Nashville man arrested for running “laptop farm” to get jobs for North Koreans

Nashville man arrested for running “laptop farm” to get jobs for North Koreans

Enlarge Federal authorities have arrested a Nashville man on charges he hosted laptops at his residences in a scheme to deceive US companies into hiring foreign remote IT workers who funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars in income to fund North Korea’s weapons program. The scheme, federal prosecutors said, worked by getting US companies to…

ChatGPT unexpectedly began speaking in a user’s cloned voice during testing

ChatGPT unexpectedly began speaking in a user’s cloned voice during testing

Enlarge (credit: Ole_CNX via Getty Images) On Thursday, OpenAI released the “system card” for ChatGPT’s new GPT-4o AI model that details model limitations and safety testing procedures. Among other examples, the document reveals that in rare occurrences during testing, the model’s Advanced Voice Mode unintentionally imitated users’ voices without permission. Currently, OpenAI has safeguards in…

AnitaB.org takes steps to protect attendees at this year’s Grace Hopper Celebration

AnitaB.org takes steps to protect attendees at this year’s Grace Hopper Celebration

AnitaB.org has announced new measures it’s taking to avoid a repeat of the debacle at last year’s Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC). The nonprofit organization’s annual event to support the advancement of women and nonbinary technologists, was named for computing pioneer Rear Admiral Grace Hopper. It combines conference sessions with an expo and job fair. At…

512-bit RSA key in home energy system gives control of “virtual power plant”

512-bit RSA key in home energy system gives control of “virtual power plant”

Enlarge When Ryan Castellucci recently acquired solar panels and a battery storage system for their home just outside of London, they were drawn to the ability to use an open source dashboard to monitor and control the flow of electricity being generated. Instead, they gained much, much more—some 200 megawatts of programmable capacity to charge…

Man vs. machine: DeepMind’s new robot serves up a table tennis triumph

Man vs. machine: DeepMind’s new robot serves up a table tennis triumph

Enlarge (credit: Benj Edwards / Google DeepMind) On Wednesday, researchers at Google DeepMind revealed the first AI-powered robotic table tennis player capable of competing at an amateur human level. The system combines an industrial robot arm called the ABB IRB 1100 and custom AI software from DeepMind. While an expert human player can still defeat…

Musk’s X under scrutiny in Europe for data privacy practices

Musk’s X under scrutiny in Europe for data privacy practices

Elon Musk’s X platform faces legal action in Ireland, with the Data Protection Commission (DPC) filing High Court proceedings over concerns related to the handling of European users’ personal data. DPC has raised concerns about X’s use of public posts from the European Union and European Economic Area (EU/EEA) to train AI systems, including its…

Major shifts at OpenAI spark skepticism about impending AGI timelines

Major shifts at OpenAI spark skepticism about impending AGI timelines

Enlarge (credit: Benj Edwards / Getty Images) Over the past week, OpenAI experienced a significant leadership shake-up as three key figures announced major changes. Greg Brockman, the company’s president and co-founder, is taking an extended sabbatical until the end of the year, while another co-founder, John Schulman, permanently departed for rival Anthropic. Peter Deng, VP…

Apple’s instructions to its new Siri GenAI offering illustrate the GenAI challenge

Apple’s instructions to its new Siri GenAI offering illustrate the GenAI challenge

Deep within Apple’s systems is a variety of instructions it has given to its GenAI Apple Intelligence mechanism. The screen captures of those instructions provide a peek into Apple’s efforts to influence its GenAI deployment, and also illustrate the steep challenges in controlling an algorithm that is simply trying to guess answers.  The more explicit…