Connect with us

Technology

Amazon’s supercharged Alexa won’t arrive this year

Published

on

Amazon’s supercharged Alexa won’t arrive this year

In the week’s least surprising news, Amazon’s reinvention of its Alexa voice assistant has reportedly fallen even further behind. According to Bloomberg, the launch of a new Alexa — billed as a smarter, more capable AI-powered voice assistant — has been pushed back. Again. “A person familiar with the matter said Alexa AI teams were recently told that their target deadline had been moved into 2025,” writes Bloomberg

The revamped voice assistant, first announced last September, was expected to arrive this year, toting ChatGPT-style intelligence and more natural, conversational interactions. But earlier this summer, Fortune reported that the new Alexa might never be ready. Then, for the first time in half a decade, fall came and went without a big splashy Amazon event, and the rumors appeared to be true.

It seems we can’t have a smarter Alexa and a more capable Alexa.

As further evidence that the company is retrenching, Amazon has cut off access to the beta of the new Alexa. You used to be able to request access by saying, “Alexa, let’s chat” to an Echo device. Now, the assistant responds with, “Let’s Chat is no longer available. For now, you can ask me questions or do things like set a timer, play music, turn on a connected light, and more.”

Advertisement

Bloomberg’s sources say those beta users who did get to chat have been unimpressed (I requested access several times but with no luck). Responses were slow, sounded stiff, and weren’t “all that useful,” they said. Plus, the new Alexa messes up smart home integrations, hallucinates, and apparently tries to show off. Bloomberg reports:

One tester says the ongoing hallucinations aren’t always wrong, just uncalled for, as if Alexa is trying to show off its newfound prowess. For instance, before, if you asked Alexa what halftime show Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson performed at, it might say the 2004 Super Bowl. Now, it’s just as likely to give a long-winded addendum about the infamous wardrobe malfunction.

The challenge appears to lie in integrating large language models with the command and control method of today’s voice assistants. It seems we can’t have a smarter Alexa and a more capable Alexa. According to Bloomberg’s sources, using pre-trained AI models allows Alexa to answer more complicated questions but makes it more likely to fail at setting a kitchen timer or controlling smart lights.

Old Alexa may have its issues, but it can (mostly) reliably control my smart lights. No one is asking for a digital assistant they can chat with at home, but who won’t get off the couch to turn out the lights. I have my husband for that.

Bloomberg reports that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has yet to convey a compelling vision for an AI-powered Alexa to the company. While he’s said publicly, “We continue to re-architect the brain of Alexa … ”, there’s been scant information about what an LLM-powered Alexa will bring to its millions of users — beyond being able to converse more naturally. More importantly, it seems Amazon has yet to prove it can do this without diminishing the features customers use the assistant for every day.

Advertisement

No one is asking for a digital assistant they can chat with, but who won’t get off the couch to turn out the lights.

While the company searches for its vision, Jassy has installed a new head of the devices and services division under which Alexa falls. Panos Panay has been at the company for a year now, and Bloomberg reports the former head of Microsoft’s Surface division has “brought a focus on higher-quality design to a group adept at utilitarian gadgets.”

As I wrote this week, Amazon’s prior tact of making copious amounts of cheap hardware at the expense of better software is partly why Alexa hasn’t gotten measurably smarter over the last decade. However, with better hardware and a focus on building on Alexa’s strength, rather than simply turning it into a chatbot, the company could recapture Jeff Bezos’s original vision of creating Star Trek’s “Computer.” But whatever the plan is for a new Alexa, it looks like it won’t be here anytime soon.

Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading
Advertisement
Click to comment

You must be logged in to post a comment Login

Leave a Reply

Technology

Noma offers security from enterprise AI data to deployment

Published

on

Noma offers security from enterprise AI data to deployment

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More


As 2024 nears its conclusion, the state of play in enterprise technology is that companies of all sizes and domains are keen to leverage their data in generative AI applications that improve internal (employee-facing) or external (cusomter/partner-facing) processes.

However, ensuring that they do so securely is another challenge — especially for companies that don’t specialize in security. For many enterprises, their existing security solutions may also be inadequate or unprepared for the AI era and the many capabilities they want to unleash with their data piped through AI.

Enter Noma, an Israeli startup specializing in AI enterprise security, that today exits stealth mode wih a Series A round led by $32 million Ballistic Ventures and supported by Glilot Capital Partners and Cyber Club London, as well as angels including the chief information security officers (CISOs) from companies like McDonald’s, Google DeepMind, Twitter, Atlassian, BNP Paribas, T-Mobile, and Nielsen.

Advertisement
Noma team. Credit: Noma

Noma provides a comprehensive security platform that ensures integrity of enterprise customer’s data from the very start, before they do anything to it, all the way through to leveraging it to train and/or deploy AI models and custom applications.

The platform is already in use by several Fortune 500 companies.

Tackling security challenges in the data and AI landscape

Niv Braun, co-founder and CEO of Noma, told VentureBeat in an interview about the pressing need for targeted security in AI workflows. “

“Today’s AI and data science models face unique security risks, like prompt injection and data leakage, that simply aren’t covered by standard security tools,” he said.

These issues are becoming more common as organizations experience security incidents due to misconfigured MLOps tools and unverified open-source models.

Advertisement

This gap inspired Braun and his co-founder, Alon Tron, to create Noma.

“My co-founder Alon and I served together in the military, and we both saw firsthand the gap in security tools for data science and AI workflows,” Braun said. “In application security, we had tools that helped software engineers work securely, but for data teams—data scientists, engineers, and analysts—there was nothing similar. They were left unprotected.”

Both co-founders served in Israel’s elite 8200 intelligence unit. Combining expertise from their backgrounds in security and data science, they quickly a team skilled in AI and application security.

What Noma’s three-tiered platform offers

Noma’s platform is designed to safeguard every stage of AI model development and operation, incorporating security tools that cover:

Advertisement
  1. Data & AI Supply Chain Security: Ensures secure environments, pipelines, and development tools, mitigating the risk of compromised data and AI supply chains.
  2. AI Security Posture Management (AI-SPM): Provides a comprehensive inventory and security management solution for both first- and third-party AI models, aiming to protect assets before they enter production.
  3. AI Threat Detection & Response: Actively monitors AI applications to detect adversarial attacks in real-time and enforce safety protocols during runtime.

Braun emphasized the consolidation that Noma’s platform offers to customers. “Our platform includes three products: data and AI supply chain security, AI security posture management, and AI runtime defense.”

But, for those that wish, each of the three domains can be applied ad-hoc, a-la-carte.

“A major strength of our platform is that it consolidates everything into one solution,” Braun explained. “While customers can choose just one part, most prefer the comprehensive approach.”

Braun clarified that Noma offers a choice between an all-inclusive enterprise license and a modular, product-based option, both on an annual software-as-a-service (SaaS) subscription basis. He said 95% of customers have so far chosen the integrated, all-in-one approach.

Braun’s comments suggest that the enterprise license is positioned as the most cost-effective, flexible choice for customers looking for extensive, organization-wide access to Noma’s solutions.

Advertisement

Maximum flexibility and ease-of-use

Noma’s platform is compatible with diverse environments, supporting cloud-based, SaaS, or self-hosted configurations, and installs within minutes without requiring code changes.

“Integration is easy,” said Braun. “All customers need to do is connect our platform via API, and we automatically map and scan everything in their environment.”

This frictionless setup means data science teams can implement security controls without disrupting their workflows, a feature that Noma highlights as essential in high-velocity, AI-powered development.

Kobi Samboursky, Founder and Managing Partner at Glilot Capital Partners, extolled the value of Noma’s unified approach in a press release: “AppSec evolved over decades with fragmented tools for static and dynamic analysis, open source, supply chain, and runtime. Security teams have come to realize that they need consolidated solutions. Noma is uniquely positioned to tackle this problem from the start, consolidating multiple use cases into a single platform.”

Advertisement

In addition, Noma can be applied by those without extensive training in security or data infrastructure.

“We engage with both data and AI teams as well as security teams, and our platform doesn’t require deep expertise in either field,” he said. “Even in cases where security teams ran POCs (proof of concepts) without data science teams involved, they found it easy to integrate and use.””

At the same time, the platform turns these subjects into digestible, easy-to-understand insights for employees working in all departments.

“The platform itself is very self-educating,” Braun noted. “It explains the basic principles of security in a way that application security teams are familiar with, but with a new ‘data and AI’ layer.”

Advertisement

Addressing industry wants and needs

As security and compliance become more critical in AI adoption, Noma aims to facilitate collaboration between data science and security teams.

“Our mission is to bridge the gap between data science and security teams, making it easy for both to collaborate on securing AI workflows,” Braun said.

Noma’s approach is designed to improve transparency and simplify security processes.

“We make security simple for both teams, providing clear, understandable risk information and steps for remediation,” he added. “It’s all about reducing friction and improving collaboration.”

Advertisement

Jake Seid, Co-founder and General Partner at Ballistic Ventures, emphasizes the importance of security from the outset in a statement in a press release.

“As security and compliance become more top of mind for organizations adopting AI, embedding security from the start ensures that innovation can flourish without compromise,” Seid said. “Noma’s approach gives AppSec teams full visibility and confidence while empowering data science teams to move fast and drive business value.”

Noma’s ambitions are to lead the emerging field

Noma’s entry into the market marks a significant step in securing AI-driven business operations at scale.

With the growing use of AI in critical applications, the potential for security vulnerabilities in AI workflows becomes more acute.

Advertisement

Noma’s platform provides a much-needed safeguard, allowing enterprises to harness AI’s potential without compromising on security.

In addition, Noma is actively contributing to AI security standards and has participated in the development of U.S. government guidelines, such as NIST SP 800-218A, through its involvement with the OWASP AI Exchange.

With $32 million in fresh funding and early traction among high-profile customers, Noma seeks to become a leader in the emerging field of data and AI lifecycle security.


Source link
Continue Reading

Technology

Why is Nintendo targeting this YouTuber?

Published

on

Why is Nintendo targeting this YouTuber?

Russ Crandall knows how to reinvent himself. At 24, he relearned how to walk and write after a stroke impacted his brain. When open-heart surgery wasn’t enough to address a rare autoimmune disease, he adopted a paleo diet — and became a New York Times bestselling cookbook author and food blogger following his seemingly miraculous recovery. Last year, he retired from a 22-year career as a US Navy translator to become a full-time YouTuber instead.

Now, he’s wondering if Nintendo will force him to change yet again.

Crandall runs Retro Game Corps, a YouTube channel with half a million subscribers that shows hundreds of ways to play classic games using modern hardware and emulation. If there’s a handheld gaming device released in the past four years, odds are Crandall has made a 20-minute video about it. He started the channel as a hobby in 2020 during the covid-19 pandemic but soon realized it could become his day job.

So, last year, he shut down his food blog — “I was kind of done telling people what to eat,” he says — and left the military with the rank of master chief petty officer.

Advertisement

Yes, Retro Game Corps was a master chief, just like in Halo. (I saw his DD-214.)
Selfie by Russ Crandall

But four years into his YouTube career, on September 28th, Crandall saw how easily his new life as a content creator could disintegrate. Walking back from his studio after pulling an all-nighter, he checked his phone to see if a just-edited video was uploading properly. It was — but another one of his videos vanished before his eyes. Days earlier, he’d published a 14-minute video about how well Nintendo Wii U games can run on Android handhelds, and now it had been wiped from YouTube.

“This can’t be happening,” he recalls saying out loud. A few minutes later, a YouTube email confirmed it wasn’t a glitch: Nintendo had issued a DMCA takedown notice, YouTube had removed his video, and his entire 500,000-subscriber channel was now at risk of permanent deletion. 

“We’ll have to terminate your channel” after one more strike, YouTube warned

Advertisement

It was his second YouTube copyright strike from Nintendo, and Crandall says that’s when it truly sank in. YouTube maintains a strict “three strikes, you’re out” rule, and he realized his family’s livelihood depended on preventing strike number three. “It all sort of came crashing down in that moment,” he tells The Verge.

In a panic, he rushed back to the studio, canceled his upload, and publicly declared that Nintendo was targeting him. He would begin self-censoring all his videos to hopefully escape the Japanese company’s wrath. “I will no longer show any Nintendo games on-screen,” he told his fans and related communities on Reddit, YouTube, and social networks.

Nintendo was well within its rights to ask for a takedown, of course: Crandall had shown the company’s copyrighted content onscreen. And yet that doesn’t explain the copyright strike at all since countless Twitch streamers, YouTubers, TikTokers, and Instagrammers show Nintendo content every single day. Clearly, Nintendo was using copyright as a pretext to get these videos taken down.

Crandall says he received this YouTube notice on September 28th.
Advertisement

Most institutions have historically taken Nintendo’s legal threats seriously. Countless fan projects, including unofficial remakes and sequels, have been voluntarily terminated by their creators after receiving cease and desist orders from Nintendo. While the technology behind video game emulators is generally considered legal, even the lead developers of the Nintendo Switch emulators Yuzu and Ryujinx folded when Nintendo came knocking on their doors.

But unlike many of those developers, Crandall isn’t some pseudonymous person who could slink back into the internet’s shadows. Nor is he someone Nintendo can readily accuse of “facilitating piracy at a colossal scale,” like Yuzu, for distributing software tools. 

Even among content creators, Crandall doesn’t seem like the kind of person Nintendo usually threatens — he’s known for advocating that people should buy Nintendo products before they use emulators and often shows off physical cartridges in his videos to drive that message home. 

“If I’m playing a Switch game on my Steam Deck, the cartridge will be there or the box will be there to indicate that I have purchased the game,” he says. While he admits he hasn’t done that 100 percent of the time, he’s been careful with Nintendo Switch games in particular. In one of the videos that YouTube removed, he flips through a wallet full of 80 genuine cartridges. He also produces guides on how to create personal backups of your own genuine classic games.

Advertisement

Here’s his wallet of 80 genuine Switch cartridges, from one of the videos that Nintendo asked YouTube to remove.

That’s why the community was so surprised when Nintendo targeted him, of all YouTubers — and it’s why Crandall might possibly take the unusual step of challenging Nintendo’s takedowns. 

Crandall says he’s been a Nintendo fan for nearly 40 years, ever since his family bought an NES for Christmas in 1985. The copyright strikes hit hard. “This is the first actual interaction I’ve had with Nintendo, and it’s crazy. I feature most of their games not because I’m trying to, like, stick it to them, but just sharing the love of those games,” he says. 

But he does have a guess as to why Nintendo targeted him. The first copyright strike landed on his video about the MIG Dumper and the MIG Flash, a pair of devices that let you turn genuine Nintendo Switch cartridges into digital files and then carry around an entire library of those ROMs in a special microSD-equipped flash cartridge for your console. I’ve watched the video, and while Crandall does explicitly take an anti-piracy stance, it’s easy to imagine these gadgets being used by bad actors, too. 

Advertisement

“I think the first strike was simply due to the fact that they wanted to minimize attention around the MIG Flash cartridge and dumper, and they had an opportunity,” Crandall says. That opportunity was a relatively tiny mistake: unlike, say, fellow YouTuber Taki Udon’s video on the MIG products, Retro Game Corps showed off four seconds of the title screen of Mario to prove the MIG hardware could legitimately dump and run games, potentially infringing Nintendo’s exclusive right to distribute and / or perform its audiovisual intellectual property.

In one of the videos YouTube removed, Crandall never shows more than the title screen of this Nintendo game.

Isn’t that fair use? Crandall thinks so. It seems like his uses could be brief, limited, and educational enough to satisfy the four-factor fair use test, and arguing that could genuinely get him out of YouTube purgatory. I could easily find dozens of similar examples in our journalism here at The Verge. But in order to submit what’s called a “copyright counter notification” with YouTube, which argues that he’s been inaccurately targeted and isn’t infringing on someone’s copyright, Crandall would have to open himself up to a potential Nintendo lawsuit. 

“It’s a dangerous game,” says Richard Hoeg, a business attorney who hosts the Virtual Legality podcast. “You really don’t want to get into federal court over something that even if you win, will be an expensive and time-consuming burden.”

Advertisement

But Crandall knows this — he seems quite read up on both the DMCA and YouTube processes — and yet he’s considered at least trying his luck. Crandall says he’s conflicted; he doesn’t want to “poke the bear.” He has his family to think about. But it’s possible Nintendo could continue to come after him, he admits, even if he lies low.

While he’s already eliminated Nintendo games from his testing suite for all future videos, he says he simply doesn’t have time to go back through the hundreds of videos he’s created that already contain Mario footage and blur or delete every last scrap. And yet, the way things stand, Nintendo could pick any of those videos to immediately designate his channel for deletion. 

Companies can freely pick and choose who they target with copyright infringement complaints and lawsuits, several legal experts tell me. Unlike with trademarks, they don’t need to actively or consistently defend their works in order to maintain their rights.

Crandall says that even YouTube initially thought that perhaps Nintendo made a mistake when targeting him. He’s part of the YouTube Partner Program, and his designated partner manager told him to sit tight while YouTube asked Nintendo if it might retract its own takedown requests. But Nintendo wouldn’t, and YouTube has now told him he’s on his own. 

Advertisement

On November 23rd, one of the copyright strikes should simply expire — unless Nintendo makes a move before then.
Image via Russ Crandall

As of late October, he’s waffling. He could simply wait two more months until YouTube’s 90-day copyright strikes expire because, as soon as they do, his channel will no longer be in danger of immediate termination. Nintendo’s takedown requests already succeeded in removing those videos, and he can hope Nintendo feels it’s made enough of an example out of him to do anything more. 

Or he can submit a document that shows he’s not willing to be that example, not willing to be pushed around by Nintendo — and hope it doesn’t land him in a world of legal hurt. 

It’s painful for Crandall, who has been a lifelong fan of Nintendo’s work. Even after a long day of making videos about games, he likes to relax by playing through a couple of classic Mario or Donkey Kong levels, purely to admire the artistry and design. “Since the second strike I haven’t been doing that much at all, because even just seeing the box art leaves a bit of a sour taste in my mouth,” he says.

Advertisement

Nintendo didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment. 

Source link

Continue Reading

Technology

Amazon finally adds MFA to its enterprise email service

Published

on

Amazon finally adds MFA to its enterprise email service

Eight years on from its initial launch, Amazon has introduced multi-factor authentication (MFA) to its business cloud-hosted email service, WorkMail.

Better late than never appears to be the justification behind the near-decade delay, especially for one of the most basic forms of identity verification that has been standard practice for several years now.

Source link

Advertisement

Continue Reading

Technology

More than winter is coming: Warner Bros. is developing a Game of Thrones movie

Published

on

More than winter is coming: Warner Bros. is developing a Game of Thrones movie
Emilia Clarke and Kit Harington in Hame of Thrones.
HBO

In the half decade since Game of Thrones finished its eight-season run on HBO, the premium cable network has put together numerous spinoff projects — only two of which have come to fruition: House of the Dragon and the upcoming prequel A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Now, HBO’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, is making plans to bring George R.R. Martin’s fantasy world to the big screen.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Warner Bros. is “quietly developing” a Game of Thrones movie, but it will certainly be a lot less quiet now that the word is out. The story notes that the project is still very early in development, with no director or screenwriters attached. It’s also unclear if the studio has a concept in mind for the film, or if Martin will be directly involved with crafting the story.

Ironically, Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss pitched HBO a trilogy of movies to wrap up the series. Martin was reportedly in favor of that plan as well, but HBO was adamant that its most popular intellectual property remain exclusive to the network. This was before Max was launched as a standalone streamer, and new ownership took over. So there doesn’t seem to be a roadblock in the way of getting the film made now.

Thus far, almost all of the proposed Game of Thrones spinoffs have been prequels. While Martin’s backstory for his A Song of Ice and Fire novels has a lot territory to explore, there was a single Game of Thrones sequel series that would have featured Kit Harington reprising his role as Jon Snow. That project fell through, but a sequel story would be the only way to bring Harington and other cast members from the show back for a new story. For now, we’ll just have to wait and see what develops.






Source link

Advertisement

Continue Reading

Science & Environment

Exxon (XOM) earnings Q3 2024

Published

on

Exxon (XOM) earnings Q3 2024


An Exxon gas station is seen in the Brooklyn borough of New York City on Oct. 6, 2023.

Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images

Exxon Mobil beat third-quarter earnings expectations, as the oil major reached its highest production level in more than four decades.

Here is what Exxon reported for the third quarter compared with what Wall Street was expecting, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG: 

Advertisement

  • Earnings per share: $1.92 adjusted, vs. $1.88 per share expected.
  • Revenues: $90 billion, vs. $93.94 billion expected

The oil major booked net income of $8.61 billion in the quarter, or $1.92 per share, down about 5% compared to $9.1 billion, or $2.25 per share, in the year-ago period. Exxon’s profits have declined as refining margins and natural gas prices have pulled back from from historically high levels in 2023.

The company returned $9.8 billion to shareholders in the quarter and increased its fourth-quarter dividend to $0.99 per share.

Exxon said it has reached its high production level in more than 40 years at 3.2 million barrels per day.

The oil major’s stock rose about 1% in pre-market trading.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Advertisement



Source link

Continue Reading

Technology

The US forced Huawei to build its own technology, founder says

Published

on

The US forced Huawei to build its own technology, founder says

Ren Zhengfei, the founder of Huawei Technologies, said that the US forced Huawei to build its own technology. In other words, the US ban did that, as the company did not really have many options following a series of those bans.

Huawei founder believes the US forced Huawei to build its own technology

The company’s founder attended the ICPC (International Collegiate Programming Content) coding competition for university students, where he said that. He also talked with students about Huawei, technology in general, future goals, and a number of other topics.

At one point during the event, Zhengfei actually said that he believes Huawei can learn from the receptive culture of the US. He believes that it can make both Huawei and China advance in science and technology.

These were his exact words: “The US has set an example for all countries and companies worldwide on being open. If a country is closed off, it will fall behind”.

Advertisement

As many of you know at this point, the US sanctions landed in 2019, as security concerns were quoted. A number of additional roadblocks were set after that, though. Huawei is still blocked off from accessing tools to make chips and various other equipment.

Those bans forced Huawei to be self-sufficient

Huawei was forced to be self-sufficient, and it seemingly benefited the company in a way. Zhengfei said the following: “American technologies and tools are very good… [but] Huawei cannot use them; we had no choice but to create our tools. Open innovation and utilizing the advanced achievements of others is the true way forward for an enterprise”.

On top of everything, Huawei’s founder also highlighted the importance of AI. He said that artificial intelligence is becoming unstoppable. He said that if Huawei uses it in the right way, it could achieve a lot of success moving forward.

Huawei is expected to announce its 5nm processor made in collaboration with SMIC soon. That Kirin chip will be first used in the upcoming Huawei Mate 70 series.

Advertisement

Source link

Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © 2024 WordupNews.com