Technology News

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Microsoft has introduced a GPT-4-based generative AI model designed specifically for US intelligence agencies that operates disconnected from the Internet, according to a Bloomberg report. This reportedly marks the first time Microsoft has deployed a major language model in a secure setting, designed to allow spy agencies to analyze top-secret information without connectivity risks—and to allow secure conversations with a chatbot similar to ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot. But it may also mislead officials if not used properly due to inherent design limitations of AI language models.

GPT-4 is a large language model (LLM) created by OpenAI that attempts to predict the most likely tokens (fragments of encoded data) in a sequence. It can be used to craft computer code and analyze information. When configured as a chatbot (like ChatGPT), GPT-4 can power AI assistants that converse in a human-like manner. Microsoft has a license to use the technology as part of a deal in exchange for large investments it has made in OpenAI.

According to the report, the new AI service (which does not yet publicly have a name) addresses a growing interest among intelligence agencies to use generative AI for processing classified data, while mitigating risks of data breaches or hacking attempts. ChatGPT normally  runs on cloud servers provided by Microsoft, which can introduce data leak and interception risks. Along those lines, the CIA announced its plan to create a ChatGPT-like service last year, but this Microsoft effort is reportedly a separate project.

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TikTok and its owner ByteDance today sued the federal government to block the "Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications" law that would prohibit TikTok in the US if the company isn't sold to a non-Chinese firm. The complaint in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit alleges that the law is unconstitutional and asks for a court order prohibiting enforcement.

TikTok and ByteDance say the law "would allow the government to decide that a company may no longer own and publish the innovative and unique speech platform it created. If Congress can do this, it can circumvent the First Amendment by invoking national security and ordering the publisher of any individual newspaper or website to sell to avoid being shut down."

The law will "silenc[e] the 170 million Americans who use the platform to communicate in ways that cannot be replicated elsewhere," TikTok and ByteDance alleged.

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Star Wars: Tales of the Empire, X-Men '97, and a new season of Doctor Who are just a few of the shows you should be watching on Disney+ this month.

ChatGPT developer OpenAI says that artists and other content owners will be able to request that their work be excluded from use in AI development. Many details of the scheme remain unclear.

ChatGPT developer OpenAI says that artists and other content owners will be able to request that their work be excluded from use in AI development. Many details of the scheme remain unclear.

AI-generated images of Katy Perry, Rihanna, and more celebrities in Met Gala refinement took over X and other platforms Monday night.

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The field of dentistry is lagging on adopting evidence-based care and, as such, is rife with overdiagnoses and overtreatments that may align more with the economic pressures of keeping a dental practice afloat than what care patients actually need. At least, that's according to a trio of health and dental researchers from Brazil and the United Kingdom, led by epidemiologist and dentist Paulo Nadanovsky, of the University of the State of Rio de Janeiro.

In a viewpoint published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, the researchers point out that many common—nearly unquestioned—practices in dentistry aren't backed up by solid data. That includes the typical recommendation that everyone should get a dental check-up every six months. The researchers note that two large clinical trials failed to find a benefit of six-month check-ups compared with longer intervals that were up to two years.

A 2020 Cochrane review that assessed the two clinical trials concluded that "whether adults see their dentist for a check‐up every six months or at personalized intervals based on their dentist's assessment of their risk of dental disease does not affect tooth decay, gum disease, or quality of life. Longer intervals (up to 24 months) between check‐ups may not negatively affect these outcomes." The Cochrane reviewers reported that they were "confident" of little to no difference between six-month and risk-based check-ups and were "moderately confident" that going up to 24-month checkups would make little to no difference either.

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Enlarge / An American Airlines Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner preparing to take off at Barcelona-El Prat Airport in Spain on May 1, 2024. (credit: Getty Images | NurPhoto )

The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating whether Boeing failed to complete required inspections on 787 Dreamliner planes and whether Boeing employees falsified aircraft records, the agency said this week. The investigation was launched after an employee reported the problem to Boeing management, and Boeing informed the FAA.

"The FAA has opened an investigation into Boeing after the company voluntarily informed us in April that it may not have completed required inspections to confirm adequate bonding and grounding where the wings join the fuselage on certain 787 Dreamliner airplanes," the FAA said in a statement provided to Ars today.

The FAA said it "is investigating whether Boeing completed the inspections and whether company employees may have falsified aircraft records. At the same time, Boeing is reinspecting all 787 airplanes still within the production system and must also create a plan to address the in-service fleet." The agency added that it "will take any necessary action—as always—to ensure the safety of the flying public."

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In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, TikTok says that the TikTok ban or divestment law violates the First Amendment.

Enlarge / Line up those colors and close those gaps... for science!

In 2020, a new minigame appeared in the video game Borderlands 3, located in the resident scientist’s laboratory on the spaceship Sanctuary III.  Although the arcade game may seem like just another way to pass in-game time, the tile-matching puzzle game—Borderlands Science—has allowed millions of players to help map the human gut microbiome.

Borderlands Science is one of the first examples of a citizen science game being embedded in a mainstream video game; it translates players’ tile matching into sequence alignment of microbial DNA strands that encode ribosomal RNA. Ultimately, this can help deduce the genetic relationships between different gut microbes—crucial information for demystifying the complex web of interactions among diet, disease, and microbiome.

Since launch, over 4 million gamers have played Borderlands Science, collectively solving over 100 million puzzles, making this one of the largest citizen science projects ever. Not only has the game generated huge player engagement, but the results have outperformed state-of-the-art computational methods, according to an analysis of the project published in Nature Biotechnology.

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Enlarge / Cleveland doctor Sherri Tenpenny gives false testimony on June 8, 2021, saying COVID-19 vaccines magnetize people. (credit: The Ohio Channel)

An anti-vaccine doctor best known for losing her medical license after falsely claiming that COVID-19 vaccines cause people to become magnetic and "interface" with 5G towers, has had her medical license restored, according to local media reports.

Sherri Tenpenny, an osteopathic doctor in the Cleveland area, beamed into the national spotlight in June 2021 while giving repelling testimony before state lawmakers about COVID-19 vaccine recipients. "I'm sure you've seen the pictures all over the Internet of people who have had these shots and now they're magnetized," Tenpenny said in her viral testimony. "You can put a key on their forehead—it sticks. You can put spoons and forks all over and they can stick because now we think there is a metal piece to that."

Her testimony was in support of a bill that would largely ban vaccine mandates in Ohio. The bill never made it out of committee. But the state's medical board opened an investigation the next month. The board intended to ask Tenpenny a variety of questions, including about her statements "regarding COVID-19 vaccines causing people to become magnetized or creating an interface with 5G towers… and regarding some major metropolitan areas liquefying dead bodies and pouring them into the water supply," according to a board report.

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The federal government has given Tesla quite the homework assignment. The electric automaker has until July 1 to reply to a massive data request from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is investigating the efficacy of Tesla's massive Autopilot recall, following at least 20 crashes post-recall.

Tesla decided to recall more than 2 million cars in the US—almost every vehicle it has ever sold here—in December 2023, following an engineering analysis by NHTSA that found the automaker's Autopilot driver assistance feature had inadequate driver monitoring and that Autopilot was too easily misused.

Last month, we discovered that NHTSA is not happy with the Autopilot recall. Now, the agency has made public the letter it sent Tesla this week, demanding a whole lot of answers by July 1.

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• The Pixel 8a. [credit: Google ]

Today is a big event day for Apple, but that doesn't mean Google is going to fade into the background: It's announcing the Pixel 8a today. The big news is that the Pixel a series is still $499 despite some upgrades.

What are those upgrades? How about a 120 Hz display on Google's mid-ranger for the first time? The 6.1-inch, 120 Hz, 2400×1080 display is closer to a flagship than ever, even if it is a smaller phone. You also get flagship-class support with Google's industry-leading seven years of OS updates, so the phone should be good until 2031, if you can hold out that long. Together, these two upgrades make the Pixel 8a an incredible value.

Major news with last year's launch of the Pixel 7a was the older Pixel 6a, which got a big price drop down to $349 when the 7a came out. When asked about a potential Pixel 7a price drop, Google says it "will continue to sell the Pixel 7a" but also that it has "no news to announce today on a pricing change." It did feel like the Pixel 6a's price drop stole some of the 7a's thunder last year, so maybe Google is giving that announcement some breathing room. For now, you'll have to think long and hard at checkout and decide between a $499 Pixel 8a and a $499 Pixel 7a. The base model Pixel 8, at $699 with nearly the same specs, is also a tough sell in the face of the Pixel 8a.

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Enlarge / John? Is that you, John? John? Can't we discuss this like civilized men? (credit: Stern Pinball)

If you don’t follow the ins and outs of pinball, you might be surprised to find out there are more active companies making games in 2024 than ever before.

Stern Pinball is the 800-pound gorilla of the industry. It has been around the longest, has the largest factory, sells the most games, and releases more titles per year than anyone else. For years, it was the sole remaining pinball company in the world.

Now—despite the decline of arcades—pinball is seeing a second life. A passionate collector base dedicates entire game rooms in their homes to machines. Pinball and bars go together so well Stern has a whole video series on “brewcade hopping”. There are games in comics shops. One of my more amazing local spots is in the back of a Korean BBQ. All this interest has created a thriving pinball ecosystem of boutique makers, where success is often measured in sales of 1,000 machines or fewer. Other pinball companies might not compete with Stern directly by volume, but they do provide a level of competition for ideas that keeps the hobby strong.

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Pixel 8a is the latest A-series phone, bringing you a phone packed with Google AI at an affordable price.Pixel 8a is the latest A-series phone, bringing you a phone packed with Google AI at an affordable price.

The company’s refined midrange Android phone packs its flagship Tensor G3 chipset. The handset was announced ahead of next week’s Google I/O conference.

Apple has launched a new M4 chipset, new iPad Air and iPad Pro models, and even an Apple Pencil Pro.

Enlarge / Artist's conception of Microsoft telling Hi-Fi Rush maker Tango Gameworks they no longer exist as a studio. (credit: Tango Gameworks)

Microsoft is shutting down four studios within its Bethesda Softworks subsidiary, according to a staff email obtained by IGN. The closures include Redfall developer Arkane Austin and Hi-Fi Rush studio Tango Gameworks. While some team members will be reassigned to other parts of the company, head of Xbox Game Studios Matt Booty said in a letter to staffers "that some of our colleagues will be leaving us."

Tango Gameworks confirmed in a short social media message that "Hi-Fi Rush, along with Tango's previous titles [like The Evil Within], will remain available and playable everywhere they are today." But the closure of Arkane Austin means that "development will not continue on Redfall," the company wrote in its own social media update. "Arkane Lyon will continue their focus on immersive experiences where they are hard at work on their upcoming project [Marvel's Blade]."

In his note to staff, Booty said that [Redfall] “will remain online for players to enjoy and we will provide make-good offers to players who purchased the Hero DLC.”

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• The Apple Pencil Pro [credit: Apple ]

With new iPads come new keyboards and pencils, and the big news today is the "Apple Pencil Pro," a souped-up version of Apple's iPad stylus. The Pencil Pro is $129 and works with the new iPad Pro and iPad Air.

How much can you improve a stylus? How about rotation detection via a new gyroscope embedded in the pencil? Apple calls this a "barrel roll," which provides rotation input in your iPad apps. If you're drawing and are using a brush that isn't symmetrical, a barrel roll will change the rotation of the brush. If you have a 3D item out in Procreate, a pencil rotation will rotate the 3D item. Devs can cook up whatever app interactions they can think of with this new feature.

The Pencil is also squeezable now, which can bring up a context menu. It also has haptics embedded in it, so you'll get feedback whenever you squeeze or rotate an item. The Pencil magnetically clips on the side of the iPad for charging, but if you happen to lose it, it will also show up in the Find My app next to all your other Apple things.

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Red vs. Blue: Restoration is the end of the line for Halo-fueled digital shorts. But machinima’s impact as a content creation tool lives on.