Technology

California lawmakers last month advanced about 30 new AI measures aimed at protecting consumers and jobs, one of the largest efforts yet to regulate the new technology. The bills aim to impose the toughest nationwide restrictions on artificial intelligence, which some technologists warn could kill entire categories of jobs, throw elections into chaos with misinformation and pose national security risks. California's proposals, many of which have won broad support, include rules to prevent AI tools from discriminating in housing and health services. They also aim to protect intellectual property and jobs. The California legislature, which is expected to vote on the proposed laws by Aug. 31, has already helped shape U.S. tech consumer protections. In 2020 the state passed a privacy law t...

Apple announced that later this year it will improve messaging between iPhone and Android users by adopting advanced communications services, a standard that Google and others built into their messaging apps years ago. Texts sent between iPhone and Android will remain green, but images and videos will be higher quality. Losing your Apple wallet For iPhones, the reference app for making mobile payments in shops is Apple Wallet and for Android users the equivalent app is Google Wallet. The experience of using each wallet app was identical: I loaded my credit cards and the Clipper card for Bay Area Rapid Transit. The Justice Department's criticism of Apple Wallet centers on how Apple gives its app access only to the iPhone's payment chip, preventing competing wallet services from using tha...

A closer look, however, would have revealed that individual BNN journalists were publishing long stories as many as multiple times a minute, writing in generic prose familiar to anyone who has tinkered with the AI ​​chatbot ChatGPT. BNN's "About Us" page featured an image of four children looking at a computer, some bearing the gnarled fingers that are a telltale sign of an AI-generated image. The ease with which the site and its errors entered the ecosystem for legitimate news highlights a growing concern: AI-generated content is disrupting, and often poisoning, the supply of information online. Many traditional news organizations are already struggling for traffic and advertising dollars. For years they have competed for clicks with journalism about the pink slime, so named for its re...

Liz Reid, Google's recently promoted head of search, wrote in a blog post Thursday that the company has narrowed down its AI overviews in certain ways, implementing "additional opt-in refinements" to provide more health-conscious responses, disabling misleading advice and limiting the inclusion of satire and user responses from forums like Reddit. “We will continue to improve when and how we show AI insights and strengthen our protections,” he wrote, adding that Google is working on updates to improve broad sets of search results. Ashley Thompson, a spokeswoman for Google, said in a statement Friday that the company has made more than a dozen technical updates to its systems. “AI overviews help people answer large numbers of search queries today, serving as a starting point for content on...

The bot then spawned an even bigger Waldo. Subbarao Kambhampati, a professor and AI researcher at Arizona State University, also put the chatbot through some testing and said he didn't notice any notable improvements in reasoning compared to the latest version. He presented ChatGPT with a puzzle involving blocks: The answer is that it is impossible to arrange the blocks under these conditions, but, just as with previous versions, ChatGPT-4o consistently found a solution that involved moving block C. With this and other reasoning tests, ChatGPT was occasionally able to take feedback to get the right answer, which is antithetical to how AI is supposed to work, Kambhampati said. “You can correct it, but when you do that you're using your own intelligence,” he said. OpenAI pointed to test res...

If you don't have a Pixel phone, there's the similar "Talk to a Live Representative" experiment from Google Research Labs. It is available in the Google app for iOS and Android; tap the laboratory flask icon in the top left corner to access Search Labs. “Talk to a Live Representative,” active through the end of 2024, lists the 1-800 numbers of several airlines and other companies and lets you request a call and call you back when the representative is there. It's still experimental, however, and may not work consistently. Don't miss calls If you need to turn off the ringer but don't want to miss an important call, use a visual or vibrating notification to alert you. In iOS 17, go to the main Settings app to Accessibility, then Sound & Picture to LED Flash for Alerts. In Android 14, t...