Twitter source code appears on GitHub, Google confirms not to use private Gmail accounts for training its AI and Microsoft claims AI is showing early signs of artificial general intelligence.
These stories and more on trending hashtags for Tuesday, March 28
James Roy, I’m your guest host this week – here’s today’s top tech news.
Twitter said parts of its source code were leaked online, according to court filings, first reported by The New York Times on Sunday.
Twitter filed a case on Friday in the US District Court for the Northern District of California against GitHub, the software collaboration platform on which the code allegedly appeared.
According to Twitter the leak included “proprietary source code for Twitter’s platform and internal tools”.
Github took down the repository after Twitter filed a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice, but Twitter refused to provide any of the requested information in an effort to hunt down the code leaker.
Specifically, Twitter asked GitHub to provide code submitters’ contact information, IP addresses, any session information, and other identifying information.
The GitHub user who posted the Twitter source code has the username “freespeech enthusiast,” possibly a reference to Twitter owner Elon Musk casting himself as a defender of free speech.
According to an article in Ars Technica, the leaker may be one of approximately 5,500 employees who left Twitter through layoffs, firings or resignations after Musk bought the company.
While Musk said in March that “all code used to recommend tweets” would be made open source by March 31, the leaked code could be more sensitive.
According to the NYT’s sources the code may contain security vulnerabilities that could give hackers or other motivated parties the means to extract user data or take the site down.
Source: Ars Technica
Google said it did not train AI chatbot Bard with private Gmail accounts, a spokesperson confirmed to news site The Register.
The question came to the fore when an AI researcher asked Bard where his training data came from and was puzzled when he mentioned Gmail’s internal data.
A former Google employee, Blake Lamoine — who was fired for leaking company secrets — claimed it was actually coached on text from Gmail.
In its statement to the Register, Google said, “Like all LLMs, Bard may occasionally generate responses that contain incorrect or misleading information, while presenting it in a confident and convincing manner. This is an example of that. We do not use personal data from your Gmail or other personal apps and services to improve Bard.
Google launched Bard last week, and is inviting US and UK enthusiasts to join a waiting list to talk to the chatbot.
It hasn’t yet exhibited the unbridled and bizarre behaviors seen during Microsoft Bing’s earlier tests, but they both share a similar tendency to respond inappropriately, when prompted, or to create false information.
Source: register
France has decided to ban all entertainment apps including TikTok on all government devices.
Stanislas Guerini, Minister of Change and Public Services, released the policy saying that there are no entertainment apps that have strong enough security to be deployed on government-owned devices.
Guerini said some exceptions would be allowed, but only for apps needed for official communications.
The move comes at a time when countries around the world are cracking down on TikTok for its impact on children’s mental health, lax privacy policies and its alleged links to the Chinese Communist Party.
In fact, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew was grilled by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce of the US Congress last week. It was a trainwreck, with many members saying the app should be banned outright – and not just from government devices.
Sunday House Speaker Kevin McCarthy tweeted that legislation would soon be introduced to approve TikTok. It is unclear whether the bill would force the sale of TikTok’s US operations or ban the app.
But the Chinese government told that Tiktok cannot do any deal without its approval. And with China’s foreign ministry accusing the US of conducting a “xenophobic witch hunt”, it is unlikely Beijing will make it easier for the US entity to control the app.
Source: register
Microsoft has unveiled a new, faster and redesigned Microsoft Teams, now available in preview, for Windows users.
The company describes the new Teams client as being up to twice as fast as the existing app, using 50 percent less memory and 70 percent less disk space.
Microsoft says the new app will also launch up to three times faster, allowing users to switch between chats and channels up to 1.7 times faster than with classic Teams.
The new Microsoft Teams also brings support for Copilot, Microsoft’s AI-powered assistant, which will help users prepare before joining meetings and answer questions in real-time while chatting with their colleagues. Will do
The enhanced teams will become generally available from June 2023.
Source: bleeping computer
Microsoft claims that its AI, supported by the OpenAI GPT large language model, is showing early signs of artificial general intelligence (AGI), which means its capabilities are at or above human levels.
Microsoft made these claims in a paper released on the arXiv preprint server titled “The Spark of Artificial General Intelligence: Early Experiments with GPT-4,
The intriguing conclusion contrasts completely with what OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has been saying about GPT-4. For example, he said that the model is “still flawed, still limited.”
But even here the bulk of the paper is devoted to listing the limitations and biases that large language models involve.
This begs the question of how close GPT-4 really is to AGI and whether AGI is being used as clickbait instead.
As a matter of fact, the researchers write in the paper abstract that GPT-4 is very close to human-level performance but then quickly refutes that statement.
They write, “Our claim that the GPT-4 represents progress towards AGI does not mean that it is perfect at what it does, or that it comes close to being able to do anything that A human can or has intrinsic motivation and goals, which are key aspects of some definitions of AGI.”
Every time researchers describe GPT-4’s impressive capabilities, it’s immediately followed by some dire warning.
A few weeks before GPT-4’s release, Altman said, “The GPT-4 rumor mill is a ridiculous thing. I don’t know where all this comes from. People are begging to be disappointed and they will be. The propaganda goes like this… We don’t have real AGI and that’s what we are expected to do.
Microsoft also clarified in a statement to news site Motherboard that it is not focused on trying to achieve AGI. Instead, it wants its AI technologies to assist humans with cognitive work rather than replace them.
But it is clear that the “spark” the researchers claim is largely overshadowed by the limits of AI.
Source: vice president
That’s the top tech news for today. Hashtag Trending airs five days a week with daily tech news and we have a special weekend edition where we do an in-depth interview with an expert on some of the tech developments that are making the news.
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I’m your host, James Roy, have a wonderful Tuesday!
