Technology

Niantic, the company behind the extremely popular augmented reality mobile games Pokémon Go and Ingress, announced that it is using data collected by its millions of players to create an AI model that can navigate the physical world. 

In a blog post published last week, first spotted by Garbage Day, Niantic says it is building a “Large Geospatial Model.” This name, the company explains, is a direct reference to Large Language Models (LLMs) Like OpenAI’s GPT, which are trained on vast quantities of text scraped from the internet in order to process and produce natural language. Niantic explains that a Large Geospatial Model, or LGM, aims to do the same for the physical world, a technology it says “will enable computers not only to perceive and understand physical spaces, but also to interact with them in new ways, forming a critical component of AR glasses and fields beyond, including robotics, content creation and autonomous systems. As we move from phones to wearable technology linked to the real world, spatial intelligence will become the world’s future operating system.”

By training an AI model on millions of geolocated images from around the world, the model will be able to predict its immediate environment in the same way an LLM is able to produce coherent and convincing sentences by statistically determining what word is likely to follow another.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/22264797

Per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS) have been found to contaminate the global environment and have been implicated in a wide range of health problems. But the tough carbon-fluorine bonds in the compounds resist being torn apart, leading to expensive remediation schemes that rely on powerful chemicals and high temperatures and pressures. Today, two groups report in Nature the discovery of catalysts that could offer a cheaper way to clean up the chemicals. When energized by light, the catalysts break down a wide range of PFAS compounds at low temperatures and ambient pressures.

Israeli forces are using an AI weapons system in Gaza co-produced by an Indian defence company that turns machine guns and assault rifles into computerised killing machines, Middle East Eye can reveal.

According to documents and news reports seen by MEE, Israeli forces have been using the Arbel weapons system in Gaza following their devastating invasion of the enclave after the 7 October attacks on southern Israel.

Touted as a "revolutionary game changer that improves operator lethality and survivability," the Arbel system enhances machine guns and assault weapons - such as the Israeli-produced Tavor, Carmel and Negev - into a weapon that uses algorithms to boost soldiers chances of hitting targets more accurately and efficiently.

Although defence analysts say the weapon system may not be as cutting-edge or as widely used as the "Lavender" or "The Gospel" AI weapons systems - that are reported to have played a huge role in the tremendous death toll in Gaza - Arbel appears to be the first weapons system to directly tie India to Israel's rapidly expanding AI war in Gaza in what could have wide-ranging implications for other conflicts.

French regional daily Ouest-France, the top-selling paper in the country, is the latest in a string of European publications to suspend posts on X, formerly Twitter. The social media platform is accused of enabling the spread of disinformation under its owner Elon Musk, an ally of US president-elect Donald Trump.

Amazon, Amazon Music, and Audible, an Amazon-owned online audiobook and podcast service, have been flooded with bogus listings that push dubious "forex trading" sites, Telegram channels, and suspicious links claiming to offer pirated software.

• 57% of the population is already connected to mobile internet.
• In Pakistan, Nigeria, and Mexico, the rate of new mobile internet subscriber growth is slowing.
• The remaining populations will be harder, and more expensive, to get online.

AI chatbots are now in everyday use both across different industries and recreationally. In this blog, we consider the growing possibility that these AI tools are the next home of the multi-billion-dollar advertising industry. We look at examples from some AI companies that have already announced demos of sponsored ads in their AI chatbot tools, and discuss why this is dangerous territory for users.

Google has updated its site reputation abuse policy to expand what is included in abuse. It now includes third-party content that has first-party involvement or content oversight. Google also dropped a mention of the starkly different content algorithm but made no mention that site reputation abuse is enforced algorithmically—so it must still be only through manual actions.

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