Self-driving Waymo cars keep SF residents awake all night by honking at each other

Self-driving Waymo cars keep SF residents awake all night by honking at each other

Enlarge / A Waymo self-driving car in front of Google’s San Francisco headquarters, San Francisco, California, June 7, 2024. (credit: Getty Images) Silicon Valley’s latest disruption? Your sleep schedule. On Saturday, NBC Bay Area reported that San Francisco’s South of Market residents are being awakened throughout the night by Waymo self-driving cars honking at each…

New AI tool enables real-time face swapping on webcams, raising fraud concerns

New AI tool enables real-time face swapping on webcams, raising fraud concerns

Enlarge / A still video capture of X user João Fiadeiro replacing his face with J.D. Vance in a test of Deep-Live-Cam. Over the past few days, a software package called Deep-Live-Cam has been going viral on social media because it can take the face of a person extracted from a single photo and apply…

Nashville man arrested for running “laptop farm” to get jobs for North Koreans

Nashville man arrested for running “laptop farm” to get jobs for North Koreans

Enlarge Federal authorities have arrested a Nashville man on charges he hosted laptops at his residences in a scheme to deceive US companies into hiring foreign remote IT workers who funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars in income to fund North Korea’s weapons program. The scheme, federal prosecutors said, worked by getting US companies to…

ChatGPT unexpectedly began speaking in a user’s cloned voice during testing

ChatGPT unexpectedly began speaking in a user’s cloned voice during testing

Enlarge (credit: Ole_CNX via Getty Images) On Thursday, OpenAI released the “system card” for ChatGPT’s new GPT-4o AI model that details model limitations and safety testing procedures. Among other examples, the document reveals that in rare occurrences during testing, the model’s Advanced Voice Mode unintentionally imitated users’ voices without permission. Currently, OpenAI has safeguards in…

AnitaB.org takes steps to protect attendees at this year’s Grace Hopper Celebration

AnitaB.org takes steps to protect attendees at this year’s Grace Hopper Celebration

AnitaB.org has announced new measures it’s taking to avoid a repeat of the debacle at last year’s Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC). The nonprofit organization’s annual event to support the advancement of women and nonbinary technologists, was named for computing pioneer Rear Admiral Grace Hopper. It combines conference sessions with an expo and job fair. At…

512-bit RSA key in home energy system gives control of “virtual power plant”

512-bit RSA key in home energy system gives control of “virtual power plant”

Enlarge When Ryan Castellucci recently acquired solar panels and a battery storage system for their home just outside of London, they were drawn to the ability to use an open source dashboard to monitor and control the flow of electricity being generated. Instead, they gained much, much more—some 200 megawatts of programmable capacity to charge…

Man vs. machine: DeepMind’s new robot serves up a table tennis triumph

Man vs. machine: DeepMind’s new robot serves up a table tennis triumph

Enlarge (credit: Benj Edwards / Google DeepMind) On Wednesday, researchers at Google DeepMind revealed the first AI-powered robotic table tennis player capable of competing at an amateur human level. The system combines an industrial robot arm called the ABB IRB 1100 and custom AI software from DeepMind. While an expert human player can still defeat…

Musk’s X under scrutiny in Europe for data privacy practices

Musk’s X under scrutiny in Europe for data privacy practices

Elon Musk’s X platform faces legal action in Ireland, with the Data Protection Commission (DPC) filing High Court proceedings over concerns related to the handling of European users’ personal data. DPC has raised concerns about X’s use of public posts from the European Union and European Economic Area (EU/EEA) to train AI systems, including its…