1 844.742.7448

Email Us

Remote Support

Contact

Posts tagged "take"

  1. Home
  2. Posts tagged take

Here’s how Apple is planning to take on ChatGPT
  • No Comments

Apple may be lagging behind when it comes to generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Google Bard, but it seems determined to catch up as soon as possible – and we just got a better idea of exactly how it's going to do that.

According to The New York Times, Apple is hoping to strike a deal with news publishers, to get access to their archives of content. AI models developed by Apple could then be trained on the vast amounts of written material in those archives.

The report says that “multi-year deals” worth “at least $ 50 million” are on the table, although it sounds as though none of the negotiations have reached a conclusion as of yet. Apple, as you would expect, has refused to comment.

As per the NYT, the heavyweight publishers involved in the talks include Condé Nast (responsible for outlets such as Vogue and The New Yorker), IAC (which runs People, The Daily Beast and Better Homes and Gardens), and NBC News.

Copy rights and wrongs

These deal rumors highlight a core part of how Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT's GPT-4 and Bard's Gemini work. They analyze huge amounts of text to learn to be able to produce convincing sentences of their own.

AI companies have been rather circumspect about where they've got the data that their models are trained on, but a vast web scraping operation is no doubt involved somewhere. In other words, if you've written something that's on the internet, it's probably been used to help train an AI.

The likes of OpenAI have promised to defend businesses who use AI models against copyright claims – a sure sign that these developers of artificial intelligence engines know that they're not on the firmest of ground when it comes to intellectual property issues.

To Apple's credit, it seems the company is attempting to reimburse writers and publishers for use of their articles, rather than just taking first and asking permission later. Expect to hear more from Apple on AI during the course of 2024.

You might also like

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

Read More

Students take note: Windows 11 update reportedly has a bug that’s taking down Wi-Fi at universities
  • No Comments

Windows 11 just received a new cumulative update, but apparently Microsoft’s round of patching for December introduces a big problem for some students.

Windows Latest highlights reports from a number of students who are readers of the tech site – and universities themselves – about patch KB5033375 breaking Wi-Fi networks on campus.

Apparently, this isn’t happening to everyone by any means, but it is a serious glitch for some of those running Windows 11 who aren’t getting internet on their own laptop. As Brunel University London (UK), one of the affected unis, informs us, this isn’t happening with official university hardware, but BYOD notebooks (possibly because admins have already side-stepped the issue, perhaps?).

One theory from a system admin at a university, as Windows Latest points out, is that there may be a compatibility issue at play here (involving the Qualcomm QCA61x4a wireless adapter, and maybe others).

Another establishment to warn its students about the December update is the University of New Haven (Connecticut, US), which advises: “A recent Windows update released on 12/12/2023 has caused users to not be able to connect to the wireless networks. This update is known as KB5033375.”

Other reports are present on Reddit, with students in European countries being affected, and the issue seemingly pertaining to other Qualcomm wireless adapters.

Analysis: Update removal seems to be the only way forward, for now

In fairness to the December update, it does contain some useful fixes, including the solution to a longstanding problem with File Explorer randomly popping up on the desktop.

However, if you’re at university, any potential plus points here are likely to be outweighed by the danger of not being able to get on Wi-Fi, which is a nasty problem indeed.

A commonality here seems to be Qualcomm components, and the above mentioned Qualcomm QCA61x4a wireless adapter is a commonly used piece of hardware seen in notebooks such as the Microsoft Surface Laptop 3, Lenovo Yoga models, and many other laptops besides.

This problem also affects some business users, but for students, the only realistic way of resolving the bug is to uninstall the update, as the universities in question are recommending. (To do this, go to Windows Update in Settings, and click to view the Update History – that shows all the updates installed, and you can remove KB5033375 from here).

Hopefully Microsoft is looking into this one, and we’ve contacted the software giant to check if there’s an investigation underway. We’ll update this article if we hear anything back as to what’s going on here.

You might also like…

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

Read More

AI might take a ‘winter break’ as GPT-4 Turbo apparently learns from us to wind down for the Holidays
  • No Comments

It seems that GPT-4 Turbo – the most recent incarnation of the large language model (LLM) from OpenAI – winds down for the winter, just as many people are doing as December rolls onwards.

We all get those end-of-year Holiday season chill vibes (probably) and indeed that appears to be why GPT-4 Turbo – which Microsoft’s Copilot AI will soon be upgraded to – is acting in this manner.

As Wccftech highlighted, the interesting observation on the AI’s behavior was made by an LLM enthusiast, Rob Lynch, on X (formerly Twitter).

See more

The claim is that GPT-4 Turbo produces shorter responses – to a statistically significant extent – when the AI believes that it’s December, as opposed to May (with the testing done by changing the date in the system prompt).

So, the tentative conclusion is that it appears GPT-4 Turbo learns this behavior from us, an idea advanced by Ethan Mollick (an Associate Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in AI).

See more

Apparently GPT-4 Turbo is about 5% less productive if the AI thinks it’s the Holiday season. 

Analysis: Winter break hypothesis

This is known as the ‘AI winter break hypothesis’ and it’s an area that is worth exploring further.

What it goes to show is how unintended influences can be picked up by an AI that we wouldn’t dream of considering – although some researchers obviously did notice and consider it, and then test it. But still, you get what we mean – and there’s a whole lot of worry around these kinds of unexpected developments.

As AI progresses, its influences, and the direction that the tech takes itself in, need careful watching over, hence all the talk of safeguards for AI being vital.

We’re rushing ahead with developing AI – or rather, the likes of OpenAI (GPT), Microsoft (Copilot), and Google (Bard) certainly are – caught up in a tech arms race, with most of the focus on driving progress as hard as possible, with safeguards being more of an afterthought. And there’s an obvious danger therein which one word sums up nicely: Skynet.

At any rate, regarding this specific experiment, it’s just one piece of evidence that the winter break theory is true for GPT-4 Turbo, and Lynch has urged others to get in touch if they can reproduce the results – and we do have one report of a successful reproduction so far. Still, that’s not enough for a concrete conclusion yet – watch this space, we guess.

As mentioned above, Microsoft is currently upgrading its Copilot AI from GPT-4 to GPT-4 Turbo, which has been advanced in terms of being more accurate and offering higher quality responses in general. Google, meanwhile, is far from standing still with its rival Bard AI, which is powered by its new LLM, Gemini.

You might also like …

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

Read More

Get ready to take your Bing AI chat from the desktop to mobile, without starting over
  • No Comments

Microsoft is working on yet another sizable update to Bing AI with this round going to mobile. The latest batch comes just weeks after a previous announcement of various desktop improvements and we have a lot to cover.

Starting off with the Bing app itself, users will be able to add a Bing Chat widget to their “iOS or Android home screen”. This gives you direct access to the AI with the option to either type in your query into the text window or select the microphone icon to ask the question verbally. You can start fresh with a new chat or continue with an old one as Microsoft is enabling the frequently requested “continuous conversations across platforms”. So now a conversation held with Bing on the desktop can continue on mobile devices and vice versa.

The last Bing app update sees the AI gaining new support for multiple countries and languages, which opens it up to more people around the world. Unfortunately, a list of all the newfound support was not included in the post (although we did ask). Microsoft also claims it “improved the quality for non-English chats.” However, the company didn’t provide any details on the level of improvement. 

Expanding support

Moving on to the second app, SwiftKey will have a Compose feature to help you write texts “according to the parameters you suggest”. These parameters include the subject matter, tone, length, and format with the final one being useful for drafting emails. Of course, you can edit those drafts. Two new tones are being added to SwiftKey as well – Witty and Funny – bringing the total to six. So, if you want to have Bing create some eye-rolling dad jokes, you can (just be sure you use this power wisely). To top it all off, the AI-powered Translator on Android will be migrating over to iOS “within the next week” or so.

The Edge browser app is getting Contextual Chat allowing users to ask Bing a question based on the content they’re viewing. The example given is you can ask the AI what the best wine would be to pair with a recipe you're looking at or have it write up a summary of an article you're looking at. Learning will also be made a bit easier thanks to Selected Text Actions. Highlighting a piece of text will open a conversation with Bing where it will then explain that topic in detail complete with “cited sources”.

And last but not least, every single group chat in Skype will have access to the generative AI. All you have to do is tag it by entering “@Bing” into a discussion. 

Bing AI update on mobile apps

(Image credit: Windows)

Availability

The release dates of all these features are all over the place which is why it wasn’t mentioned earlier. The Skype update, SwiftKey Compose tool, and the Bing widget are releasing this week (week of May 14, 2023). Next week, we’ll see continuous conversations alongside the Translator tool. Everything else is unknown other than a vague “soon”. 

We asked Microsoft if it could provide us with dates for the unmentioned features plus a list of the newly supported countries and languages. This story will be updated at a later time.

While we have you check out TechRadar’s list of the best AI tools for 2023 to see what the technology is capable of. It’s not just assistants or content generators.

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

Read More

Apple thinks it has the tools to take your SMB to the next level
  • No Comments

After launching in beta last year, Apple has announced that Apple Business Essentials is now available to all small businesses in the US.

The iPhone maker’s new service brings mobile device management, 24/7 Apple support and cloud storage from iCloud together into flexible subscription plans.

Apple Business Essentials is designed to support SMBs throughout the entire device management life cycle from device setup to device upgrades while also providing strong security, prioritized support, data storage and cloud backup. It begins with simple employee onboarding which allows a small business to easily configure, deploy and manage the company’s products from anywhere.

VP of enterprise and education marketing at Apple, Susan Prescott provided further insight on the company’s complete solution for SMBs in a press release, saying

“Apple has a deep and decades-long commitment to helping small businesses thrive. From dedicated business teams in our stores to the App Store Small Business Program, our goal is to help each company grow, compete, and succeed. We look forward to bringing Apple Business Essentials to even more small businesses to simplify device management, storage, support, and repairs. Using this new service leads to invaluable time savings for customers — including those without dedicated IT staff — that they can invest back into their business.”

Apple Business Essentials

One of the most useful features in Apple Business Essentials is Collections which allows groups of apps to be delivered to employees or teams while settings such as VPN configurations, Wi-Fi passwords and more can be automatically pushed to devices.

To get started, employees simply need to sign in to their work account on their iPhone, iPad or Mac using a Managed Apple ID. Once this is done, they will have access to everything they need to be productive including the new Apple Business Essentials app from where they can download their organization’s work apps.

Managed Apple IDs for employees can be created by federating with Microsoft Azure, Azure Director and later this spring with Google Workspace identity services. This allows employees to log into their business laptops using a single business username and passwords.

Read more

> Apple could be working on a whole host of financial and banking tools

> It looks like Apple is preparing a major upgrade for its datacenters

> Apple will let businesses host secret apps on the App Store

Apple Business Essentials also works with both company-provided and personal devices and with Apple’s User Enrollment feature, employees’ personal information stays private and cryptographically separated from work data.

In addition to Apple Business Essentials, Apple has announced the launch of AppleCare+ for Business Essentials which provides organizations with 24/7 access to phone support and up to two device repairs per plan per year by individual, group or device. Employees can initiate repairs directly from the Apple Business Essentials app and an Apple-trained technician will come onsite in as little as four hours to get their devices back up and running.

Apple Business Essentials with up to 2TB of iCloud cloud storage starts at $ 2.99 per month after a two-month free trial while plans for AppleCare+ for Apple Business Essentials start at $ 9.99 per month.

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

Read More

Bitdefender wants to take a bite out of the password manager market
  • No Comments

Bitdefender has announced the launch of its new password manager which aims to simplify the creation and management of secure passwords across all of a user's online accounts on both desktop and mobile.

While the company is known for its antivirus software, its new Bitdefender Password Manager offering also includes a password generator to create and save unique, highly complex passwords for each online account. These passwords can then be accessed by using a single master password. Bitdefender Password Manager is also backed by strong end-to-end encryption along with simple set-up, easy installation and an intuitive user interface designed to be accessible to all.

According to the recent 2021 Bitdefender Global Report: Cybersecurity and Online Behaviors, half of the over 10,000 consumers surveyed use a single password for all of their online accounts while nearly one-third (32%) reuse just a few passwords across multiple online accounts. 

Vice president of Bitdefender's consumer solutions division, Ciprian Istrate explained why the company decided to create its new password manager in a press release, saying:

“Cybercriminals rely on weak passwords to compromise accounts, steal user identities and profit from selling credentials on the dark web. Despite understanding the importance of strong passwords as a security best practice, the ease of memorizing a few passwords and reusing them everywhere outweighs increased security risk for most. We built Bitdefender Password Manager with this in mind, delivering what we believe is one of the best-in-class password protection without sacrificing user convenience.”

Bitdefender Password Manager

In addition to allowing users to store their passwords, Bitdefender Password Manager can also be used to manage and auto-fill payment data. All of this data is encrypted and decrypted locally and the account holder alone has access to the master password so that no third party has access to their financial information.

While there are mobile apps available for Android and iOS, Bitdefender has also created browser extensions for Windows and macOS that support a wide range of browsers including Chrome, Firefox and Edge with support for Safari launching soon.

Read More

> We're all still making the same mistakes when it comes to secure passwords

> For some reason, these are still the most popular passwords around

> iCloud for Windows now has its own password generator

If you already use another password manager like 1Password or LastPass, Bitdefender Password Manager allows you to easily import data and passwords from other platforms including browsers like Chrome and Firefox which have their own built-in password managers.

An annual subscription to Bitdefender Password Manager costs $ 29.99 per year but the company is currently offering an introductory discount where new customers can save 33 percent and pay $ 19.99 for the year or as little as $ 1.66 per month.

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

Read More

Apple, take some notes from this half a MacBook concept for a future Mac mini
  • No Comments

If you browse forums and news sites, you'll most likely come across concept ideas from users who want to give their vision of how a product from Apple or Microsoft could be.

Back when owning an iPhone was a wish for many in the early noughties, you would see concept images of iPod Videos with a 'Phone' menu, but in the same iPod body, or a design that would look similar to the bondi-blue iMac from 1997.

However, one user has gone beyond this concept idea, and removed the display to a MacBook Pro, but left the keyboard part intact.

This not only harks back to the days of the Amiga with its 2-in-1 design, but gives me the idea that this could be perfect as a replacement to the Mac mini.

An Amiga and Apple hybrid?

The Mac mini has been around since 2006, and Apple mentioned at the time that they could only do this thanks to the PowerPC to Intel CPU transition.

But with another transition in progress, Apple has repeated the same mantra, which is why we've seen a redesigned iMac and MacBook Pro so far.

While there's been efforts by others to prove that a smaller Mac mini could work for the Apple Silicon chips, you still need to have a keyboard and trackpad in order to use it.

This is why the below makes sense in the long run, instead of being an effort to go viral for a day.

See more

This would reshape how a Mac mini could work, especially if this concept could also run on a battery if needed.

You could take this hybrid on a commute to work, and plug in the HDMI or Thunderbolt cable to start your day. This would cut down the setup you would normally have to do for a Mac mini, as the keyboard and trackpad are already there.

But this also harks back to the days of the Amiga, a PC from the eighties that allowed you to do this in a similar design.

Amiga 600 computer

(Image credit: Future)

It's one thing to look at an image, but to see someone use a snapped MacBook as if it's an Amiga 600 in 2022, makes a lot of sense.

The design can work in an age where you can easily find a spare monitor in the office and get going on some work, without also having to find a keyboard and mouse.

If this was to replace how we see the Mac mini in the near future with an M2 chip, it could be the best recommendation from me for family and friends, especially if they're looking for a new device for their bedroom or office.

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

Read More

Microsoft OneDrive will soon let you take out your frustrations on those hated files
  • No Comments

There may soon be a way to cleanse your Microsoft OneDrive and SharePoint accounts of pesky large folders, freeing up much-needed storage space and decluttering your mind for good.

The company is working on a new update for its cloud storage service that will allow users to delete large folders on Microsoft OneDrive and SharePoint Document Libraries on web.

The move will cover folders holding up to 10,000 items, meaning it could be the solution your overcrowded account needs to make some room for new items.

Microsoft OneDrive purge

The official entry on the Microsoft 365 roadmap notes that the feature is still in development for now, but should have a general release in March 2022. It is listed as being available to all Web users of OneDrive and SharePoint around the world.

With hybrid working now a common experience for most businesses, cloud-based services such as OneDrive have become pivotal to making sure organizations stay connected, wherever they may be located.

Read more

> Windows 11 Pro will soon force you to make a Microsoft account

> Microsoft 365 exploit could give attackers access to all your emails

> Windows 11 could be watermarked on unsupported PCs

Microsoft recently revealed an update for OneDrive that will embed the cloud storage service more deeply into its productivity ecosystem by working more closely with its online collaboration app Microsoft Teams.

The idea is to use this heightened level of interoperability to make it as inconvenient as possible to break away from the Microsoft ecosystem, even if a company or individual has adopted just a small selection of services.

The company also recently made it easier for remote workers to ensure that important tasks don’t slip through the cracks with another OneDrive update that provides a dedicated feed to highlight recent activity associated with their files.

However, concerns were raised in a separate area of Windows recently when Microsoft was forced to admit that its data wiping tool didn't always completely clean everything it needed to.

Although data collected by TechRadar Pro suggests Google Drive is currently the most popular cloud storage service by some margin, Microsoft will hope OneDrive improvements like these will help capture a larger portion of the business market.

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

Read More