Bruce Schneier and Nathan E. Sanders, writing in a post: Someone who makes calculus mistakes is also likely to respond "I don't know" to calculus-related questions. To the extent that AI systems make these human-like mistakes, we can bring all of our mistake-correcting systems to bear on their output. But the current crop of AI models -- particularly LLMs -- make mistakes differently. AI errors come at seemingly random times, without any clustering around particular topics. LLM mistakes tend to be more evenly distributed through the knowledge space. A model might be equally likely to make a mistake on a calculus question as it is to propose that cabbages eat goats. And AI mistakes aren't accompanied by ignorance. A LLM will be just as confident when saying something completely wrong -- and obviously so, to a human -- as it will be when saying something true. The seemingly random inconsistency of LLMs makes it hard to trust their reasoning in complex, multi-step problems. If you want to use an AI model to help with a business problem, it's not enough to see that it understands what factors make a product profitable; you need to be sure it won't forget what money is. [...] Humans may occasionally make seemingly random, incomprehensible, and inconsistent mistakes, but such occurrences are rare and often indicative of more serious problems. We also tend not to put people exhibiting these behaviors in decision-making positions. Likewise, we should confine AI decision-making systems to applications that suit their actual abilities -- while keeping the potential ramifications of their mistakes firmly in mind.

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Britain's competition watchdog launched investigations into Apple and Google's mobile ecosystems on Thursday under new powers to tackle digital market abuses that took effect this year. The Competition and Markets Authority will examine whether the tech giants' control over operating systems, app stores and browsers constitutes "strategic market status" requiring regulatory intervention. The probe will focus on potential barriers to competition, preferential treatment of their own apps, and whether developers face unfair terms for app distribution. The regulator could force changes including mandatory access to key mobile functions or allowing users to download apps outside official stores.

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People with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder face significantly shorter life expectancy and higher mental health risks, a British study of over 30,000 patients found. The research, published in The British Journal of Psychiatry, showed men with ADHD lived 4.5 to 9 years less, while women's lives were shortened by 6.5 to 11 years. The study compared primary care data from 30,029 adults with ADHD against 300,400 people without the condition. "Although many people with ADHD live long and healthy lives, our finding that on average they are living shorter lives than they should indicates unmet support needs," said Dr. Liz O'Nions, honorary research fellow at University College London. The study linked ADHD to increased risks of anxiety, depression, self-harm, and suicide, along with higher rates of smoking and alcohol use.

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Pakistan's lower house of parliament on Thursday passed a controversial bill that will give the government sweeping controls on social media, including sending users to prison for spreading disinformation. From a report: The bill was quickly passed after lawmakers from the opposition party of imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan staged a walkout to denounce the law. Critics say the government is seeking to further suppress freedom of speech. Farhatullah Babar, a leading human rights activist, said the latest changes to cybercrime law were aimed at "further stifling the freedom of expression through setting up of multiple authorities under executive control, enlarging the print of unaccountable intelligence agencies." He said the law also "gives sweeping powers to the executive not only over the contents of the message but also the messengers, namely the social media platforms." Under the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, which was introduced in the National Assembly Wednesday, authorities would create an agency with the power to order the immediate blocking of content deemed "unlawful and offensive" from social media, such as content critical of judges, the armed forces, parliament or provincial assemblies. Individuals and organizations posting such content may also be blocked from social media.

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Microsoft's absence from OpenAI's Stargate announcement follows months of tension between the companies and signals a new era in which the longtime partners will be less reliant on each other. From a report: At a White House press conference, the ChatGPT maker announced Stargate, a venture with Oracle and tech investor SoftBank. The new company plans to spend up to $500 billion building new data centers in the U.S. to help power OpenAI's development. The assembled leaders -- OpenAI's Sam Altman, Oracle's Larry Ellison, SoftBank's Masayoshi Son and President Trump -- discussed how AI could create jobs and even cure cancer. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was thousands of miles away, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The developments show how the OpenAI-Microsoft partnership that helped trigger the generative-AI boom is drifting apart as each company focuses on its own evolving needs. In the months leading up to the announcement, the two sides had been haggling over what to do about OpenAI's seemingly insatiable appetite for computing power and its contention Microsoft couldn't fulfill it even though their agreement didn't allow OpenAI to easily switch to others, said people familiar with the discussions. OpenAI is almost entirely reliant on Microsoft to provide it with the data centers it needs to build and operate its sophisticated AI software. That has been part of their agreement since Microsoft first invested in 2019. With the success of ChatGPT, OpenAI's need for computing power surged. Its executives have said ending the exclusive cloud contract could be crucial to compete with rival AI developers that don't have the same constraints.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: E-commerce giant Amazon.com is exiting its operations in the Canadian province of Quebec, leading to the loss of about 1,700 full-time jobs, the company said on Wednesday, prompting Ottawa to express its unhappiness. The online retailer will phase out operations across seven sites in the province -- the only location in Canada with unionized Amazon employees -- over the next two months. It will return to a third-party delivery model, relying on local small businesses, similar to its approach before 2020. "Following a recent review of our Quebec operations, we've seen that returning to a third-party delivery model ... will allow us to provide even more savings to our customers," Amazon spokesperson Barbara Agrait said. The move will affect approximately 250 seasonal workers. Amazon will offer affected employees a package including up to 14 weeks' pay and "transitional benefits such as job placement resources," Agrait added. "This is not the way business is done in Canada," said Federal Innovation Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne. "There is no doubt that the closings announced today are part of an anti-union campaign against CSN and Amazon employees," said CSN president Caroline Senneville in a statement. "This move contradicts the provisions of the Quebec Labour Code, which we will strongly oppose," Senneville added.

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A federal district court has ruled that backdoor searches of Americans' private communications collected under Section 702 of FISA are unconstitutional without a warrant. "The landmark ruling comes in a criminal case, United States v. Hasbajrami, after more than a decade of litigation, and over four years since the Second Circuit Court of Appeals found that backdoor searches constitute 'separate Fourth Amendment events' and directed the district court to determine a warrant was required," reports the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). "Now, that has been officially decreed." Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares the report: Hasbajrami involves a U.S. resident who was arrested at New York JFK airport in 2011 on his way to Pakistan and charged with providing material support to terrorists. Only after his original conviction did the government explain that its case was premised in part on emails between Mr. Hasbajrami and an unnamed foreigner associated with terrorist groups, emails collected warrantless using Section 702 programs, placed in a database, then searched, again without a warrant, using terms related to Mr. Hasbajrami himself. The district court found that regardless of whether the government can lawfully warrantlessly collect communications between foreigners and Americans using Section 702, it cannot ordinarily rely on a "foreign intelligence exception" to the Fourth Amendment's warrant clause when searching these communications, as is the FBI's routine practice. And, even if such an exception did apply, the court found that the intrusion on privacy caused by reading our most sensitive communications rendered these searches "unreasonable" under the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. In 2021 alone, the FBI conducted 3.4 million warrantless searches of US person's 702 data.

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Scientists have detected cosmic "chorus waves" resembling bird chirps over 62,000 miles from Earth, a region where such waves have never been observed. "Scientists still aren't sure how the perturbations happen, but they think Earth's magnetic field may have something to do with it," reports the Associated Press. From the report: The chorus has been picked up on radio antennas for decades, including receivers at an Antarctica research station in the 1960s. And twin spacecraft -- NASA's Van Allen Probes -- heard the chirps from Earth's radiation belts at a closer distance than the newest detection. The latest notes were picked up by NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale satellites, launched in 2015 to explore the Earth and sun's magnetic fields. The new research was published Wednesday in the journal Nature. Chorus waves have also been spotted near other planets including Jupiter and Saturn. They can even produce high-energy electrons capable of scrambling satellite communications. "They are one of the strongest and most significant waves in space," said study author Chengming Liu from Beihang University in an email. The newfound chorus waves were detected in a region where Earth's magnetic field is stretched out, which scientists didn't expect. That raises fresh questions about how these chirping waves form. "It's very captivating, very compelling," Jaynes said. "We definitely need to find more of these events."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Department of Homeland Security has terminated all members of advisory committees, including one that has been investigating a major Chinese hack of large US telecom firms. "The Cyber Safety Review Board -- a Department of Homeland Security investigatory body stood up under a Biden-era cybersecurity executive order to probe major cybersecurity incidents -- has been cleared of non-government members as part of a DHS-wide push to cut costs under the Trump administration, according to three people familiar with the matter," NextGov/FCW reported yesterday. A memo sent Monday by DHS Acting Secretary Benjamine Huffman said that in order to "eliminate[e] the misuse of resources and ensur[e] that DHS activities prioritize our national security, I am directing the termination of all current memberships on advisory committees within DHS, effective immediately. Future committee activities will be focused solely on advancing our critical mission to protect the homeland and support DHS's strategic priorities." The memo said advisory board members terminated this week "are welcome to reapply." The Cyber Safety Review Board's list of members included security experts from the private sector and lead cybersecurity officials from multiple government agencies. "The CSRB was 'less than halfway' done with its Salt Typhoon investigation, according to a now-former member," wrote freelance cybersecurity reporter Eric Geller, who quoted an anonymous source as saying the Cyber Safety Review Board's review of Salt Typhoon is "dead." The former member was also quoted as saying, "There are still professional staff for the CSRB and I hope they will continue some of the work in the interim." The Cyber Safety Review Board operates under (PDF) the DHS's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), notes Ars. The review board previously investigated a 2023 hack of Microsoft Exchange Online and more recently has been investigating how the Chinese hacking group called Salt Typhoon infiltrated major telecom providers such as Verizon and AT&T.

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Consumer spending on apps is projected to reach $150 billion globally in 2024, up 13% from the prior year. According to Sensor Tower's annual "State of Mobile" report, it's being fueled by a 200% surge in spending on generative AI apps like ChatGPT and Gemini, which collectively drew $1.1 billion. TechCrunch reports: If this rate of growth is sustained, this category of apps could move into the top 10 by consumer spending within a year, the firm notes. Though the release of new AI models, like OpenAI's GPT-4o last summer, helped drive app revenue up to record numbers at times, consumer demand for AI apps was consistent throughout the year -- not only during these peak surges. As a result, consumers spent nearly 7.7 billion hours using AI apps in 2024, while apps mentioning "AI" were also downloaded 17 billion times in the year. ChatGPT alone reached 50 million monthly active users -- faster than Temu, Disney+, or YouTube Music, for comparison. This indicates there's still a growing appetite for AI apps and those with AI features.

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Google Fiber has confirmed that it has started construction in Las Vegas and Clark County, with its fiber internet service expected to be available "later this year." The Verge reports: On Wednesday, Google also confirmed that it's piloting simplified, "lifestyle-based" plans in Alabama and Tennesee, which were first spotted last month. The new $70 / month Core 1 Gig, $100 / month Home 3 Gig, and $150 / month Edge 8 Gig plans replace the 1 Gig, 2 Gig, 5 Gig, and 8 Gig plans that GFiber widely offers. These new plans are also launching in all of the locations where GFiber is currently available in Arizona and North Carolina, GFiber spokesperson Sunny Gettinger tells The Verge. They're coming to most of GFiber's remaining cities within the next month, too.

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LinkedIn has been sued by Premium customers alleging the platform disclosed private messages to third parties without consent to train generative AI models. The lawsuit seeks damages for breach of contract and privacy violations, accusing LinkedIn of attempting to minimize scrutiny over its actions. Reuters reports: According to a proposed class action filed on Tuesday night on behalf of millions of LinkedIn Premium customers, LinkedIn quietly introduced a privacy setting last August that let users enable or disable the sharing of their personal data. Customers said LinkedIn then discreetly updated its privacy policy on Sept. 18 to say data could be used to train AI models, and in a "frequently asked questions" hyperlink said opting out "does not affect training that has already taken place." This attempt to "cover its tracks" suggests LinkedIn was fully aware it violated customers' privacy and its promise to use personal data only to support and improve its platform, in order to minimize public scrutiny and legal fallout, the complaint said. The lawsuit was filed in the San Jose, California, federal court on behalf of LinkedIn Premium customers who sent or received InMail messages, and whose private information was disclosed to third parties for AI training before Sept. 18. It seeks unspecified damages for breach of contract and violations of California's unfair competition law, and $1,000 per person for violations of the federal Stored Communications Act. LinkedIn said in a statement: "These are false claims with no merit."

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LinkedIn has been sued by Premium customers alleging the platform disclosed private messages to third parties without consent to train generative AI models. The lawsuit seeks damages for breach of contract and privacy violations, accusing LinkedIn of attempting to minimize scrutiny over its actions. Reuters reports: According to a proposed class action filed on Tuesday night on behalf of millions of LinkedIn Premium customers, LinkedIn quietly introduced a privacy setting last August that let users enable or disable the sharing of their personal data. Customers said LinkedIn then discreetly updated its privacy policy on Sept. 18 to say data could be used to train AI models, and in a "frequently asked questions" hyperlink said opting out "does not affect training that has already taken place." This attempt to "cover its tracks" suggests LinkedIn was fully aware it violated customers' privacy and its promise to use personal data only to support and improve its platform, in order to minimize public scrutiny and legal fallout, the complaint said. The lawsuit was filed in the San Jose, California, federal court on behalf of LinkedIn Premium customers who sent or received InMail messages, and whose private information was disclosed to third parties for AI training before Sept. 18. It seeks unspecified damages for breach of contract and violations of California's unfair competition law, and $1,000 per person for violations of the federal Stored Communications Act. LinkedIn said in a statement: "These are false claims with no merit."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: The manufacturer of a machine that costs six figures used during heart surgery has told hospitals that it will no longer allow hospitals' repair technicians to maintain or fix the devices and that all repairs must now be done by the manufacturer itself, according to a letter obtained by 404 Media. The change will require hospitals to enter into repair contracts with the manufacturer, which will ultimately drive up medical costs, a person familiar with the devices said. The company, Terumo Cardiovascular, makes a device called the Advanced Perfusion System 1 Heart Lung Machine, which is used to reroute blood during open-heart surgeries and essentially keeps a patient alive during the surgery. Last month, the company sent hospitals a letter alerting them to the "discontinuation of certification classes," meaning it "will no longer offer certification classes for the repair and/or preventative maintenance of the System 1 and its components." This means it will no longer teach hospital repair techs how to maintain and fix the devices, and will no longer certify in-house hospital repair technicians. Instead, the company "will continue to provide direct servicing for the System 1 and its components." [...] In a brochure for hospitals, Terumo advertises both its device and its maintenance program: "Advanced, precision medical equipment requires genuine parts and top-quality, specialized service -- just as getting the best medical care from qualified specialists. Terumo Cardiovascular Service has the unrivaled expertise, experience, equipment, and parts to provide the optimal level of planned service and repairs needed. Use Terumo Cardiovascular Service and avoid exposure to liability issues." A spokesperson for Terumo told 404 Media that the company "saw declining participation in this program and determined that the best way forward was to require servicing through Terumo Cardiovascular's genuine in-house Service team to continue to ensure Terumo devices are properly maintained." "Terumo Cardiovascular's Biomed Certification Program was originally structured to train non-Terumo personnel (hospital Biomeds) to service Terumo heart-lung machines and associated hardware. Properly maintained medical devices are necessary for optimal performance which is essential for quality of patient care and outcomes," they added. "Hospitals' existing Terumo Cardiovascular Biomed certifications will remain valid through their expiration dates but will not be renewed once they expire." "It's no secret that America's healthcare system is the most expensive, and this is one of the reasons why. These machines are actually highly reliable, we've had a low cost of service for it over the last few years. And when something isn't right, we have people in-house who can fix it," a source familiar with Terumo machine repair said. "But the cost of having a service contract with a manufacturer, you're probably talking 10 times the cost. It's not a big deal having a contract for one device, but when that starts happening across many devices, it adds up in the end. If you took every hospital in America and said for every medical device in the hospital, you need to put it on an OEM [original equipment manufacturer] maintenance contract, it would tank your financial system. You just can't do that."

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In the aftermath of Israel's October 2023 ground invasion of Gaza, Google reportedly worked with the Israeli military to provide AI services while racing against Amazon for contracts. This comes despite publicly denying collaboration with the military and punishing employees protesting its involvement in Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion cloud computing agreement with Israel. The Verge reports: In the weeks after Hamas's October 7th attack on Israel, employees at Google's cloud division worked directly with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) -- even as the company told both the public and its own employees that Google only worked with civilian government ministries, the documents reportedly show. Weeks after the war began, an employee with Google's cloud division escalated the IDF's military's requests for access to Google's AI technology, according to the Washington Post. In another document, an employee warned that Google needed to quickly respond to the military's requests, or else Israel would turn to Amazon for its cloud computing needs. In a November 2023 document, an employee thanks a coworker for handling the IDF's request. Months later, employees requested additional access to AI tools for the IDF.

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At Galaxy Unpacked today in San Jose, California, Samsung unveiled the new Galaxy S25 series of flagship smartphones loaded with AI capabilities and LLMs. "Currently, the Galaxy S25 range is comprised of the Galaxy S25 ($800), Galaxy S25+ ($1,000), and Galaxy S25 Ultra ($1,300)," reports Wired. "The phones are available for preorder today and will officially go on sale February 7." Since the hardware is relatively unchanged from last year's Galaxy S24 series, here's what Wired has to say about the new AI smarts: The Galaxy S25 is a tale of two AIs: Gemini and Bixby. Yes, while Google's Gemini AI assistant sits at the forefront -- it can finally be triggered through a long press of the power button-- Samsung is bringing its original Bixby voice assistant out from the shadows. Bixby has been enhanced with large language models but is still designed to handle phone functions, like changing device settings. Gemini is meant to be used for general web queries and more complex actions. You can even have two hot words, one for each assistant. I foresee all of this being confusing [...]. The highlight AI feature debuting on the Galaxy S25 series is "cross-app experiences." These are tasks you can ask Gemini to perform, even if the task requires multiple apps. For example, you can ask for the schedule of this season's Arsenal matches and then add it to your calendar; Gemini will then search and add every Arsenal FC game in the season to your schedule. Or you can ask it to find pet-friendly vegan restaurants nearby and text the list to a friend. It even works with images too -- snap a pic of your fridge and ask Gemini to find you a recipe based on the available ingredients. These cross-app experiences work with Google apps, Samsung's Galaxy apps, and select third-party apps, like WhatsApp and Spotify. All these AI features have culminated in a new app: Now Brief. Samsung calls this proactive assistance (remember Google's Now on Tap?) where a morning brief arrives with the weather, upcoming calendar events, stock details, news articles, and suggestions to trigger routines. There's also an evening brief with a summary of the day's events with photos. Since the feature can plug into email, it'll send reminders about expiring coupons and upcoming travel tickets. Samsung claims it can even suggest changing an 8:45 am alarm even earlier if it sees a 9 am meeting on the schedule. On the lock screen, a "Now Bar" widget persists at the bottom, much like Apple's Live Activities. It'll offer quick access to the Now Brief app, but it will also show updates for favorite sports teams, along with glanceable directions from Google Maps. The rest of the AI features are playing a bit of catch-up to Apple and Google's Pixel phones. There's Drawing Assist, a generative AI tool to craft new images in different art styles based on sketches or text prompts. AI Select works with the S Pen stylus on the S25 Ultra and understands what is selected -- for example, if a video is selected, it will suggest turning it into a GIF. Audio Eraser is an editing tool to cut out background noise in videos post-capture, canceling out the sound of a crowd's chatter or an ambulance's siren. Finally, Samsung's Generative Edit feature, which lets you erase unwanted objects in images, now works locally on the device and is much more accurate and faster. A full list of specs can be found here. You can watch a recording of the event on YouTube.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Tuesday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei predicted that AI models may surpass human capabilities "in almost everything" within two to three years, according to a Wall Street Journal interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Speaking at Journal House in Davos, Amodei said, "I don't know exactly when it'll come, I don't know if it'll be 2027. I think it's plausible it could be longer than that. I don't think it will be a whole bunch longer than that when AI systems are better than humans at almost everything. Better than almost all humans at almost everything. And then eventually better than all humans at everything, even robotics." Amodei co-founded Anthropic in 2021 with his sister Daniela Amodei and five other former OpenAI employees. Not long after, Anthropic emerged as a strong technological competitor to OpenAI's AI products (such as GPT-4 and ChatGPT). Most recently, its Claude 3.5 Sonnet model has remained highly regarded among some AI users and highly ranked among AI benchmarks. During the WSJ interview, Amodei also spoke some about the potential implications of highly intelligent AI systems when these AI models can control advanced robotics. "[If] we make good enough AI systems, they'll enable us to make better robots. And so when that happens, we will need to have a conversation... at places like this event, about how do we organize our economy, right? How do humans find meaning?" He then shared his concerns about how human-level AI models and robotics that are capable of replacing all human labor may require a complete re-think of how humans value both labor and themselves. "We've recognized that we've reached the point as a technological civilization where the idea, there's huge abundance and huge economic value, but the idea that the way to distribute that value is for humans to produce economic labor, and this is where they feel their sense of self worth," he added. "Once that idea gets invalidated, we're all going to have to sit down and figure it out." The eye-catching comments, similar to comments about AGI made recently by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, come as Anthropic negotiates a $2 billion funding round that would value the company at $60 billion. Amodei disclosed that Anthropic's revenue multiplied tenfold in 2024. Further reading: Salesforce Chief Predicts Today's CEOs Will Be the Last With All-Human Workforces

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A security researcher discovered and fixed a critical domain name server misconfiguration in Mastercard's systems that persisted undetected for nearly five years, potentially exposing the credit card giant to traffic interception risks. Philippe Caturegli, founder of security firm Seralys, found that one of Mastercard's five DNS servers incorrectly pointed to "akam.ne" instead of "akam.net" from June 2020 to January 2025. He spent $300 to register the domain through Niger's domain authority to prevent potential exploitation. Mastercard said the typo has been corrected, insisting there was "not a risk to our systems."

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YouTube Premium subscribers can now stream music videos at 256kbps bitrate audio quality, matching the high-fidelity standard previously exclusive to YouTube Music, the video platform said. The audio upgrade comes as part of an expanded experimental features program that allows Premium users to test multiple new features simultaneously, departing from its previous single-experiment limitation, the company said.

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Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said Wednesday that current business leaders may be the last generation to manage an exclusively human workforce, as AI transforms the workplace. "We are really moving into a world now of managing humans and agents together," he told Axios. His company's Agentforce platform, launched in September, has taken over many customer support tasks, prompting plans to move support staff into sales roles. Speaking to Axios at the World Economic Forum, Benioff dismissed Microsoft's AI CoPilot as disappointing and promised to defend his employees against discrimination amid political debates over corporate diversity programs.

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