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DoD Seeking Innovative Ideas on Logistics For Modern Times

Logistics has always been a critically important part of military power. But it is also, frankly, boring. There is no sizzle and little glory in moving supplies. It has always been this way. But great masters of strategy have always known the importance of transport. Here is the way Winston Churchill put it: “Victory is…
Is the Paranoia About Kaspersky Lab Products Justified?

In late March 2022, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) placed cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab on the list of organization it deems a potential threat to the United States. This is the first Russian company on the list with Kaspersky Lab joining a growing list of Chinese technology and telecommunications companies that include Huawei, ZTE, China…
The Critical Infrastructure Defense Project: Free, Premium Cybersecurity Services Available to Hospitals and Utilities

As Western companies continue to break ties with the Russian State (as an extension of the sanctions imposed on Russia by the U.S. and NATO), three U.S. cybersecurity companies in the U.S. are addressing the ongoing threat of potential cyber-attacks in the U.S. by making their platforms available to critical infrastructure entities, including the energy…
IriusRisk’s Open-Threat Model (OTM) Standard Available via Creative Commons License

In 2014, Elon Musk applied the open-source philosophy to Telsa patents (to foster innovation and “create a common, rapidly-evolving technology platform”) making all the company’s patents available for public use. The automated threat modeling company IriusRisk may have similar motivations for the rapid market creation of an open-standard threat modeling tools marketplace, with the added…
Crafting a Humanitarian Surge to Respond to the War on Ukraine

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has placed an extraordinary burden on civilians and civilian infrastructure. According to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, as of March 20, 2022, 902 civilians have been killed and another 1,459 have been wounded. This casualty rate is likely much higher and will certainly increase as the conflict continues.
Using Artificial Intelligence For Competitive Advantage in Business

AI technologies are making continuous advances in domains like industrial robotics, logistics, speech recognition and translation, banking, medicine and advanced scientific research. But in almost every case, the cutting edge AI that drives the advances drops from attention, becoming almost invisible when it becomes part of the overall system. The fact that most AI use…
The March 2022 OODA Network Member Meeting: Core Themes Emerge from Five Scenarios for War’s End

To help members optimize opportunities and reduce risk, OODA hosts a monthly video call to discuss items of common interest to our membership. These highly collaborative sessions are always a great way for our members to meet and interact with each other while talking about topics like global risks, emerging technologies, cybersecurity, and current or…
Why is cyber threat detection so hard?

Why is cyber threat detection so hard? The most obvious reason threat detection is hard is that “threat” is too abstract to solve. It may seem obvious, but effective problem solving requires problem framing. Hence, everyone involved in the process clearly understands the problem and what it is not. We get distracted by vague and…
China Keeps U.S. Cyber Operations in the News

In March 2022, the Chinese cybersecurity company Pangu Lab attributed cyber espionage targeting Chinese organization to the United States’ premier signals intelligence agency. The Chinese company Qihoo 360 had done this in 2020 when it attributed hostile cyber activity to the Central Intelligence Agency (APT-C-39). In the past, Beijing appeared content to ride out global…
Open-Source Intelligence Resources: The EU Disinformation Lab’s Ukraine Conflict Resource Hub

EU DisinfoLab is an independent non-governmental organization (NGO) focused on “researching and tackling sophisticated disinformation campaigns targeting the European Union, its member states, core institutions, and core values.” The lab has created the Ukraine Conflict Resource Hub with essential information and links to reliable research, analysis, and fact-checks to help [organizations] navigate during this crisis.…
Global Crypto and Digital Currency Initiatives: China

We continue with our brief survey of crypto and digital currency initiatives from around the globe, all of which are officially sanctioned to enhance national competitive advantage (in the event crypto overtakes the US dollar as the global reserve currency). In previous posts, we provided an analysis of crypto and digital currency initiatives in El Salvador,…
For Corporate Strategic Planners: Five Scenarios For War’s End

As we have discussed in OODA network meetings and our reporting since the beginning of renewed Russian hostilities against Ukraine, assessing the likelihood of war was relatively easy. We listened to what Putin was saying and understood Russian history, culture and Putin’s imperial ambitions and assessed early that he had made up his mind to…
What Will The Federal Government Do In Response To The Rise of Cryptocurrencies?

Over the years it has been very exciting to watch the incredible innovations around Bitcoin and Ethereum and other projects in the crypto space. And there have been huge disappointments in statements by government leaders over the years, many of which have really said disparaging things about the movement. There are still some real haters…
Mental Models For Leadership In The Modern Age

The study of mental models can improve your ability to make decisions and improve business outcomes. This post, part of our series on Decision Intelligence, reviews the mental models we recommend all business and government decision makers master. Retired Air Force Colonel John Boyd was an early advocate for the study of mental models in competitive…
The Very Serious Okta Breach and the Arrest of the Lapsus$ Ransomware Gang

The recent breach of the industry-standard, cloud-based single sign-on (SSO) authentification service provider Okta is a consequential cyber incident. Following is a timeline of the Okta Breach and the recent Lapsus$ ransomware rampage, concluding with technical guidance and recommendations gleaned from a handful of ongoing technical investigations underway by law enforcement, Okta, Microsoft, Nvidia and…

Briefs

Apple signs deal with OpenAI for iOS, still wants Google as an ‘option’

We previously heard Apple was talking to Google and OpenAI about providing AI functionality on iOS 18. Now, it sounds like Apple has signed a deal with the ChatGPT maker. Bloomberg journalist Mark Gurman reported in his Power On newsletter that Apple and OpenAI have reached a deal for OpenAI to provide chatbot functionality in…
Gun-toting robot dog fetches attention at Chinese military drills

China flaunted a robot dog strapped with a gun during its largest-ever military exercise with Cambodia, producing images reminiscent of dystopian movies. China and the U.S. are racing to dominate robotics and other smart machinery. Defense officials from both powers believe unmanned technologies will be decisive in future wars. The gun-toting quadruped was shown off…
The Great AI Challenge: We Test Five Top Bots on Useful, Everyday Skills

Would you trust an AI chatbot with family planning? Investing $1 million? How about writing your wedding vows? Human-sounding bots barely existed two years ago. Now they’re everywhere. There’s ChatGPT, which kicked off the whole generative-AI craze, and big swings from Google and Microsoft, plus countless other smaller players, all with their own smooth-talking helpers. We put…
Musk’s A.I. Firm Raises $6 Billion in Race With Rivals

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, said on Sunday that it has raised $6 billion, helping to close the funding gap with OpenAI, Anthropic and other rivals in the red-hot industry. The funds would be used “to take xAI’s first products to market, build advanced infrastructure, and accelerate the research and development of future technologies,”…
Big Tech execs say Europe’s new AI law could harm innovation

Amazon and Meta executives told CNN this week that some of the fears about artificial intelligence are overblown and that the European Union’s sweeping new AI rules risk holding back innovation. The EU gave the final green light to its AI act Tuesday, the same week tech leaders gathered in Paris for the annual VivaTech…
Cohere launches open weights AI model Aya 23 with support for nearly two dozen languages

Today, Cohere for AI (C4AI), the non-profit research arm of Canadian enterprise AI startup Cohere, announced the open weights release of Aya 23, a new family of state-of-the-art multilingual language models. Available in 8B and 35B parameter variants (parameters refer to the strength of connections between artificial neurons in an AI model, with more generally…
Glue pizza and eat rocks: Google AI search errors go viral

Google’s new artificial intelligence (AI) search feature is facing criticism for providing erratic, inaccurate answers. Its experimental “AI Overviews” tool has told some users searching for how to make cheese stick to pizza better that they could use “non-toxic glue”. The search engine’s AI-generated responses have also said geologists recommend humans eat one rock per day.…
Reinforcement learning AI might bring humanoid robots to the real world

ChatGPT and other AI tools are upending our digital lives, but our AI interactions are about to get physical. Humanoid robots trained with a particular type of AI to sense and react to their world could lend a hand in factories, space stations, nursing homes and beyond. Two recent papers in Science Robotics highlight how…
Elon Musk predicts jobs will become ‘kinda like a hobby’

Elon Musk is a notoriously hard worker. At present he’s the CEO of EV maker Tesla and rocket company SpaceX, founder of satellite venture Starlink and neurotechnology company Neuralink, and the owner of X—the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. But even Musk, who is well-known for sleeping on the floors of his factories in…
C.I.A. Director to Meet With Israeli Counterpart This Weekend Over Cease-Fire Talks

William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, will talk with his Israeli counterpart to try to revive the stalled discussions over a pause in the fighting and the release of hostages in Gaza, according to a U.S. official. It is not clear if Egyptian and Qatari negotiators will join Mr. Burns and David Barnea, the chief…
Russia, in New Push, Increasingly Disrupts Ukraine’s Starlink Service

Russia has deployed advanced tech to interfere with Elon Musk’s satellite internet service, Starlink, leading to more outages on the northern front battle line. Starlink has been critical to the Ukrainian military since the earliest days of the war with Russia. Without the full service, Ukrainian soldiers said, they couldn’t quickly communicate and share information…
Newly Detected Chinese Group Targeting Military, Government Entities

A Chinese threat actor, Unfading Sea Haze, has been targeting military and government entities in South China Sea countries for at least six years, Bitdefender reports. The hacking group has remained under the radar since 2018 using new and improved tools, tactics, and techniques (TTPs). The threat actor has been observed employing spear-phishing in some…
US Intelligence Agencies’ Embrace of Generative AI Is at Once Wary and Urgent

U.S. intelligence agencies are scrambling to embrace the AI revolution, believing they’ll be smothered by exponential data growth as sensor-generated surveillance tech further blankets the planet. But officials are acutely aware that the tech is young and brittle, and that generative AI is anything but tailor-made for a dangerous trade steeped in deception. The CIA’s…
Amazon, AI startup Hugging Face pair to use Amazon chips

Amazon.com’s cloud unit on Wednesday said it has partnered with artificial intelligence startup Hugging Face to make it easier to run thousands of AI models on Amazon’s custom computing chips. Valued at $4.5 billion, Hugging Face has become a central hub for AI researchers and developers to share chatbots and other AI software and is backed…
Is OpenAI scrapping GPT-5? Slide suggests a move away from numbers

OpenAI may be moving away from numbers in the way it names its next generation artificial intelligence models, at least that’s the suggestion from a recent presentation in Paris. During a demonstration of ChatGPT Voice at the VivaTech conference, OpenAI’s Head of Developer Experience Romain Huet showed a slide revealing the potential growth of AI…
Autonomous robot invents the world’s best shock absorber

MAMA BEAR – which stands for Mechanics of Additively Manufactured Architectures Bayesian Experimental Autonomous Researcher – 3D prints small structures before gently placing them into a hydraulic press and crushes them. It measures the energy absorption of each little creation it makes as it flattens them into little plastic pancakes. MAMA BEAR then stores the…
OpenAI Strikes a Deal to License News Corp Content

News Corp, the Murdoch-owned empire of publications like The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post, announced on Wednesday that it had agreed to a deal with OpenAI to share its content to train and service artificial intelligence chatbots. News Corp said the multiyear agreement would allow OpenAI to use current and archived news content…
Meta introduces Chameleon, a state-of-the-art multimodal model

As competition in the generative AI field shifts toward multimodal models, Meta has released a preview of what can be its answer to the models released by frontier labs. Chameleon, its new family of models, has been designed to be natively multi-modal instead of putting together components with different modalities. While Meta has not released…
Why Board Members Must Prioritize Cybersecurity and Regulatory Compliance: Lessons from the SEC’s $10 Million Fine on Intercontinental Exchange and NYSE

The SEC charged Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) and nine affiliates, including the New York Stock Exchange, with failing to promptly inform the SEC about a cyber intrusion in 2021 (more here). ICE was fined $10 million for delaying notification and not following Regulation SCI, which mandates immediate reporting of cyber events. ICE’s failure to notify its…
Under Relentless Russian Assault, Ukraine Adopts a Defensive Crouch

Russian troops punched across the border between Russia and Ukraine this month and pushed toward Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv. Military analysts say Russia lacks the troops to capture the city but could advance to within artillery range. Militarily, the incursion seems intended to stretch Ukraine’s already thin and under equipped forces by diverting troops from…
Israel Responds to Move to Recognize Palestinian State by Withholding Funds

Israel will not transfer much-needed funds to the Palestinian Authority in the wake of the decision by three European countries to recognize a Palestinian state. The decision by the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right leader who opposes Palestinian sovereignty, threatened to push the Palestinian government into a deeper fiscal crisis. He said in a…
China Launches Military Drills Around Taiwan as ‘Punishment’

Starting Thursday, China launched two days of military drills surrounding Taiwan in what it called a “strong punishment” to the self-governing island, after Taiwan’s new president pledged to defend its sovereignty as he took office. The drills were the first substantive response by China to the swearing in of President Lai Ching-te, whose party asserts…
US to Invest $50 Million in Securing Hospitals Against Cyber Threats

The US government’s Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) this week announced a $50 million cybersecurity effort to help IT teams better secure hospital environments against cyberattacks. According to ARPA-H, the large number of internet-connected devices in health facilities makes it difficult to advance cybersecurity tools in the health sector, exposing hospitals and other…
Rockwell Automation Urges Customers to Disconnect ICS From Internet

Rockwell Automation has issued a security notice urging customers to ensure that their industrial control systems (ICS) are not connected to the internet and exposed to cyber threats. The company is concerned about potential attacks “due to heightened geopolitical tensions and adversarial cyber activity globally”. Users should never configure their assets to be directly connected…
Amazon plans to give Alexa an AI overhaul

Amazon is upgrading its decade-old Alexa voice assistant with generative artificial intelligence and plans to charge a monthly subscription fee to offset the cost of the technology, according to people with knowledge of Amazon’s plans. The Seattle-based tech and retail giant will launch a more conversational version of Alexa later this year, potentially positioning it to…
Magic Editor starts rolling out to older Google phones as it expands past Pixel 8

Last month, Google Photos announced that it would be making Magic Editor and other AI-powered tools free for all Android and iOS users. There are some constraints, but this is now starting to roll out for Pixel owners. Magic Editor launched with the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro to let you move, resize, or erase…
Microsoft’s new Copilot AI agents act like virtual employees to automate tasks

Microsoft will soon allow businesses and developers to build AI-powered Copilots that can work like virtual employees and perform tasks automatically. Instead of Copilot sitting idle waiting for queries, it will be able to do things like monitor email inboxes and automate a series of tasks or data entry that employees normally have to do…
Meta AI chief says large language models will not reach human intelligence

Meta’s artificial intelligence chief said the large language models that power generative AI products such as ChatGPT would never achieve the ability to reason and plan like humans, as he focused instead on a radical alternative approach to create “superintelligence” in machines. Yann LeCun, chief AI scientist at the social media giant that owns Facebook…
‘In a mess’: Evacuees from New Caledonia tell of relief

Australians evacuated from New Caledonia after being stranded amid over a week of violent protests have expressed relief upon returning home. Two Royal Australian Air Force planes brought 108 Australians and other tourists to Brisbane on Tuesday night, while the New Zealand military flew 48 people to Auckland. France plans to evacuate around 500 people…
Ukraine makes gains in its other war – fighting corruption

Since its independence in 1991, Ukraine has struggled with pervasive corruption, but efforts to combat it are deemed crucial to its current war effort against Russia. Transparency International ranks Ukraine at its best since 2006, reflecting some successes such as the arrest of high-profile officials, including the then-Supreme Court head on bribery charges. Significant milestones…
UN halts Rafah food distribution due to shortages and hostilities

Food distribution in the southern Gaza city of Rafah has been halted due to a lack of supplies and insecurity amid the ongoing Israeli military operation against Hamas, according to the UN. The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) and the World Food Programme (WFP) have reported that their distribution centers and warehouses are now…
Iran’s supreme leader leads prayers at Raisi funeral

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei presided over a funeral for the late President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, and others who died in a helicopter crash near the Azerbaijan border. The ceremony, held at Tehran University, featured caskets draped in Iranian flags and was attended by top Iranian leaders and international figures, including…
Ivanti Patches Critical Code Execution Vulnerabilities in Endpoint Manager

Ivanti announced patches for several critical vulnerabilities in their Endpoint Manager (EPM) on Tuesday, addressing six critical SQL Injection bugs (CVE-2024-29822 through CVE-2024-29827) with a CVSS score of 9.6, allowing unauthenticated attackers on the network to execute arbitrary code. These flaws impact the Core server of EPM 2022 SU5 and earlier versions. The company released…
Critical Authentication Bypass Resolved in GitHub Enterprise Server

GitHub has released patches for a critical-severity vulnerability (CVE-2024-4985, CVSS score 10/10) in its Enterprise Server, which could allow unauthenticated attackers to obtain administrative privileges. This authentication bypass issue affects instances using SAML single sign-on (SSO) authentication with the optional encrypted assertions feature enabled. The vulnerability, present in all versions prior to 3.13.0, allows an…
Critical Veeam Vulnerability Leads to Authentication Bypass

Veeam has released an update for its Backup & Replication software, addressing four vulnerabilities, including a critical-severity flaw (CVE-2024-29849, CVSS score 9.8) that allows unauthenticated attackers to log in to the Backup Enterprise Manager web interface as any user. The issue affects product versions 5.0 to 12.1 and is resolved in version 12.1.2.172. The update…
Norway, Ireland, Spain to Recognize Palestinian State

Norway, Ireland and Spain will formally recognise Palestine as a state next week for the sake of “peace in the Middle East.“ Israel immediately announced it was recalling its envoys to Ireland and Norway for “urgent consultations.” The Israeli foreign ministry said that “recognising a Palestinian state risks turning you into a pawn in the…
Russia Launches ‘Space Weapon’ in Path of US Satellite: Pentagon

The United States says Russia has launched a satellite that US intelligence officials believe can inspect and attack other satellites in low Earth orbit. A Soyuz rocket blasted off from Russia’s Plesetsk launch site, deploying in low Earth orbit at least nine satellites, including COSMOS 2576, a type of Russian military “inspector” spacecraft US officials…
No Gaza Aid Delivered Through U.S.-Built Pier Has Been Distributed, Pentagon Says

None of the food and supplies that has entered the Gaza Strip through a U.S.-built temporary pier in its first five days of operation has been distributed to Palestinians by aid organizations. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder, the Pentagon spokesman, said that 569 metric tons of aid had made it onto Gaza’s shore but that those…
Russia Starts Tactical Nuclear Drills, in a Warning to Ukraine’s Allies

Russia sent a pointed reminder on Tuesday that it could use battlefield nuclear weapons in Ukraine. They released videos of its forces beginning exercises to practice their use of nuclear weapons. The Russian Defense Ministry said the exercises in the videos, carried out near Ukraine, were aimed at preparing the force for the possibility of…
Zoom Adding Post-Quantum End-to-End Encryption to Products

Zoom announced on Tuesday that post-quantum end-to-end encryption (E2EE) has been added to Zoom Workplace. The feature is currently available worldwide in Zoom Meetings, with Zoom Phone and Zoom Rooms coming soon. Zoom claims it is the first unified communications-as-a-service company to offer a post-quantum E2EE solution for video conferencing. Post-quantum E2EE will allow Zoom…
AI Companies Make Fresh Safety Promise at Seoul Summit, Nations Agree to Align Work on Risks

Leading artificial intelligence companies made a fresh pledge at the AI Seoul Summit to develop AI safely, while world leaders agreed to build a network of publicly backed safety institutes to advance research and testing of the technology. Google, Meta and OpenAI were among these companies. The companies present vowed to ensure the safety of…
Europe sets benchmark for rest of the world with landmark AI laws

Europe’s landmark rules on artificial intelligence will enter into force next month after EU countries endorsed them on Tuesday (May 21), a political deal reached in December, setting a potential global benchmark on guardrails for a technology used in almost every facet of life and business. The AI Act is more comprehensive than the United…
AI Needs Enormous Computing Power. Could Light-Based Chips Help?

Moore’s law is already pretty fast. It holds that computer chips pack in twice as many transistors every two years or so, producing major jumps in speed and efficiency. But the computing demands of the deep learning era are growing even faster than that — at a pace that is likely not sustainable. The International…
Sony’s careful robot is learning how to perform microsurgeries

A robot just performed microsurgery on a corn kernel, which could change the game for precision surgeries. Sony has unveiled a prototype of a microsurgery assistance robot which can support surgeons operating on extremely small tissues, nerves, and veins. The compact creation includes a miniature automatic instrument exchange, designed to reduce the number of interruptions and delays…
Microsoft brings its lightweight Phi-3 model and OpenAI’s ‘magical’ GPT-4o to Azure AI to help devs build transformational experiences

Microsoft is currently holding its annual developer conference, Build 2024 in Seattle. While the event is centered on AI PCs and Windows 11 on Arm, Microsoft has also made a handful of announcements around its AI efforts, particularly in its Microsoft Azure cloud service. The tech giant says the new advances in Azure will help users…
A.I.’s Black Boxes Just Got a Little Less Mysterious

One of the weirder, more unnerving things about today’s leading artificial intelligence systems is that nobody — not even the people who build them — really knows how the systems work. That’s because large language models, the type of A.I. systems that power ChatGPT and other popular chatbots, are not programmed line by line by…
Ukraine’s Zelenskiy pushes allies to step up aid and involvement in war

On Monday, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy declared that Western allies are “taking too long” to make key decisions regarding military support for Ukraine. President Zelenskiy also announced that he was personally encouraging partners to become more directly engaged with the war. He continued by stating that helping intercept Russian missiles over Ukraine, as well as enabling…
Poland arrests nine on charges of Russian-ordered sabotage

Late on Monday, Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced the arrest of nine people relating to acts of sabotage in connection with the Russian services. Prime Minister Donald Tusk also announced that Poland would allocate extra funding in the form of an additional 100 million zlotys ($25.53 million) to its intelligence services to guard against the…
In Divided Iran, President’s death met by muted mourning and furtive celebration

On Monday, Iran announced five days of mourning for President Ebrahim Raisi. Following the death of Iran’s President and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahain, government loyalists filled the mosques and squares with prayer. However, the majority of shops have remained open in the wake of the deaths. Opponents of the leadership posted videos of people…
Russia fails in rival UN bid on nuclear, other weapons in space

On Monday, a Russian-drafted United Nations Security Council resolution failed as it split the 15-member body. The Russian-drafted resolution called on all countries to prevent “for all time” the threat, placement, or use of any weapons in outer space. The draft ultimately failed as it was unable to acquire the minimum number of votes necessary…
Vulnerability Found in Fluent Bit Utility Used by Major Cloud, Tech Companies

Fluent Bit, a logging utility used by several major companies has been impacted by a severe vulnerability to its system. Fluent Bit operates as an open-source data collector and processor that handles large swaths of data from a myriad of sources. The vulnerability, detailed by cybersecurity firm Tenable, leaves the logging utility exposed to denial-of-service…
EPA Issues Alert After Finding Critical Vulnerabilities in Drinking Water Systems

On Monday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued an enforcement regarding steps to protect drinking water systems against cyber threats. According to inspections conducted by the EPA, over 70% of water systems in the U.S. are not compliant with the Safe Drinking Water Act. Inspections conducted since September 2023 revealed that critical cyber vulnerabilities…
Iranian MOIS-Linked Hackers Behind Destructive Attacks on Albania and Israel

An Iranian threat actor working in collaboration with the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) has been identified as being responsible for wiping attacks targeting Albania and Israel. The cybersecurity firm Check Point has been tracking the threat actor using the moniker Void Manticore, also known as Storm-0842 by Microsoft. The threat actor has been…
Cyber Criminals Exploit Github and FileZilla to Deliver Malware Cocktail

An in-depth multi-stage campaign has been uncovered wherein cyber criminals abuse legitimate services to deliver malware. Legitimate services such as GitHub and FileZilla have been utilized to deliver different stealer malware and banking Trojans. The threat actors are able to impersonate credible software such as 1Password and Pixelmator Pro to execute this campaign and effectively…
Artificial intelligence companies seek big profits from ‘small’ language models

Artificial intelligence companies that have spent billions of dollars building so-called large language models to power generative AI products are now banking on a new way to drive revenues: small language models. Apple, Microsoft, Meta and Google have all recently released new AI models with fewer “parameters” — the number of variables used to train…
Inflection AI reveals new team and plan to embed emotional AI in business bots

When Mustafa Sulyman, a leading figure in artificial intelligence, left Inflection AI in March to head Microsoft’s AI division, the tech world buzzed about Microsoft’s gain in the ongoing AI talent war. Less discussed, however, was the impact of this departure on Inflection AI. With Sulyman and approximately 70 team members moving to Microsoft, the…
Microsoft to unveil AI devices and features ahead of developer conference

Microsoft plans to announce several pieces of hardware and software related to consumer devices on Monday at an event at its Redmond, Washington, campus. The Windows maker is expected to reveal a new version of its Surface Pro tablet and Surface Laptop that feature Qualcomm chips based on Arm Holdings’ architecture. After Intel’s processors dominated the…
The robots are coming

On a sunny, balmy Tuesday in late April, a line of cars formed outside a military proving ground near Kyiv, their passengers eager to catch a glimpse of the future of warfare. As the drivers waited to enter, hosts of maybugs swarmed overhead. Above them buzzed bigger, robotic competitors: military drones crisscrossing the sky. The…
Google CEO Sundar Pichai on AI-powered search and the future of the web

Today, I’m talking to Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who joined the show the day after the Google I/O developer conference last week. Google’s focus during the conference was AI, of course — Google is building AI into virtually all of its products. My personal favorite is the new AI search in Google Photos…
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, hardline ally of Supreme Leader, killed in helicopter crash

On Sunday, a helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and his foreign minister crashed, killing the Iranian President. According to an Iranian official, the helicopter crashed while navigating through heavy fog and crossing over mountain terrain. The crash occurred on a return trip from a border visit with Azerbaijan. The official also stated that the…