Xbox gamers are not happy about full-screen ads
Unexpected changes to the Xbox dashboard have become commonplace in recent years, but the unsolicited introduction of full-screen ads is arguably the worst to date. If there’s one unforgiving community you really don’t want to antagonise, it’s gamers. A bona fide way of doing so is to immediately interrupt our sessions...
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Google’s ‘AMIE’ paves the way for AI-driven medicine
While AMIE has demonstrated superior diagnostic capabilities compared to human doctors, questions remain about the ethics of its implementation. In the realm of medical innovation, Google has recently unveiled a groundbreaking advancement with its AI system, the Articulate Medical Intelligence Explorer (AMIE), marking a significant stride in the integration...
Study lays bare Meta’s intrusive data gathering for targeted ads
Facebook has anything but a clean record when it comes to the intrusive data gathering of its consumers. Now, data watchdog Consumer Reports has revealed that tens of thousands of companies send Facebook data on single users. Your phone isn’t actually listening to you, don’t worry about turning your mic...
Music streams reach record-breaking 4 trillion in 2023
On-demand streaming saw continual growth last year, despite a resurgence in physical media and a full return to live events. It follows similar trends in other industries, emphasising subscription models and digital licensing rather than outright ownership. In news that will be unsurprising to most, on-demand music streaming saw exceptional...
World’s first IVF rhino pregnancy could save species
The critically endangered northern white rhinoceros could be brought back from the brink of extinction after scientists successfully transferred a lab-created embryo into a surrogate mother. At present, there exist only two infertile female northern white rhinoceros on Earth as a consequence of illegal poaching – fuelled by the demand...
OpenAI alleges the New York Times tricked ChatGPT into plagiarism
In what is due to be a definitive case for the future of generative AI, the New York Times is suing OpenAI for training ChatGPT using its articles without permission. The defendant alleges that the media outlet tricked its AI model specifically to produce answers verbatim. The landscape of generative...
X launches new AI tool called ‘Grok’ for US-based users
Allegedly modelled after the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, it is designed to answer questions and help content creators generate creative and engaging tweets. With the turn of the new year, Elon Musk has introduced a new feature to the platform he acquired a little over a year ago. You know, the one formerly known (and still often referred to) as Twitter, but is officially known as X. GrokBot, or Grok...
How will tech experts prevent AI from adopting extreme bias?
As Artificial Intelligence becomes further interwoven with everyday life, more questions about its input biases emerge. By 2032, the market value of Artificial intelligence is expected to reach $2,760.3 billion. This relatively novel technology has become an integral part of our most-used devices, through the incorporation of Siri in our smartphones and computers as well as in our homes via virtual assistants like Alexa. Now, the use of AI is expanding beyond...
Disrupted sleep linked to cognitive decline in later life
According to a new study, young people with poor sleep quality are more than twice as likely to have memory and thinking issues when they get older. Though sleep is known to play an important role in the health of our brains and numerous studies have associated the lack of it with a higher risk of developing dementia, most research to date has focused on the impacts of this in...
AI discovers the first new antibiotic in over 60 years
A deep-learning algorithm has helped scientists identify new compounds that are effective against antibiotic-resistant bacteria – a public health threat that causes thousands of deaths annually. With doctors concerned that antibiotics have become increasingly ineffective since Fleming first purified penicillin in 1928, the recent discovery of a compound which can kill the drug-resistant bacteria that’s responsible for thousands of deaths worldwide every year is a welcome...
