Hello radio listeners, thank you for tuning in! Here are links to all of the stories we spoke about today, and some we didn’t.
1) ASUS gave a sneak peek of its world’s first laptop with a 3D OLED display, which doesn’t require glasses. It won’t come to Australia until next year, although it is sold overseas. I’ll have a full article about the launch, with a video that captures the entire presentation to the media, but the main news is that OLED screens are now across 24 models in the ASUS 2023 range, which brings brilliant screen quality across virtually every price point.
You can see the the FULL VIDEO of the launch event this week, and all the details, plus two video interviews, one with Aussie content creator Jazza from YouTube.com/Jazza
2) Bill Gates says AI could kill Google Search, Amazon and productivity sites through “personal agents”
Microsoft co-founder, Bill Gates, has spoken at a Goldman Sachs and SV Angel event, and has warned AI-powered digital agents could take over the need to use Google, Amazon or “productivity” sites, with Gates quoted saying: “Whoever wins the personal agent, that’s the big thing, because you will never go to a search site again, you will never go to a productivity site, you’ll never go to Amazon again.
“This yet-to-be developed AI assistant will be able to understand a person’s needs and habits and will you read the stuff you don’t have time to read” with Gates noting there’s a 50-50 chance that this future AI winner will be either a startup or a tech giant.
Here’s more on what Bill Gates said from CNBC.
3) An AI-generated fake image caused market jitters in the US overnight
An image of an explosion at the Pentagon, which is suspected to have been created by AI, was posted on a Twitter account called “Bloomberg Feed”, which had a blue tick but which was not affiliated with Bloomberg at all.
Various news sites republished the image, which caused a 25 basis point drop on the S&P 500, but which corrected itself after the Bloomberg Feed Twitter account was suspended, by Twitter.
This isn’t the first time fake news has caused waves online.
In the past, a fake tweet from a “verified with a Blue Tick” Eli Lily account delcared insulin was now free, and this cost Eli Lily billions in their share price.
Ai generated images of Donaldf Trump being arrested and his resisting took the Internet by storm a couple of months ago, as did fake images of the Pope in a white puffer jacker.
While “deep fake videos” have been around for years, they looked a bit primitive, a but suspicious. Today, your voice can be cloned by just seconds of your real voice, and I even know of a relatively high profile Australian gamer who had his voice cloned to say really hurtful things about disabled people, so this threat is growing – we can’t trust our eyes and ears anymore, it seems.
4) Security company Sophos warns about AI app “fleeceware” – I spoke about this briefly with Chris last Friday, with a flood of AI chatbot apps which charge a fortune to use them – and what US users of the new free ChatGPT app are saying are serious deficiencies that are causing them to abandon the app in favour of Google Bard, Perplexity.Ai and Bing Chat (all free, too – and which are up to date with live web info AND give web sources; which ChatGPT doesn’t!).
More information from Sophos here.
5) Camera maker Pentax declaring 35mm film cameras are not dead – Pentax is exploring making new models!
Pentax has published two videos that look at bringing 35mm cameras back to life:
Here’s an article from Inside Imaging with more details:
6) Optus launching AI-powered “Call Effects” which “will help Australians add some joy into their everyday phone calls with playful skills. Whether thats flipping a coin to decide who should book that concert, asking the crystal ball whether to go on that date, or making a quick decision on what Saturday night take-away to order, Optus Call Effects will help customers make simple decisions.”
Presumably every phone company globally will offer some kind of similar system, but does it mean AI will be listening to every phone call? The system is triggered when you say “Hey Optus”.
Optus already lets you have live translations in your phone calls and more… Here are details from the Optus newsroom.
7) Fake iPhone 14 models are being sold as new on Gumtree in Australia and elsewhere, promoted as unloved, with fake JB Hifi receipts, but when people open them up, they are Chinese fakes that run Android. If something is priced too good to be true… caveat emptor. If it’s happening in Australia it is happening everywhere – I had someone at Shanghai airport, on the departures driveway platform, approach me with a fake IPhone X back in 2017 so this isn’t a new thing at all, but if 7News is reporting it, this scam has gone into overdrive.
Here are details from 7News.
8) An HP printer firmware update is bricking some HP printers, and there’s no fix from HP yet. Which models are affected and how can you stop your HP printer from automatically downloading the update? Details here.
9) Apple has posted a dozen job ads seeking machine learning specialists “passionate about building extraordinary autonomous systems” – so it’s clear Apple is serious about not only Generative AI and the ChatGPT side of things, but everything else AI, too.
Details at TechCrunch here.
9) Netflix is going to start charging extra fees for people who are sharing your account, but don’t live in the same household.
