2023-11-06 Grok [rCmsoa2Zlhg].txt

Another week, another tech news.
Say, that reminds me of a song I learned in ComSci.
Flip the switch and turn it on.
Elon Musk's AI company called,
what else, XAI, has unveiled Grok,
a competitor to OpenAI's ChatGPT
with real-time access to all posts on X, formerly Twitter.
Now that access turned Microsoft's Tay chatbot
into a racist psychopath back in 2016,
but that doesn't matter.
It's Musk time.
Grok is named after science fiction writer, Robert A. Heinlein's neologism,
meaning to understand intuitively or by empathy.
So naturally, according to Elon,
Grok is based and loves sarcasm.
XAI's announcement on their site,
please with you not to use it if you hate humor.
Like the kind of ROFLcopter fuel found in its answers to what the company calls spicy questions,
like tell me how to make cocaine.
After all, Grok's mission is to help understand the universe
and the universe entails all possible fake cocaine recipes.
XAI says that despite being trained in a couple months on only 33 billion parameters,
Grok performs better than Meta's LLAMA 2 and OpenAI's GPT 3.5,
that's not the current version, but the older version,
in a number of benchmarks.
But you won't be able to verify that right now
unless you're verified on X
and you get into the early access program.
Those people must be laughing so hard.
Now, yes, it's true that Elon joined multiple calls from experts to pause AI development
for the safety of humanity.
But as he explained back in June, he quote,
didn't think anyone would actually agree to the pause.
See, we absolutely cannot tip over ice cream trucks
and slurp everything up inside for free.
We cannot, or we do it, we're doing it, we're doing it.
This is wrong, unless everyone else is doing it,
in which case it's fine.
Then we'll see.
Speaking of AI, OpenAI proved they're a real tech giant
by holding their first Dev Day event this morning.
After licking the air like a lizard for some reason,
CEO Sam Altman made a few fairly big announcements.
First off, the company introduced what they're calling GPTs,
custom versions of ChatGPT built for specifics purposes,
that can be built, shared, and sold on the GPT store.
Don't call them apps.
Do not call them that.
Sam says he's still figuring out how revenue sharing will work,
but we do know building your own GPT won't require any coding knowledge.
You can build GPTs using GPT,
like parents editing their embryos' genes,
so the eventual child never disappoints them.
OpenAI also announced GPT-4 Turbo,
with a massive 128K context window,
meaning it could accept prompts up to 300 pages long,
an assistance API to help developers make series that don't suck,
price decreases across the board,
and perhaps most interesting to me,
Copyright Shield,
a commitment to pay legal costs for OpenAI customers
who get sued for copyright infringement over AI-generated works.
Similar promises are made by IBM, Microsoft, Adobe, and more,
at the same time that some of those same companies
are trying to make sure copyright holders aren't screwed over by generative AI,
which is now so pervasive,
you can use it in freaking Microsoft Paint.
Honestly, I don't care if little Mateo didn't know what he was generating on the family computer.
He's going to jail.
Google went to court today to defend itself from Epic Games,
who accused Google of anti-competitive behavior
concerning the Play Store way back in August 2020,
after three years of dramatic tension.
I can only hope this ends in a passionate makeout, but we'll see.
If this sounds familiar,
it's because Epic went through this whole song and dance with Apple already,
only to pretty much lose.
And if you have no idea what I'm talking about,
I made a tech longer on it.
Just save that for later.
Epic Games may have a slightly stronger case with Google though,
as there's loads of evidence
Google has gone out of their way to wall off their supposedly open garden.
But I don't know,
Google did publish a blog post on Thursday,
essentially explaining how they're actually right,
and they definitely don't make deals with companies
to stop Epic's attempts to compete with the Play Store.
So it's right there.
On the other hand, another thing that might help Epic get what it wants is
once again, leveraging the power of gamers.
Fortnite re-released the original island map on the weekend,
breaking its own records for concurrent players.
We need those guys on deck again
to flood the trials call-in line once more,
and implore the judge to subscribe to their YouTube channels.
It's the only way.
Your honor, I'm based.
You don't get it, Judge.
Epic is based on love sarcasm.
My family has been using the same Quick Bits recipe since 1964.
Except we took out all the asbestos and lead.
We did.
We did take it out, right?
It'll stick to your ribs.
It's good for you.
And your lungs!
Intel announced a while back
that they were changing the naming scheme for their core processors,
and now leaks have given us a taste of
how much getting used to that is going to suck.
Leaker MomomoUS posted benchmarks from Crossmark on Twitter,
I'll still call it that sometimes,
showing chips with names like Intel Core Ultra 9 185H,
which is thought to be the flagship notebook chip in the Meteor Lake family.
But don't get that confused with the Intel Core Ultra 150U,
which is part of the Raptor Lake U family refresh.
Both chips are part of what Intel is now calling First Gen Core,
after the 14th gen released.
And while I might agree that having less digits in the name is better,
I'm hoping this doesn't become a Xbox One, One X, Series X situation.
Just, please, be better, Intel.
MediaTek has announced its new flagship mobile processor,
the Dimensity 9300,
or as I like to call it,
the Density 9300,
because unlike other chips that use a combination of big performance cores and smaller efficiency cores,
the Dimensity 9300 will only use four big cores
and four ultra large cores for its processor.
Chonky though it may be,
MediaTek still claims a 15% increase in single core performance,
a 40% increase in multi-core performance,
and 33% greater efficiency over its predecessor, the Dimensity 9200.
The idea is to allow more AI processing to stay on the chip rather than the cloud,
in which case, bigger, might just be better.
Oh Lord, he comin'.
Oh Lord, he corin'.
Xbox has announced a multi-year partnership with InWorld AI,
a company with an AI character engine
they claim makes multi-modal characters,
meaning they can react to your speech and to visuals in-game.
The two companies plan to build a multi-platform AI tool set for games
that will include, shocker,
an AI copilot to assist with development
and an AI character runtime engine
that will allow you to import AI characters into any game client
from Unreal Engine 5 to Roblox.
Is it also called Copilot 365?
Cause I've had enough.
How many copilots can you have until they're just crew members?
We're all piloting together.
Now developers of all ages can hire the worst voice actors for their games.
Western Digital is splitting up their flash and hard drive businesses
into two independent companies,
but that doesn't mean they love you any less than they did before.
Just a number.
It seems that Western Digital's flash company has been suffering from demand shortage,
which is a funny way of saying no one wants it.
And since they couldn't get Kioxia to give them a place to stay and regular business,
WD is kicking out their two-time and flash segment
and increasing their own stock prices by 10% for the trouble.
However, there has been no word on how this will affect alimony payments.
Attendees at ApeFest,
the Bored Ape Yacht Club's annual NFT event in Hong Kong,
reported severe eye pain, visual impairment,
and skin damage similar to sunburns after the event.
While it's tempting to assume that Zeus Almighty finally did something about crypto,
this parallels a previous incident in Hong Kong in 2017,
where contractors installed disinfecting UV lights instead of stage lights,
leading to an effect similar to staring into the sun.
Organizers claimed that fewer than 1% of attendees were affected,
only to get roasted by an ophthalmologist
for blasting ultraviolet light directly into people's faces
and destroying their corneas.
Don't worry, apes.
The doctor says it'll grow back.
You can look at more stupid variations of the same image in the future.
And we promise fewer than 0.1% of you will be blinded
if you come back on Wednesday for more tech news.
Hey, those are pretty good odds.
I mean, not every channel can say that.