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Tag: Science & Technology
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New X users will need to pay for posting: Elon Musk
In a dampener for new X users, Elon Musk has announced they may be charged for posting content on the social platform. In reply to an X user, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO said that unfortunately, ‘a small fee for new user write access is the only way to curb the relentless onslaught of bots.’‘Current AI (and troll farms) can pass ‘are you a bot’ with ease,’ Musk posted.
He further said that the onslaught of fake accounts also uses up the available namespace, ‘so many good handles are taken as a result’.
‘That is way harder than paying a tiny fee. This is only for new users. They will be able to do write actions for free after 3 months,’ the billionaire elaborated.
In October last year, the platform began charging new unverified users $1 per year in New Zealand and the Philippines. Earlier this month, Musk-led platform announced a mega purge of spam accounts. Several X users lost followers as the social media platform kicked off the exercise to remove bots. The action came as spam and porn bots swarmed the platform in the past few months, leaving users flummoxed. Musk had announced that a system purge of bots and trolls was underway.
Source: IANS -
ChatGPT is now more direct and less verbose in its responses: OpenAI
Sam Altman-run OpenAI has said it has made its AI chatbot called ChatGPT more direct and less verbose. In a post on X, the company said its new GPT-4 Turbo model is now available to paid ChatGPT users. “We’ve improved capabilities in writing, math, logical reasoning, and coding,” said the company. The new AI model has been trained on publicly available data up to December last year.
“When writing with ChatGPT, responses will be more direct, less verbose and use more conversational language,” OpenAI posted.
The company said it continues to invest in making its AI models better and looks forward to seeing what the users do with those.
“If you haven’t tried it yet, GPT-4 Turbo is available in ChatGPT Plus, Team, Enterprise, and the API,” it added. Meanwhile, the AI company allegedly transcribed more than a million hours of YouTube videos to train GPT-4. The New York Times reported last week that OpenAI knew this was not legal but “believed it to be fair use”.
An OpenAI spokesperson was quoted as saying that the company uses “numerous sources including publicly available data and partnerships for non-public data,” to maintain its global research competitiveness. -
‘Hidden’ galaxy with billions of stars discovered by Hubble telescope
The Hubble Space Telescope has captured the picture of a galaxy with billions of stars, located 100 million light years away from the earth. The spiral galaxy, IC 4633, is located in the constellation Apus, Nasa said in a statement. “IC 4633 is a galaxy rich in star-forming activity and also hosts an active galactic nucleus at its core. From our point of view, the galaxy is tilted mostly towards us, giving astronomers a fairly good view of its billions of stars,” it said.
However, Nasa said that the galaxy’s features are partially obstructed due to a stretch of dark dust which covers the lower right of the picture. The cloud overlapping IC 4633 is a dark nebula, also known as MW9 and the South Celestial Serpent.
“This dark nebula is part of the Chamaeleon star-forming region, itself located only around 500 light-years from us, in a nearby part of our Milky Way galaxy,” it said.
The dark clouds in the Chamaeleon region occupy a large area of the southern sky, covering their constellation but also encroaching on nearby constellations, like the Apus.
“Classified as an integrated flux nebula (IFN) — a cloud of gas and dust in the Milky Way galaxy that’s not near to any single star and is only faintly lit by the total light of all the galaxy’s stars — this vast, narrow trail of faint gas that snakes over the southern celestial pole is much more subdued looking than its neighbors,” the space agency said.
The cloud is studied for its large amount of young stars, particularly the cloud Cha I, which has been captured by both the Hubble Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope.
Earth’s mysterious twin Venus is leaking
Gases, including oxygen, are stripping away from the upper layers of the atmosphere of planet Venus, which is important to understand how the planet lost its water, a study said.
During its journey to Mercury in 2021, the joint European and Japanese mission BepiColombo performed its second fly-by of Venus and found that carbon and oxygen ions were escaping from the unexplored region of the planet’s magnetic environment, the study of which was published in Nature Astronomy journal. “These results have important implications regarding the evolution of Venus’s atmosphere and, in particular, the evolution of water on the surface of the planet,” the study stated. Over a period of 90 minutes, BepiColombo measured the number and mass of charged particles it encountered, capturing information about the chemical and physical processes driving atmospheric escape in the flank of the magnetosheath.
Venus doesn’t have an intrinsic magnetic field in its core like Earth. But, a weak, comet-shaped “induced magnetosphere” is created around the planet due to solar winds with electrically charged particles in Venus’s upper atmosphere. The region around the magnetosphere is called the “magnetosheath”, where the solar wind is slowed and heated. -
WhatsApp testing new feature, will let users know which contacts were online recently
WhatsApp has been working on a number of features in the last few months and they have all made headlines. Be it encouraging new conversations with the suggested contacts feature or letting Indian users make international payments, the instant messaging platform is trying to enhance customer experience. As per latest news, WhatsApp has another feature in store that might help you decide whom you should text first.
A report in WA Beta Info says that WhatsApp is working on a feature that will show you a list of contacts that were online recently. A screenshot shared by the portal shows a list of contacts who were active on the instant messaging platform recently. It is to be noted that only a few selected contacts, who were recently online, will be shown in this list. This feature could prove to be useful if you want to check who was recently active on the messaging platform and is most likely to answer your texts or pick up your calls first. This feature could also enhance users’ the messaging experience by removing the need to individually check the activity status of each contact. Keeping users’ privacy in mind, WA Beta Info report adds that the feature won’t show users’ last seen and online status in these lists. -
Spotify now lets you use AI to make playlists using text prompts
Searching music on apps can be a multi-layer process but AI is here to your rescue. Spotify is bringing its new AI feature that gets you a list of tracks in a playlist just with the help of text prompts. So, if you want to listen to energetic morning music, just use the Spotify AI feature and get a full playlist of songs that matches your description. The AI Playlist feature is like Copilot for your music listening. If you don’t like what Spotify shows you, users can tweak the prompts further and give more details to get closer to your preferences.
Available for both Android and iOS smartphone users, the feature is limited to markets like the UK, Australia, and will soon be expanded to more markets.
Spotify Premium users can now use text prompts or phrases like “songs to serenade my cat” or “beats to battle a zombie apocalypse.” They can also include emojis, colours, names of movie characters, and more to get music recommendations. Based on these inputs, Spotify will recommend music that matches either artist, genre, mood, or all of the above.
Spotify uses inputs from a generative AI model (LLM) to understand users’ intent and offer music that suits their moods and tastes. The company also recently introduced a new AI-powered DJ, which offers custom curation of music, including spoken-word commentary.
SPOTIFY AI PLAYLIST: HOW IT WORKS
Spotify AI Playlist is available to premium subscribers for now, so expect the feature to work like a beta product. You can start giving text prompts to the platform for a new playlist by doing these things:
– Go to your Spotify library and tap on the + icon to activate the AI assistant
– Spotify users will see a screen with ‘What do you want to hear today’ message
– The platform even has few pre-loaded templates just to get you started
– Spotify will use its AI tech to find the best tracks for your playlist
– The list of songs will show on your screen, click on create to make a new AI Playlist
Spotify is only giving the AI Playlist to its subscribers in the UK and Australia and only for those with the mobile app. We still don’t know if and when Indian subscribers will get to try the feature but we expect that to happen soon.
Spotify wants more people to pay for its service and we have seen the change happen in front of our eyes recently. Basic features like playing the same song again or repeat has gone behind the paywall, while the free users see their options limited by the day.
AI is definitely popular among segments, and it is imperative for Spotify to jump in the wagon. Having said that, AI has raised its concerns, and the last thing you want is for your music app to throw some funny results. The platform will have to be careful of how the results its AI model shows to avoid unnecessary scrutiny. -
Google could finally make Android work faster on PCs with new desktop mode
Android users are waiting for the day when their phones can connect to a big screen and convert into a full-fledged Android PC. We have seen hints of the development but nothing concrete has shown up so far, except for Samsung’s DeX mode. But things could finally change and we could see the standard Android version getting the PC mode, at least that’s what some code strings of the next Android 15 update suggest.
Reports point out that Android 14 is slowly but surely preparing a big upgrade for its successor which will be unveiled in around a month’s time from now at the Google I/O 2024 keynote in May.
It has been observed that the latest version of Android’s desktop mode in Android 14 beta allows users to move the apps around the big screen as well as resize them depending on how many apps they want to use simultaneously.
These features might not sound new but when you realise that we are talking about Android running on a big screen and supporting these options, you can imagine the excitement people will have thinking about the tool if and when it officially rolls out. We have already seen glimpses of what Google has in store for Android users.
The new Pixel 8 series launched in 2023 come with support for external display via the USB C port for wired transmission of data and all the mobile capability on a big screen. Having the hardware support will amplify when Android is ready to fully utilise the device and its AI features and tech that will finally let people enjoy Android beyond phone, tablet and watches. Bringing the PC mode to Pixel series also could be a gamechanger for the company with more consumers ready to get their hands on an Android phone, just to see how the technology works.
Apple already offers a similar feature but only within its ecosystem. Android being open source means you could have a premium phone and a basic 4K monitor to get the PC mode up and running without breaking the bank.
Google turns on its new, global Find My device network for Android
Google has officially announced that it’s finally turning on its long-awaited revamped Find My Device network for Android, which works even with offline devices. This is going live on devices running Android 9 and later, across the world.
The network will have over a billion devices, so it will make it very easy to locate yours, even when they’re offline. As a bonus for the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro, these will be trackable even when they’re powered off or the battery is dead, thanks to some “specialized Pixel hardware”.
Starting in May, new Bluetooth tracker tags will become available from Chipolo and Pebblebee, and these will be locateable in the Find My Device app, as they’re built specifically for the new Find My Device network. -
Microsoft to open new AI hub in London
Months after creating the new Microsoft AI organisation to help advance their consumer AI products and research, including Copilot, the tech giant has now announced that it is opening a new AI hub in London, UK.
According to the company, the new AI hub will drive pioneering work to “advance state-of-the-art language models and their supporting infrastructure, and to create world-class tooling for foundation models, collaborating closely with our AI teams across Microsoft and with our partners, including OpenAI.”
The new AI hub will be led by Jordan Hoffmann, an AI scientist and engineer. Before joining Microsoft AI, Hoffmann distinguished himself as an AI pioneer at Inflection and DeepMind, based in London.
Hoffmann will be joined by a group of Microsoft AI team members based in the company’s London Paddington office. “There is an enormous pool of AI talent and expertise in the UK, and Microsoft AI plans to make a significant, long-term investment in the region as we begin hiring the best AI scientists and engineers into this new AI hub,” the company said in a blogpost. In the post, the tech giant also highlighted its recently announced 2.5 billion pound investment to upskill the UK workforce for the AI era and to build the infrastructure to power the AI economy, including its commitment to bring 20,000 of the most advanced GPUs to the country by 2026. -
Perseverance finds rock that could answer why the rover came to Mars
Perseverance has drilled a sample from a rock that could go on to provide answers to questions the rover came in search of on Mars.
The 24th rock core taken by the rover is believed to have been awash in water for an extended period in the distant past, and could have been part of an ancient beach that once adorned the Red Planet.
“To put it simply, this is the kind of rock we had hoped to find when we decided to investigate Jezero Crater. Nearly all the minerals in the rock we just sampled were made in water; on Earth, water-deposited minerals are often good at trapping and preserving ancient organic material and biosignatures,” Ken Farley, project scientist for Perseverance said.
Named after Yellowstone National Park’s iconic landmark, “Bunsen Peak,” the rock of approximately 5.6 feet wide and 3.3 feet high intrigued scientists as they observed it with the rover.
Its prominent stature amidst the terrain and unique texture piqued their curiosity, especially its vertical face, providing a clear cross-section for analysis and less dust accumulation for instruments. “The rock can even tell us about Mars climate conditions that were present when it was formed,” says Farley.
Before extracting a sample, Perseverance used its SuperCam spectrometers and the X-ray spectrometer PIXL to scan the rock’s composition. -
We now have a chip for generative AI era, says Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang
As big tech companies aim to lead the generative AI race, Nvidia Founder and CEO Jensen Huang has said that they have created a processor for the GenAI era. Huang introduced the company’s new Blackwell computing platform at the GTC conference in the US, saying that increased computing power can deliver for everything from software to services, robotics to medical technology and more.
“Accelerated computing has reached the tipping point — general purpose computing has run out of steam,” Huang told more than 11,000 attendees during his keynote address.
Delivering a massive upgrade to the world’s AI infrastructure, Huang introduced the Nvidia Blackwell platform “to unleash real-time generative AI on trillion-parameter large language models”. Huang also presented Nvidia NIM — a reference to NVIDIA inference microservices — a new way of packaging and delivering software that connects developers with hundreds of millions of GPUs to deploy custom AI of all kinds.