Passengers of Singapore Airlines can now stay connected to free internet at an altitude of 12,000 meters.
In simpler times, during a flight journey, one could switch off the cellular, read a good or a bad book, enjoy a glass of questionable wine, watch a movie in a different language using the in-flight entertainment system, or simply nod off. Or one could even dare to converse with a fellow passenger (gasp).
And now, more and more airlines have… More.
FreshSplash/iStock.
Hallucination!
Can “hallucinations” generate an alternate world, prophesying falsehood?
As I write this article, NVIDIA(• is surpassing Wall Street’s expectations. The company, headquartered in Santa Clara, California, has just joined the exclusive club of only five companies in the world valued at over a trillion dollars [Apple (2.7T), Microsoft (2.4T), Saudi Aramco (2T), Alphabet/Google (1.5T), and Amazon (1.2T)], as its shares rose nearly 25% in a single day! A clear sign of how the widespread use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) can dramatically reshape the technology sector.
Article by John Gao, President of 5.5G Domain, Huawei
As industries increasingly lean on new digital technologies to streamline operations, digital twins are being used by business to generate complete and dynamic overviews of their assets and their processes. The Internet of Things (IoT) is key to realizing this vision. Following 80 years of development, RFID technology, which offers low cost and zero power consumption, is currently the most widely used technology in the retail and logistics industries that enables this. However, this technology application scenarios are limited. It is hampered by the very short distance it can transmit its signal, is relatively expansive to integrate and is not very advanced when it comes to automation.
By reducing costs and the need for labor, a passive IoT solution could make sensor networks far more economically viable. Passive IoT technologies could support two key IoT application scenarios and disrupt current logistics best practice and business operations. Passive IoT technologies could make sensor networks far more economically viable, while dramatically increasing the efficiency of warehouse stocktaking and other industrial processes by tracking hundreds of thousands of items over a 200m2 area in real time.
Will the emergence of AI personal assistants end ‘search’ and other ways we access the Internet? Bill Gates believes so.
Read more about SpaceX launches 22 second-generation Starlink satellites into orbit on Devdiscourse.
One novel approach — that some experts say could actually work — is to use metadata, watermarks, and other technical systems to distinguish fake from real. Companies like Google, Adobe, and Microsoft are all supporting some form of labeling of AI in their products. Google, for example, said at its recent I/O conference that, in the coming months, it will attach a written disclosure, similar to a copyright notice, underneath AI-generated results on Google Images. OpenAI’s popular image generation technology DALL-E already adds a colorful stripe watermark to the bottom of all images it creates.
“We all have a fundamental right to establish a common objective reality,” said Andy Parsons, senior director of Adobe’s content authenticity initiative group. “And that starts with knowing what something is and, in cases where it makes sense, who made it or where it came from.”
In order to reduce confusion between fake and real images, the content authenticity initiative group developed a tool Adobe is now using called content credentials that tracks when images are edited by AI. The company describes it as a nutrition label: information for digital content that stays with the file wherever it’s published or stored. For example, Photoshop’s latest feature, Generative Fill, uses AI to quickly create new content in an existing image, and content credentials can keep track of those changes.
From the surreal world of AI-generated films to a nanoscale robotic hand, check out this week’s awesome tech stories from around the web.
Stability AI became a $1 billion company with the help of a viral AI text-to-image generator and — per interviews with more than 30 people — some misleading claims from founder Emad Mostaque.
Emad Mostaque is the modern-day Renaissance man who kicked off the AI gold rush. The Oxford master’s degree holder is an award-winning hedge fund manager, a trusted confidant to the United Nations and the tech founder behind Stable Diffusion — the text-to-image generator that broke the internet last summer and, in his words, pressured OpenAI to launch ChatGPT, the bot that mainstreamed AI.
While OpenAI launched an official ChatGPT app for iOS, most of the AI-powered chatbots are still best accessible through the web. And that’s why browsers are stepping up to integrate AI-aided features within their apps. LocalGlobe-and Y Combinator-backed web browser startup SigmaOS launched its own AI assistant on Thursday to a limited set of people.
The company says that the unique thing about Airis, its AI assistant, is that understands a page’s context and gives you answers based on that. Here’s a good example: if you are reading about Manchester United, ask Airis to explain “United” or ask questions about it, the bot understands that you are asking about the football team and not just the word.
WordPress.com is taking on Substack and others with today’s news that its Newsletter product will now support paid subscriptions and premium content. First launched in December, WordPress.com Newsletter allows writers to automatically send out posts via email to connect directly with their audience, while still being able to leverage WordPress.com’s other capabilities. Writers can opt to use the feature solely for newsletters or they can add the option to their blog to cater to readers who want to receive new posts via email instead.
While for years there have been plug-ins and third-party services that allow blog owners to send out their posts via email, WordPress.com’s decision to move more directly into this space was a reflection of how people now prefer to read news and information. As the state of websites has worsened — dominated by clutter, ads, overlays, pop-ups, and cookie acceptance banners — many have turned to email as an easier way to stay connected to writers, journalists, essayists, and other publishers they want to follow.
Given WordPress.com’s sizable footprint — WordPress powers 43% of the web, including its open source version — its shift into the newsletters market is significant.
