Techmeme
December 6, 2023, 8:45 PM

Top News

Thomas Germain / Gizmodo:
Google unveils Gemini, an AI model with Ultra, Pro, and Nano tiers, and plans a paid chatbot version in 2024; Google says Gemini Ultra beats GPT-4 on most tests  —  Starting today, Gemini is running on Bard and Google's Pixel 8 Pro phones.  The company says it blows OpenAI out of the water.
More: The Keyword, Google on YouTube, Google on YouTube, MIT Technology Review, TechCrunch, Forbes, The Guardian, The Atlantic, Android Police, CNBC, Mashable, Google on YouTube, CIO Dive, TechRadar, Android Headlines, TechStartups, Chrome Unboxed, Google on YouTube, Newser, TechEBlog, Google on YouTube, ZDNet, Tech.co, Google on YouTube, TIME, Tom's Hardware, TestingCatalog, Ars Technica, and Business Insider
David Pierce / The Verge:
Google updates Bard to use its Gemini Pro model, which the company says represents Bard's “biggest and best upgrade yet” and can match and even exceed ChatGPT  —  While OpenAI's ChatGPT has become a worldwide phenomenon and one of the fastest-growing consumer products ever …
Casey Newton / Platformer:
Q&A with Google CEO Sundar Pichai and DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis on Gemini, digital agents, changing search's UX, the pace of AI development, coding, and more  —  CEO Sundar Pichai and DeepMind's Demis Hassabis talk to Platformer about the promise — and product roadmap — of their answer to GPT-4
David Pierce / The Verge:
Google adds Gemini Nano, its native, local-first LLM, to the Pixel 8 Pro, powering Gboard's Smart Reply and Recorder's auto-summarize, before an Android launch  —  Gemini may be the biggest, most powerful large language model, or LLM, Google has ever developed, but it's better suited to running in data centers than on your phone.
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Raphael Satter / Reuters:
Apple and Google confirm that foreign governments have demanded smartphone push notifications data, after US senator Ron Wyden revealed the practice in a letter  —  Unidentified governments are surveilling smartphone users via their apps' push notifications, a U.S. senator warned on Wednesday.
Drew Harwell / Washington Post:
Apple guidelines now say that US law enforcement can obtain the Apple ID associated with a push notification token via a subpoena; Google requires a court order  —  Apple and Google had been told to keep the practice secret until Sen. Ron Wyden revealed it in a letter Wednesday
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple plans a revamped iPad Pro with an OLED screen, iPad Airs with 10.9" and 12.9" screens, 13" and 15" MacBook Airs with M3, and more for early 2024  —  - New models follow an unprecedented drought in iPad releases  — Vision Pro, larger iPhones and new AirPods also coming in 2024
Paul Alcorn / Tom's Hardware:
AMD launches Instinct MI300X and MI300A AI accelerators and claims the MI300X delivers up to 1.6x more performance than Nvidia's H100 HGX in inference workloads  —  AMD's chiplet strategy comes to fore.  —  AMD launched its Instinct MI300X AI accelerator and the Instinct MI300A …
Kif Leswing / CNBC:
Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, and OpenAI say they plan to use AMD's new Instinct MI300X GPU; Microsoft plans to offer access to the chips through Azure  —  - Meta, OpenAI, and Microsoft said they will use AMD's newest AI chip, the Instinct MI300X — a sign that tech companies want alternatives …
Jonny Evans / Computerworld:
Apple's machine learning research team quietly releases MLX, an array framework to train and deploy ML models on Apple silicon, available on GitHub  —  Apple's machine learning (ML) teams quietly flexed their muscle with the release of a new ML framework developed for Apple Silicon.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Meta debuts Imagine with Meta, a standalone text-to-image generator on the web powered by its Emu model that generates four images per prompt, free for US users  —  Not to be outdone by Google's Gemini launch, Meta's rolling out a new, standalone generative AI experience on the web …
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Researchers unveil LogoFAIL, an attack that defeats UEFI boot protections in nearly all Windows and Linux computers and can be remotely executed in many cases  —  UEFIs booting Windows and Linux devices can be hacked by malicious logo images.  —  Hundreds of Windows and Linux computer models …
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Meta is rolling out end-to-end encryption to Messenger by default, for one-on-one chats and calls; E2EE for group chats remains opt-in  —  Meta is now rolling out end-to-end encryption for one-on-one chats and calls on Messenger and Facebook, finally fulfilling a promise that's been in the works for quite awhile.
Samuel Stolton / Bloomberg:
Sources: the EU leans toward a DMA carve out for iMessage as the app is not popular enough with business users, as part of an investigation ending in February  —  - EU tentatively finds it doesn't warrant being covered by DMA  — New antitrust law imposes raft of Big Tech dos and don'ts
TIME:
Interviews with Sam Altman and 20+ people in his circle reveal a complicated portrait of being brilliant but slippery, as Time names him CEO of the Year 2023  —  It was a strange Thanksgiving for Sam Altman.  Normally, the CEO of OpenAI flies home to St. Louis to visit family.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
MIT spinoff Liquid AI, which aims to build AI systems powered by liquid neural networks, emerges from stealth with a $37.6M seed at a $303M post-money valuation  —  An MIT spinoff co-founded by robotics luminary Daniela Rus aims to build general-purpose AI systems powered by a relatively …
Aaron Klotz / Tom's Hardware:
Intel publishes and then removes “Core Truths”, a document calling AMD products “snake oil” for using the older Zen 2 architecture in new Ryzen 7000 mobile CPUs  —  Look in the mirror Intel  —  Intel recently published a new playbook titled “Core Truths” …
Wall Street Journal:
New Mexico sues Meta, alleging the company let Facebook and Instagram “become a marketplace for predators in search of children”, and blames Mark Zuckerberg  —  State investigators' test accounts with AI-generated photos were deluged with sexual propositions and adult sex content …

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