Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the federal body that sets technology standards for governmental agencies, standards organizations, and private companies, has proposed barring some of the most vexing and nonsensical password requirements. Chief among them: mandatory resets, required or restricted use of certain characters, and the use of...
OpenAI’s Murati shocks with sudden departure announcement
Enlarge / Mira Murati, Chief Technology Officer of OpenAI, speaks during The Wall Street Journal’s WSJ Tech Live Conference in Laguna Beach, California on October 17, 2023. (credit: PATRICK T. FALLON via Getty Images) On Wednesday, OpenAI Chief Technical Officer Mira Murati announced she is leaving the company in a surprise resignation shared on the...
Talking to ChatGPT for the first time is a surreal experience
Enlarge / Putting the “chat” in ChatGPT (credit: Getty Images) In May, when OpenAI first demonstrated ChatGPT-4o’s coming audio conversation capabilities, I wrote that it felt like we were “on the verge of something… like a sea change in how we think of and work with large language models.” Now that those “Advanced Voice” features...
Hacker plants false memories in ChatGPT to steal user data in perpetuity
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) When security researcher Johann Rehberger recently reported a vulnerability in ChatGPT that allowed attackers to store false information and malicious instructions in a user’s long-term memory settings, OpenAI summarily closed the inquiry, labeling the flaw a safety issue, not, technically speaking, a security concern. So Rehberger did what all good researchers...
Terminator’s Cameron joins AI company behind controversial image generator
Enlarge / Filmmaker James Cameron. (credit: James Cameron / Stability AI) On Tuesday, Stability AI announced that renowned filmmaker James Cameron—of Terminator and Skynet fame—has joined its board of directors. Stability is best known for its pioneering but highly controversial Stable Diffusion series of AI image-synthesis models, first launched in 2022, which can generate images...
Broadcom responds to AT&T’s VMware support lawsuit: AT&T has “other options”
Enlarge (credit: Getty) Broadcom is accusing AT&T of trying to “rewind the clock and force” Broadcom “to sell support services for perpetual software licenses… that VMware has discontinued from its product line and to which AT&T has no contractual right to purchase.” The statement comes from legal documents Broadcom filed in response to AT&T’s lawsuit...
(BPRW) Why Every Black Father Must Vote: Urgent Issues for Our Families and Communities
(Black PR Wire) As fathers, we play a profound role in families and communities. While the daily responsibilities of fatherhood keep us busy providing care, love, and guidance, an essential aspect of fatherhood often goes overlooked: civic engagement. Vot…
OpenAI CEO: We may have AI superintelligence in “a few thousand days”
Enlarge (credit: andresr via Getty Images) On Monday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman outlined his vision for an AI-driven future of tech progress and global prosperity in a new personal blog post titled “The Intelligence Age.” The essay paints a picture of human advancement accelerated by AI, with Altman suggesting that superintelligent AI could emerge within...
11 million devices infected with botnet malware hosted in Google Play
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Five years ago, researchers made a grim discovery—a legitimate Android app in the Google Play market that was surreptitiously made malicious by a library the developers used to earn advertising revenue. With that, the app was infected with code that caused 100 million infected devices to connect to attacker-controlled servers and...
When you call a restaurant, you might be chatting with an AI host
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Juj Winn) A pleasant female voice greets me over the phone. “Hi, I’m an assistant named Jasmine for Bodega,” the voice says. “How can I help?” “Do you have patio seating,” I ask. Jasmine sounds a little sad as she tells me that unfortunately, the San Francisco–based Vietnamese restaurant doesn’t...