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SHANGHAI/HONGKONG: China's Alibaba Cloud on Thursday said it will slash prices of some of its products by as much as 55%, its most severe price cut to date, amid intensifying competition to attract heavy users, particularly artificial intelligence software developers. This would be the second time the cloud arm of Chinese e-commerce leader Alibaba Group Holding has cut price s in less than a year after reductions of as much as 50% in April. The cloud service provider said it will lower price s of over 100 products by an average of 20%. The price cuts constitute Alibaba's latest effort to persuade developers to build data-intensive AI models and applications using its cloud services. Rivals including Tencent Holdings and Huawei Technologies, which also cut cloud price s last year following Alibaba's lead, have offered a number of promotions to convince tech firms to develop AI within their ecosystems. "We decided to launch the price reduction cam...

Disruption in the use of social media has an economic impact and can fuel disinformation, experts said, commenting on the ban on the open use of X in Pakistan. Access to the social media giant has been blocked since Feb 17 as allegations of rigging during the Feb 8 general elections continue to make news. UK-based Alp Toker, the director of NetBlocks, said X disruption in Pakistan could have millions of dollars in economic impact in the region. "The disruption to X in Pakistan could have an economic impact in the region of $50m, based on our COST outage disruption impact estimator. This takes into account lost productivity and lost Business and investment opportunities," Toker said in a statement sent to Anadolu . Ban was imposed after an elections officer in Rawalpindi, Liaqat Ali Chattha, publicly claimed to have allegedly changed election results in his area. It soon went viral on social media. Read more: Freedom Network demands restoration of X, slams caretake...

T ikTok is launching an in-app Election Center to mitigate the spread of online misinformation during the 2024 European Parliament elections. In a blog post published on Wednesday, Kevin Morgan, Head of Safety and Integrity for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, said the ByteDance-owned social media platform will host local language centers for each of the 27 E.U. countries to help viewers “separate fact from fiction.” The tool is set to be available for TikTok’s 134 million monthly European users to access in March, ahead of the bloc taking to the polls in early June. The centers will aim to inform European voters about the elections, and videos linked to the electoral process will be clearly signposted and guide users to the relevant center. TikTok also noted that it has a team of 6,000 people working to moderate E.U. languages content. Read More: Tech Companies Are Taking Action on AI Election Misinformation. Will It Matter? “Working with local electoral commissions and civil soc...

H ave you ever wanted to know what two golden retrievers podcasting on top of a mountain might look like? Or perhaps watch a bicycle race on the ocean with different Animals riding the bicycles? Now you can. OpenAI’s latest generative artificial intelligence offering, Sora, can generate breathtakingly realistic videos that are up to a minute long from text prompts. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced the model’s creation on X on Thursday. here is sora, our video generation model:https://t.co/CDr4DdCrh1 today we are starting red-teaming and offering access to a limited number of creators.@_tim_brooks @billpeeb @model_mechanic are really incredible; amazing work by them and the team. remarkable moment. — Sam Altman (@sama) February 15, 2024 Sora is not yet available to the public. For now, OpenAI is only granting access to red teamers—individuals employed to look for issues—who will assess potential risks associated with the model’s release, as well as a limited number of “visual ar...

Scientists have created an error-free quantum bit, or qubit, from a single pulse of light, raising hopes for a light-based room-temperature quantum computer in the future. While bits in classical computers store information as either 1 or 0, qubits in quantum computers can encode information as a superposition of 1 and 0, meaning one qubit can adopt both states simultaneously.  When quantum computers have millions of qubits in the future, they will process calculations in a fraction of the time that today's most powerful supercomputers can. But the most powerful quantum computers so far have only been built with roughly 1,000 qubits.  Most qubits are made from a superconducting metal, but these need to be cooled to near absolute zero to achieve stability for the laws of quantum mechanics to dominate. Qubits are also highly prone to failure, and if a qubit fails during a computation, the data it stores is lost, and a calculation is delayed. One way to solve this probl...

Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, Nvidia and other big Technology names are investing in startup Figure AI that develops human-like robots, Bloomberg News reported on Friday, citing people with knowledge of the situation. Figure AI, also backed by ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and Microsoft, is raising about $675 million in a funding round that carries a pre-money valuation of about $2 billion, according to the report. Bezos had committed $100 million through his firm Explore Investments LLC and Microsoft is investing $95 million, while Nvidia and an Amazon-affiliated fund are each providing $50 million, the report added. Investments in artificial intelligence startup s have sparked after the launch of OpenAI's viral chatbot ChatGPT in November 2022, as investors sense an opportunity, betting on these startup s that they might outpace bigger rivals. OpenAI, which at one point considered acquiring Figure, is investing $5 million, the report added. Backers include Intel's...

T he rise of generative AI tools like ChatGPT has increased the potential for a wide range of attackers to target elections around the world in 2024, according to a new report by cybersecurity giant CrowdStrike. Both state-linked hackers and allied so-called “hacktivists” are increasingly experimenting with ChatGPT and other AI tools, enabling a wider range of actors to carry out cyberattacks and scams, according to the company’s annual global threats report. This includes hackers linked to Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran, who have been testing new ways to use these technologies against the U.S., Israel, and European countries. With half the world’s population set to vote in 2024, the use of generative AI to target elections could be a “huge factor,” says Adam Meyers, head of counter-adversary operations at CrowdStrike. So far, CrowdStrike analysts have been able to detect the use of these models through comments in the scripts that would have been placed there by a tool like Cha...

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Nvidia Corp., which has seen its value skyrocket over the past year thanks to soaring demand for its graphics chips used for artificial intelligence, posted stronger-than-expected results Wednesday for its latest quarter, with its revenue more than tripling from a year earlier. Nvidia reported revenue for its fiscal fourth quarter that ended Jan. 28 of $22.1 billion, up from $6.05 billion. The company based in Santa Clara, California, earned $12.29 billion, compared to a profit of $1.41 billion a year ago. Adjusted for one-time items, Nvidia earned $5.16 a share in the latest quarter, that topped Wall Street forecasts for $4.59 per share, based on analysts surveyed by FactSet Research. Analysts had expected revenue of $20.4 billion for the period that concluded the company’s fiscal year. The company's specialized chips are key components that help power different forms of artificial intelligence, including the latest generative AI chatbots such as ChatGPT and ...

Bankrupt crypto exchange FTX may sell its shares in artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, a US judge ruled Thursday. US Bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey in Wilmington, Delaware approved FTX's proposal to sell the shares after FTX reached a compromise in court with a group of FTX customers that had opposed the sale. FTX invested $500 million in Anthropic in 2021, and currently holds a 7.84 percent stake in the company, according to court documents. The company had sought permission to sell the shares as part of its court-supervised effort to liquidate its assets and repay customers who lost access to their accounts when the company collapsed in 2022. "We are selling the Anthropic shares , as we are selling everything, and putting the money in the bank," FTX attorney Andy Dietderich said at a Thursday court hearing. FTX expects to sell the shares at a profit, and it will retain flexibility to sell its shares at the "most optimal and appropriate time,...

T here are 103 people betting on whether Austin Chen and Rachel Weinberg will still be married in five years time. The aggregation of their bets puts the probability at 92%. The couple are more bullish—Chen puts the probability as high as 98%. As is customary for users of the website Manifold, where people can bet on anything from the outcome of the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election to winner of Best Actress at the Oscars, they’ve both put their—virtual—money where their mouths are. If his marriage endures, Chen stands to win 6,483 Mana, Manifold’s play currency. (Mana are named after magical stamina in video Game s and can be purchased at a rate of one dollar per hundred Mana and traded in for charitable donations at the same rate.) Weinberg, who bet less than Chen, would collect a more modest 2,407 Mana. Users are given $10 worth of Mana free when they sign up. Chen co-founded Manifold, along with brothers Stephen and James Grugett, in December 2021, with funding from both venture capi...

 Apple is rolling out an upgrade to its iMessage texting platform to defend against future encryption-breaking technologies. The new protocol, known as PQ3, is another sign that US tech firms are bracing for a potential future breakthrough in quantum computing that could make current methods of protecting users’ communications obsolete. “More than simply replacing an existing algorithm with a new one, we rebuilt the iMessage cryptographic protocol from the ground up,” an Apple blog post published on Wednesday reads. “It will fully replace the existing protocol within all supported conversations this year.” The Cupertino, California-based iPhone maker says its encryption algorithms are state-of-the-art and that it has found no evidence so far of a successful attack on them. Still, government officials and scientists are concerned that the advent of quantum computers, advanced machines that tap in to the properties of subatomic particles, ...

 Intel said on Wednesday that Microsoft plans to use its services to manufacture a custom computing chip and that the company expects to beat an internal deadline of 2025 to overtake its biggest rival, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, in advanced chip manufacturing. The chipmaker also gave new details on how it plans to maintain a lead over TSMC into 2026 and beyond. Intel made the disclosures at an event in San Jose, California, at the first technology conference for Intel Foundry, the contract manufacturing operation it established to compete with TSMC. Intel says it plans to retake the mantle of making the world's fastest chips from TSMC later this year with what it calls Intel 18A manufacturing technology and extend that lead into 2026 with new technology called Intel 14A. It said Microsoft will use its 18A technology to make an undisclosed chip and that it now expects $15 billion of foundry orders, up from the $10 billion that the company had earlier t...

Boston Dynamics' flagship Atlas humanoid robot picks up and places heavy automotive struts with ease in new footage. In this latest demonstration of Atlas' capabilities, the robot uses only its on-board sensors to detect the objects before using its grippers to pick up the struts from storage and insert them into a nearby flow cart. The footage also gives us a glimpse of the action from Atlas' perspective. Atlas — which Boston Dynamics describes as the "world's most dynamic humanoid robot" — made its public debut in July 2013 and has been iterated upon over the years. The footage of Atlas handling automotive struts is the latest in a series of demonstrations, with previous footage showing Atlas running a.nd performing parkour . Related: Robot hand exceptionally 'human-like' thanks to new 3D printing technique Last year, the company released the first footage of Atlas using grippers to handle objects and deliver them to a human companion. Atla...

Space has always fascinated humans, which is why some of the most powerful nations on Earth financed expensive missions costing billions of dollars to unearth the mysteries hidden in the stars, supernovas, black holes, exoplanets and all other galactic objects. The world has come a long way from 4 October 1957, when the Soviet Union became the first to launch an artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, into space. Since then, mankind has placed the first human in space (Russia’s Yuri Gagarin), the first woman in space (Russia’s Valentina Tereshkova) and the first human on the Moon (US astronaut Neil Armstrong) among countless other feats in human History . It is remarkable that in just about seven decades, the world is now aiming to set up a colony on Mars — a goal that is increasingly becoming more realistic with the progress in technology and shared scientific understanding among several countries. One day in the far future, interstellar travel might also become a reality ...