Portable AI-powered devices that connect directly to a chatbot without the need for apps or a touchscreen are set to hit the market. Are they the emperor’s new clothes or a gamechanger?

Imagine it: you’re on the bus or walking in the park, when you remember some important task has slipped your mind. You were meant to send an email, catch up on a meeting, or arrange to grab lunch with a friend. Without missing a beat, you simply say aloud what you’ve forgotten and the small device that’s pinned to your chest, or resting on the bridge of your nose, sends the message, summarises the meeting, or pings your buddy a lunch invitation. The work has been taken care of, without you ever having to prod the screen of your smartphone.

It’s the sort of utopian convenience that a growing wave of tech companies are hoping to realise through artificial intelligence. Generative AI chatbots such as ChatGPT exploded in popularity last year, as search engines like Google, messaging apps such as Slack and social media services like Snapchat raced to integrate the tech into their systems. Yet while AI add-ons have become a familiar sight across apps and software, the same generative tech is now making an attempt to join the realm of hardware, as the first AI-powered consumer devices rear their heads and jostle for space with our smartphones.

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The journalist and podcaster has been scrutinising Silicon Valley for decades, knows all the big players – and once believed that tech could save the world. But that was before greed and ego got in the way

“This is about love gone wrong,” says Kara Swisher, looking back on a life spent studying the giants of Big Tech. “I saw the possibilities of tech being the saviour of humanity – or at the very least, really helping people, in terms of community and knowledge and education. And instead, you know …”

She pauses, and wearily exhales. “It’s like that old expression: ‘They promised us jetpacks, and this is what we got?’ Like, are you kidding me? ” But, she adds: “The problem isn’t tech. It’s people.”

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Reports say tech giant made announcement during meeting and forecast layoffs, ending secretive and resource-heavy project

Apple is canceling its plans to build an electric car, according to multiple outlets , ending a secretive project that has consumed immense resources over the past decade. Executives from the company made the unexpected announcement during an internal team meeting on Tuesday, forecasting layoffs and telling employees that many of them would shift to working on generative artificial intelligence, per reports.

Apple is believed to have spent billions of dollars attempting to develop an electric, semi-autonomous vehicle under the codename Project Titan, and its decision to kill the program is a major retreat from its previous strategy.

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Is all this bunker-building a sign the 1% know something we don’t and are preparing for end times?

What’s your plan for the apocalypse? I’ll tell you what mine is: death. I am not really built for battle – I need five cups of coffee just to function and I have terrible allergies. My body can’t even handle pollen, it’s not going to do well with nuclear war. Plus, even if I was hardier – who wants to live a few extra months in a completely destroyed world?

Billionaires. Billionaires do. As you have probably noticed bunkers have become the ultimate status symbol among the 1%. The bunker craze, accelerated by the pandemic, has been going on for a while now. However I’m starting to think that bunker-fever is getting out of hand. The rich are no longer content with run-of-the-mill $500,000 survival shelters, they’re taking things to the next level: a development which should probably worry us all.

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Juste à côté des sièges de Google et Apple, Samsung dispose de son propre laboratoire de recherche en Californie. Numerama a pu visiter ce centre dans lequel le Coréen étudie notamment l'intelligence artificielle, la réalité mixte et la 6G.

Inauguré avant le retour de Steve Jobs en 1993, le Company Store est un magasin Apple pas comme les autres. À l'intérieur, les fans de la marque ont longtemps pu trouver des t-shirts, des pulls, des casquettes, des stylos ou des carnets avec le logo de la marque. Il ferme définitivement ses portes ce 20 janvier 2024, après être devenu un Apple Store presque normal en 2015.

The chaos at OpenAI reveals contradictions in the way we think about the technology

At times it felt less like Succession than Fawlty Towers , not so much Shakespearean tragedy as Laurel and Hardy farce. OpenAI is the hottest tech company today thanks to the success of its most famous product, the chatbot ChatGPT . It was inevitable that the mayhem surrounding the sacking , and subsequent rehiring , of Sam Altman as its CEO would play out across global media last week, accompanied by astonishment and bemusement in equal measure.

For some, the farce spoke to the incompetence of the board; for others, to a clash of monstrous egos . In a deeper sense, the turmoil also reflected many of the contradictions at the heart of the tech industry. The contradiction between the self-serving myth of tech entrepreneurs as rebel “disruptors”, and their control of a multibillion-dollar monster of an industry through which they shape all our lives. The tension, too, between the view of AI as a mechanism for transforming human life and the fear that it may be an existential threat to humanity.

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Un média américain révèle que le milliardaire Peter Thiel informait le FBI pendant plusieurs années. Le co-fondateur de PayPal donnait des pistes d'ingérence étrangères dans la Silicon Valley. [Lire la suite]

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