Category: AI

Leading into WWDC, I shared some concerns I had when it came to thinking about how Apple would integrate AI into its products.

Tim Cook has spoken to Josh Tyrangiel at The Washington Post about how the company went into this endeavor. Here’s Cook:

We went into this saying, “These are our values, and we can’t veer from them.” And we took the time and the depth of thinking to come out with a product that we’re proud of. We knew that we had to do things outside of the device because of the size of the language models that we’re working with, so we needed to have a level of invention on the cloud. And fortunately, we were able to build it upon things that we had, like Apple silicon.

Continue reading ⇢

Tripp Mickle and Erin Griffith, at The New York Times:

About a week after the reviews came out, Humane started talking to HP, the computer and printer company, about selling itself for more than $1 billion, three people with knowledge of the conversations said. Other potential buyers have emerged, though talks have been casual and no formal sales process has begun.

Humane retained Tidal Partners, an investment bank, to help navigate the discussions while also managing a new funding round that would value it at $1.1 billion, three people with knowledge of the plans said.

Continue reading ⇢

There has been much debate about what Apple’s upcoming AI-based features could look like. With WWDC’s keynote just eight days away, Mark Gurman has some information about how Siri could be transformed by new technology:

The big news at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference next week will be the company’s renewed push into artificial intelligence. As I’ve outlined previously, Apple’s approach will integrate AI into many of its core apps and features, including Photos, Messages, Notes and the Safari browser. It will handle voice memo transcriptions and provide recaps of meetings, text messages, emails and articles. There also will be new bells and whistles like AI-created emojis.

Continue reading ⇢

If you don’t want a bunch of AI nonsense showing up in your Google results, Ernie Smith’s new project may be for you. He writes over on Tedium:

Forget AI. Google just created a version of its search engine free of all the extra junk it has added over the past decade-plus. All you have to do is add “udm=14” to the search URL.

This can be done by setting up a custom search engine in your browser (if supported), a handful of extensions, and a new website, udm14.com.That last option is the only viable one for Safari users, sadly. Update: Good news for Safari users: you can use StopTheMadness Pro to append the magical &udm=14 to your search results!

Continue reading ⇢

Google has begun rolling out AI-powered search results, and it’s not going super well. While many of the screenshots floating around social media are probably fake, there are some real examples that are pretty troubling, as Kylie Robison reports for The Verge:

Imagine this: you’ve carved out an evening to unwind and decide to make a homemade pizza. You assemble your pie, throw it in the oven, and are excited to start eating. But once you get ready to take a bite of your oily creation, you run into a problem — the cheese falls right off. Frustrated, you turn to Google for a solution.

Continue reading ⇢

Tripp Mickle, Brian X. Chen and Cade Metz:

Apple is expected to show off its A.I. work at its annual developers conference on June 10 when it releases an improved Siri that is more conversational and versatile, according to three people familiar with the company’s work, who didn’t have permission to speak publicly. Siri’s underlying technology will include a new generative A.I. system that will allow it to chat rather than respond to questions one at a time.

Continue reading ⇢

I recently noticed a new folder in the root level of my Home directory, named ai_overlay_tmp:

In preparation for a Mac Power Users episode, I’ve been playing with a bunch of AI software, and I assumed something I downloaded generated this folder. I deleted it, just to be frustrated when the folder reappeared on its own.

Adding a new folder to the Home directory is a Cardinal Sin of Mac Programming, so I was on a mission to root out the cause. After some searching online, it seems that this folder was generated by Logi Options+, the software that came with my mouse, the Logitech MX Master 3S. ¹

Continue reading ⇢

Tom Warren at The Verge:

Microsoft is hiring former OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman.

Altman was fired from OpenAI on Friday after the board said it “no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.” After a weekend of negotiations to potentially bring Altman back to OpenAI, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced that both Altman and Brockman will be joining to lead Microsoft’s new advanced AI research team. Altman will have the CEO title of this new group.

Continue reading ⇢

In the 24 hours since Sam Altman was fired from OpenAI, we’ve learned more about what is going on at the nonprofit. Let’s start with Kevin Roose, writing at The New York Times:

I’ll start by saying: I don’t know all the details about why Mr. Altman was pushed out. Neither, it seems, do OpenAI’s shellshocked employees, investors and business partners, many of whom learned of the move at the same time as the general public. In a blog post on Friday, the company said that Mr. Altman “was not consistently candid in his communications” with the board, but gave no other details.

Continue reading ⇢

OpenAI has some big news this Friday afternoon:

The board of directors of OpenAI, Inc, the 501(c)(3) that acts as the overall governing body for all OpenAI activities, today announced that Sam Altman will depart as CEO and leave the board of directors. Mira Murati, the company’s chief technology officer, will serve as interim CEO, effective immediately.

A member of OpenAI’s leadership team for five years, Mira has played a critical role in OpenAI’s evolution into a global AI leader. She brings a unique skill set, understanding of the company’s values, operations, and business, and already leads the company’s research, product, and safety functions. Given her long tenure and close engagement with all aspects of the company, including her experience in AI governance and policy, the board believes she is uniquely qualified for the role and anticipates a seamless transition while it conducts a formal search for a permanent CEO.

Continue reading ⇢

Tom Warren, reporting on the news that Microsoft rebranding “Bing Chat” to bring it more in line with the company’s other AI-powered products, which wear the far superior “Copilot” name:

“Bing Chat and Bing Chat Enterprise will now simply become Copilot,” explains Colette Stallbaumer, general manager of Microsoft 365. The official name change comes just a couple of months after Microsoft picked Copilot as its branding for its chatbot inside Windows 11. At the time it wasn’t clear that the Bing Chat branding would fully disappear, but it is today.

Continue reading ⇢

After a lot of hype — and a massive last-minute leak — Humane has launched its first product, the AI Pin.

(Humane spells the product name differently in various places on its website, but I’m going with this style.)

I encourage you to take ten minutes and watch the introductory video, which shows off the hardware, software and services that the team has stitched together to create the $700 device.

And what a team it is. Humane is led by husband and wife Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, who both had long careers at Apple before leaving in 2016. What came next is detailed in a New York Times profile of the pair and their new device:

Continue reading ⇢