Education on technology

Hollywood's actors union will announce Monday whether their members authorised a possible strike, a move that would turn up the heat on major film and television studios already grappling with a work stoppage by writers. The SAG-AFTRA union set a Monday deadline for its 160,000 members to vote on whether to give their negotiators the power to call a strike if needed. Talks between the actors union and major studios are scheduled to start on Wednesday. Over the weekend, the studios likely averted another work stoppage by reaching a tentative deal with the Directors Guild of America (DGA). That pact will take effect if DGA members vote to ratify it. Actors, in their negotiations, will seek higher pay and safeguards against the unauthorised use of their images through artificial intelligence. Their current deal expires June 30. In a letter to members urging them to vote in favour of a strike authorisation, SAG-AFTRA leaders said the industry had changed dramatically with the rise...

Android 14 is still a few months away from its anticipated release, but details about the next version of Google's operating system for smartphones continues to surface online. The upcoming version of Android is expected to feature small design tweaks and improvements, as well has enhancements for performance and privacy under the hood. A month after the company showed off lock screen clock customisation options on Android 14 at Google I/O , new custom clock designs as well as customisation options have surfaced online. New lock screen clock customisation options for Android 14 have been shared by tipster Kamila Wojciechowska ( via Esper's Mishaal Rahman). A series of lock screen clocks are shown in a screen recording showing a few options — for colour and size — when a specific clock face is selected. According to Rahman, the new lock screen customisation options should be available with Android 14 Beta 3, a month after they were revealed at Google I/O.  In Android 14 B...

For all the intelligence that we like to ascribe to ChatGPT , the chatbot was essentially homeschooled. Its creator OpenAI trained it on the vast, imperfect glory of the public internet — one reason why ChatGPT makes so many embarrassing mistakes. A lawyer who recently used the chatbot to write his court brief realized he'd blundered when it cited six nonexistent cases. How can ChatGPT get more accurate? Send it to college by training it on better-quality data. That poses the tantalizing possibility of a new revenue stream for publishers and any other company that owns valuable, accurate text that could be used to train language models. It will be expensive for OpenAI, but it could reinforce the dominance of Sam Altman 's company, along with Google , Meta Platforms and the handful of other large firms that make so-called foundation models. They may become the few that can afford to pay for AI's higher education.  OpenAI has kept its training data for GPT-4 a secret. Bu...

When the Beatles broke up more than 50 years ago, devastated fans were left yearning for more. Now, artificial intelligence is offering just that. From ‘re-uniting' the Fab Four on songs from their solo careers, to re-imagining surviving superstar Paul McCartney 's later works with his voice restored to its youthful peak, the new creations show off how far this technology has come — and raise a host of ethical and legal questions. "I'm sobbing! This is so beautiful!!!", wrote a listener in a typical YouTube comment for a fan-created AI cover of McCartney's 2013 single, New, which features de-aged vocals and a bridge part ‘sung' by his great songwriting partner and friend, the late John Lennon . Equally impressive is a version of Grow Old With Me, one of the last songs penned by Lennon, which was posthumously released after his 1980 murder and recently remade by an AI creator who goes by Dae Lims. With enhanced audio quality, an orchestral arrangemen...

Google is highly anticipated to unveil the Pixel 8 series smartphones in October this year. Google's next-generation branded SoC — Tensor G3, codenamed Zuma, is expected to power the upcoming Pixel family. The tech giant did not preview the Tensor G3 at its Google I/O keynote this year, but the specification of this chipset has surfaced through a new leak. The Tensor G3 SoC could use the 1+4+4 CPU setup with ARMv9 cores. It will likely come with ARM Mali-G715 GPU with 10 cores and a frequency of 890MHz. It could support AV1 encode capabilities as well. As per a  report by Android Authority's Kamila Wojciechowska, the Tensor G3 SoC will see big improvements. As per the report, the Tensor G3 will feature nine CPU cores with a 1+4+4 layout. Last year's Tensor G2 has a 4+2+2 core layout. With the latest chipset, Google is said to rearchitect the entire CPU block to use the 2022 ARMv9 core. The new CPU will reportedly have a single Cortex-X3 core running at 3.00GHz, four Co...