Category: Technology

The CEOs of leading AI companies — including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai, Tesla’s Elon Musk and Open AI’s Sam Altman — appeared before Congress once again on Wednesday. But instead of the normal bombast and soapboxing we see during public hearings about the dangers of unfettered AI development, this conversation reportedly took on far more muted tones. 

In all, more than 20 tech and civil society leaders spoke with lawmakers at Wednesday’s meeting, organized by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, to discuss how AI development should be regulated moving forward. Senators Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Todd Young (R-IN) and Mike Rounds (R-SD) who were also in attendance and reportedly working with the majority leader to draft additional proposals. 

The word of the day: consensus. “First, I asked everyone in the room, ‘Is government needed to play a role in regulating AI?’ and every single person raised their hands even though they had diverse views,” Schumer told reporters Wednesday. 

But as Bloomberg reports, “areas of disagreement were apparent throughout the morning session” with Zuckerberg, Altman and Bill Gates all differing on the risks posed by open-source AI (three guesses as to where old Monopoly Bill came down on that issue). True to form, Elon Musk got into it with “Berkeley researcher Deb Raji for appearing to downplay concerns about AI-powered self-driving cars, according to one of the people in the room,” Bloomberg reports.

“Some people mentioned licensing and testing and other ways of regulation … there were various suggestions as to how to do it, but no consensus emerged yet,” Schumer said following the event.

“That’s probably the worst wedding to try to do seating for,” Humane Intelligence CEO Rumman Chowdhury said of the event as an attendee. She also noted that Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg did not interact and sat at opposite ends of the room-width table — presumably to keep the two bloodthirsty cagefighting CEOs from throwing down and Royal Rumbling the esteemed proceedings.

The meeting participants generally agreed that the federal government needs to “help to deal with what we call transformational innovation,” one unnamed participant suggested. That could entail creating a $32 billion fund that would assist with “the kind of stuff that maximizes the benefits of AI,” Schumer told reporters.

Following the seven-hour event, Facebook released Mark Zuckerberg’s official remarks. They cover the company’s long-standing talking points about developing and rolling out the technology “in a responsible manner,” coordinating its efforts with civil society leaders (instead of say, allegedly fomenting genocide like that one time in Myanmar) and ensuring “that America continue to lead in this area and define the technical standard that the world uses.” 

In a departure from his rhetoric in recent years warning of perceived growing threats from China, Zuckerberg pointed to a new boogieman: “the next leading open source model … out of Abu Dhabi.”  This appears to have been a thinly-veiled reference to the UAE’s recent entrance into AI development. 

Elon Musk, famed libertarian and bloodsworn enemy of the FTC, warned reporters corralled outside of the hearing about the “civilizational risk” posed by AI. He wants a Federal Department of AI to help regulate the industry. He reportedly envisions it operating similarly to the FAA or SEC (two more agencies Musk has been variously scolded by) but did not elaborate beyond that. “I think this meeting could go down in history as important to the future of civilization,” he told reporters.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai-tech-leaders-make-all-the-right-noises-at-cozy-closed-door-senate-meeting-194505318.html?src=rss 

Major League Baseball is ready to test its virtual ballpark for a regular-season game. Fans can “enter” the digital stadium on Wednesday, September 20, to watch the Tampa Bay Rays host the Los Angeles Angels. The league debuted the digital park earlier this summer for a celebrity softball game during this year’s All-Star Game activities. Next week’s game will mark the first non-exhibition game to deploy the metaverse-like digital park.

The game will include a “3D representation” of on-field avatars corresponding to the game’s real-time action, tracked using the same Sony Hawk-Eye cameras used for the league’s Statcast data. In addition, participants who prefer a traditional view can watch the game’s television broadcast on the virtual park’s giant Jumbotrons floating around the field and parking lot. There should be plenty to keep you occupied if the on-field play gets dull: The stadium supports spatial audio, and you can talk with nearby fans, play trivia games and take part in a scavenger hunt to win NFT collectible “cards.”

The entire setup sounds like something you’d eventually use with a VR or AR headset like the Meta Quest or Apple’s upcoming Vision Pro. While it may be a precursor to those more immersive experiences, you’ll access this game on flat screens through a web browser. MLB says a desktop or laptop provides the best experience, but it recommends Safari on iOS or Chrome on Android if you want to tune in on mobile.

The experience begins at 6:40PM ET on September 20. You’ll need to create an MLB profile to join. After that, you can head to the park’s webpage to create a custom avatar (rocking your favorite team’s apparel) and start exploring.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-angels-face-the-marlins-in-mlbs-first-regular-season-virtual-ballpark-game-202934979.html?src=rss 

You might see more sponsored recommendations when you fire up your Spotify app, now that the music streaming giant has started offering artists a new paid tool they can use to promote their music. “Showcase” gives artists a way to put their music in front of more people, whether their tunes are newly released or are something from deep in their catalog. They can create multiple campaigns for different content, and they can use Spotlight to promote not just singles, but also EPs and albums. 

These sponsored recommendations will appear under various headlines — succinct information about them designed to get your attention, really — provided by Spotify, depending on what the artist’s team chooses. They can promote their stuff as “new music,” for instance, or use the headline “on tour,” if they’re on the road and want to drum up more interest. In the image above, the single that’s being promoted entitled White Winter Hymnal uses the headline “seasonal vibes.” In addition, artists can choose the people they want to target and can go for both active listeners and previous ones. 

According to Spotify, Showcase ads will be shown in 30 markets. The streaming giant also claims that people who do see them are six times more likely to stream whatever it is being promoted. If you stream music you’ve seen through a particular Showcase ad, you won’t see it again for 28 days. Musicians are charged per click, after all, with prices starting at 40 cents. Initially, though, Spotify will only offer Showcase to artists with at least 1,000 streams over the past 28 days and whose billing country is set to the US. It will roll out the tool within the Campaigns tab for eligible artists in the US over the coming weeks, but it says it will expand access to it worldwide over time. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/spotify-will-promote-artists-music-on-your-home-feed-if-they-pay-105740700.html?src=rss 

Caesars Entertainment reportedly paid “tens of millions of dollars” to hackers who threatened to release company data, Bloomberg has reported. The attack was reportedly perpetrated by a group called Scattered Spider (aka UNC 3944), a group skilled at using social engineering to bypass corporate network security. It’s the second notable attack of a Las Vegas casino group, following a hack that caused a cyber outage at MGM Resorts. 

Members of the hacking group are reportedly located in the US and UK and are as young as 19 years old. They began targeting Caesars as early as August 27th, and obtained access to an outside vendor before entering the company’s network, according to the report. Caesars is expected to disclose the attack “imminently” in a regulatory filing. 

Scattered Spider has reportedly been activate since May of 2022, and has largely attacked telecom and business outsourcing organizations, according to Trellix. The group is known to impersonate IT personnel and uses social engineering to persuade company officials to rum remote monitoring and other tools. From there, they exploit vulnerabilities and use tools like “Stonestop” to evade security software. Security Week describes them as a “financially-motivated threat actor.” 

The group has been implicated in the MGM Resorts cyber outage as well, though another ransomware group called ALPHV/BlackCat also took credit. ALPHV also claims to have used social engineering to get inside, saying it took just a ten minute conversation to gain access. MGM has reportedly declined to pay the demanded ransom.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/caesars-reportedly-paid-millions-to-stop-hackers-releasing-its-data-081052820.html?src=rss 

Mac users who want to play Baldur’s Gate III on their computers only have to wait a few more days: Larian Studios has announced that the full version of the game will be available for Mac on September 21. It has been available for the OS for quite some time, but as a limited, early access version. Fans can only play the first act of the game and can’t go any further than what the developer previously described as “approximately 25 hours of self-contained content.” Soon, Mac gamers will be able to continue playing until they reach the Moonrise Towers and until secrets are revealed in the third act. 

Baldur’s Gate III was initially released for Windows PCs on August 3 before it came out for the PlayStation 5 earlier this month. For consoles, it remains a PlayStation 5 exclusive, but not because the developer struck a deal with Sony Entertainment. What happened was Larian Studios couldn’t cross a technical hurdle, preventing it from launching the game on Xbox at the same it came out for the PS5. 

Microsoft has rules requiring developers to ensure that games released for the Series S and Series X have the same features. In Larian Studios’ case, it couldn’t make the game’s split-screen coop feature work on the less powerful Series S. After meeting with Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer, though, the developer was given permission to release the title for the Series S without the split-screen function but with cross-save progression between Steam and the two Xbox consoles. The Xbox version of Baldur’s Gate III doesn’t have an exact release date yet, but it’s expected to come out before the year ends. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/baldurs-gate-iii-will-be-fully-available-for-mac-users-on-september-21-054650964.html?src=rss 

Wondering what you’ll be playing on your PlayStation 5 this fall? Sony has some ideas. The company announced that its next State of Play stream will take place at 5PM ET on September 14, hosted on PlayStation’s YouTube, Twitch and TikTok accounts. While the stream’s announcement promises to have “something for everyone,” including updates on major releases and PS VR2, don’t expect a lot of big reveals: Sony says that the showcase will have a strong focus on indie and third party titles, and will primarily feature updates to previously announced games.

If you can’t bear to wait until Thursday evening, however, you may be able to get some clues from the Nintendo Direct stream happening earlier that same day. While the Switch-focused stream won’t give you any clues about PlayStation’s flagship updates, there’s a good chance some of the third party announcements featured on the Nintendo Direct will be at Sony’s showcase, too. If nothing else, the State of Play should give us a good idea of what fans might be playing on the upcoming PlayStation Portal streaming device when it launches this fall.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/playstation-is-hosting-a-surprise-state-of-play-on-september-14-000143525.html?src=rss 

AI is just about everywhere lately, but nobody expected it to be used as a salvo in the ongoing cola wars. Coca-Cola, however, has other plans, as it just launched a new flavor co-created by artificial intelligence. The company’s calling it the soda “from the future” and it’s available for a limited time in both regular and zero sugar varieties, as reported by CNBC.

It’s called Y3000, which is certainly a futuristic-sounding name, though it calls to mind Skynet and its army of evil Terminators more than a refreshing beverage. Coke hasn’t released any information as to how it actually tastes, but testers describe it as resembling a raspberry slushy.

The company did release info on the creation process. It all started with researchers collecting flavor preferences from consumers, looking for trends to understand what the “future tastes like.” Next, this data was fed into a proprietary artificial intelligence system to help create the flavor profile. Before you know it, a new baby soda was born. What a mitzvah.

Doing its best Secret Invasion impression, Coke also tasked AI to help design the artwork on the slim can. The cans have a beachy, neon-purple vibe that absolutely calls to mind an image generation platform like Dall-E or Midjourney. There are also traditionally-sized bottles filled with the futuristic fluid.

Y3000 is described as a limited edition flavor, but Coke hasn’t said when the soda would head to the scrapheap to join other futuristic foods, like Dippin’ Dots freeze-dried ice cream and the transparent (and awful) Crystal Pepsi. It should stick around through the fall, though, as Coca-Cola also announced a partnership with luxury streetwear brand Ambush to release a Y3000-themed clothing collection later in the season. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/coca-colas-ai-generated-soda-tastes-like-marketing-184556330.html?src=rss