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☆ This is Google’s new folding phone
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Samantha Murphy Kelly | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

CNN —Just a few days ahead of its product launch, Google unveiled an early look at its first foldable smartphone. In a video posted to Twitter and YouTube, the company teased a Pixel phone with a vertical hinge that can be opened to reveal a tablet-like display. According to ABI Research, foldable and flexible displays made up about 0.7% of the smartphone market in 2021, and in 2022 expected to fall just shy of 2%. Google's new Pixel Fold smartphone From Google StoreHigh price points have limited consumer adoption, too. The Pixel Fold is rumored to start at $1,700.

☆ Google employees who tested its ChatGPT rival Bard reportedly called it 'cringeworthy' and a 'pathological liar,' and said the AI's responses could 'result in serious injury or death'
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( Aaron Mok | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Google employees who tested Bard called it "cringeworthy" and a "pathological liar," per Bloomberg. Google employees tasked with testing their employer's AI chatbot Bard were not all that pleased by what they found, according to Bloomberg. After testing the bot, one employee reportedly called Bard "cringeworthy," and another called it a "pathological liar," according to screenshots of internal discussions obtained by Bloomberg. Google employees called the announcement "rushed" and "botched." Read Bloomberg's full report on Google employees' responses to Bard here

☆ Indian startups go to court to stop Google's new in-app billing system
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-11 | by ( Aditya Kalra | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

NEW DELHI, April 11 (Reuters) - A group of Indian startups has asked a court to suspend Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) Google's new in-app billing fee system until the country's antitrust body investigates the U.S. firm for alleged non-compliance with its directives, a legal filing showed. The 744-page filing, seen by Reuters, asks the court to "keep the implementation of Google’s UCB in abeyance" until CCI hears the complaint. The new service fee system, it says, supports investments in Google Play app store and the Android mobile operating system, ensuring it distributes it for free, and covers developer tools and analytic services. But Indian startups argue Google's UCB system still imposes a "service fee" of 11-26%, compared with the earlier in-app payment system that charged a fee of 15-30%. The new system is "cloaked as another version" of Google's earlier system, the ADIF filing stated.

☆ Google Flights will pay you the difference if a ticket gets cheaper after you book — here's how to use the new tool
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-04 | by ( Hannah Towey | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Google Flights launched a "price guarantee" program for some flights departing from the US. If you buy an eligible ticket and the price drops afterward, Google will pay you the difference. Through its new "price guarantee" pilot program launched in April, Google Flights promises to pay travelers the difference if their ticket price drops anytime after booking. If your ticket price drops anytime between booking and take-0ff, you'll receive a notification after your first flight. Within 48 hours, the difference should be deposited in your Google Pay account — just make sure to use the same email for Google Pay and Google Flights and download the Google Pay app.

☆ Google Bard is here. Catch up on everything you need to know about the ChatGPT alternative.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-25 | by ( Sindhu Sundar | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Google debuted its AI chatbot Bard this week with a nod to the unpredictability of AI chatbot responses. Bard works like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Microsoft's Bing chatbot, but can give multiple responses to a prompt. Google had also moved to reassure users this week that Bard "is not trained on Gmail data," according to a tweet. Here's how it worksGoogle's new Bard chatbot told an AI expert it was trained using Gmail data. Google asked staff to spend time teaching its Bard chatbot to write like a human.

☆ Google's new Bard chatbot told an AI expert it was trained using Gmail data. The company says that's inaccurate and Bard 'will make mistakes.'
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-22 | by ( Sarah Jackson | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Google Bard started rolling out this week, and it's off to a bit of a rocky start. The AI chatbot told one user that it was trained on data from Gmail, among other sources. AI expert Kate Crawford posted an exchange she had with the new AI chatbot in which she asks where Bard's training dataset comes from. "Anyone a little concerned that Bard is saying its training dataset includes... Gmail? It is not trained on Gmail data," the company said in a tweet.

☆ Google's new AI bot Bard just debuted and it's already warning about its creator's 'monopoly' over ads
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-21 | by ( Sindhu Sundar | Hugh Langley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Google just dropped Bard on Tuesday, and the AI bot is already game to even take on the tech giant. "12:11"As we've said, Bard can sometimes give inaccurate or inappropriate information that doesn't represent Google's views and Bard should not respond in a way that endorses a particular viewpoint on subjective topics," the statement said. Insider repeated Wong's question in our own test of Bard, and received similar responses — Bard offers different answers to the same question, called "drafts," as Insider previously reported. In multiple versions of its responses, Bard repeated that "I would side with the Justice Department in this case." AI chatbots can sometimes deliver factually incorrect information, experts including OpenAI's own chief technology officer Mira Murati have said.

Google (GOOGL), which for years ranked as the top company to work for in the United States, laid off thousands of workers by e-mail. During her early years there, she worked in marketing and became known as the “The Bard of Google” for the internal emails she sent celebrating the company’s culture. Google employee affected by January layoffs“The problem was, suddenly, you didn’t work for a company that was sending stuff to space or building autonomous cars,” Rout said. Hundreds of Google employees in Switzerland staged a walkout last week to protest layoffs, partly out of frustration with the lack of transparency. About a month before the January layoffs, one former employee said Google painted “You Belong” on one of the walls in their working area.

☆ Googlers are begrudgingly testing Bard and making memes out of their new task.
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-27 | by ( Diamond Naga Siu | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Since it's a tough time in the tech industry right now, I hope this resonates with some of you, too. Thomas Maxwell/InsiderGooglers are begrudgingly testing their company's ChatGPT competitor. CEO Sundar Pichai asked every employee to spend multiple hours testing Google's new chatbot Bard. They were tasked with improving Bard by asking it questions and flagging bad answers, in addition to their normal responsibilities. Some made memes from the conversations they've had with Bard, continuing a trend of internally mocking the chatbot.

[1/2] Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau takes questions from media, at the SEIU Healthcare union office in Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada February 22, 2023. Trudeau, speaking to reporters in Toronto, said the blocking of news in Canada was an issue "bothering" him. Facebook has also raised concerns about the legislation and warned it might be forced to block news-sharing on its platform. The legislation passed Canada's House of Commons in December and is currently in the unelected upper chamber of the parliament, which rarely blocks legislation the lower house clears. Both eventually struck deals with Australian media companies after a series of amendments to the legislation were offered.

☆ It's not just Google — closer inspection reveals Bing's AI also flubbed the facts in its big reveal
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-14 | by ( Aaron Mok | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Dmitri Brereton said Bing's new AI chatbot "got some answers completely wrong" during its demo. As part of Microsoft's unveiling of the new tech, Bing's AI was asked to list the pros and cons of the three best-selling pet vacuums. "I hope Bing AI enjoys being sued for libel," he wrote. The AI arms race may lead to the spread of misinformationBrereton's observations come as Big Tech companies like Google and Microsoft enter an AI arms race. While Brereton told Insider that generative AI search engines like the new Bing can be "quite transformative," he noted that releasing it prematurely "could lead to big problems."

☆ Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak thinks ChatGPT is 'pretty impressive,' but warned it can make 'horrible mistakes': CNBC
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-13 | by ( Felise Seah | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Steve Wozniak said OpenAI's ChatGPT is "pretty impressive," during an interview with CNBC on Wednesday. "The trouble is it does good things for us, but it can make horrible mistakes by not knowing what humanness is," Wozniak warned. "The trouble is it does good things for us, but it can make horrible mistakes by not knowing what humanness is," Wozniak warned. In the interview, Wozniak also drew a parallel to the concerns surrounding AI technology in self-driving cars, and said that AI cannot currently replace human drivers. Google's new experimental AI chatbot, Bard, gave an inaccurate answer to a question about the James Webb Space Telescope.

☆ Morning Bid: Bar-duh
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-09 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

And it was an own goal given the error was in a Twitter video put out by Google itself, ouch. Alphabet's shares sank almost 8%, wiping a cool $100 billion off its market cap, and dragging all of Wall Street down. "Monetary policy in Sweden is clearly more restrictive than in the Euro-area," they say. "If the ECB therefore ends up with a 3.25% terminal rate (our forecast), we think the Riksbank will not be able to follow suit and take the policy rate to 3.75%." Key developments that could influence markets on Thursday:- Riksbank rate decision and Feb monetary policy report due at 0830 GMT.

☆ Web search as you know it is dead: Microsoft's and Google's new AIs are about to transform how you look for information online
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-08 | by ( Beatrice Nolan | James Dean | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

AI-boosted search engines from Microsoft and Google are set to change the way we search the web. New versions of Google Search and Bing are meant to give conversational answers to complex queries. It's "more like just asking a personal assistant to do something," an AI expert told Insider. Nadella said in media interviews Tuesday that the AI-powered overhaul of web search represented "a new paradigm" for the industry. The new search AIs draw their answers from the web at large, and information on the web isn't always accurate, to say the least.

☆ Here's how tech giants Microsoft, Google, and Baidu are dealing with ChatGPT, and what that could mean for investors
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-08 | by ( George Glover | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

ChatGPT's viral success has caught the eye of big tech companies and investors. Microsoft is working to integrate the bot into its search engine, while Google is scrambling for alternatives. Major tech names like Microsoft, Google parent Alphabet, and Chinese tech giant Baidu have all taken steps in recent weeks to show they're trying to harness the technology underpinning OpenAI's ChatGPT. BaiduChinese search giant Baidu is also working on developing a rival to ChatGPT to use in its services. But analysts generally expect Baidu's bounce to prove short-lived – because so many of its competitors, including Microsoft and Google, are working on similar AI programs.

☆ Alphabet slides 9% after a report the tech titan's ad for its new Google AI chatbot Bard had inaccurate information
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-08 | by ( Carla Mozée | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Alphabet stock dropped Wednesday after a report about an inaccuracy in as ad for its new Bard AI chatbot. Reuters reported the Google ad on Twitter offered an incorrect answer related to NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. ChatGPT popularity has launched a race among tech companies to integrate AI chat features into their products. NASA has confirmed European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope had taken the first pictures of exoplanets, in 2004, the report said. The report said Google hadn't immediately responded to a comment request.

☆ Google just introduced Bard, a new rival and competition for ChatGPT
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-06 | by ( Lakshmi Varanasi | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

The technology is powered by LaMDA, a large language model Google unveiled in May 2021. On Monday, Pichai unveiled its Bard AI service in a blog post on Google's website, which he described as "an experimental conversational AI service." Bard is powered by LaMDA, a language model trained on dialogue that Google announced in May 2021. Pichai noted that Bard will draw on information from the web to provide "fresh, high-quality responses." However, Pichai noted that Google is releasing Bard with a "lightweight model version of LaMDA."

☆ Google CEO issues rallying cry in internal memo: All hands on deck to test ChatGPT competitor Bard
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-06 | by ( Jennifer Elias | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google Inc. speaks during an event in New Delhi on December 19, 2022. Google CEO Sundar Pichai told employees Monday the company is going to need all hands on deck to test Bard, its new ChatGPT rival. He also said Google will soon be enlisting help from partners to test an application programming interface, or API, that would let others access the same underlying technology. Pichai's note to employees also said search boss Prabhakar Raghavan will be "sharing progress" at an event in Paris later this week. Microsoft is reportedly planning to launch a version of its own search engine, Bing, that will use ChatGPT to answer users' search queries.

☆ Google makes changes to Android in India after antitrust setbacks
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-25 | by ( Aditya Kalra | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

Hoping to block the implementation of the CCI directives, Google had approached the Supreme Court, warning that growth of its Android ecosystem will stall. The court had also said a lower tribunal - where Google first challenged the Android directives - can continue to hear the company's appeal and must rule by March 31. The U.S. search giant also said it is updating the Android compatibility requirements to introduce changes for partners to build non-compatible variants of Android. In Europe, Google was fined for putting in place what the Commission called unlawful restrictions on Android mobile device makers. Regarding in-app billing, Google said it will start offering users choice billing to all apps and games starting next month which will help developers offer an option to choose alternative systems alongside Google's when purchasing in-app digital content.

"As counterintuitive as it may sound, this layoff left me in a really good position," the 24-year-old said. U.S. tech giants including Meta, Microsoft (MSFT.O), Twitter and Snap (SNAP.N) have purged more than 150,000 staff, according to Layoff.fyi, which tracks technology job losses. Day One Ventures, an early stage venture fund in San Francisco, launched a new initiative in November to fund startups founded by people who had been laid off from their tech jobs, touting the slogan "Funded, not Fired". Silicon Valley investor U.S. Venture Partners and Austrian VC firm Speedinvest have meanwhile earmarked a similar amount for newly founded companies. Fong told Reuters that experience in Big Tech firm gave founders a "strong brand that can be leveraged to meet investors, potential customers, and recruit team members".

☆ Here's why a former Meta, Slack, and Google sales director swapped Big Tech for climate tech by joining SoftBank-backed startup Plan A
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-12 | by ( Tasmin Lockwood | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

A former Meta, Slack, and Google sales director is joining SoftBank-backed carbon accounting startup Plan A.Neil Delaney, who is joining the startup as chief revenue officer, left Meta in pursuit of "ikigai." Former Google director Neil Delaney describes himself as personable; he enjoys learning and has a natural interest in people. He was working as the interim global sales director at Meta when something else caught his eye: climate tech. With 15 years in Big Tech under his belt, Delaney has now joined Berlin-based carbon accounting company Plan A as its chief revenue officer. The next wave of tech unicorns is expected to be in climate tech, and Delaney sees Plan A as one of them as long as it "executes well."

☆ In a tense all-hands, Google's CEO said it's 'tough to predict the future' when asked whether the company would do layoffs
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-09 | by ( Hugh Langley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Google CEO Sundar Pichai said it's "tough to predict the future" when asked about layoffs. The possibility of layoffs was top of mind for Google employees during a company all-hands Thursday, but CEO Sundar Pichai wouldn't rule out cuts. Some employees at Google have been nervous over the prospect of layoffs, which have hit other tech giants, such as Meta and Amazon. Employees also asked about Google's new performance rating system, known as GRAD, which the company introduced this year. Some employees have said GRAD, which this year replaced Google's previous performance tool, has had a rocky start.

The new Google Pixel 7 is faster and more powerful than the Pixel 6, but doesn't add many features. Pixel 6 vs. Pixel 7: CameraBoth the Pixel 6 and Pixel 7 have three cameras: One "selfie" camera in the front, and two on the back. Pixel 6 vs. Pixel 7: Internal hardwareThe Tensor G2 chip is the brain of the Pixel 7. Pixel 6 vs. Pixel 7: BatteryBattery-wise, the Pixel 7's 4,355 mAh battery has less capacity than the Pixel 6, which is rated at 4,614 mAh. Pixel 6 vs. Pixel 7: PriceFollowing the announcement of the Pixel 7 last week, the Pixel 6 and the Pixel 7 were briefly available from Google at the same price point.

☆ How one pioneering platform is working to detoxify social media
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-13 | by ( Jordan Parker Erb | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

But some platforms are trying to detoxify social media. Twitter; Mastodon; Vicky Leta/Insider1. One pioneering platform is working to detoxify social media. Once championed as heralds of a more interconnected world, social media has instead contributed to loneliness, low self-esteem, and the proliferation of harmful disinformation, Evan Malmgren writes. With 4.4 million users, Mastodon looks like Twitter, but rather than a single website, it's an open-source software platform that allows users to run self-hosted, "federated" social networks.

☆ Google is selling its first Pixel Watch with Fitbit technology, but it's too little, too late
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-12 | by ( Sofia Pitt | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

It's called Pixel Watch, and consumers can find it on store shelves starting Thursday. The Pixel Watch starts at $350 for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and $400 for 4G LTE. The new Apple Watch SE is just $250 and has the same main features as the Pixel Watch. Google's Pixel Watch is the company's premium watch, whereas the Apple Watch SE and Galaxy Watch 5 are base models. Here's what you need to know before buying the new Pixel Watch and what I noticed about the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro phones.

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