A anonymous reader shares a report: Personal artificial intelligence assistants that know our health status and legal history inside out. The ability to transfer your data from one place to another seamlessly without any roadblocks. These are just some of the predictions for the future of the web from the inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, on the 35th anniversary of its invention.

[...] Another thing Berners-Lee says might happen in the future is a big tech company being forced to break up. [...] Berners-Lee said he always prefers it when tech companies "do the right thing by themselves" before regulators step in. "That's always been the spirit of the internet." He uses the example of the Data Transfer Initiative, a private initiative that launched in 2018 and is now backed by the likes of Google, Apple, and Meta, to encourage portability of photos, videos and other data between their platforms.

"Maybe the companies were prompted a bit by the possibility of regulation," Berners-Lee said. "But this was an independent thing." However, he added: "Things are changing so quickly. AI is changing very, very quickly. There are monopolies in AI. Monopolies changed pretty quickly back in the web. Maybe at some point in the future, agencies will have to work to break up big companies, but we don't know which company that will be."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: YouTube is no longer showing recommended videos to users logged out of a Google account or using Incognito mode, making people concerned they are being bullied into always being signed into the service. This change, which is now rolling out, shows a simple YouTube homepage without any videos or tips on what to watch. Before, even in incognito mode or when not logged in, Google would still show you video suggestions. Now, users see a message saying "Get Started" and "Start watching videos to help us build a feed of videos you'll love" when they open YouTube in incognito mode, with videos no longer being recommended.

The U.S. government must move "quickly and decisively" to avert substantial national security risks stemming from artificial intelligence (AI) which could, in the worst case, cause an "extinction-level threat to the human species," says a report commissioned by the U.S. government published on Monday. Time: "Current frontier AI development poses urgent and growing risks to national security," the report, which TIME obtained ahead of its publication, says. "The rise of advanced AI and AGI [artificial general intelligence] has the potential to destabilize global security in ways reminiscent of the introduction of nuclear weapons." AGI is a hypothetical technology that could perform most tasks at or above the level of a human. Such systems do not currently exist, but the leading AI labs are working toward them and many expect AGI to arrive within the next five years or less.

The three authors of the report worked on it for more than a year, speaking with more than 200 government employees, experts, and workers at frontier AI companies -- like OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Anthropic and Meta -- as part of their research. Accounts from some of those conversations paint a disturbing picture, suggesting that many AI safety workers inside cutting-edge labs are concerned about perverse incentives driving decisionmaking by the executives who control their companies. The finished document, titled "An Action Plan to Increase the Safety and Security of Advanced AI," recommends a set of sweeping and unprecedented policy actions that, if enacted, would radically disrupt the AI industry. Congress should make it illegal, the report recommends, to train AI models using more than a certain level of computing power.

The threshold, the report recommends, should be set by a new federal AI agency, although the report suggests, as an example, that the agency could set it just above the levels of computing power used to train current cutting-edge models like OpenAI's GPT-4 and Google's Gemini. The new AI agency should require AI companies on the "frontier" of the industry to obtain government permission to train and deploy new models above a certain lower threshold, the report adds. Authorities should also "urgently" consider outlawing the publication of the "weights," or inner workings, of powerful AI models, for example under open-source licenses, with violations possibly punishable by jail time, the report says. And the government should further tighten controls on the manufacture and export of AI chips, and channel federal funding toward "alignment" research that seeks to make advanced AI safer, it recommends.

An article in Inc notes a "wild projection" in Reddit's SEC filing that Reddit's global market opportunity by 2027 is $1.4 trillion." Some of the numbers lead back to a single individual: Sam Altman. The co-founder and chief executive of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI owns an 8.7 percent stake in Reddit, more than its co-founder and CEO, Steve Huffman, who owns 3.3 percent... Altman, through various funds and holding companies he owns or manages, controls more than a million shares of Reddit at $60 million in aggregate purchase price — and holds more than 9 percent of voting rights...

Discussing Reddit's future, financial analyst and journalist Herb Greenberg recently told CNBC, "This is an AI play."
But the senior investing editor for Kiplinger.com argues that retail investors "may want to hold tight before rushing out to buy the Reddit IPO." While IPO stocks tend to have strong first-day showings, returns for the first year are generally weak, says the team of analysts at Trivariate Research, a market research firm based in New York. And since 2020, "the average IPO has lagged its industry average by 30% over the subsequent three years following its first closing price..."

Other commenters have noted that Reddit's allotment of shares to select Redditors could lower demand on the first day of trading, which would work against any IPO pop.
"Over the past few years, there have been a bunch of IPOs in the U.S. in which overhyped names enjoyed flashy stock-market debuts only to drop sharply soon after," notes the Street. Notable examples include Coinbase, which plummeted by almost 90% after its debut, Robinhood, still down 53% since its IPO, and Rivian, down over 91% since its debut. However, it's crucial to note that all of these IPOs occurred in 2021 amid market euphoria fueled by low interest rates, significant economic stimulus, and the lingering effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Although the current macroeconomic landscape differs from three years ago, valuations of tech and growth stocks remain stretched.
Kiplingers.com concludes it "boils down to your own personal investing goals and risk tolerance. If you do decide to buy Reddit stock when it first begins trading, do so in a small amount that you can afford to lose."

But they also cite analysis from David Trainer, CEO of New Constructs, a research firm powered by artificial intelligence. "Reddit's IPO marks the return of the junk IPO," Trainer wrote in Forbes. "[The valuation] implies that Reddit will grow its user base to 26 times current levels, which would be nearly five times the size of [Snapchat-maker] Snap, and a highly unlikely feat. Reddit looks overvalued, and we think investors should pass on this IPO."

Trainer writes: [T]he company has never been profitable and should not be a publicly traded company... I think the company may never monetize its platform without angering its users and the entire premise of Reddit is user-generated content. This business model is inescapably built on a catch-22: make money or please users... Reddit looks overvalued, and I think investors should pass on this IPO.
Buyers and analysts told the site Marketing Brew "that they see the platform as nice-to-have, but that it is not an essential part of their media plans, like Meta or Google are." "They've always been solidly in the second or third tier of social networks," alongside Snap, Pinterest, and X, Brian Wieser, a former GroupM exec who's now author of the industry newsletter Madison and Wall, told Marketing Brew.
Yet Trainer notes that "98% of Reddit's revenue in 2023 came from third-party advertising on the site and 28% of all revenue came from ten customers," and "Reddit's cost of revenue, sales & marketing, general & administrative, and research & development costs were 117% of revenue in 2023."

Trainer concludes "Reddit is nowhere near breakeven. Reddit is an unprofitable social media company fighting for users."

Bloomberg adds that the subreddit r/WallStreetBets "has threatened to bet against the stock, with many people noting that the company still loses money two decades into its existence. (Reddit lost $90.8 million last year, down from $158.6 million the year before.)" Some have complained that the invitation to invest fails to make up for the unpaid labor they've invested making the site work... In 2021 the platform's WallStreetBets forum ignited a meme-stock frenzy, propelling skyward the stocks of nostalgic but struggling companies like GameStop Corp. and AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. and sending shockwaves through the financial industry... When it goes public, the platform that invented meme stocks runs the risk of becoming one itself.

Reddit noted the possibility as a risk in its IPO filing. "Given the broad awareness and brand recognition of Reddit, including as a result of the popularity of r/wallstreetbets among retail investors," the company warned that its stock could "experience extreme volatility ... which could cause you to lose all or part of your investment if you are unable to sell your shares at or above the initial offering price."

Users on WallStreetBets got a kick out of the fact that the company listed the forum as a risk factor, posting about it with a sly smiling emoji...
Meanwhile, reports that marketers are infiltrating subreddits have been confirmed. Over 200 businesses have "integrated Reddit Pro into their digital strategies," reports Search Engine Land, including "well-known names such as Taco Bell, the NFL, and The Wall Street Journal...

"During the initial alpha testing phase with approximately 20 businesses, Reddit reported its Pro partners, on average, generated 11 additional posts and comments per month."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Android Police: Seven years ago, Google announced that it would phase out all Chrome apps on Windows, Mac, and Linux by 2018 (it would actually take until 2023). In its place would be what the company called Progressive Web Apps (PWAs), web apps that can be installed on a user's desktop that act as if they are practically natural apps and programs. The idea grew quickly, with Chrome users having installed PWAs in record numbers by the beginning of 2022. Soon, every website will be installable on desktops through PWAs.

In Chrome Canary (the daily build version of Google Chrome and typically a couple of versions ahead of the stable build), websites can now be installed on desktops. As part of the latest daily build, Google has added an "Install page as app" option to the "Save and share" submenu on the desktop version (via @Leopeva64 on X). This makes clicking the app -- which is just the website made to look and feel like a native app -- always open in its own window. Sites that already have their own PWAs, like YouTube or Reddit, have been prompting users to install them for a while now and will have their "Install page as app" function actually showing the name of the site. For example, YouTube's entry will show as "Install YouTube." In February, it became possible to enable the flags necessary to make any website into a PWA, but it seems to have just now become fully implemented.

Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from The Guardian: Akira Toriyama, the influential Japanese manga artist who created the Dragon Ball series, has died at the age of 68. He died on March 1 from an acute subdural haematoma. The news was confirmed by Bird Studio, the manga company that Toriyama founded in 1983.

"It's our deep regret that he still had several works in the middle of creation with great enthusiasm," the studio wrote in a statement. "Also, he would have many more things to achieve." The studio remembered his "unique world of creation". "He has left many manga titles and works of art to this world," the statement read. "Thanks to the support of so many people around the world, he has been able to continue his creative activities for over 45 years." [...]

Based on an earlier work titled Dragon Boy, Dragon Ball was serialized in 519 chapters in Weekly Shonen Jump from 1984 to 1995 and birthed a blockbuster franchise including an English-language comic book series, five distinct television adaptation -- with Dragon Ball Z the most familiar to western audiences -- and spin-offs, over 20 different films and a vast array of video games. The series -- a kung fu take on the shonen (or young adult) manga genre -- drew from Chinese and Hong Kong action films as well as Japanese folklore. It introduced audiences to the now-instantly familiar Son Goku -- a young martial arts trainee searching for seven magical orbs that will summon a mystical dragon -- as well as his ragtag gang of allies and enemies. You can learn more about Toriyama via the Dragon Ball Wiki.

The Associated Press, Washington Post, and New York Times, among others, have all reported on his passing.

Lindsay Clark reports via The Register: Palantir has won a US Army contract worth $178.4 million to house a battlefield intelligence system inside a big truck. In what purports to be the Army's first AI-defined vehicle, Palantir will provide systems for the TITAN "ground station," which is designed to access space, high altitude, aerial, and terrestrial sensors to "provide actionable targeting information for enhanced mission command and long range precision fires", according to a Palantir statement.

TITAN stands for Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node, which might sound harmless enough. Who was ever killed by a node? The TITAN solution is built to "maximize usability for soldiers, incorporating tangible feedback and insights from soldier touchpoints at every step of the development and configuration process," the statement said. The aim of the TITAN project is to bring together military software and hardware providers in a new way. These include "traditional and non-traditional partners" of the US armed forces, such as Northrop Grumman, Anduril Industries, L3Harris Technologies, Pacific Defense, SNC, Strategic Technology Consulting, and World Wide Technology, as well as Palantir.

Speaking to Bloomberg, Alex Karp, Palantir's motor-mouth CEO, said TITAN was the logical extension of Maven, a controversial project for using machine learning and engineering to tell people and objects apart in drone footage in which Palantir is a partner and from which Google famously pulled out after employees protested. Karp said TITAN was a partnership between "people who've built software products that have been used on the battlefield and used commercially." "That simple insight which you see in the battlefield in Ukraine, which you see in Israel is something that is hard for institutions to internalize. [For] the Pentagon this step is one of the most historic steps ever because what it basically says is, 'We're going to fight for real, we're going to put the best on the battlefield and the best is not just one company.' It's a team of people led by the most prominent software provider in defense in the world: Palantir," he said. On Thursday, Palantir was one of the companies included in a new U.S. consortium assembled to support the safe development and deployment of generative AI.

Google's swanky new office building located on the Alphabet's Mountain View, California headquarters has been "plagued for months by inoperable, or, at best, spotty Wi-Fi," reports Reuters citing six people familiar with the matter. "Its recliner-laden collaborative workspaces do not work well for teams carting around laptops, since workers must plug into ethernet cables at their desks to get consistent internet service. Some make do by using their phones as hotspots." From the report: The company promoted the new building and surrounding campus in a 229-page glossy book highlighting its cutting-edge features, such as "Googley interiors" and "an environment where everyone has the tools they need to be successful."

But, a Google spokeswoman acknowledged, "we've had Wi-Fi connectivity issues in Bay View." She said Google "made several improvements to address the issue," and the company hoped to have a fix in coming weeks. According to one AI engineer assigned to the building, which also houses members of the advertising team, the wonky Wi-Fi has been no help for Google pushing a three day per week return-to-office mandate. "You'd think the world's leading internet company would have worked this out," he said.

Managers have encouraged workers to stroll outside or sit at the adjoining cafe where the Wi-Fi signal is stronger. Some were issued new laptops recently with more powerful Wi-Fi chips. Google has not publicly disclosed the reasons for the Wi-Fi problems, but workers say the 600,000-square-foot building's swooping, wave-like rooftop swallows broadband like the Bermuda Triangle.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MobileSyrup: Google's new smart assistant, Gemini, is available on multiple devices but Gemini Nano, the multimodal large language model, isn't coming to all Pixel smartphones. Gemini Nano is only available on the Google Pixel 8 Pro and the Samsung Galaxy S24 series; however, we've recently learned that it's not making its way to the base Pixel 8, according to Terence Zhang, an engineer at Google and reporter by Mishaal Rahman.

Zhang told everyone that Gemini Nano isn't coming to the Pixel 8 because of hardware limitations, but it's unclear what the hardware limitations are. Many would assume it's due to the Pixel 8 housing only 8GB of RAM compared to the Pixel 8 Pro's 12GB. That said, the Galaxy S24 series starts at 8GB of RAM and can use Nano. This must mean that some other hardware limitations are holding back Gemini Nano. Hopefully, more information will come in the future, but right now, it seems like only high-end devices will get the Gemini Nano experience.

Linwei Ding, a former Google software engineer, has been indicted for stealing trade secrets related to AI to benefit two Chinese companies. He faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine on each criminal count. Reuters reports: Ding's indictment was unveiled a little over a year after the Biden administration created an interagency Disruptive Technology Strike Force to help stop advanced technology being acquired by countries such as China and Russia, or potentially threaten national security. "The Justice Department just will not tolerate the theft of our trade secrets and intelligence," U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a conference in San Francisco.

According to the indictment, Ding stole detailed information about the hardware infrastructure and software platform that lets Google's supercomputing data centers train large AI models through machine learning. The stolen information included details about chips and systems, and software that helps power a supercomputer "capable of executing at the cutting edge of machine learning and AI technology," the indictment said. Google designed some of the allegedly stolen chip blueprints to gain an edge over cloud computing rivals Amazon.com and Microsoft, which design their own, and reduce its reliance on chips from Nvidia.

Hired by Google in 2019, Ding allegedly began his thefts three years later, while he was being courted to become chief technology officer for an early-stage Chinese tech company, and by May 2023 had uploaded more than 500 confidential files. The indictment said Ding founded his own technology company that month, and circulated a document to a chat group that said "We have experience with Google's ten-thousand-card computational power platform; we just need to replicate and upgrade it." Google became suspicious of Ding in December 2023 and took away his laptop on Jan. 4, 2024, the day before Ding planned to resign. A Google spokesperson said: "We have strict safeguards to prevent the theft of our confidential commercial information and trade secrets. After an investigation, we found that this employee stole numerous documents, and we quickly referred the case to law enforcement."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Google today is sharing more details about the fees that will accompany its plan to comply with Europe's new Digital Markets Act (DMA), the new regulation aimed at increasing competition across the app store ecosystem. While Google yesterday pointed to ways it already complied with the DMA -- by allowing sideloading of apps, for example -- it hadn't yet shared specifics about the fees that would apply to developers, noting that further details would come out this week. That time is now, as it turns out.

Today, Google shared that there will be two fees that apply to its External offers program, also announced yesterday. This new program allows Play Store developers to lead their users in the EEA outside their app, including to promote offers. With these fees, Google is going the route of Apple, which reduced its App Store commissions in the EU to comply with the DMA but implemented a new Core Technology Fee that required developers to pay 0.50 euros for each first annual install per year over a 1 million threshold for apps distributed outside the App Store. Apple justified the fee by explaining that the services it provides developers extend beyond payment processing and include the work it does to support app creation and discovery, craft APIs, frameworks and tools to support developers' app creation work, fight fraud and more.

Google is taking a similar tactic, saying today that "Google Play's service fee has never been simply a fee for payment processing -- it reflects the value provided by Android and Play and supports our continued investments across Android and Google Play, allowing for the user and developer features that people count on," a blog post states. It says there will now be two fees that accompany External Offers program transactions:

- An initial acquisition fee, which is 10% for in-app purchases or 5% for subscriptions for two years. Google says this fee represents the value that Play provided in facilitating the initial user acquisition through the Play Store.
- An ongoing services fee, which is 17% for in-app purchases or 7% for subscriptions. This reflects the "broader value Play provides users and developers, including ongoing services such as parental controls, security scanning, fraud prevention, and continuous app updates," writes Google.

Of note, a developer can opt out of the ongoing services and corresponding fees, if the user agrees, after two years. Users who initially installed the app believe they'll have services like parental controls, security scanning, fraud prevention and continuous app updates, which is why opting out requires user consent. Although Google allows the developer to terminate this fee, those ongoing services will no longer apply either. Developers, however, will still be responsible for reporting transactions involving those users who are continuing to receive Play Store services.

Jess Weatherbed reports via The Verge: Apple's iOS 17.4 update is now available, introducing new emoji and a cryptographic security protocol for iMessage, alongside some major changes to the App Store and contactless payments for the iPhone platform in Europe. Apple is making several of these changes to comply with the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA), a law that aims to make the digital economy fairer by removing unfair advantages that tech giants hold over businesses and end users. iOS 17.4 will allow third-party developers to offer alternative app marketplaces and app downloads to EU users from outside the iOS App Store. Developers wanting to take advantage of this will be required to go through Apple's approval process and pay Apple a "Core Technology Fee" that charges 50 euro cents per install once an app reaches 1 million downloads annually. iPhone owners in the EU will see different update notes that specifically mention new options available for app stores, web browsers, and payment options.

The approval process may take some time, but we know that at least one enterprise-focused app marketplace from Mobivention will be available on March 7th. Epic is also working on releasing the Epic Game Store on iOS in 2024, and software company MacPaw is planning to officially launch its Setapp store in April. iOS 17.4 allows people in the EU to download alternative browser engines that aren't based on Apple's WebKit, such as Chrome and Firefox, with a new choice screen in iOS Safari that will prompt users to select a default browser when opened for the first time. While no browser alternatives have been officially announced, both Google and Mozilla are currently experimenting with new iOS browsers that could eventually be released to the public.

Apple is also introducing new APIs that allow third-party developers to utilize the iPhone's NFC payment chip for contactless payment services besides Apple Pay and Apple Wallet in the European Economic Area. No alternative contactless providers have been confirmed yet, but users will find a list of apps that have requested the feature under Settings > Privacy & Security > Contactless & NFC. While Apple previously revealed it was planning to drop support for progressive web apps (PWAs) in the EU to avoid building "an entirely new integration architecture" around DMA compliance, the company now says it will "continue to offer the existing Home Screen web apps capability" for EU users. However, these homescreen apps will still run using WebKit technology, with no option to be powered by third-party browser engines.

Amazon's cloud services division is halting fees it has long charged customers that switch to a rival provider -- following in the steps of Google, which recently announced it was ending the practice. From a report: Amazon Web Services will no longer charge customers who want to extract all of their data from the company's servers and move them to another service, AWS Vice President Robert Kennedy said in a blog post on Tuesday. "Beginning today, customers globally are now entitled to free data transfers out to the internet if they want to move to another IT provider," Kennedy said.

Google announced updates to its search ranking systems aimed at promoting high-quality content and demoting manipulative or low-effort material, including content generated by AI solely to summarize other sources. The company also stated it is improving its ability to detect and combat tactics used to deceive its ranking algorithms.

Anthropic, a leading artificial intelligence startup, unveiled its Claude 3 series of AI models today, designed to meet the diverse needs of enterprise customers with a balance of intelligence, speed, and cost efficiency. The lineup includes three models: Opus, Sonnet, and the upcoming Haiku. From a report: The star of the lineup is Opus, which Anthropic claims is more capable than any other openly available AI system on the market, even outperforming leading models from rivals OpenAI and Google. "Opus is capable of the widest range of tasks and performs them exceptionally well," said Anthropic cofounder and CEO Dario Amodei in an interview with VentureBeat. Amodei explained that Opus outperforms top AI models like GPT-4, GPT-3.5 and Gemini Ultra on a wide range of benchmarks. This includes topping the leaderboard on academic benchmarks like GSM-8k for mathematical reasoning and MMLU for expert-level knowledge.

"It seems to outperform everyone and get scores that we haven't seen before on some tasks," Amodei said. While companies like Anthropic and Google have not disclosed the full parameters of their leading models, the reported benchmark results from both companies imply Opus either matches or surpasses major alternatives like GPT-4 and Gemini in core capabilities. This, at least on paper, establishes a new high watermark for commercially available conversational AI. Engineered for complex tasks requiring advanced reasoning, Opus stands out in Anthropic's lineup for its superior performance. Sonnet, the mid-range model, offers businesses a more cost-effective solution for routine data analysis and knowledge work, maintaining high performance without the premium price tag of the flagship model. Meanwhile, Haiku is designed to be swift and economical, suited for applications such as consumer-facing chatbots, where responsiveness and cost are crucial factors. Amodei told VentureBeat he expects Haiku to launch publicly in a matter of "weeks, not months."

Long-time Slashdot reader Greymane shared this article from Wired: [I]n a demonstration of the risks of connected, autonomous AI ecosystems, a group of researchers has created one of what they claim are the first generative AI worms — which can spread from one system to another, potentially stealing data or deploying malware in the process. "It basically means that now you have the ability to conduct or to perform a new kind of cyberattack that hasn't been seen before," says Ben Nassi, a Cornell Tech researcher behind the research. Nassi, along with fellow researchers Stav Cohen and Ron Bitton, created the worm, dubbed Morris II, as a nod to the original Morris computer worm that caused chaos across the Internet in 1988. In a research paper and website shared exclusively with WIRED, the researchers show how the AI worm can attack a generative AI email assistant to steal data from emails and send spam messages — breaking some security protections in ChatGPT and Gemini in the process...in test environments [and not against a publicly available email assistant]...

To create the generative AI worm, the researchers turned to a so-called "adversarial self-replicating prompt." This is a prompt that triggers the generative AI model to output, in its response, another prompt, the researchers say. In short, the AI system is told to produce a set of further instructions in its replies... To show how the worm can work, the researchers created an email system that could send and receive messages using generative AI, plugging into ChatGPT, Gemini, and open source LLM, LLaVA. They then found two ways to exploit the system — by using a text-based self-replicating prompt and by embedding a self-replicating prompt within an image file.

In one instance, the researchers, acting as attackers, wrote an email including the adversarial text prompt, which "poisons" the database of an email assistant using retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), a way for LLMs to pull in extra data from outside its system. When the email is retrieved by the RAG, in response to a user query, and is sent to GPT-4 or Gemini Pro to create an answer, it "jailbreaks the GenAI service" and ultimately steals data from the emails, Nassi says. "The generated response containing the sensitive user data later infects new hosts when it is used to reply to an email sent to a new client and then stored in the database of the new client," Nassi says. In the second method, the researchers say, an image with a malicious prompt embedded makes the email assistant forward the message on to others. "By encoding the self-replicating prompt into the image, any kind of image containing spam, abuse material, or even propaganda can be forwarded further to new clients after the initial email has been sent," Nassi says.

In a video demonstrating the research, the email system can be seen forwarding a message multiple times. The researchers also say they could extract data from emails. "It can be names, it can be telephone numbers, credit card numbers, SSN, anything that is considered confidential," Nassi says.
The researchers reported their findings to Google and OpenAI, according to the article, with OpenAI confirming "They appear to have found a way to exploit prompt-injection type vulnerabilities by relying on user input that hasn't been checked or filtered." OpenAI says they're now working to make their systems "more resilient."

Google declined to comment on the research.

Microsoft built two datacenters west of Phoenix, with plans for seven more (serving, among other companies, OpenAI). "Microsoft has been adding data centers at a stupendous rate, spending more than $10 billion on cloud-computing capacity in every quarter of late," writes the Atlantic. "One semiconductor analyst called this "the largest infrastructure buildout that humanity has ever seen."

But is this part of a concerning trend? Microsoft plans to absorb its excess heat with a steady flow of air and, as needed, evaporated drinking water. Use of the latter is projected to reach more than 50 million gallons every year. That might be a burden in the best of times. As of 2023, it seemed absurd. Phoenix had just endured its hottest summer ever, with 55 days of temperatures above 110 degrees. The weather strained electrical grids and compounded the effects of the worst drought the region has faced in more than a millennium. The Colorado River, which provides drinking water and hydropower throughout the region, has been dwindling. Farmers have already had to fallow fields, and a community on the eastern outskirts of Phoenix went without tap water for most of the year... [T]here were dozens of other facilities I could visit in the area, including those run by Apple, Amazon, Meta, and, soon, Google. Not too far from California, and with plenty of cheap land, Greater Phoenix is among the fastest-growing hubs in the U.S. for data centers....

Microsoft, the biggest tech firm on the planet, has made ambitious plans to tackle climate change. In 2020, it pledged to be carbon-negative (removing more carbon than it emits each year) and water-positive (replenishing more clean water than it consumes) by the end of the decade. But the company also made an all-encompassing commitment to OpenAI, the most important maker of large-scale AI models. In so doing, it helped kick off a global race to build and deploy one of the world's most resource-intensive digital technologies. Microsoft operates more than 300 data centers around the world, and in 2021 declared itself "on pace to build between 50 and 100 new datacenters each year for the foreseeable future...."

Researchers at UC Riverside estimated last year... that global AI demand could cause data centers to suck up 1.1 trillion to 1.7 trillion gallons of freshwater by 2027. A separate study from a university in the Netherlands, this one peer-reviewed, found that AI servers' electricity demand could grow, over the same period, to be on the order of 100 terawatt hours per year, about as much as the entire annual consumption of Argentina or Sweden... [T]ensions over data centers' water use are cropping up not just in Arizona but also in Oregon, Uruguay, and England, among other places in the world.
The article points out that Microsoft "is transitioning some data centers, including those in Arizona, to designs that use less or no water, cooling themselves instead with giant fans." And an analysis (commissioned by Microsoft) on the impact of one building said it would use about 56 million gallons of drinking water each year, equivalent to the amount used by 670 families, according to the article. "In other words, a campus of servers pumping out ChatGPT replies from the Arizona desert is not about to make anyone go thirsty."

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: CACM [Communications of the ACM] Is Now Open Access," proclaims the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in its tear-down-this-CACM-paywall announcement. "More than six decades of CACM's renowned research articles, seminal papers, technical reports, commentaries, real-world practice, and news articles are now open to everyone, regardless of whether they are members of ACM or subscribe to the ACM Digital Library."

Ironically, clicking on Google search results for older CACM articles on Aaron Swartz currently returns page-not-found error messages and the CACM's own search can't find Aaron Swarz either, so perhaps there's some work that remains to be done with the transition to CACM's new website. ACM plans to open its entire archive of over 600,000 articles when its five-year transition to full Open Access is complete (January 2026 target date).
"They are right..." the site's editor-in-chief told Slashdot. "We need to get Google to reindex the new site ASAP."

Microsoft is "delighted to introduce some useful new features" for its "Copilot Preview for Windows 11," according to a recent blog post.

TechRepublic adds that "most features will be enabled by default... rolling out from today until April 2024." Windows 11 users will be able to change system settings through prompts typed directly into Copilot in Windows, currently accessible in the Copilot Preview via an icon on the taskbar, or by pressing Windows + C. Microsoft Copilot will be able to perform the following actions:

- Turn on/off battery saver.
- Show device information.
- Show system information.
- Show battery information.
- Open storage page.
- Launch Live Captions.
- Launch Narrator.
- Launch Screen Magnifier.
- Open Voice Access page.
- Open Text size page.
- Open contrast themes page.
- Launch Voice input.
- Show available Wi-Fi network.
- Display IP Address.
- Show Available Storage.

The new third-party app integrations for Copilot will give Windows 11 users new ways to interact with various applications. For example, making business lunch reservations through OpenTable...

Other new AI features for Windows 11 rolling out today include a new, AI-powered Generative Erase tool, which sounds reminiscent of Google's Magic Eraser tool for Google Photos. Generative Erase allows users to remove unwanted objects or artifacts from their photos in the Photos app.

Likewise, Microsoft's video editing tool Clipchamp is receiving a Silence Removal tool, which functions much as the name implies  — it allows users to remove gaps in conversation or audio from a video clip.

Voice access is another focal point of Microsoft's latest Windows 11 update, detailed in a separate blog post by Windows Commercial Product Marketing Manager Harjit Dhaliwal. Users can now use voice controls to navigate between multiple displays, aided by number and grid overlays that provide easy switching between screens.
A Copilot icon has already started appearing in the taskbar of some Windows systems. If you Google "microsoft installs copilot preview windows," Google adds these helpful suggestions.

People also ask: Why is Copilot preview on my computer?

How do I get rid of Copilot preview on Windows 10?

"Apparently there was some sort of update..." writes one Windows users. "Anyway, there is a logo at the bottom of the screen that is distracting and I'd like to get rid of it."

Lifehacker has already published an article titled "How to Hide (or Disable) Copilot in Windows 11."

"Artificial intelligence is feeling harder and harder to avoid," it begins, "but you still have options."

An anonymous Slashdot reader shared this report from The Washington Post: A YouTube contractor was addressing the Austin City Council on Thursday, calling on them to urge Google to negotiate with his union, when a colleague interrupted him with jaw-dropping news: His 43-person team of contractors had all been laid off...

The YouTube workers, who work for Google and Cognizant, unanimously voted to unionize under the Alphabet Workers Union-CWA in April 2023. Since then, the workers say that Google has refused to bargain with them. Thursday's layoff signifies continued tensions between Google and its workers, some of whom in 2021 formed a union...

Workers had about 20 minutes to gather their belongings and leave the premises before they were considered trespassing.
Video footage of the moment is embedded at the top of the article. "I was speechless, shocked," said the contractor who'd been speaking. He told the Washington Post "I didn't know what to do. But angered, that was the main feeling." The council meeting was streaming live online and has since spread on social media. The contractors view the layoff as retaliation for unionizing, but Google and information technology subcontractor Cognizant said it was the normal end of a business contract.

The ability for layoffs to spread over social media highlights how the painful experience of a job loss is frequently being made public, from employees sharing recordings of Zoom meetings to posting about their unemployment. The increasing tension between YouTube's contractors and Google comes as massive layoffs continue to hit the tech industry — leaving workers uneasy and companies emboldened. Google already has had rounds of cuts the past two years.

Google has been in a long-running battle with many of its contractors as they seek the perks and high pay that full-time Google workers are accustomed to. The company has tens of thousands of contractors doing everything from food service to sales to writing code... Google maintains that Cognizant is responsible for the contractors' employment and working conditions, and therefore isn't responsible for bargaining with them. Cognizant said it is offering the workers seven weeks of paid time to explore other roles at the company and use its training resources.

Last year, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that Cognizant and Google are joint employers of the contractors. In January, the NLRB sent a cease-and-desist letter to both employers for failing to bargain with the union. Since then the issue of joint employment, which would ultimately determine which company is responsible for bargaining, has landed in an appeals court and has yet to be ruled on.
"Workers say they don't have sick pay, receive minimal benefits and are paid as little as $19 an hour," according to the article, "forcing some to work multiple jobs to make ends meet." Sam Regan, a data analyst contractor for YouTube Music, told the Washington Post that he was one of the last workers to leave the meeting where the layoffs were announced.

"Upon leaving, he heard one of the security guards call the non-emergency police line to report trespassers."