An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: For a while now, many AI researchers have been working to integrate a so-called "world model" into their systems. Ideally, these models could infer a simulated understanding of how in-game objects and characters should behave based on video footage alone, then create fully interactive video that instantly simulates new playable worlds based on that understanding. Microsoft Research's new World and Human Action Model (WHAM), revealed today in a paper published in the journal Nature, shows how quickly those models have advanced in a short time. But it also shows how much further we have to go before the dream of AI crafting complete, playable gameplay footage from just some basic prompts and sample video footage becomes a reality.

Much like Google's Genie model before it, WHAM starts by training on "ground truth" gameplay video and input data provided by actual players. In this case, that data comes from Bleeding Edge, a four-on-four online brawler released in 2020 by Microsoft subsidiary Ninja Theory. By collecting actual player footage since launch (as allowed under the game's user agreement), Microsoft gathered the equivalent of seven player-years' worth of gameplay video paired with real player inputs. Early in that training process, Microsoft Research's Katja Hoffman said the model would get easily confused, generating inconsistent clips that would "deteriorate [into] these blocks of color." After 1 million training updates, though, the WHAM model started showing basic understanding of complex gameplay interactions, such as a power cell item exploding after three hits from the player or the movements of a specific character's flight abilities. The results continued to improve as the researchers threw more computing resources and larger models at the problem, according to the Nature paper.

To see just how well the WHAM model generated new gameplay sequences, Microsoft tested the model by giving it up to one second's worth of real gameplay footage and asking it to generate what subsequent frames would look like based on new simulated inputs. To test the model's consistency, Microsoft used actual human input strings to generate up to two minutes of new AI-generated footage, which was then compared to actual gameplay results using the Frechet Video Distance metric. Microsoft boasts that WHAM's outputs can stay broadly consistent for up to two minutes without falling apart, with simulated footage lining up well with actual footage even as items and environments come in and out of view. That's an improvement over even the "long horizon memory" of Google's Genie 2 model, which topped out at a minute of consistent footage. Microsoft also tested WHAM's ability to respond to a diverse set of randomized inputs not found in its training data. These tests showed broadly appropriate responses to many different input sequences based on human annotations of the resulting footage, even as the best models fell a bit short of the "human-to-human baseline."

The most interesting result of Microsoft's WHAM tests, though, might be in the persistence of in-game objects. Microsoft provided examples of developers inserting images of new in-game objects or characters into pre-existing gameplay footage. The WHAM model could then incorporate that new image into its subsequent generated frames, with appropriate responses to player input or camera movements. With just five edited frames, the new object "persisted" appropriately in subsequent frames anywhere from 85 to 98 percent of the time, according to the Nature paper.

After two decades of quantum computing research, Microsoft has unveiled its first quantum chip: the Majorana 1. CNBC reports: Microsoft's quantum chip employs eight topological qubits using indium arsenide, which is a semiconductor, and aluminum, which is a superconductor. A new paper in the journal Nature describes the chip in detail. Microsoft won't be allowing clients to use its Majorana 1 chip through the company's Azure public cloud, as it plans to do with its custom artificial intelligence chip, Maia 100. Instead, Majorana 1 is a step toward a goal of a million qubits on a chip, following extensive physics research.

Rather than rely on Taiwan Semiconductor or another company for fabrication, Microsoft is manufacturing the components of Majorana 1 itself in the U.S. That's possible because the work is unfolding at a small scale. "We want to get to a few hundred qubits before we start talking about commercial reliability," Jason Zander, a Microsoft executive vice president, told CNBC. In the meantime, the company will engage with national laboratories and universities on research using Majorana 1.

Microsoft has placed its new AI-powered text rewrite feature in Notepad behind a subscription paywall, requiring users to have a Microsoft 365 Personal or Family plan to access the functionality. While the core text editor remains free and accessible without a Microsoft account, the AI feature requires users to sign in and have sufficient "AI credits" included in their subscription.Users can disable the feature and hide its icon if they choose not to subscribe.

Microsoft is reminding IT administrators that WSUS driver synchronization will be deprecated on April 18, 2025, urging them to transition to cloud-based update solutions like Windows Autopatch, Azure Update Manager, and Microsoft Intune. "For on-premises contexts, drivers will be available on the Microsoft Update catalog, but you won't be able to import them into WSUS," the company said in a Windows message center update on Tuesday. "You'll need to use any of the available alternative solutions, such as Device Driver Packages, or transition to cloud-based driver services for your organization, such as Microsoft Intune and Windows Autopatch." BleepingComputer reports: This reminder follows two other warnings issued since June 2024, announcing the deprecation of WSUS driver synchronization and encouraging customers to adopt Redmond's newer cloud-based driver services. The company also revealed in September 2024 that WSUS had been deprecated, but Microsoft added that it plans to keep publishing updates through the channel and maintain all existing capabilities. This announcement came after WSUS was listed on August 13 as one of the "features removed or no longer developed starting with Windows Server 2025."

"Specifically, this means that we are no longer investing in new capabilities, nor are we accepting new feature requests for WSUS," Microsoft's Nir Froimovici said at the time. "However, we are preserving current functionality and will continue to publish updates through the WSUS channel. We will also support any content already published through the WSUS channel."

Former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida has attributed the current wave of video game industry layoffs and slowdown to companies overextending during the COVID-19 pandemic. "I think it's an overreaction to the COVID situation. Companies invested too much, including ourselves. Then we had to face reality and make adjustments," Yoshida told VentureBeat in an interview.

Yoshida, who left Sony in January after 31 years at PlayStation, suggested the industry's growth would have been more stable without the pandemic-driven surge. "If you take out the COVID years you'd have smoother growth over the years," he said. Yoshida's comments come amid widespread job cuts across the gaming sector, including at Sony, Microsoft, Epic Games, and other major publishers following a post-pandemic decline in gaming engagement.

A new study (PDF) from researchers at Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University found that increased reliance on AI tools leads to a decline in critical thinking skills. Gizmodo reports: The researchers tapped 319 knowledge workers -- a person whose job involves handling data or information -- and asked them to self-report details of how they use generative AI tools in the workplace. The participants were asked to report tasks that they were asked to do, how they used AI tools to complete them, how confident they were in the AI's ability to do the task, their ability to evaluate that output, and how confident they were in their own ability to complete the same task without any AI assistance.

Over the course of the study, a pattern revealed itself: the more confident the worker was in the AI's capability to complete the task, the more often they could feel themselves letting their hands off the wheel. The participants reported a "perceived enaction of critical thinking" when they felt like they could rely on the AI tool, presenting the potential for over-reliance on the technology without examination. This was especially true for lower-stakes tasks, the study found, as people tended to be less critical. While it's very human to have your eyes glaze over for a simple task, the researchers warned that this could portend to concerns about "long-term reliance and diminished independent problem-solving."

By contrast, when the workers had less confidence in the ability of AI to complete the assigned task, the more they found themselves engaging in their critical thinking skills. In turn, they typically reported more confidence in their ability to evaluate what the AI produced and improve upon it on their own. Another noteworthy finding of the study: users who had access to generative AI tools tended to produce "a less diverse set of outcomes for the same task" compared to those without.

Hector Martin has resigned as the project lead of Asahi Linux, weeks after stepping down from his role as a Linux kernel maintainer for Apple ARM support. His departure from Asahi follows a contentious exchange with Linus Torvalds over development processes and social media advocacy. After quitting kernel maintenance earlier this month, the conflict escalated when Martin suggested that "shaming on social media" might be necessary to effect change.

Torvalds sharply rejected this approach, stating that "social media brigading just makes me not want to have anything at all to do with your approach" and suggested that Martin himself might be the problem. In his final resignation announcement from Asahi, Martin wrote: "I no longer have any faith left in the kernel development process or community management approach."

The dispute reflects deeper tensions in the Linux kernel community, particularly around the integration of Rust code. It follows the August departure of another key Rust for Linux maintainer, Wedson Almeida Filho from Microsoft. According to Sonatype's research, more than 300,000 open source projects have slowed or halted updates since 2020.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Australia's Department of the Treasury has found that Microsoft's Copilot can easily deliver return on investment, but staff exposed to the AI assistant came away from the experience less confident it will help them at work.

The Department conducted a 14-week trial of Microsoft 365 Copilot during 2024 and asked for volunteers to participate. 218 put up their hands and then submitted to surveys about their experiences using Microsoft's AI helpers. Those surveys are the basis of an evaluation report published on Tuesday. The report reveals that after the trial participants rated Copilot less useful than they hoped it would be, as it was applicable to fewer workloads than they hoped would be the case.

Workers' views on Copilot's ability to improve their work also fell. Usage of Copilot was lower than expected, with most participants using it two or three times a week, or less. reported using Copilot 2-3 times per week or less. Treasury thinks it probably set unrealistically high expectations before the trial, and noted that participants often suggested extra training would be valuable.

A BBC study published yesterday (PDF) found that AI news summarization tools frequently generate inaccurate or misleading summaries, with 51% of responses containing significant issues. The Register reports: The research focused on OpenAI's ChatGPT, Microsoft's Copilot, Google's Gemini, and Perplexity assistants, assessing their ability to provide "accurate responses to questions about the news; and if their answers faithfully represented BBC news stories used as sources." The assistants were granted access to the BBC website for the duration of the research and asked 100 questions about the news, being prompted to draw from BBC News articles as sources where possible. Normally, these models are "blocked" from accessing the broadcaster's websites, the BBC said. Responses were reviewed by BBC journalists, "all experts in the question topics," on their accuracy, impartiality, and how well they represented BBC content. Overall:

- 51 percent of all AI answers to questions about the news were judged to have significant issues of some form.
- 19 percent of AI answers which cited BBC content introduced factual errors -- incorrect factual statements, numbers, and dates.
- 13 percent of the quotes sourced from BBC articles were either altered from the original source or not present in the article cited.

But which chatbot performed worst? "34 percent of Gemini, 27 percent of Copilot, 17 percent of Perplexity, and 15 percent of ChatGPT responses were judged to have significant issues with how they represented the BBC content used as a source," the Beeb reported. "The most common problems were factual inaccuracies, sourcing, and missing context." [...] In an accompanying blog post, BBC News and Current Affairs CEO Deborah Turness wrote: "The price of AI's extraordinary benefits must not be a world where people searching for answers are served distorted, defective content that presents itself as fact. In what can feel like a chaotic world, it surely cannot be right that consumers seeking clarity are met with yet more confusion.

"It's not hard to see how quickly AI's distortion could undermine people's already fragile faith in facts and verified information. We live in troubled times, and how long will it be before an AI-distorted headline causes significant real world harm? The companies developing Gen AI tools are playing with fire." Training cutoff dates for various models certainly don't help, yet the research lays bare the weaknesses of generative AI in summarizing content. Even with direct access to the information they are being asked about, these assistants still regularly pull "facts" from thin air.

Most corporate tech leaders are hesitant to deploy AI agents despite vendors' push for rapid adoption, according to a Wall Street Journal CIO Network Summit poll on Tuesday. While 61% of attendees at the Menlo Park summit said they are experimenting with AI agents, which perform automated tasks, 21% reported no usage at all.

Reliability concerns and cybersecurity risks remain key barriers, with 29% citing data privacy as their primary concern. OpenAI, Microsoft and Sierra are urging businesses not to wait for the technology to be perfected. "Accept that it is imperfect," said Bret Taylor, Sierra CEO and OpenAI chairman. "Rather than say, 'Will AI do something wrong', say, 'When it does something wrong, what are the operational mitigations that we've put in place?'" Three-quarters of the polled executives said AI currently delivers minimal value for their investments. Some companies are "having hammers looking for nails," said Jim Siders, Palantir's chief information officer, describing firms that purchase AI solutions before identifying clear use cases.

Anduril will take over management and eventual manufacturing of the U.S. Army's Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) from Microsoft, a significant shift in one of the military's most ambitious augmented reality projects.

The deal, which requires Army approval, could be worth over $20 billion in the next decade if all options are exercised, according to Bloomberg. The IVAS system, based on Microsoft's HoloLens mixed reality platform, aims to equip soldiers with advanced capabilities including night vision and airborne threat detection.

Under the new arrangement, Microsoft will transition to providing cloud computing and AI infrastructure, while Anduril assumes control of hardware production and software development. The Army has planned orders for up to 121,000 units, though full production hinges on passing combat testing this year.

The program has faced technical hurdles, with early prototypes causing headaches and nausea among soldiers. The current slimmer version has received better feedback, though cost remains a concern - the Army indicated the $80,000 per-unit price needs to "be substantially less" to justify large-scale procurement.

Anduril founder Palmer Luckey, writing in a blog post: This move has been so many years in the making, over a decade of hacking and scheming and dreaming and building with exactly this specific outcome clearly visualized in my mind's eye. I can hardly believe I managed to pull it off. Everything I've done in my career -- building Oculus out of a camper trailer, shipping VR to millions of consumers, getting run out of Silicon Valley by backstabbing snakes, betting that Anduril could tear people out of the bigtech megacorp matrix and put them to work on our nation's most important problems -- has led to this moment. IVAS isn't just another product, it is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to redefine how technology supports those who serve. We have a shot to prove that this long-standing dream is no windmill, that this can expand far beyond one company or one headset and act as a a nexus for the best of the best to set a new standard for how a large collection of companies can work together to solve our nation's most important problems.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft has offered to widen the price differential between its Office product sold with its chat and video app Teams and its software sold without the app in a bid to avert a possible EU antitrust fine, according to three sources. The move by the U.S. tech giant comes five years after Salesforce-owned Slack complained to the European Commission about Microsoft's tying of Teams with Office. In 2023, German rival alfaview filed a similar grievance to the EU watchdog. Teams, which was added to Office 365 in 2017 for free and eventually replaced Skype for Business, became popular during the pandemic due in part to its video conferencing.

An anonymous reader shares a report: A new paper [PDF] from researchers at Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University finds that as humans increasingly rely on generative AI in their work, they use less critical thinking, which can "result in the deterioration of cognitive faculties that ought to be preserved."

"[A] key irony of automation is that by mechanising routine tasks and leaving exception-handling to the human user, you deprive the user of the routine opportunities to practice their judgement and strengthen their cognitive musculature, leaving them atrophied and unprepared when the exceptions do arise," the researchers wrote.

Fortune remembers that in 2011 Steve Jobs had told author Walter Isaacson that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates would "be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger."

But The Indendepent notes that in his new memoir Gates does write about two acid trip experiences. (Gates mis-timed his first experiment with LSD, ending up still tripping during a previously-scheduled appointment for dental surgery...) "Later in the book, Gates recounts another experience with LSD with future Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and some friends... Gates says in the book that it was the fear of damaging his memory that finally persuaded him never to take the drug again." He added: "I smoked pot in high school, but not because it did anything interesting. I thought maybe I would look cool and some girl would think that was interesting. It didn't succeed, so I gave it up."

Gates went on to say that former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who didn't know about his past drug use, teased him on the subject. "Steve Jobs once said that he wished I'd take acid because then maybe I would have had more taste in my design of my products," recalled Gates. "My response to that was to say, 'Look, I got the wrong batch.' I got the coding batch, and this guy got the marketing-design batch, so good for him! Because his talents and mine, other than being kind of an energetic leader, and pushing the limits, they didn't overlap much. He wouldn't know what a line of code meant, and his ability to think about design and marketing and things like that... I envy those skills. I'm not in his league."

Gates added that he was a fan of Michael Pollan's book about psychedelic drugs, How To Change Your Mind, and is intrigued by the idea that they may have therapeutic uses. "The idea that some of these drugs that affect your mind might help with depression or OCD, I think that's fascinating," said Gates. "Of course, we have to be careful, and that's very different than recreational usage."
Touring the country, 69-year-old Gates shared more glimpses of his life story:

• The Harvard Gazette notes that the university didn't offer computer science degrees when Gates attended in 1973. But since Gates already had years of code-writing experience, he "initially rebuffed any suggestion of taking computer-related coursework... 'It's too easy,' he remembered telling friends."

• "The naiveté I had that free computing would just be this unadulterated good thing wasn't totally correct even before AI," Gates told an audience at the Harvard Book Store. "And now with AI, I can see that we could shape this in the wrong way."

• Gates "expressed regret about how he treated another boyhood friend, Paul Allen, the other cofounder of Microsoft, who died in 2018," reports the Boston Globe. "Gates at first took 60 percent ownership of the new software company and then pressured his friend for another 4 percent. 'I feel bad about it in retrospect,' he said. 'That was always a little complicated, and I wish I hadn't pushed....'"

• Business Insider adds that according to his memoir, Gates "eventually gave his additional 4% stake to [Steve] Ballmer to convince him to quit business school for Microsoft. 'He joined in 1980 and became the 24-hour-a-day partner I needed,' Gates wrote."

• Benzinga writes that Gates has now "donated $100 billion to charitable causes... Had Gates retained the $100 billion he has donated, his total wealth would be around $264 billion, placing him second on the global wealth rankings behind Elon Musk and ahead of Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg."

• Gates told the Associated Press "I am stunned that Intel basically lost its way," saying Intel is now "kind of behind" on both chip design and fabrication. "They missed the AI chip revolution, and with their fabrication capabilities, they don't even use standards that people like Nvidia and Qualcomm find easy... I hope Intel recovers, but it looks pretty tough for them at this stage."

• Gates also told the Associated Press that fighting a three-year antitrust case had "distracted" Microsoft. "The area that Google did well in that would not have happened had I not been distracted is Android, where it was a natural thing for me. I was trying, although what I didn't do well enough is provide the operating system for the phone. That was ours for the taking."

• The Dallas News reports that in an on-stage interview in Texas, Mark Cuban closed by asking Gates one question. "Is the American Dream alive?" Gates answered: "It was for me."

Keynotes at this year's FOSDEM included free AI models and systemd, reports Heise.de — and also a progress report from Miguel Ojeda, supervisor of the Rust integration in the Linux kernel. Only eight people remain in the core team around Rust for Linux... Miguel Ojeda therefore launched a survey among kernel developers, including those outside the Rust community, and presented some of the more important voices in his FOSDEM talk. The overall mood towards Rust remains favorable, especially as Linus Torvalds and Greg Kroah-Hartman are convinced of the necessity of Rust integration. This is less about rapid progress and more about finding new talent for kernel development in the future.
The reaction was mostly positive, judging by Ojeda's slides:

- "2025 will be the year of Rust GPU drivers..." — Daniel Almedia

- "I think the introduction of Rust in the kernel is one of the most exciting development experiments we've seen in a long time." — Andrea Righi

- "[T]he project faces unique challenges. Rust's biggest weakness, as a language, is that relatively few people speak it. Indeed, Rust is not a language for beginners, and systems-level development complicates things even more. That said, the Linux kernel project has historically attracted developers who love challenging software — if there's an open source group willing to put the extra effort for a better OS, it's the kernel devs." — Carlos Bilbao

- "I played a little with [Rust] in user space, and I just absolutely hate the cargo concept... I hate having to pull down other code that I do not trust. At least with shared libraries, I can trust a third party to have done the build and all that... [While Rust should continue to grow in the kernel], if a subset of C becomes as safe as Rust, it may make Rust obsolete..." Steven Rostedt

Rostedt wasn't sure if Rust would attract more kernel contributors, but did venture this opinion. "I feel Rust is more of a language that younger developers want to learn, and C is their dad's language."

But still "contention exists within the kernel development community between those pro-Rust and -C camps," argues The New Stack, citing the latest remarks from kernel maintainer Christoph Hellwig (who had earlier likened the mixing of Rust and C to cancer). Three days later Hellwig reiterated his position again on the Linux kernel mailing list: "Every additional bit that another language creeps in drastically reduces the maintainability of the kernel as an integrated project. The only reason Linux managed to survive so long is by not having internal boundaries, and adding another language completely breaks this. You might not like my answer, but I will do everything I can do to stop this. This is NOT because I hate Rust. While not my favourite language it's definitively one of the best new ones and I encourage people to use it for new projects where it fits. I do not want it anywhere near a huge C code base that I need to maintain."
But the article also notes that Google "has been a staunch supporter of adding Rust to the kernel for Linux running in its Android phones." The use of Rust in the kernel is seen as a way to avoid memory vulnerabilities associated with C and C++ code and to add more stability to the Android OS. "Google's wanting to replace C code with Rust represents a small piece of the kernel but it would have a huge impact since we are talking about billions of phones," Ojeda told me after his talk.

In addition to Google, Rust adoption and enthusiasm for it is increasing as Rust gets more architectural support and as "maintainers become more comfortable with it," Ojeda told me. "Maintainers have already told me that if they could, then they would start writing Rust now," Ojeda said. "If they could drop C, they would do it...."

Amid the controversy, there has been a steady stream of vocal support for Ojeda. Much of his discussion also covered statements given by advocates for Rust in the kernel, ranging from lead developers of the kernel and including Linux creator Linus Torvalds himself to technology leads from Red Hat, Samsung, Google, Microsoft and others.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Users are now receiving notifications regarding their Microsoft 365 subscriptions and must take action if they wish to avoid Copilot and its extra charges.

The email from Microsoft warns that the cost of a 365 Personal Subscription will jump, however, there is no need to worry -- Microsoft knows what's best and will increase your payment in return for all those AI-powered Copilot services it knows you want.

We noted the upcoming increases last month and how users could turn off the generative AI assistant. At the time, Microsoft said users would be able to switch to plans without Copilot. However, unless a user takes action, the price they pay for their "Current Subscription" will increase, and AI-powered delights will be added to their plan.

The Entertainment Software Association is launching a new gaming event to replace E3, which was permanently canceled in 2023. According to Engadget, the new event is called iicon (short for "interactive innovation conference") and will feature many of the same major gaming companies that once participated in E3. "Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, Disney, EA, Epic Games, Ubisoft, Square Enix, Take Two Interactive, Amazon Games and Warner Bros. Games are all named as participants." From the report: [T]he announcements on social media promote iicon as being for "visionaries," "changemakers" and "innovators," so our best guess is that this event will swing more toward the corporate side of gaming where people might use that language unironically. If that's the case, this won't really be a replacement for the heyday of E3, when studios big and small would showcase their upcoming projects and drop internet-breaking surprises. Instead, the inaugural event in April 2026 sounds like it will focus more on moving the needle, brand alignments and synergy.

A heated dispute has erupted in the Linux kernel community over the integration of Rust code, with kernel maintainer Christoph Hellwig likening multiple programming languages to "cancer" for the project's maintainability. The conflict centers on a proposed patch enabling Rust-written device drivers to access the kernel's DMA API, which Hellwig strongly opposed. While the dispute isn't about Rust itself, Hellwig argues that maintaining cross-language codebases severely compromises Linux's integrated nature. From a report: "Don't force me to deal with your shiny language of the day," he [Hellwig] wrote. "Maintaining multi-language projects is a pain I have no interest in dealing with. If you want to use something that's not C, be that assembly or Rust, you write to C interfaces and deal with the impedance mismatch yourself as far as I'm concerned." This resistance follows the September departure of Microsoft engineer Wedson Almeida Filho from the Rust for Linux project, citing "nontechnical nonsense."

Microsoft will charge commercial customers $61 per device in the first year to continue receiving Windows 10 security updates after support ends, The Register wrote in a PSA note Wednesday, citing text, with costs doubling each subsequent year for up to three years.

Organizations can't skip initial years to save money, as the updates are cumulative. Some users may avoid fees if they connect Windows 10 endpoints to Windows 365 Cloud PCs. The program also covers Windows 10 virtual machines running on Windows 365 or Azure Virtual Desktop for three years with an active Windows 365 subscription.

Google parent Alphabet plans to spend $75 billion on capital expenditures in 2025, up from $52.5 billion last year, as it races to compete with Microsoft and Meta in AI infrastructure. CNBC: On its earnings call, Alphabet said it expects $16 billion to $18 billion of those expenses to come in the first quarter. Overall, the expenditures will go toward "technical infrastructure, primarily for servers, followed by data centers and networking," finance chief Anat Ashkenazi said.

[...] Alphabet and its megacap tech rivals are rushing to build out their data centers with next-generation AI infrastructure, packed with Nvidia's graphics processing units, or GPUs. Last month, Meta said it plans to invest $60 billion to $65 billion this year as part of its AI push. Microsoft has committed to $80 billion in AI-related capital expenditures in its current fiscal year.