Crooked Bough News Round-up

— 161 years ago, a New Zealand sheep farmer predicted AI doom

 

at 1/11/25 5:15am

Butler's "Darwin among the machines" warned of a future mechanical race that could subjugate humanity.

[Category: AI, Biz & IT, charles darwin, machine learning]

— Microsoft sues service for creating illicit content with its AI platform

 

at 1/10/25 4:10pm

Service used undocumented APIs and other tricks to bypass safety guardrails.

[Category: AI, Biz & IT, Policy, Security, Artificial Intelligence, generative ai, microsoft]

— AI could create 78 million more jobs than it eliminates by 2030—report

 

at 1/10/25 10:52am

As AGI talk sparks job loss fears, new WEF report projects AI-driven net job growth by 2030.

[Category: AI, Biz & IT, AI and jobs, AI layoffs, machine learning, World Economic Forum]

— Ongoing attacks on Ivanti VPNs install a ton of sneaky, well-written malware

 

at 1/9/25 3:17pm

In-the-wild attacks tamper with built-in security tool to suppress infection warnings.

[Category: Biz & IT, Security]

— How the UK was connected to the Internet for the first time

 

at 1/9/25 10:11am

And a few months later, the Internet's first password.

[Category: Biz & IT, Culture, ARPANET, Classic computing, syndication, Vintage computing]

— Here’s how hucksters are manipulating Google to promote shady Chrome extensions

 

at 1/8/25 4:46pm

How do you stash 18,000 keywords into a description? Turns out it's easy.

[Category: Biz & IT, Security, abuse, Chrome Web Store, extensions, google, spam]

— Nvidia unveils $3,000 desktop AI computer for home researchers

 

at 1/7/25 9:33am

Project DIGITS can run a local chatbot or other AI models up to 200B parameters in size.

[Category: AI, Biz & IT, desktop AI, large language models, local AI, machine learning, NVIDIA, parameters, Project DIGITS]

— Widely used DNA sequencer still doesn’t enforce Secure Boot

 

at 1/7/25 7:00am

A firmware-dwelling bootkit in the iSeq 100 could be a key win for threat actors.

[Category: Biz & IT, Security, dna sequencer, firmware, illumina, iseq 100, secure boot]

— Sam Altman says “we are now confident we know how to build AGI”

 

at 1/6/25 10:18am

The race to replace human workers continues in Big Tech, but not everyone is convinced it will happen so soon.

[Category: AI, Biz & IT, agi, Anthropic, Claude, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Gary Marcus, machine learning, o1, o1-pro, o3, openai, sam altman, simulated reasoning, SR, SR models, superintelligence]

— Time to check if you ran any of these 33 malicious Chrome extensions

 

at 1/3/25 5:15am

Two separate campaigns have been stealing credentials and browsing history for months.

[Category: Biz & IT, Security, browsers, chrome, extensions, privacy, security]

— Passkey technology is elegant, but it’s most definitely not usable security

 

at 12/30/24 5:00am

Just in time for holiday tech-support sessions, here's what to know about passkeys.

[Category: Biz & IT, Features, Security, login, passkeys, passwords, phishing, signin]

— 2024: The year AI drove everyone crazy

 

at 12/26/24 5:00am

What do eating rocks, rat genitals, and Willy Wonka have in common? AI, of course.

[Category: AI, Biz & IT, Features, AI jabberwocky, air canada, Anthropic, ChatGPT, confabulation, google, GPT-4o, jabberwocky, machine learning, meta, openai, OpenAI o1, rat genitals, Wonka]

— Health care giant Ascension says 5.6 million patients affected in cyberattack

 

at 12/23/24 10:21am

Intrusion caused medical errors and diversion of emergency services.

[Category: Biz & IT, Security, Data breaches, health care, ransomware]

— 12 days of OpenAI: The Ars Technica recap

 

at 12/20/24 3:01pm

Did OpenAI's big holiday event live up to the billing?

[Category: AI, Biz & IT, 12 days of OpenAI, ChatGPT, chatgtp, machine learning, openai]

— OpenAI announces o3 and o3-mini, its next simulated reasoning models

 

at 12/20/24 12:31pm

o3 matches human levels on ARC-AGI benchmark, and o3-mini exceeds o1 at some tasks.

[Category: AI, Biz & IT, ChatGPT, chatgtp, GPT-4o, large language models, machine learning, o1, openai, OpenAI o1, OpenAI Orion, simulated reasoning]

— The AI war between Google and OpenAI has never been more heated

 

at 12/20/24 8:44am

Potentially groundbreaking AI releases have been coming in fast, sending experts' heads spinning.

[Category: AI, Biz & IT, agentic AI, AI agents, AI assistants, ChatGPT, Gemini 2.0, google, Google Gemini, Google Veo, imag synthesis, machine learning, openai, Veo, Veo 2, video synthesis]

— Not to be outdone by OpenAI, Google releases its own “reasoning” AI model

 

at 12/19/24 2:49pm

Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking is Google's take on so-called AI reasoning models.

[Category: AI, Biz & IT, AI reasoning, Gemini 2.0, Gemini 2.0 Flash, Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking, google, google deepmind, Google Gemini, machine learning, o1, openai, OpenAI o1]

— As firms abandon VMware, Broadcom is laughing all the way to the bank

 

at 12/19/24 1:41pm

Ingram Micro the latest to ditch VMware, but VMware's still making money.

[Category: Biz & IT, Broadcom, vmware]

— New physics sim trains robots 430,000 times faster than reality

 

at 12/19/24 1:10pm

"Genesis" can compress training times from decades into hours using 3D worlds conjured from text.

[Category: AI, Biz & IT, AI physics, Carnegie Mellon University, Genesis, Jim Fan, machine learning, Zhou Xian]

— A new, uncensored AI video model may spark a new AI hobbyist movement

 

at 12/19/24 8:50am

Will Tencent's "open source" HunyuanVideo launch an at-home "Stable Diffusion" moment for uncensored AI video?

[Category: AI, Biz & IT, Ai video generator, barbarian, cat beer, china, Chinese AI, google, HunyuanVideo, machine learning, Minimax, Minimax video-01, Minimax video-01-live, openai, OpenAI Sora, Pika, Sora, Tencent, Veo, Veo 2, video synthesis, will smith]

— Arm says it’s losing $50M a year in revenue from Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite SoCs

 

at 12/18/24 12:40pm

At issue: Arm SoC designs that Qualcomm acquired when it bought Nuvia in 2021.

[Category: Biz & IT, Tech, ARM, nuvia, Qualcomm, snapdragon x elite]

As of 1/12/25 9:09pm. Last new 1/11/25 6:48am.