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☆ Science has finally figured out how fast and loud you should talk on Zoom
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( Adam Rogers | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +16 min

The result is the largest-ever database of one-on-one Zoom conversations. It may shed new light on what we talk about when we talk about talking today — the conversation of the future. And while the average loudness of speakers didn't change across bad or good conversations, the "good" talkers varied their decibel levels more than the "bad" talkers did. The machine found that women rated as better Zoom conversationalists tended to be more intense. Good conversationalists are those who appear more engaged in what their partners are saying.

☆ Researchers just created the largest-ever database of how we interact on Zoom. Here are their tips for making everyone like you on video chats.
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( Adam Rogers | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +16 min

The result is the largest-ever database of one-on-one Zoom conversations. And while the average loudness of speakers didn't change across bad or good conversations, the "good" talkers varied their decibel levels more than the "bad" talkers did. The machine found that women rated as better Zoom conversationalists tended to be more intense. Good conversationalists are those who appear more engaged in what their partners are saying. Studying Zoom calls may help us have better conversations on Zoom.

☆ When A.I. Chatbots Hallucinate
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( Karen Weise | Cade Metz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Chatbots like ChatGPT are used by hundreds of millions of people for an increasingly wide array of tasks, including email services, online tutors and search engines. But there is no way of ensuring that these systems produce information that is accurate. The technology, called generative A.I., relies on a complex algorithm that analyzes the way humans put words together on the internet. The tech industry often refers to the inaccuracies as “hallucinations.” But to some researchers, “hallucinations” is too much of a euphemism. Google’s Bard and Microsoft’s Bing chatbots both repeatedly provided inaccurate answers to the same question.

By comparison, less than 5% of companies mentioned AI in analyst calls held during the first quarter of 2016. Big Tech mentions jump AI has been a growing theme in Big Tech as companies try to capitalize on the wave following 2022's selloff. In calls from Big Tech companies alone, AI was mentioned 265 times. Executives at real estate company UDR said its AI chat has a 10% higher closing rate than normal call centers. Interpublic Group of Companies CEO Philippe Krakowsky noted the advertising company brought on a chief AI officer two years ago.

☆ Renowned China investor Ray Dalio says the US and China are on the brink of war, and that both sides are 'beyond the ability to talk'
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Matthew Loh | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Billionaire Ray Dalio warned on Thursday that the US and China are on the precipice of war. "The United States and China are on the brink of war and are beyond the ability to talk," reads Dalio's grim message. And as both powers look to protect their sources of essential technologies and minerals, they're making countries around the world choose sides, Dalio warned further. "I want to emphasize that by saying that they are on the brink, I don't mean to say that they will necessarily go over the brink," Dalio wrote. "Have all parties make clear that peace is better than war," Dalio said.

☆ Meet 4 OnlyFans creators who prefer to promote content on Reddit. Here's their advice for using the platform to grow their businesses.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Nhari Djan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

OnlyFans creators promote their content on other social-media sites to find new subscribers. To be successful on OnlyFans, creators have to spend a lot of time off the platform. Reddit is one go-to for some creators to promote their OnlyFans pages, five creators told Insider, all of whom asked to be referred to by their online pseudonyms to protect their privacy. Some OnlyFans creators who promote on Reddit described it as a "necessary evil" because of how difficult the platform can be to navigate. Of course, Reddit isn't the only popular acquisition channel for OnlyFans creators.

☆ Mark Cuban says he could get people to pay $100 for Twitter's blue checkmarks—Elon Musk's strategy is a 'huge mistake'
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Megan Sauer | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

"There were 100 ways [Musk] could have asked legacy checks for $100," Cuban wrote. When rolling out the subscription service, Musk removed blue checkmarks from previously verified users, and made them available to anyone willing to pay. It's unclear whether he's paying for Twitter Blue or Musk is covering his subscription. Musk's implementation of Twitter Blue could make both elements harder for many users, particularly when they're no longer sure who they're actually speaking with. "Twitter still is the best game in town for so many different types of communications," Cuban wrote.

☆ China's A.I. chatbots haven't yet reached the public like ChatGPT did
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Evelyn Cheng | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Baidu CTO Wang Haifeng speaks at the unveiling of Baidus AI chatbot Ernie Bot at an event in Beijing on March 16, 2023. Those restrictions haven't stopped the Chinese press and social media in general from talking frequently about ChatGPT and AI tech. So far, publicly available figures indicate similar AI products in China are not as widely available. Kunlun claims Tiangong is the only chatbot in China with training metrics at the level of ChatGPT. Some in the industry also expect such AI tools will be easier to commercialize for business products than for public tools such as search.

☆ Snap misses revenue expectations, warns on second quarter outlook
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-27 | by ( Sheila Dang | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

While Snap said it was not providing formal financial guidance, its internal revenue forecast for the second quarter is $1.04 billion, which would be a 6% decline year-over-year. The internal forecast is below analyst expectations of $1.13 billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. "Snapchat users primarily use the app for messaging, and messaging apps are notoriously difficult to monetize," she said. Along with AR, Snap has deepened its investment in artificial intelligence and recently expanded its chatbot called My AI to all Snapchat users globally. Snap said it expects between 394 million and 395 million daily active users in the second quarter.

☆ Sam Altman is building his utopia, whether you want it or not
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-27 | by ( Melia Russell | Julia Black | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +41 min

Altman told Insider, "We debate our approach frequently and carefully." "I don't think anyone can lose your dad young and wish he didn't have more time with him," Altman told Insider. Altman told Insider that his thinking had evolved since those posts. (When asked about guns, Altman told Insider he'd been "happy to have one both times my home was broken into while I was there.") When asked about this, Altman told Insider in an email: "i can guess what that's about; these stories grow crazily inflated over the years of getting re-told!

☆ He's played chess with Peter Thiel, sparred with Elon Musk and once, supposedly, stopped a plane crash: Inside Sam Altman's world, where truth is stranger than fiction
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-27 | by ( Melia Russell | Julia Black | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +41 min

But, "you do at some point need to start having contact with reality," he told Insider. The plan was still only a rough sketch, Blania told Insider, but that didn't seem to matter to his host. "He always wanted to understand everything at a very deep level," Thrun told Insider in an email. (When asked about guns, Altman told Insider he'd been "happy to have one both times my home was broken into while I was there.") When asked about this, Altman told Insider in an email: "i can guess what that's about; these stories grow crazily inflated over the years of getting re-told!

☆ Colombia's Gustavo Petro finds his opening in Washington
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-27 | by ( Stefano Pozzebon | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

So what was the most solid common ground President Biden, as host, could find for his guest? Leaders from the region tend to see the climate issue as their platform in international summits. Like many countries in Latin America, Colombia has received considerable investments from Chinese companies in recent years, mostly in the transport and mining sectors. “Petro has the aspiration of leading the new phase of Latin America’s geopolitics. And Biden can also tout a considerable concession from his meeting with Petro, who had always refused to condemn Russia’s actions in Ukraine – until now.

☆ Snapchat’s new AI chatbot is already raising alarms among teens and parents
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-27 | by ( Samantha Murphy Kelly | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

The feature is powered by the viral AI chatbot tool ChatGPT – and like ChatGPT, it can offer recommendations, answer questions and converse with users. The net effect is that conversing with Snapchat’s chatbot may feel less transactional than visiting ChatGPT’s website. Snapchat's new AI chatbot. “I snapped a picture … and it said ‘nice shoes’ and asked who the people [were] in the photo,” a Snapchat user wrote on Facebook. One user wrote on Facebook that she’s been asking My AI for homework help.

☆ Senators unveil bipartisan legislation to ban kids under 13 from joining social media platforms
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-26 | by ( Brian Fung | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

The proposed legislation by a bipartisan group of US senators aims to address what policymakers, mental health advocates and critics of tech platforms say is a mental health crisis fueled by social media. “Social media companies have stumbled onto a stubborn, devastating fact,” Schatz said. But it would represent a potentially vast expansion of the government’s role in regulating websites where age verification is a requirement. Tech companies could still develop their own in-house age verification technology or hire third party companies to perform the verification, lawmakers said. Violations of the proposed law could mean millions of dollars in Federal Trade Commission fines for social media companies.

☆ Watch an A.I. Learn to Write by Reading Nothing but Jane Austen
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-26 | by ( Aatish Bhatia | Aatish Bhatia Spent Weeks Reading Dozens Of A.I. Research Articles | Training Tiny Language Models On His Computer. Before Coming To The Times | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +12 min

This is how language models usually start off: They guess randomly and produce gibberish. Over many, many rounds of training, language models can learn to write. As language models grow larger, the patterns that they learn can become increasingly complex. More is differentOther than the additional fine-tuning stages, the primary difference between nanoGPT and the language model underlying chatGPT is size. Large language models can become highly unpredictable, as evidenced by Microsoft Bing A.I.’s early interactions with my colleague Kevin Roose.

☆ A Harlem Institution Reimagines How Americans Interact With the African Continent
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-26 | by ( Dionne Searcey | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Situated on an East Harlem street corner overlooking Central Park, the Center has welcomed billionaires Bill Gates and Mo Ibrahim talking about the future of African business as well as the actress Lupita Nyong’o reading from her children’s book on colorism. Hank Willis Thomas’s Afro Pick installation was situated on its plaza. The Center has hosted African presidents and prizewinning authors — and a sweaty crowd breaking into a dance party. “There are places where your behavior has to be precious,” said Iweala, speaking about his vision. But that would require significant new fund-raising and a bump in staffing, which now stands at 11 full-time positions and four part-time.

☆ What Is the Synod of Bishops?
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-26 | by ( Gaia Pianigiani | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The Synod of Bishops is a religious assembly of bishops from all over the world who gather in Rome to discuss issues vital to the Roman Catholic Church and act as an advisory body to the pope. The word synod means “coming together.” It stems from ancient Greek, and is a combination of the word “together” and “road” or “way.”Pope Francis announced on Wednesday that for the first time at an upcoming synod, women and laypeople will be able to vote. As a result, half of the 70 non-bishop voting members will be women, and five nuns will also have voting rights. Preparation for such events requires years, as church leaders hold consultations and listen to their local communities before the selected bishops travel to the Vatican to gather around the pope, who ultimately decides possible changes to the church’s discipline or administration. The Vatican has described synods as opportunities for bishops “to interact with each other and to share information and experiences, in the common pursuit of pastoral solutions which have a universal validity and application.”

☆ A 13-year-old boy was groomed publicly on Twitter and kidnapped, despite numerous chances to stop it
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-25 | by ( Ben Goggin | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +19 min

On the Hunter Fox Twitter account, the adult interacted directly with the boy's account, where he posted selfies of himself on a school bus and in other locations. Their teen son had plenty of friends, his parents said, and liked to play golf and build Legos. Heather McConney's teen son communicated with the man accused of grooming him through an Apple iPhone. The suspect's primary Twitter account appears to have been @HunterFloofyFox. After the worst day of their lives, the McConneys' son was recovered early on the morning of Dec. 28 in Nebraska.

☆ Tim Hecker Helped Popularize Ambient Music. He’s (Sort of) Sorry.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-25 | by ( Grayson Haver Currin | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Still, he admitted, the loss was “bound up in the melancholy of youth.”This multivalence seemed to follow Hecker. He would spend his collegiate summers in the British Columbia wilderness, planting as many as 4,000 trees each day in clear-cut forests. Later, frustrated by the exigencies of starting a band, like remembering what they’d played the day before, Hecker began experimenting with drum machines and samplers. “The original impulse was this awe-struck excitement,” Hecker said, recalling his titanic computer tower, gargantuan monitor and pirated software. “There are different feelings in those different moments, and they each have their own ecosystem,” he said.

☆ Supreme Court takes up legal spat over public officials blocking people on social media
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-24 | by ( Lawrence Hurley | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 19: The Supreme Court of the United States, on Wednesday, April 19, 2023 in Washington, DC. But the legal dispute is the same: Can blocking someone on social media give rise to a free speech violation under the Constitution's First Amendment? It's a recurring question that has arisen at all levels of government as elected officials increasingly use social media to interact with voters. The appeals court concluded that the elected officials were acting in their official capacities and that social media accounts are akin to a public forum. The court also rejected the officials' argument that their social media pages were not official channels for members of the public to communicate with the government.

The northern and southern lights, which are usually confined to the Arctic and Antarctica, have generated awe and wonder for centuries. The northern lights were visible over St. Mary's lighthouse in Whitley Bay, England on Monday. The southern lights glowed over Lake Ellesmere on the outskirts of Christchurch, New Zealand on Monday. Over the next few years, the northern lights might appear further south more regularly, said Robert Massey, executive director at the Royal Astronomical Society. A National Weather Service employee took a photo of the northern lights in Maine on Sunday.

☆ How Elon Musk transformed Twitter’s blue check from status symbol into a badge of shame
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-24 | by ( Brian Fung | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +9 min

Over the weekend, numerous high-profile people announced — with apparent despair — that they too had been “punished” with verification badges. Twitter Verified account seen in an iPhone screen in Vancouver, Canada, on Dec. 9 2022. Instead of conveying authenticity, Twitter verification is now fraught with multiple conflicting messages. For weeks, many legacy verified users had signaled they would not be paying for Twitter Blue. It doesn’t benefit Twitter for celebrity accounts to be buried along with the other non-paying accounts Musk has said the platform will demote.

☆ 'Crypto is dead in America' as US regulators target the sector for threatening the establishment, Chamath Palihapitiya says
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-24 | by ( Filip De Mott | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Crypto is paying the price for challenging the establishment, Chamath Palihapitiya said. "Crypto is dead in America," the so-called SPAC King said recently on the All-In podcast. "Crypto is dead in America," Palihapitiya said. Recent examples of the SEC's enforcement efforts include a February proposal to stop investment advisors from trading in crypto, and the threat of legal action against a number of Coinbase products. Meanwhile, Palihapitiya also lamented the SEC's enforcement rationale, claiming that it is excessively targeting a company that has a history of being regulation-friendly.

☆ It might be time to break up with your work wife or husband — the concept is 'outdated' and exclusionary, experts say
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-23 | by ( Beatrice Nolan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Work spouses are close colleagues who rely on each other for support in the workplace. But is it appropriate to have a non-romantic work wife or husband? A poll conducted in March for Newsweek by Redfield & Wilton Strategies found a generational divide in opinions on work spouses. "I have never seen, for instance, a male-female pair of close friends at work called 'work spouses' if one or both of them are gay," they told Insider. She said that while it's fine to have close relationships at work, the heteronormative terms can be restrictive.

☆ Artificial intelligence is a $38 billion revenue opportunity for retailers. Here's how to play the trend
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-22 | by ( Michelle Fox | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +15 min

Morgan Stanley estimates that in 2022, only 23% of the $4.3 trillion of U.S adjusted retail spending was online. Add in AI, which can drive better shopper experiences or better conversion, it could bump to 9% or possibly 10% CAGR, he said. Eventually, AI can help retailers pitch tailored products to each potential customer based on their prior history. You might see it in the member services experience in having a better opportunity to get customer support," he said. As retailers move ahead in their plans to integrate AI into their business, some will build the capabilities.

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