Author: Brett Venter

Everybody seems to be super-excited about the launch of generative AI. Well, almost everybody. Samsung has reportedly instituted a company-wide ban on the use of the technology thanks to an internal leak as a result of ChatGPT. Technically, the problem isn’t really the generative AI. It’s more the fact that it can’t keep a secret. Samsung engineers in South Korea uploaded sensitive code to ChatGPT which was later leaked. This sort of poor operational security isn’t going to work for the company. Safety at Samsung The door is open for the likes of Google Bard and ChatGPT to make a…

Following the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT 3 (and subsequent launches), everyone seemed to have an artificial intelligence project on the boil. Everything, that is, besides Apple. Apple’s own Siri voice assistant is a sort of AI but when it comes to generative artificial intelligence, there doesn’t seem to be much going on. Part of that could be laid at the door of the notoriously secretive company’s usual policies but, a new report from The Information suggests there’s also some internal conflict happening behind closed doors. At the heart of it is the voice assistant that has appeared as a character…

Artificial intelligence may prove to be a threat to some jobs but there’s one task that AI won’t be given — that of launching nuclear weapons in the United States. That’s always been the case in theory — the US Department of Defence maintains that a human will remain “‘in the loop’ for all actions critical to informing and executing decisions by the President to initiate and terminate nuclear weapon employment”. But several US senators are looking to get something more official on the books. Called the Block Nuclear Launch by Autonomous Artificial Intelligence Act, the new legal framework would……

For ages, the conventional wisdom was that artificial intelligence wouldn’t cause too much harm to jobs around the world. IBM’s new hiring pause suggests that those views might have been slightly optimistic. According to CEO Arvind Krishna, the company intends to freeze hiring for a range of roles within the company. These roles include so-called back-office functions and amount to around 26,000 staff. Of those, approximately 30% are expected to be replaceable. IBM’s artificial intelligence “I could easily see 30 percent of that getting replaced by AI and automation over a five-year period,” said Krishna. Some human resources functions and…

Samsung promised, not too long ago, that it was launching its range of microLED TVs in South Africa. They were always supposed to be expensive and almost all of them will be brought in to order as a result. Well, if you were hankering for some microLED love in your living room, the time has come. Samsung has announced that its newest (and best) TVs are now in South Africa. Specific pricing isn’t something the company’s giving out. The adage goes, ‘If you need to ask, you can’t afford it”, but if you’ve got R1.4 million, you can have the…

You know how in science fiction files, the trouble starts when advanced AI systems are downloaded into robots? Well, Boston Dynamics’ Spot now has access to OpenAI’s ChatGPT technology. Not only is the world’s second-scariest robotic quadruped mechanically capable, but it’s also now much more intelligent. That won’t end badly. It was only a matter of time before someone stuck the year’s most popular technology into one of the superstars of recent memory. Spot was given access to ChatGPT, which integrated with its usual patrol work, as well as a verbal interface. Long story short, the robot can now talk…

Everyone’s talking about the abilities that new large language model AI systems are capable of but there’s another that you may not be aware of: emergent behaviour. The term doesn’t just apply to artificial intelligence. It has a tendency to appear whenever there’s a large, complicated system interacting with the real world. You know, kinda like ChatGPT and others are right now. What is emergent behaviour? Emergent behaviour, otherwise known as emergence, refers to the tendency of a system to develop unexpected functions that aren’t suggested by its initial makeup. A definition of it would be “…something that is a…

It looks like South Africa won’t have much to do with that UAE space mission after all. The Hakuto-R private lunar mission being conducted by Japanese company ispace appears to have ended in failure. We say ‘appeared to’ because communication with the Mission 1 lander, scheduled to touch down yesterday afternoon, was lost just before it was supposed to make moonfall. No, not that one. Hakuto-R you listening? Our HAKUTO-R M1 lunar lander was scheduled to land on the surface of the Moon at approx. 1:40 (JST). As of 8:00 today (JST), communication between the lander at the Mission Control…

The idea of using 3D printing to create human habitats on the Moon isn’t new. Knowledge of China’s plans to use the technology for the same purpose is quite novel. So far the country has sent several missions in its Chang’e lunar program to the moon, with its most recent bringing back samples from the surface. The country intends to land astronauts on the lunar surface by 2030, shortly after NASA’s Artemis program is expected to have placed boots on the ground there. China plans on a more concrete presence on our lunar satellite and it’ll do it the same…

It’s hard to land things on the moon. It’s even harder if you’re a private company, as Israel’s 2019 Beresheet mission demonstrated. Japan’s ispace hopes to become the first private company to successfully place an object on the moon and it’s happening this afternoon. The mission is known as Hakuto-R and it’s a really big deal as far as space missions go. Locally, at least. South Africa will play a part in one of the missions hitching a ride on the Japanese company’s lander — the UAE’s Rashid Rover is on board and South Africa will be facilitating ground control…