List of All Articles with Tag 'tech'

By Toby Sterling AMSTERDAM Dutch semiconductor equipment maker ASML reported second-quarter earnings that beat expectations on Wednesday and

Meta has unveiled its new artificial intelligence system “Llama 2” rivalling the likes of OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot. The Facebook parent company’s chief Mark Zuckerberg said on Tuesday that the new AI system, created after partnering with Microsoft, is free to use for research and commercial purposes in contrast to its competitors. Microsoft also said it aims to “democratise AI and its benefits” with the launch of Llama 2. A previous version known as Llama, had been launched in February, but leaked onto the internet in March and was tinkered with by the public since. Compared to some of their Big Tech rivals developing large AI language models, Meta and Microsoft said they seek to provide “an open approach”, offering researchers and companies a peek into the data and code they use to build their AI. “We believe an open approach is the right one for the development of today’s AI models, especially those in the generative space where the technology is rapidly advancing,” Meta noted in a blog post. “Giving businesses, startups, entrepreneurs, and researchers access to tools developed at a scale that would be challenging to build themselves, backed by computing power they might not otherwise access, will open up a world of opportunities for them to experiment, innovate in exciting ways, and ultimately benefit from economically and socially,” the tech giant noted. The new AI system Llama 2 is in contrast with other chatbots like ChatGPT by OpenAI and Bard by Google that are not open source. “Open source drives innovation because it enables many more developers to build with new technology,” Mr Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post. “It also improves safety and security because when software is open, more people can scrutinize it to identify and fix potential issues. I believe it would unlock more progress if the ecosystem were more open, which is why we’re open sourcing Llama 2,” he said. However, despite Meta’s claims of open-sourcing its new AI system, the data it used to build Llama 2 still remains unclear. A research paper released along with the new model says it was trained on “a new mix of data from publicly available sources, which does not include data from Meta’s products or services”, but does not mention specifically what data was used. The paper, however, noted that Meta removed data from websites containing a “high volume of personal information about private individuals”. The new AI models can be directly downloaded or via a partnership, which makes them available on Microsoft’s cloud platform Azure, Meta said. “Starting today, Llama 2 is available in the Azure AI model catalog, enabling developers using Microsoft Azure to build with it and leverage their cloud-native tools for content filtering and safety features,” it said. “It is also optimized to run locally on Windows, giving developers a seamless workflow as they bring generative AI experiences to customers across different platforms,” it said. Llama 2 is also available via Microsoft’s rival Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Hugging Face, among other providers, Meta said. Read More Threads starts limiting how many posts people can see as it is hit by spam attacks $44 billion and eight months later. It’s finally all over for Elon Musk ChatGPT rival with ‘no ethical boundaries’ sold on dark web Xbox and PlayStation sign major deal on the future of Call of Duty Microsoft changes its default typeface for only the second ever time Microsoft’s attempt to buy Call of Duty developer reaches huge new development

South Korea’s LG Group introduced an upgraded version of its artificial intelligence software, and demonstrated how it can

AT&T Inc. says less than 10% of its nationwide copper-wire telecom network has lead-clad cables, addressing investor concerns

Google is working to fix false contact information for some major airlines on Google Maps after a Twitter user found a phone number actually connected callers to scammers.

Meta's Twitter rival app Threads on Tuesday rolled out its first major batch of updates since its launch two weeks ago as it works to maintain momentum.

AMSTERDAM Dutch semiconductor equipment maker ASML will hire 100 researchers who are leaving Philips, the companies said on

Threads says it has been forced to limit how many posts people can see, amid an increase in “spam attacks”. The announcement drew mockery from Elon Musk, who had been widely criticised for introducing such “rate limits” on his own site, Twitter. Adam Mosseri, who serves as the head of Instagram and therefore Threads at Meta, said in a post on the site that it was being hit by more spam attacks and that it would have to take a range of responses as a result. “Spam attacks have picked up so we’re going to have to get tighter on things like rate limits, which is going to mean more unintentionally limiting active people (false positives),” he wrote. “If you get caught up [in] those protections let us know.” The change means that users who use Threads the most might run into limits on how many posts they can see and whether they can view the app. He did not give any indication of where the rate limit would be set or how many people mighttbe expected to run into problems. Threads users have complained about a significant increase in the amount of spam on the site, including in the replies to Mr Mosseri’s post. Mr Mosseri has made a number of announcements about the future of Threads on the site. The company – which appears to have been surprised by the success of its own app – has been looking both to add new and widely requested features as well as deal with any technical problems caused by the success of the app. The change drew mockery from Elon Musk, who announced days before the launch of Threads that Twitter would start rate limiting, in what he said was an attempt to stop AI companies scraping Twitter for data to train its models. That led to major problems for Twitter users, who were unable to see posts and more, and those technical issues have been pointed to as one of the reasons that so many users were eager to sign up to Threads in the first place. Mr Musk laughed and posted “copycat” in response to a screenshot of Mr Mosseri’s post. Mr Musk introduced his own rate limits earlier this month. But he announced the numbers of posts that users would be able to see – and did not invite feedback from those who might be swept up in the change. Read More DMs may come to Threads soon as app’s user base grows to one-fifth of Twitter’s Elon Musk posts series of explicit tweets about Mark Zuckerberg Twitter traffic ‘tanking’ after record-breaking Threads launch

Neopets is launching a comeback that it says will start a “new era” for the virtual pet website. The site was launched in 1999 and became one of the most popular and beloved parts of the early internet. Players were able to look after cartoon pets as well as playing games and chatting with other users. Its popularity led it to boast some 25 million users in the 2000s, at a time before the launch of major social networks. Since then it has fallen dramatically, and many parts of the site have broken as technology has moved on. Now the game is under the management of a new leadership team that has promised to “breathe fresh life into Neopia”, the virtual world in which the game’s characters live. “For most of the last decade, the The Neopets Team [TNT] has been under the management of JumpStart Games, which, over time, has struggled to find success for Neopets,” the team wrote in a long blog post. “Beset by ageing site features, a waning user base, and a lack of resources, TNT had to work tirelessly just to barely keep the site afloat. “The resources available to us simply weren’t substantial enough to sustain the level of growth and development that the site needed to keep up with the times, resulting in bugs, unconverted pages, broken games, and a lack of new content. Despite these challenges, TNT pushed onward, guided by an unwavering belief that this iconic brand that has meant so much to so many truly deserved better.” The new version of the site will launch this week, the team said. It wil included updated games: many of the playable parts of the site broke with the demise of Adobe Flash, but the team has committed to updating them and bringing them back to be played. The team also said that they would be introducing new games, including a mobile game called World of Neopets. That is a “social life-simulation game”, the team said, and it will be distinct from the crypto, metaverse and NFT-focus that has come to the site in recent times. Through the 2000s, Neopets was one of the internet’s most popular websites, and in 2005 it was bought by Viacom for $160 million. But in the years that followed it was beset by problems, and was sold again to JumpStart Games in 2014. That era was marked by a range of problems, including technical issues and data breaches that led to people’s passwords being stolen. In recent years, many parts of the site have been left broken. JumpStart Games shut down at the end of June. But a new management team has struck a deal to buy the website and its contents and the new team will be led by Dominic Law, who played the games in the 2000s. Read More Powerful solar flare to disrupt communications, Russians warn ChatGPT rival with ‘no ethical boundaries’ sold on dark web Watch: James Cleverly chairs UN meeting on artificial intelligence

Meta Platforms Inc. is making its artificial intelligence large language model, Llama 2, available for commercial use through

Microsoft on Tuesday announced a more secure version of its AI-powered Bing specifically for businesses and designed to assure professionals they can safely share potentially sensitive information with a chatbot.

The United Nations should create a new international body to help govern the use of artificial intelligence as the technology increasingly reveals its potential risks and benefits, according to UN Secretary-General António Guterres.