Kalakshar US

In a surprise shakeup of its c-suite Friday, OpenAI’s board of directors announced that CEO Sam Altman has been fired and will be leaving both the company and the board, effective immediately. Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati has been named interim CEO.

Altman’s oustering reportedly follows an internal “deliberative review process” which found he had not been “consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities,” the company announced. As such, “the board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.”

OpenAI, which owns popular AI chatbot ChatGPT, thanked Altman’ for his “many contributions to the founding and growth of OpenAI,” but believes that “as the leader of the company’s research, product, and safety functions, Mira is exceptionally qualified to step into the role of interim CEO.” The board added it has “the utmost confidence in her ability to lead OpenAI during this transition period.”

OpenAI’s board is comprised of the company’s Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever, as well as Chairman and President Greg Brockman. Independent advisors, who hold no equity in the company, are also board members: Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo, tech entrepreneur Tasha McCauley and privacy advocate Helen Toner of the Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology. Altman was also considered an independent advisor on the board, despite being CEO of the company prior to his departure.

Altman’s personal profile has grown alongside the meteoric rise of generative AI technologies over the past year, making him something of an unofficial face for both OpenAI and the burgeoning industry as a whole. Previously the president of Y Combinator, Alman has appeared before Congressional panels and committees, attended both Senate AI Insight forums, and made numerous rounds at industry conferences.

On Thursday. Altman attended the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation CEO Summit in San Francisco. “Something has qualitatively changed,” he said during the event. “Now I can talk to this thing. It’s like the ‘Star Trek’ computer I was always promised. … I think a lot of the world has collectively gone through a lurch this year to catch up.”

Altman and Murati aren’t the only ones caught in this shuffle. Brockman will also be stepping down from his role as board president but will remain at OpenAI, reporting to the new CEO.

Altman co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and has served as its CEO since 2019. The company’s ultra-popular ChatGPT conversational AI is credited with kickstarting the generative AI boom with its release last November. The system, built atop the GPT-3.5 (then GPT-4, now GPT-4 Turbo) platform, initially enabled users to converse with a digital agent — more capable than the previous generation of Siri, Alexa and Assistant — using natural language. Those capabilities quickly expanded to include myriad languages and modalities, the generation of computer code, controlling remote processes and devices through API access.   

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/openai-ceo-sam-altman-ousted-as-board-no-longer-has-confidence-in-his-leadership-204924006.html?src=rss 

In a dramatic reversal, Apple announced this week it would offer RCS support starting in 2024. The decision effectively ends one of the most protracted and confusing conflicts between iOS and Android. If you’re not sure what any of that means, don’t worry: We’re about to lay out what could change with Apple’s adoption of the GSMA’s next-generation messaging protocol. 

What is SMS?

Short Message Service (SMS) is one of the most ubiquitous messaging protocols on the planet. It dates back to the early days of mobile technology. In December 1992, Neil Papworth, at the time an engineer at Vodafone, sent the first SMS text message when he wished his boss “Merry Christmas.” By the start of 2011, approximately 80 percent of all mobile phone users globally — an estimated 3.5 billion people — were sending SMS messages every month.

In 2023, however, the standard has some notable drawbacks. SMS messages are limited to 160 characters, and texts you send can’t include photos, videos, audio or GIFs. For that, cell phones have long turned to a supporting protocol known as Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), but it too has its share of technical limitations, including woefully small message size limits. SMS also doesn’t support end-to-end encryption.

But for all the ways SMS feels dated in an era dominated by instant messaging platforms, it has one defining advantage: SMS messages are routed through your carrier’s mobile network, meaning a data plan isn’t necessary to use the technology. That fact has meant SMS has often served as a fallback for more advanced protocols, including iMessage.

What is RCS?

RCS is short for Rich Communication Services, though sometimes it is also marketed as “Advanced Messaging.” Either way, it’s often positioned as a next-generation replacement for SMS and MMS. RCS allows users to take advantage of many features that were previously exclusive to over-the-top messaging platforms like WhatsApp.

For instance, the RCS Universal Profile includes full support for read receipts and typing indicators. It can also facilitate proper group chats, and allow users to send high-resolution images, video and audio clips. As of earlier this year, Google’s implementation of RCS also offers by default end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for both one-on-one and group chats.

Unlike SMS texts, RCS messages are routed over a mobile data connection or Wi-Fi link, with SMS functioning as a fallback. For that reason, the older protocol likely isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

One thing that’s important to remember about RCS is that it is not and has never been envisioned as a replacement or competitor to instant messaging apps. At its heart, RCS is a communication protocol between mobile telephone carriers and between a phone and carrier. Taking advantage of RCS does not require signing up for a new service. As long as your phone and carrier support RCS, and you’re using a compatible app such as Messages by Google, you can take advantage of everything the protocol has to offer — provided, of course, the person or people you’re messaging meet those same requirements.

How does iMessage fit into all this?

Apple announced iMessage in June 2011, a few short months before Steve Jobs died later that same year. Unlike RCS, iMessage is a proprietary messaging protocol controlled exclusively by Apple and available (barring some unofficial workarounds) only on iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Mac devices. Starting in 2024, Apple plans to integrate support for RCS in its Messages app. However, at the moment the two protocols do not communicate with one another. As such, Apple’s Messages app will default to SMS/MMS when users attempt to send texts and media files to someone with an Android phone.

From the perspective of an iMessage user, it can feel like Android users are stuck in a bygone messaging era — even though the latter is not at fault for the situation. Due to iMessage’s reliance on SMS/MMS for Android communication, media files end up pixelated, there aren’t any read receipts or typing indicators and forget about trying to involve multiple iPhone and Android users in a single group chat.

How did we get here?

Although work on RCS began before Apple announced iMessage, the protocol had one major disadvantage that doomed it to a slow rollout. RCS is a multi-stakeholder project that includes the involvement of the GSMA, a trade body that represents the interests of the mobile communications industry at large. In 2015, Google took a more active role in the proliferation of RCS when it acquired Jibe Mobile. With Jibe’s technology as a base, it’s effectively Google that provides the glue that binds the RCS ecosystem together, but for a long time, the company did a poor job of aligning everyone involved in RCS toward a shared goal.

In fact, the early days of RCS were marked by false starts, with some carriers, including a group made up of AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon forming a short-lived joint venture to push the protocol forward before eventually aligning themselves with Google. Even Samsung did its own thing for a while before it too eventually agreed to make Messages by Google the default messaging app it ships on phones in the US.

For that reason, Apple has had little reason to adopt RCS. After all, why would it give a bumbling competitor a freebie? And as recently as last year, it seemed there was little to no chance the situation was going to change anytime soon. “I don’t hear our users asking that we put a lot of energy into that,” Apple CEO Tim Cook told the Code Conference in 2022 when he was asked about RCS messaging. “Buy your mom an iPhone” was his final word on the matter.

But it was also last year that the European Union passed its landmark Digital Markets and Services Act (DMA). The legislation requires “gatekeepers” to not favor their own systems or limit third parties from interoperating within them. Gatekeepers are any company that meets specific financial and usage qualifications. Apple, according to the law, is one such company. 

At the start of November, Google sent the European Commission arguing that iMessage violates the DMA. It’s probably not an accident that Apple’s RCS announcement coincided with the deadline for companies to file challenges to the DMA at the EU’s General Court. On Friday, the EU announced Apple is contesting its DMA assignments. The details of the company’s complaints aren’t public, but Bloomberg reported last week Apple was planning to challenge the gatekeeper designations of both iMessage and the App Store.

Does Apple’s support of RCS mean the end of green text bubbles on iPhone?

It’s too early to tell. On Thursday, Apple provided precious few details about how it plans to display and treat RCS messages on its devices. What’s more, the company did note that iMessage “will continue to be the best and most secure messaging experience for Apple users.” That said, even if you take that statement to mean iMessage will continue to display texts from non-Apple devices differently from those sent from an iPhone, iPad or Mac, Apple’s adoption of RCS will lead to a better user experience for both iOS and Android users.

Again, Apple needs to provide specifics, but it’s easy to envision a future where its Messages app, thanks to RCS, properly displays high-resolution images and videos sent from Android phones, and allows both iOS and Android users to take part in group chats without something breaking. On Thursday, Apple also said it would work with GSMA members to improve the existing Universal Profile protocol, with a focus on adding end-to-end encryption to the standard.

Of course, whether that interoperability ends the stigma around green bubbles is harder to answer.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/what-is-rcs-and-how-is-it-different-from-sms-and-imessage-202334057.html?src=rss 

Amazon is sacking employees in its Alexa division even as it prepares to upgrade Alexa to be as smart as modern AI-powered chatbots like ChatGPT. The move will impact several hundred employees in the US, Canada, and India, according to an internal email sent on Friday.

“As we continue to invent, we’re shifting some of our efforts to better align with our business priorities, and what we know matters most to customers — which includes maximizing our resources and efforts focused on generative AI,” wrote Daniel Bausch, Amazon’s vice president of Alexa and Fire TV in the email, first obtained by GeekWire. “These shifts are leading us to discontinue some initiatives, which is resulting in several hundred roles being eliminated.”

An Amazon spokesperson confirmed to Engadget that the company was, indeed, laying off “several hundred” people in the division and said that Amazon was trying to find roles for those impacted wherever possible. “While this was a hard decision to make, we remain very optimistic about the future of Alexa,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “As we move forward, Alexa remains an incredibly important part of our business, and we will continue to invest and innovate to deliver on our vision.” The spokesperson did not say which initiatives were being discontinued.

Amazon released Alexa in 2014. But nearly ten years later, most people don’t use the digital assistant for anything beyond playing music, asking for the weather, or setting timers. OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which was powered by generative AI, was widely perceived to be smarter than Alexa and Siri, which sometimes struggle with basic requests. A few months ago, OpenAI added voice capabilities to ChatGPT, letting people have conversations with it in natural language.

In September, Amazon announced that it would upgrade Alexa with capabilities that would bring it closer in line with ChatGPT. Alexa will soon be powered by a large language model, the same foundational technology that is the basis of modern chatbots like ChatGPT. “Our latest model has been specifically optimized for voice,” David Limp, Amazon’s SVP of Devices & Services, told the audience at the company’s event that month, “and the things we know our customers love — like having access to real-time information, efficiently controlling their smart home, and getting the most out of their home entertainment.” Earlier this year, Limp announced he would leave Amazon after more than 13 years later this year and is now the CEO of Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin.

The new upgrades to Alexa will mean that you won’t have to say “Alexa” each time you want something done. You’ll also be able to give complex requests, like asking the assistant to prepare the house for bedtime every weeknight at 9 PM, dim the lights, lock the doors, and set the temperature all at one go. Alexa will also be able to hold longer conversations and maintain the context of the discussion.

Amazon has so far laid off more than 27,000 employees across the company after it began mass-scale cutbacks a year ago for the first time in its history. Last week, the company cut 180 jobs from its gaming division, including the entire staff of Crown, a company-backed Twitch channel. Earlier this month, Amazon also laid off an unspecified number of employees in its music streaming unit and has previously cut more than 100 employees from its gaming divisions.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazon-is-laying-off-several-hundred-employees-working-on-alexa-190339189.html?src=rss 

Half-Life is one of the greatest video games of all time and just ahead of its 25th anniversary on Sunday, Valve has released a major update for the first-person shooter. For one thing, the base game now includes Half-Life Uplink. This was a demo of Half-Life, but most of its content doesn’t appear in the original game.

Uplink was initially available on CDs that came free with magazines (remember those?) and hardware like sound cards. It’s also been available on the internet for a while for those who know where to look. But now players can access it by clicking the New Game button in Half-Life itself.

On top of that, Valve has added four spanking new multiplayer maps. Some might seem familiar, such as one based on an abandoned Xen outpost and another set at an old orbital satellite launch facility. “If we could switch on the oxygen lines, power, and fuel, we might just be able to light this candle,” Valve said. The company has added three other maps that were originally available on a disc called Half-Life: Further Data.

You can now, at long last, play the original Half-Life in widescreen without having to resort to mods or the fan remake Black Mesa. Valve has added controller support along with a string of other under-the-hood updates, UI tweaks and bug fixes. Steam Networking support should make multiplayer smoother too.

Although it’s a critical part of Valve’s history, Half-Life hadn’t been Verified for Steam Deck until now. It instead bore the Playable label. “We finally put our game through our own ‘Verified’ tests, and… we failed super hard,” Valve wrote. “So we fixed it! After re-testing the game, Half-Life gets to officially wear the green checkmark.” So, that means it should run on your new Steam Deck OLED without a hitch.

Best of all, in case you somehow don’t already have it in your library, Half-Life is free on Steam until November 20. Various Half-Life and Valve bundles are on sale too, while Half-Life Alyx is 66 percent off at $20.39.

It’s worth noting that Valve now considers the anniversary edition of Half-Life “to be the definitive version, and the one we’ll continue to support going forward.” As such, Valve says Half Life: Source will be less prominent on Steam, but it will remain available so modders can continue using its assets.

“We launched Half-Life on November 19, 1998. We are very proud of what we built back then and we remain extremely grateful for the community of players who have been enjoying it ever since,” Valve said. “The game hasn’t received as much attention in recent years as many other titles in our catalog, so we thought this milestone was a great opportunity to spruce up the player experience and add some fun new ways to play the game.”

Last but not least, Valve has released a new documentary to mark the 25th anniversary. The 65-minute film features developers and Valve co-founders discussing the company’s early days and their memories of working on Half-Life. Happy birthday, Mr. Freeman.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/half-lifes-big-25th-anniversary-update-includes-four-new-multiplayer-maps-and-much-more-193932590.html?src=rss