning lack of awareness by those procuring for these technologies of the high risks these tools pose in mission-critical environments.”

An OpenAI spokesperson told The Intercept, “OpenAI does not have a partnership with US Africa Command” and referred questions to Microsoft. Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Nor did a spokesperson for AFRICOM.

Apple AAPL 1.46%increase; green up pointing triangle and Nvidia NVDA -6.38%decrease; red down pointing triangle are in talks to invest in OpenAI, a move that would strengthen their ties to a partner integral to their efforts in the artificial-intelligence race.

Google is on a determined mission to make Gemini an indispensable part of our daily routines. With deeper integrations into popular apps like Spotify and the Pixel 9 series shipping with Gemini as the default assistant, it’s clear that Google has ambitious plans for its AI model.

The tech giant has been strategically enhancing Gemini’s functionality with new extensions. After adding extensions for Google apps like Keep, Tasks, and Calendar, along with YouTube and YouTube Music, recent findings suggest even more exciting additions are on the horizon.

An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.

In the Google app version 15.34.32.29.arm64 beta, we could enable the toggles for new Gemini extensions for WhatsApp, Google Messages, and Android system notifications. While they aren’t working just yet, their official descriptions provide a glimpse into what they might offer.

The founder and CEO of Rumble — a YouTube alternative billing itself as “immune to cancel culture” — said he has “departed” from Europe after Pavel Durov, the CEO of encrypted messaging app Telegram, was arrested.

“I’ve just safely departed from Europe,” Chris Pavlovski, a Canadian national, posted on X on Sunday, Aug. 25.

He claimed France had “threatened Rumble” and had “crossed a red line” by arresting Telegram’s Durov. In November 2022, Rumble blocked access to French users, claiming the country’s government asked it to remove “certain Russian news sources,” which it said it would legally challenge.

In May, Pavlovski also claimed Russia blocked Rumble because it “refused to comply with their censorship demands.”

Wind turbines and solar panels have overtaken fossil fuels to generate 30% of the European Union’s electricity in the first half of the year, a report has found.

Power generation from burning coal, oil and gas fell 17% in the first six months of 2024 compared with the same period the year before, according to climate thinktank Ember. It found the continued shift away from polluting fuels has led to a one-third drop in the sector’s emissions since the first half of 2022.

Chris Rosslowe, an analyst at Ember, said the rise of wind and solar was narrowing the role of fossil fuels. “We are witnessing a historic shift in the power sector, and it is happening rapidly.”

These announcements were made at TSMC’s US Technology Symposium earlier this year. The symposium is a roadshow, covering continents and key markets for the company. Just before the EU Symposium, I had a chance to catch up with Dr. Kevin Zhang, SVP and Deputy Co-COO of TSMC for an interview. We covered a wide range of topics, from Kevin’s thoughts on Moore’s Law, to how the market has changed under the weight of AI (also, the activations of AI).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isjeYKLBffs

Here is a video of this interview, or a transcript is available below

Meta on Tuesday announced the release of Llama 3.1, the latest version of its large language model that the company claims now rivals competitors from OpenAI and Anthropic. The new model comes just three months after Meta launched Llama 3 by integrating it into Meta AI, a chatbot that now lives in Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp and also powers the company's smart glasses. In the interim, OpenAI and Anthropic already released new versions of their own AI models, a sign that Silicon Valley’s AI arms race isn’t slowing down any time soon.

Meta said that the new model, called Llama 3.1 405B, is the first openly available model that can compete against rivals in general knowledge, math skills and translating across multiple languages. The model was trained on more than 16,000 NVIDIA H100 GPUs, currently the fastest available chips that cost roughly $25,000 each, and can beat rivals on over 150 benchmarks, Meta claimed.

Mistral NeMo 12B is the name of the new AI model, presented this week by Nvidia and Mistral. “We are fortunate to collaborate with the NVIDIA team, leveraging their top-tier hardware and software,” said Guillaume Lample, cofounder and chief scientist of Mistral AI. “Together, we have developed a model with unprecedented accuracy, flexibility, high-efficiency and enterprise-grade support and security thanks to NVIDIA AI Enterprise deployment.”

The promise of the new AI model is significant. Whereas previous LLMs were tied to datacenters, Mistral NeMo 12B moves to workstations. And it does this without sacrificing performance, or well, that’s the promise.

Google is launching its new Vids productivity app in Workspace Labs with the idea that “if you can make a slide, you can make a video in Vids.” Announced in April, Vids allows users to drop docs, slides, voiceovers, and video recordings into a timeline to create a presentation video to share with coworkers. Making it available in the Workspace Labs preview allows Workspace admins to opt in users to try out the AI-powered video maker.

While you can generate video in Vids, it’s not to be confused with AI tools like OpenAI’s Sora, which can create lifelike footage from a prompt. Instead, Vids is about generating a presentation by describing what you want Gemini to create and then letting you alter the video afterward.

When is an ad an advertisement and not a recommendation? Microsoft clearly likes to use the term recommendation for what others may see as an advertisement.

There are recommendations in the Start menu, Settings app, Lock screen, File Explorer, Get Help app, and other areas of the operating system already. These are often not that useful. App recommendations in the Start menu are limited to Microsoft Store apps.

Now, Microsoft is testing recommendations in the Microsoft Store app. If you never use the app, you won't be exposed to these. If you do, you may notice recommendations popping up when you try to use the built-in search.

First spotted by phantomofearth on X, two or three recommendations are shown whenever search is activated in the official Microsoft Store app.

Microsoft has fixed a known issue causing restart loops and taskbar problems on Windows 11 systems after installing the June KB5039302 preview update.

"This issue was resolved in updates released July 9, 2024 (KB5040442) and later," the company said in an update added to the Windows release health page on Tuesday.

"We recommend you install the latest security update for your device. It contains important improvements and issue resolutions, including this one."

The known issue only impacts systems running Windows 11 23H2 and Windows 11 22H2, with users of Windows Home edition less likely to experience it because virtualization is less common in home environments.

This fix comes after Redmond was forced to pull the update on June 27 after reports that it was causing some Windows devices to restart repeatedly while others failed to start altogether.