When Google told 12,000 employees they were out of a job last week, there were a lot of feels, understandably. Some workers were confused about why they had been laid off. Others were frustrated. Some ex-Googlers were grateful to have even had the opportunity at all.
The future of facial recognition use by private companies in the United States could boil down to who emerges victorious in an ongoing dispute between a collection of lawyers and a petty, authoritarian New York billionaire. The place: one of America’s most famous venues, Madison Square Garden. The owner: James Dolan.
Chinese search giant Baidu aims to introduce a ChatGPT-like AI service that gives users conversational results, Bloomberg has reported. It’ll be based on the company’s Ernie system, a large-scale machine-learning model trained over several years that “excels at natural language understanding and generation,” Baidu said in 2021.
Open AI’s ChatGPT has taken the tech world by storm of late, thanks to its ability to answer fact-based questions, write in a human-like way and even create code. Microsoft invested $1 billion in Open AI back in 2019, and reportedly plans to incorporate aspects of ChatGPT into its Bing search engine.
Google, meanwhile, likely sees the technology as a threat to its search business and plans to accelerate development of its own conversational AI technology. CEO Sundar Pichai reportedly declared a “code red” over ChatGPT and may be preparing to show off 20 or more AI-products and a chatbot for its search engine at its I/O conference in May.
Baidu has reportedly seen lagging growth in search and sees ChatGPT-like apps as a potential way to leapfrog rivals. “I’m so glad that the technology we are pondering every day can attract so many people’s attention. That’s not easy,” he said during a talk in December, according to a transcript seen by Bloomberg.
ChatGPT has largely drawn positive attention, but the downsides have come into focus as well. Technology news site CNET was forced to correct AI-written articles due to errors and concerns about plagiarism. And New York City public schools recently banned ChatGPT over cheating concerns, because it can create articles and essays that can be difficult to distinguish from student-created content.
“You simply cannot engage in good faith with these people,” the MSNBC host warned of Carlson and others in conservative media.
Something on the surface of Mars bears a resemblance to a certain animal.
She’s “kind of given up” on trying to be tidy.
San Francisco city officials have sent letters to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) asking to slow or halt the expansion of Cruise and Waymo robotaxi services in the city, NBC News has reported. San Francisco Transportation Authority (SFTA) officials wrote that unlimited expansion would be “unreasonable” in light of recent safety incidents in which vehicles blocked traffic and interfered with emergency vehicles.
Alphabet’s Waymo and Cruise, owned by GM, both operate fully driverless services (without backup drivers) in the city. Last June, Cruise gained permission to charge for rides in set areas of the city between the hours of 10PM and 6AM. Waymo is allowed to give driverless vehicle rides but is waiting for another permit before it can charge for them.
“A series of limited deployments with incremental expansions — rather than unlimited authorizations — offer the best path toward public confidence in driving automation and industry success in San Francisco and beyond,” the letter reads.
The services have had their challenges. A small fleet of Cruise robotaxis in San Francisco suddenly stopped operating on a street in the city’s Fillmore district, blocking traffic for several hours. Another Cruise vehicle was pulled over by confused cops and then promptly went on the lam. Cruise vehicles also reportedly interfered with emergency responders, and the NTSA recently opened a probe into Cruise’s self-driving vehicles over hard braking, traffic blocking and other issues.
However, Cruise pointed out that the service has been safe so far. “Cruise’s safety record is publicly reported and includes having driven millions of miles in an extremely complex urban environment with zero life-threatening injuries or fatalities,” a spokesperson told NBC News.
The letters may have been prompted by Cruise’s stated plans to operate its robotaxi service 24 hours a day rather than just at night. It’s been approved for that by the California DMV, but is waiting on permission from the CPUC. (Both companies also operate driverless ride services in Phoenix, and Cruise’s self-driving taxis are available in Austin, Texas as well.)
The SFTA isn’t against the 24/7 expansion, but has requested more data like how often and for how long Cruise’s vehicles block traffic. It also wants robotaxis to stay off primary routes during rush hour until they prove they can operate “without significant interruption of street operations and transit services.”
The game is set to take place in Glendale, Arizona and will mark the first matchup of Black starting quarterbacks in Super Bowl history.
The actor, known for her role in the 1960s sitcom “The Addams Family,” suffered a stroke, her friend said.
That’s based on polling before the 2020 election, the actual vote — and dismal midterms, said the Republican and one-time staunch Trump ally.
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