Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: And how the tech are you. It's time for the
Speaker 1: tech news for Thursday, February nine, and I almost said Tuesday,
Speaker 1: because I don't know what day it is anymore. And
Speaker 1: it's time to get those AI chat bought news items
Speaker 1: out of the way. First thing, these have been obviously
Speaker 1: the big news throughout the beginning of this year. Now,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned earlier this week, both Microsoft and Google
Speaker 1: have launched kind of an invitation only test of their
Speaker 1: respective AI chat bought tools. Microsoft is taking advantage of
Speaker 1: chat GPT, that's the chat bought everyone has heard about.
Speaker 1: But there are some inferences with the Microsoft version. Standard
Speaker 1: chat GPT cannot give up to date responses. You wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to get information about, say the recent earthquake
Speaker 1: in Turkey, for example. The information that chat GPT the
Speaker 1: Vanilla brand draws from is a couple of years old. However,
Speaker 1: the Microsoft version is able to reference current events, so
Speaker 1: you could ask about stuff that's happening in the news.
Speaker 1: Now that's potentially good being able to get us accinct
Speaker 1: summary of what's going on could be a really valuable tool,
Speaker 1: but it can also spell trouble for news organizations. You know,
Speaker 1: if they're not getting traffic because people are just getting
Speaker 1: the news from an AI chat butt, that could mean
Speaker 1: that they start seeing less and less revenue and then
Speaker 1: ultimately they could go out of business. Ironically, these are
Speaker 1: the institutions that are creating the data that the chat
Speaker 1: bots able to pull from in the first place. However,
Speaker 1: it could also mean that summary could end up being
Speaker 1: very biased depending upon which news sources the chat bought
Speaker 1: is pulling from when it's formulating a response. If it's
Speaker 1: a far left or far right leaning news source, then
Speaker 1: you're probably not going to get an objective account of
Speaker 1: what's going on in the news, and so that could
Speaker 1: be a really big problem down the line. Now I'm
Speaker 1: on waitlist for access to the Microsoft version, which, by
Speaker 1: the way, you can only access if you're using Microsoft's
Speaker 1: browser Edge, which is you know, obviously an attempt for
Speaker 1: Microsoft to try and get some some market share away
Speaker 1: from Google and to claim some of that for their
Speaker 1: own by keeping this being search result AI chat bot
Speaker 1: integration contained to the Edge browser. But anyway, I'm on
Speaker 1: the wait list. I have not received access to it,
Speaker 1: so I don't have any firsthand experience. But you know,
Speaker 1: I did test out some of the example questions and
Speaker 1: being so you, as a normal user, you can go
Speaker 1: to Being through Edge and have some access to this,
Speaker 1: but only by submitting sample questions that have already been written.
Speaker 1: So I did that and what I saw was that
Speaker 1: the results came back where you have search results in
Speaker 1: the main part of the screen on the left hand side,
Speaker 1: and then the right hand column you have the AI
Speaker 1: generated response, so they're side by side. I think that's
Speaker 1: a wise decision. It means that the search results are
Speaker 1: not outright eliminated. But whether or not folks will go
Speaker 1: beyond AI generated responses and start clicking on links remains
Speaker 1: to be seen. Anyway, Microsoft impressed a lot of folks
Speaker 1: with this announcement and the early access. Now let's contrast
Speaker 1: that with Google, which has had a much rougher week now.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned earlier, Google had sort of rushed its
Speaker 1: own AI chat bot, which is now called Barred, into
Speaker 1: an invitation only beta test earlier this week, in anticipation
Speaker 1: of Microsoft's announcement of chat GPT. Then yesterday Google promoted
Speaker 1: the barred chat butt, but in that outing, the AI
Speaker 1: made a boo boo. So when it was asked to
Speaker 1: list things that the James Webb Space Telescope had managed
Speaker 1: to do so far, the barred AI chat butt included
Speaker 1: a bullet point saying that the James Webb Space Telescope
Speaker 1: took the very first picture of an exo planet, so
Speaker 1: a planet that's outside of our own solar system. The
Speaker 1: problem is that's wrong. The very first image of an
Speaker 1: exo planet pre dates the James Webb Space Telescope. It
Speaker 1: happened almost twenty years ago. But Bard presented the bullet
Speaker 1: item as if it were a fact, something that chat
Speaker 1: GPT critics have said is a huge problem with chat
Speaker 1: GPT as well. In fact, for all these AI applications,
Speaker 1: that's the problem is that they present information in such
Speaker 1: way that it seems authoritative and definitive, when in fact
Speaker 1: it may be incorrect. Well, Google stock went tumbling, had
Speaker 1: dropped from around a hundred six dollars per share down
Speaker 1: to ninety eight dollars per share, and you might think, wow, okay,
Speaker 1: ten dollars, that's big, but it's not. You know, how
Speaker 1: much could that be collectively? Well, collectively, if you measure
Speaker 1: it across all the shares of Google that are out there,
Speaker 1: it means that the company effectively lost a hundred billion
Speaker 1: dollars in value Yawza, Microsoft Scores and early victory in
Speaker 1: the Chat Bought search wars. Though I would caution anyone
Speaker 1: in Redwood from celebrating just yet, as chat gpt is
Speaker 1: very much capable of giving wrong answers with conviction, just
Speaker 1: as Barred has done. It is better to continue to
Speaker 1: stress that these tools are in development, they are not
Speaker 1: trustworthy by a long shot. On a related note, I
Speaker 1: also saw that Kun'lan Tech, the parent company behind the
Speaker 1: web browser Opera, plans to incorporate chat gpt into Opera
Speaker 1: itself in the future. There are scarce details as to
Speaker 1: the extent to which chat gpt will play a role
Speaker 1: in Opera, and I also don't have really any information
Speaker 1: on a timeline for when this could be rolled out,
Speaker 1: but it is interesting that Opera, which is a niche
Speaker 1: web browser, is waiting into this competitive field. Currently, Opera
Speaker 1: ranks as the sixth most popular browser in the world
Speaker 1: and has a market share of two point four percent.
Speaker 1: Compare that to Google Chrome. This is the dominant web
Speaker 1: browser in the world and has a sixty five point
Speaker 1: four percent market share, so more than half of all
Speaker 1: web browsers being used our Google Chrome. Now Microsoft is
Speaker 1: hoping to take a serious chunk out of Google because
Speaker 1: again it's chat GPT bing search tool is only available
Speaker 1: if you're using the Edge browser. So we'll have to
Speaker 1: see if this changes things, or if in fact chat
Speaker 1: gpt just doesn't have the legs. Vice has a really
Speaker 1: interesting article about a very odd quirk chat gpt appears
Speaker 1: to have. The article has the title quote chat gpt
Speaker 1: can be broken by entering these strange words and nobody
Speaker 1: is sure why end quote, And yeah, that kind of
Speaker 1: summarizes the story. But the strange words in particular appear
Speaker 1: to be user names from places like Reddit and Twitch
Speaker 1: and that sort of stuff, and they include stuff like
Speaker 1: solid gold, magic harp, and streamer bought. Researchers discovered a
Speaker 1: bank of around one hundred odd words or user names
Speaker 1: while they were probing chat gpt. They were trying to
Speaker 1: determine what sort of prompts create the most reliable results,
Speaker 1: and in the process they kind of uncovered this treasure
Speaker 1: trove of bizarre words that chat GPT just doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to understand what to do with. Now, chat GPT can
Speaker 1: compose text that will include words that are similar to
Speaker 1: the one hundred or so odd ones that the researchers found,
Speaker 1: but they discovered if they put those actual names into
Speaker 1: a prompt, it would create an odd response from chat GPT.
Speaker 1: For example, they said that when they submitted streamer bought
Speaker 1: to chat GPT, it replied, you're a jerk. Now, that's
Speaker 1: very funny, but obviously it's also puzzling. What would prompt
Speaker 1: chat GPT to call you a jerk just for saying
Speaker 1: streamer bought to it? Other words would either create no
Speaker 1: response at all, or chat GPT would totally misinterpret whatever
Speaker 1: it was. It would not be able to repeat these
Speaker 1: words if you told it to repeat them. Uh. In
Speaker 1: one case, it converted a user name into a number.
Speaker 1: It treated the user name as if it were a number,
Speaker 1: and if you asked questions about the user name, it
Speaker 1: would answer as if it were a number. Now, the
Speaker 1: researchers admit they are not sure what's going on here,
Speaker 1: As the title of the piece suggests, they suspect that
Speaker 1: this could be from open AI using sites like Reddit
Speaker 1: as a data source to crawl through and gather information.
Speaker 1: According to one of these researchers, several of the user
Speaker 1: handles were actually found to be participants in a Reddit
Speaker 1: thread where people in the thread are counting to infinity
Speaker 1: reply by reply, like each reply increases the number by one.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's why when the researchers asked about the Nitrome
Speaker 1: Fan they discovered the chat GPT interpreted that as the
Speaker 1: number two, like the Nitrome Fan meant two, So I
Speaker 1: guess you would have blink the Nitrome Fan as a
Speaker 1: band that I don't really like very much. And sure,
Speaker 1: this might all sound trivial, but the researchers have pointed
Speaker 1: out that they want to understand why a chat bought
Speaker 1: might pick certain information over other while creating a response,
Speaker 1: what kind of information would cause a chat about to break,
Speaker 1: because that's important to understand and also for us to
Speaker 1: get a better grip on how accurate, reliable, and trustworthy
Speaker 1: the AI is at any given time, as well as
Speaker 1: get insight into the types of sources that the AI
Speaker 1: relies upon important questions to answer. Okay, we're gonna take
Speaker 1: a quick break. When we come back, we're gonna segue
Speaker 1: away from all this AI stuff and talk about Twitter
Speaker 1: for a little bit. Okay, we're back. If you were
Speaker 1: on Twitter yesterday, you might have encountered some weirdness going on.
Speaker 1: Some users ended up seeing a message that said you
Speaker 1: are over the daily limit for sending tweets, even though
Speaker 1: they hadn't posted anything up to that point. Twitter does
Speaker 1: in fact have a daily limit on tweets, but it
Speaker 1: is a very high limit. I'm talking two thousand, four
Speaker 1: hundred messages. There's also a limit on direct messages per
Speaker 1: day that's five hundred, and you're also limited to how
Speaker 1: many people you can follow in a day that's four hundred.
Speaker 1: These policies are largely an effort to stave off particularly
Speaker 1: active spam bots. Your average person is not likely to
Speaker 1: send that many messages. I mean, a hundred messages per
Speaker 1: hour on average is asking a bit much, even for me.
Speaker 1: So it was certainly strange when users started to get
Speaker 1: message saying they had hit these limits, and it prompted
Speaker 1: speculation that perhaps Twitter was going to impose strict limits
Speaker 1: and then you would have to subscribe to a paid
Speaker 1: Twitter account in order to increase those limits. But honestly,
Speaker 1: it just ended up being a glitch. And I know
Speaker 1: that Twitter has made a lot of decisions that would
Speaker 1: lead you to think, oh, they're gonna charge you if
Speaker 1: you want to post more than ten times a day,
Speaker 1: but that does not appear to be the case as
Speaker 1: far as anyone outside of Twitter is where there is
Speaker 1: no plan to do that. So Elon Musk also sent
Speaker 1: out a message to Twitter employees that urged them to
Speaker 1: kind of put projects on hold for the moment and
Speaker 1: instead prioritize making sure that Twitter is stable and that
Speaker 1: it's performing properly. He also cited the fact that the
Speaker 1: Big Game, you know, the American football big game that
Speaker 1: has a trademark name that I have been told I
Speaker 1: cannot use, is happening this weekend and people are bound
Speaker 1: to be on Twitter talking about all the commercials and
Speaker 1: also the game, because you know, I understand there are
Speaker 1: people who really take those games very seriously. This is
Speaker 1: me not really joking about sports fans. I'm more joking
Speaker 1: about how I'm just a person who never got into sports.
Speaker 1: I think sports fans who are passionate about the sports
Speaker 1: they love, that's awesome. Um, I just I just am
Speaker 1: not one of them. But it's a big shocking revelation.
Speaker 1: I knew you weren't expecting it anyway. I'm sure that
Speaker 1: Twitter staff are going to have their hands full keeping
Speaker 1: the ship afloat during one of the busiest days for
Speaker 1: social networks, and that's got to be hard considering the
Speaker 1: reduced workforce that still remains at Twitter. The UK and
Speaker 1: the US have imposed sanctions against leaders in the Russian
Speaker 1: hacker group called trick Mott, which hasn't been as active recently,
Speaker 1: but in the past has been responsible for some massive
Speaker 1: ransomware attacks on vulnerable targets, most notably healthcare facilities. Hackers
Speaker 1: will frequently concentrate on healthcare companies because their services are
Speaker 1: literally matters of life and death, so there's a strong
Speaker 1: incentive for these targets to concede to ransom demands because
Speaker 1: the consequences could be deadly. UK and US officials have
Speaker 1: also alleged that this hacker group has official ties with
Speaker 1: Russian intelligence, which would mean they are a state sponsored
Speaker 1: hacker group. And you might wonder what good sanctions in
Speaker 1: the UK and the US are going to do against
Speaker 1: these hackers who are based out of Russia, which is
Speaker 1: a country that already has heavy sanctions against it for
Speaker 1: numerous reasons, and according to the officials, the goal is
Speaker 1: really to make it harder for the hackers to launder
Speaker 1: money from their ransomware attacks, which would potentially make them
Speaker 1: easier to catch and harder for Russian officials to ignore.
Speaker 1: A couple of electric vehicle startup companies called Rivian and
Speaker 1: pole Star recently commissioned a climate study from the consulting
Speaker 1: firm Kearney, and the results of that study prompted the
Speaker 1: startups to announce that the automotive industry needs some serious
Speaker 1: changes beyond the electrification of the vehicles they offer in
Speaker 1: order to make a real DNT in carbon emissions. And
Speaker 1: we've been seeing a lot of companies commit to producing
Speaker 1: more electric vehicles recently, particularly as states and countries are
Speaker 1: passing laws that are going to require all new vehicles
Speaker 1: sold within their borders to be something other than traditional
Speaker 1: internal combustion engine vehicles. But the startups argue that to
Speaker 1: really make meaningful change, the industry as a whole has
Speaker 1: to address the entire supply chains contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.
Speaker 1: That includes things like the mining of the minerals you
Speaker 1: need in order to make batteries and further that even
Speaker 1: with the electrification of vehicles, we're moving far too slowly
Speaker 1: to meet important goals outlined by the Paris Agreement. The
Speaker 1: report is actually pretty grim. Uh. It sounds like it's
Speaker 1: impossible to meet the Paris goals without a much more
Speaker 1: drastic change than what countries like the United States have
Speaker 1: already committed to, and it's not likely that these countries
Speaker 1: are going to uh increase that commitment. The implications for
Speaker 1: that are really sobering because it means that we will
Speaker 1: fail to limit global warming to a further one point
Speaker 1: five degrees celsius and the impact of climate change will
Speaker 1: be greater because of that. And as the startups are stressing,
Speaker 1: every year that passes with us not doing what is
Speaker 1: necessary means that what is necessary will become even harder
Speaker 1: to do. It will grow and become more imperative for
Speaker 1: us to do something about it. We're really just making
Speaker 1: it harder for ourselves and more importantly, on future generations.
Speaker 1: According to this report, The Wall Street Journal reports that
Speaker 1: users in certain Facebook groups in India have been using
Speaker 1: the platform to offer guns for sale. The groups in
Speaker 1: question are related to an extremist Hindu organization that the
Speaker 1: c i A alleges is connected with violent attacks against
Speaker 1: Muslims in India. Now, private gun sales between citizens is
Speaker 1: a big no no in Facebook's terms of service, and yet,
Speaker 1: when an Indian activist brought these posts to Meta's attention,
Speaker 1: he received a response that said the posts actually didn't
Speaker 1: violate any of Facebook's policies. However, when the Wall Street
Speaker 1: Journal started to ask Meta questions about how that could
Speaker 1: possibly be the case, the posts offering guns for sale
Speaker 1: were suddenly removed. Meta essentially said, these posts violated Facebook policies,
Speaker 1: and we take that kind of stuff down when we
Speaker 1: find out about it. Except they had already found out
Speaker 1: about it because the activists had reported it. I guess
Speaker 1: you just need to insert cricket chirping sound here. Various
Speaker 1: activist groups have long pointed out that Meta's content moderation
Speaker 1: practices have a lot to be desired in many regions
Speaker 1: around the globe, particularly in places where English is not
Speaker 1: the dominant language. And to make matters even stickier for Meta,
Speaker 1: India is home to more than a billion people, and
Speaker 1: a whole lot of them use Meta products like Facebook
Speaker 1: and WhatsApp. So the picture of the Wall Street Journal
Speaker 1: paints is that despite this large user base, Meta really
Speaker 1: is failing to enforce its policies in India. Finally, some
Speaker 1: light news. This week, Nintendo held one of its Nintendo
Speaker 1: Direct events and showed off some upcoming titles, including the
Speaker 1: highly anticipated and delayed sequel to the legend of Zelda
Speaker 1: game Breath of the Wild. The sequel is called Tears
Speaker 1: of the King, and Nintendo released a trailer to give
Speaker 1: players a hint of what to expect, and it looks real,
Speaker 1: moody and epic. Y'all. You get a real Lord of
Speaker 1: the Rings s ron kind of vibe going with the
Speaker 1: the villain and uh saying that the entire kingdom of
Speaker 1: High Rule is going to get wiped out. And we
Speaker 1: get some shots of Link in action doing cool stuff
Speaker 1: like writing a quad copter like device and fighting various monsters,
Speaker 1: as well as some cut scene clips. And we also
Speaker 1: got the release date of May twelve of this year,
Speaker 1: and it looks pretty cool now. I say that as
Speaker 1: someone who hasn't played a Zelda game since Okarina of
Speaker 1: Time that was my last one because I'm old. Nintendo
Speaker 1: also announced a remaster of Metroid Prime that's available on
Speaker 1: the Shop, the digital store for the Nintendo Switch right now.
Speaker 1: Nintendo also announced that Switch Online players will be able
Speaker 1: to access a library of games that were originally designed
Speaker 1: for the game Boy and the game Boy Advance. That
Speaker 1: really takes me back. You could finally play Tetris the
Speaker 1: way it was meant to be played a k a.
Speaker 1: The way I played it. Nintendo announced several other titles
Speaker 1: and releases, and you should definitely pop online when you
Speaker 1: can and find the full presentation. If you're a big
Speaker 1: Nintendo fan, I'm sure you'll enjoy it. That's it for
Speaker 1: the news for Thursday, February nine. I hope you are
Speaker 1: all well. Make sure you reach out to me with
Speaker 1: anything you would like to hear in future episodes of
Speaker 1: tech Stuff. You do that on Twitter if it's up.
Speaker 1: The handel for tech Stuff is tech Stuff hs W.
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again really soon. Tex Stuff is
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