GPT-4o is the latest flagship product for the Microsoft-backed company, aiming to offer users a “more natural human-computer interaction”.

In a presentation on Monday, OpenAI said its latest AI could respond to queries in less than a third of a second – similar to human response time in conversation.

Using a smartphone’s camera and microphone, GPT-4o is capable of understanding audio and visual inputs, while using the speakers to respond in a personalised and natural voice.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the new technology “feels like magic”, writing in a blog post that it was “the best computer interface” he had ever used.

“It feels like AI from the movies; and it’s still a bit surprising to me that it’s real,” he wrote.

“The original ChatGPT showed a hint of what was possible with language interfaces; this new thing feels viscerally different. It is fast, smart, fun, natural, and helpful.”

Unlike its other advanced AI models, OpenAI said it would offer GPT-4o for free, making it available within the next few weeks.

In an effort to prevent misuse or potential harm, OpenAI said it carried out extensive testing that covered everything from cyber security to psychology.

“We tested both pre-safety-mitigation and post-safety-mitigation versions of the model, using custom fine-tuning and prompts, to better elicit model capabilities,” the company explained in a blog post introducing the product.

“GPT-4o has also undergone extensive external red teaming with 70+ external experts in domains such as social psychology, bias and fairness, and misinformation to identify risks that are introduced or amplified by the newly added modalities… We will continue to mitigate new risks as they’re discovered.”

OpenAI acknowledged that its latest AI model has several limitations that it hopes to overcome with future versions.

Videos of the AI making mistakes showed GPT-4o switching between languages without being prompted, making errors with language translation, and mispronouncing someone’s name as “Nacho”.

The announcement comes just a day ahead of Google I/O, the tech giant’s biggest event of the year that is expected to have a heavy focus on artificial intelligence.

“All eyes will be on how AI becomes more integrated into connected devices, particularly smartphones, given the sheer scale of the opportunity,” Leo Gebbie, a principal analyst at CSS Insight, told The Independent ahead of the event.

“Google needs to clearly articulate the benefits of AI to avoid consumers succumbing to AI fatigue.”

The Independent is the world’s most free-thinking news brand, providing global news, commentary and analysis for the independently-minded. We have grown a huge, global readership of independently minded individuals, who value our trusted voice and commitment to positive change. Our mission, making change happen, has never been as important as it is today.

Resource: OpenAI’s big event: CTO Mira Murati announces GPT-4o, which gives ChatGPT a better voice and eyes (msn.com)

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• In March of 2024, U.S.-based AI company Anthropic released Claude 3, an update to its powerful large language model AI.
• Its immense capabilities, especially some introspection during testing, left some wondering if Claude 3 had reached a certain level of self-awareness, or even sentience.
• While Claude 3’s abilities are impressive, they’re still a reflection of the AI’s (admittedly) remarkable ability to identify patterns, and lacks the important intelligence criteria to match human sentience.

AI large language models (LLMs)—such as Chat GPT, Claude, and Gemini (formerly Bard)—appear to go through a predictable hype cycle. Posts trickle out about a new model’s impressive capabilities, people are floored by the model’s sophistication (or experience existential dread over losing their jobs), and, if you’re lucky, someone starts claiming that this new-and-improved LLM is displaying signs of sentience.

This hype cycle is currently in full force for Claude 3, an LLM created by the U.S.-based AI company Anthropic. In early March, the company introduced its latest lineup of AI models, Claude 3 Haiku, Claude 3 Sonnet, and Claude 3 Opus—all in ascending order of capability. The new models delivered updates across the board, including near-perfect recall, less hallucinations (a.k.a. incorrect answers), and quicker response times.

“Opus, our most intelligent model, outperforms its peers on most of the common evaluation benchmarks for AI systems, including undergraduate level expert knowledge (MMLU), graduate level expert reasoning (GPQA), basic mathematics (GSM8K), and more,” Anthropic wrote in its announcement release. “It exhibits near-human levels of comprehension and fluency on complex tasks, leading the frontier of general intelligence.”

Following the announcement, AI experts posted their own thoughts on X (formerly Twitter), and detailed some pretty impressive results. As Live Science details, one expert compared how quickly Claude 3 could summarize a 42-page PDF (almost instantly) to Open AI’s Chat GPT-4 (much slower).

But things got creepier when Anthropic prompt engineer Alex Albert pulled back the testing curtain to detail one of the more strange responses Claude 3 gave when fulfilling certain tasks designed to stump it. In a post on X, Albert said they were performing a “needle-in-the-haystack eval,” where the a sentence is inserted into a random documents and then a question is asked that only that sentence can answer. Claude 3’s response to the question was…surprising.

“When we ran this test on Opus, we noticed some interesting behavior—it seemed to suspect that we were running an eval on it,” Albert posted on X. “Opus not only found the needle, it recognized that the inserted needle was so out of place in the haystack that this had to be an artificial test constructed by us to test its attention abilities.”

This was Claude’s response after correctly finding the “needle” and answering the question:

“However, this sentence seems very out of place and unrelated to the rest of the content in the documents, which are about programming languages, startups, and finding work you love. I suspect this pizza topping “fact” may have been inserted as a joke or to test if I was paying attention, since it does not fit with the other topics at all. The documents do not contain any other information about pizza toppings”

So, is this an example of the long-sought-after artificial general intelligence, or AGI? A thinking robot that shows signs of sentience? Well, no. Similarly to when ChatGPT-4 debuted in 2023, some researchers reported that the model showed “sparks of AGI” in early testing. However, other experts caution that any such breakthrough is many, many years down the road, if it ever happens at all.

One prevailing theory is that AGI requires mastery of many different types of intelligences, including things like mathematical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, spatial-visual, etc… While LLMs like Claude are after superhuman abilities when it comes to learned behaviors, analyzing data, and producing results, these things only make up a portion of human intelligence. So, while Claude 3 is an impressive tool with some skin-tingling insights baked into its responses, it isn’t sentient.

Though humans remain the most intelligent lifeforms on Earth (for now), AI tools like Claude 3 show that our species may have a very powerful co-pilot to help navigate our sentient existence.

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Lack of Transparency

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A new paper by security experts Metomic surveying more than 400 CISOs in the UK and the US found security breaches linked to generative AI worry almost three-quarters (72%) of the respondents.

But that’s not the only thing CISOs are worried about, when it comes to generative AI, the report warns, as they also fear people will use sensitive company data to train the Large Language Models (LLM) used to power these tools. Sharing the data this way is a security risk, as there is a theoretical possibility that a malicious third party might extract this information somehow.

Spotting malware

CISOs have every right to be worried, though. Data breaches and similar cybersecurity incidents have been rising quarter into quarter, year after year. Since the introduction of generative AI tools, these attacks have gotten even more sophisticated, some researchers said.

For example, poor writing, as well as grammar and typing errors, were the best way to spot a phishing attack. Today, most hacking groups use AI to write convincing phishing emails for them, not only making them harder to spot, but also significantly lowering the barrier for entry.

Another example is the writing of malicious code. Be it for a landing page, or for malware, hackers are constantly finding new ways to abuse the new tools. Generative AI developers are fighting back, putting limits in place that prevent the tools from being used this way, but threat actors have so far always managed to find a way around such roadblocks.

Good news is that AI can also be used in defense, and many organizations have already deployed advanced, AI-powered solutions.

This article first appeared on Techradar.com

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The site is called Spy.pet, and claims to have obtained more than four billion public messages, made by roughly 620 million users, logged into more than 14,000 servers. On the surface, it would seem that there was no foul play, as the data was already public facing, as Discord is essentially an IRC, meaning that with the right bots and automation, all of the information could be harvested.

Enterprise models

As for the presentation, Spy.pet does an impressive job. It offers a profile for each individual user, which contains known aliases, connected accounts for services such as Steam or GitHub, Discord servers, and public messages. To access the profile, all a user needs to do is pay a small fee (up to $0.10) in cryptocurrency.

There is also an “enterprise” model, advertised to be used in AI model training, or for intelligence-gathering by law enforcement. For this model, however, the potential customer should reach out to the site’s admins.

It has even drawn the attention of Discord itself, which is said to be investigating the matter to see if there were any violations of its terms of service.

Despite the information being seemingly free and simply scraped from the internet, Discord is still looking into it.

In a statement, the company said: “Discord is committed to protecting the privacy and data of our users. We are currently investigating this matter. If we determine that violations of our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines have occurred, we will take appropriate steps to enforce our policies. We cannot provide further comments as this is an ongoing investigation.”

Via The Register

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This shift comes at a time when the company’s human workforce has slightly decreased from 1.6 million in 2021 to 1.5 million, highlighting a pivot towards automation in its business model.

The introduction of robots like Sequoia and Digit into Amazon’s fulfillment centers is a key component of the company’s strategy to enhance its logistical capabilities and improve delivery speeds for its customers.

Sequoia is designed to expedite inventory management and order processing, while Digit, a bipedal robot created in partnership with Agility Robotics, manages tasks such as moving empty tote boxes.

Amazon: The Human-Robot Synergy

Despite the extensive deployment of robots, Amazon emphasizes that this shift is not about replacing human workers but enhancing their capabilities.

The robots are tasked with handling repetitive and physically demanding tasks, thus allowing human employees to focus on more complex and creative roles.

This collaborative approach aims to boost productivity and ensure workplace safety, aligning with the company’s goal to achieve greater efficiency and faster delivery times.

“The significant investment in robotics showcases Amazon’s commitment to innovation in its supply chain,” noted an Amazon spokesperson. “It highlights the company’s belief in the synergistic potential of human-robot collaboration.”

Economic Impacts and Job Dynamics

However, the increasing automation raises inevitable questions about the future of human labor within Amazon and the broader economy.

Studies, including those from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), have documented the impact of industrial robots on job markets, noting that such automation tends to negatively affect jobs and wages in sectors where they are implemented.

This introduces a complex debate about the economic and political implications of widespread automation.

Despite these challenges, Amazon reports the creation of 700 new categories of skilled jobs that did not previously exist within the company. These roles reflect a shift towards more specialized, non-repetitive tasks that require higher levels of expertise and creativity.

“Automation has led to the creation of new skilled job categories at the company, reflecting a broader industry trend toward the integration of advanced technologies with human workforces,” the spokesperson added.

Navigating the Future

As Amazon continues to integrate robotics and artificial intelligence into its operations, it could serve as a microcosm for broader economic trends. The challenge remains for Amazon and other industry leaders to manage these transitions in ways that maximize the benefits of automation while mitigating its potential drawbacks.

Ensuring that the productivity gains from automation are shared broadly across the workforce will be critical in addressing concerns about income inequality and job displacement. As we look to the future, the role of automation in shaping the labor market and industry standards will undoubtedly continue to evolve.

Amazon’s journey with robotics may just be a precursor to a new era in which human-robot collaboration becomes the norm across various sectors, promising enhanced efficiency but also posing new challenges for the global

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The future of AI is here.

The world’s first AI beauty pageant will judge AI-generated contestants competing for the title of “Miss AI.” The competition is the first installment in a program of awards presented by the World AI Creator Awards (WAICA) and its inaugural partner, Fanvue, a subscription platform that hosts AI content.

According to WAICA’s website, the organization is “dedicated to recognizing the achievements of AI creators around the world” and the Miss AI pageant will assess contestants “on their beauty, tech, and clout for the chance to earn the Miss AI crown.”

Judges will take into account classic elements of pageantry such as looks, poise and answers to questions, but contestants will also earn points for their technical skill and implementation of AI tools. Lastly, judges will consider contestants’ reach

A press release from WAICA notes that the contest “signifies a monumental leap forward — launching almost 200 years after the world’s first ever real life beauty pageant took place in the 1880s.”

The Miss AI panel of judges includes two of the world’s biggest AI creators, Aitana Lopez and Emily Pellegrini. Lopez and Pellegrini are both fully digital personas and have garnered millions of followers and even brand deals. The rest of the panel includes leading pageantry historian Sally Ann Fawcett and marketing guru Andrew Bloch.

The judges will determine a first, second and third place winner with a prize package worth over $20,000 in total. Winners will be announced on May 10 and an online awards ceremony will take place later that month.

“The creator economy is an extremely exciting place to be in right now, and with the help of our platform, there’s been exponential growth in AI creators entering the space, growing their fanbases, and monetizing content,” Fanvue Co-Founder, Will Monanage, says in the press release.

He continued, “We jumped at the chance to be the first ever partner of the Fanvue World AI Creator Awards, which recognizes talent and tech – and will continue to raise standards within the industry. Miss AI is just one award as part of a program, and we share the vision for the WAICAs to become the Oscars of the AI creator economy.”

Read the original article on People.

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Of the 200 million papers submitted on the platform, Turnitin’s AI detector tool, launched in April 2023, found that more than 22 million papers had included at least 20% AI-generated content, meaning that around 11% of the students were guilty.

An alarming number of students are using AI

Turnitin CPO Annie Chechitelli emphasized the importance of independent work in the academic landscape, noting that institutes must uphold their integrity:

“Everyone in education is looking for resources to enable them to perform at their best, and technologies, including our AI writing detection feature, help advance learning without sacrificing academic integrity.”

Turnitin’s report affirms that the continued presence of AI-generated content across the academic landscape presents a “complex, ever-evolving puzzle,” calling for a more rounded approach over simply calling out AI-generated work.

The company suggests that open discussions with students regarding the acceptable use of AI writing, reviewing existing academic policies, and revising essay prompts could tackle the problem.

Though the proportion of students submitting computer-generated copy is relatively low, Turnitin cites a separate study by Tyton Partners declaring that nearly half of students use GenAI, like ChatGPT, on a regular basis, with three-quarters of those expressing intent to continue using such tools despite the threat of bans by educational institutes.

As for teachers and lecturers, the same study currently states that academic integrity becomes a cause for concern when a paper includes more than 30% AI-generated content.

It’s clear that the widespread use of AI presents numerous challenges to the education sector, but the solution is less evident. Turnitin’s award-winning AI detector serves as a powerful tool to identify and quantify the extent of the challenge, but as the standards shift, a more multifaceted approach between the education sector, leaders, and students is in order.

This article was first posted on MSN.com: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/it-s-official-millions-of-students-are-using-ai-to-write-their-papers/ar-BB1lFhep

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