Version 7.0
Written & Compiled by Macklin Andrick, GPJ Sr. Creative Technologist
GPJ Experience Technology is your trusted guide through the latest technological shifts and how they might benefit your next experience. Another week, another opportunity to explore some of the weird and wild things going on in the tech world!
The White House announces a new $20 Million dollar AI Cyber Challenge to crowdsource solutions to patch software vulnerabilities in the US’ digital infrastructure. Slack is due for a redesign, the music industry is exploring how to monetize deepfake songs and Netflix inches closer into the gaming space.
The White House Aims to Crowdsource National Security Solutions
The White House has announced a new AI Cyber Challenge to crowdsource solutions to the problem of software vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure. Hosted by DARPA in collaboration with Anthropic, Google, Microsoft and OpenAI the goal of the challenge is to develop AI systems that can proactively identify and fix software vulnerabilities. The two-year development program will be open to competitors throughout the US and will offer nearly $20 million in prize money. White House officials say AI offers a promising approach to this problem, as it can be used to quickly and efficiently analyze large amounts of data.
Slack’s Biggest Redesign Tries to Tame the Chaos of Your Workday
Slack is many things, which is kind of the problem. The Salesforce-owned company has spent years building a team chat app alongside an alerts system, a file storage system, a knowledge base, and all the other things encompassed by Slack’s “digital HQ” motto. Over time, Slack ran out of space and too many of those features became either cluttered, buried, or both. So Slack is about to roll out its biggest-ever redesign, designed especially for the heaviest users, changing both the look and the layout of the app to hopefully make things easier to find and manage.
Google, Record Labels Working on Deal Covering Musical “Deepfakes”
Google and Universal Music are in talks to license artists’ melodies and voices for songs generated by artificial intelligence as the music business tries to monetize one of its biggest threats. The rise of generative AI has bred a surge in “deepfake” songs that can convincingly mimic the voices, lyrics or sound of established artists, often without their consent. Discussions are in their early stages and no product launch is imminent, but people close to the situation say the goal is to develop a tool for fans to create these tracks legitimately and pay the owners of the copyrights for it. Artists would also have the choice to opt in.
With New Controller App, Netflix Games Move From Mobile to TV
In the surest sign that Netflix plans to expand its gaming offerings, the company quietly released an iOS app called “Game Controller” that will allow subscribers to play games on their TVs. Until now, Netflix has offered a curated selection of mobile games—mostly from established developers of premium mobile games but has not released any games that are playable on a living room TV and technically still the case. When you open up the iPhone app, you’re told to “choose a game on your TV and follow the directions to connect,” but that process does not appear to be supported by any of Netflix’s apps yet, only a disclaimer saying “Netflix Games on TV are in beta. Some devices may not be supported at this time.”
NVIDIA and Hugging Face to Connect Millions of Developers to Generative AI Supercomputing
The Hugging Face platform lets developers build, train and deploy state-of-the-art AI models using open-source resources. Over 15,000 organizations use Hugging Face, and its community has shared over 250,000 models and 50,000 datasets. The DGX Cloud integration with Hugging Face will bring one-click access to NVIDIA’s multi-node AI supercomputing platform. With DGX Cloud, Hugging Face users will be able to connect to NVIDIA AI supercomputing, providing the software and infrastructure needed to rapidly train and tune foundation models with unique data to drive a new wave of enterprise LLM development.
Google Announces New Web-Based Coding Workspace With Generative AI Features
Google DeepMind has developed vision-language model applications for end-to-end robotic control, focusing on their ability to generalize and transfer knowledge across domains. The RT-2 model, designed to generate sequences capable of encoding vast amounts of information, has been tested in various scenarios including unfamiliar objects, different backgrounds and varied environments. The RT-2 model outperforms some of its predecessors in adapting to new conditions, largely due to its expansive language model.
More Cool Stuff We Found
- OpenAI Sponsors Major Study on Unconditional Basic Income: Insights from Sam Altman’s Thesis
- Vionlabs Partners with Plex to Deliver Enhanced Viewing Experiences
- Google’s Brain2Music AI interprets brain signals to reproduce the music you liked
- Nvidia reveals new A.I. chip, says costs of running LLMs will ‘drop significantly’
- Vibrating haptic suits give deaf people a new way to feel live music
- Robotaxis score a huge victory in California with approval to operate 24/7
- FDA Approves First Oral Treatment for Postpartum Depression
- Unity WĒTĀ Tools
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