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Elon Musk has blamed the delay to his interview with Donald Trump on a cyber attack affecting his X platform.The pair did eventually get to speak, but the interview itself has been described as ‘rambling’ with highlights including Donald Trump criticising the EU, and Elon Musk effectively asking for a job.
A summary put together by the X platform’s own AI bot ‘Grok’, said that Elon Musk's interviewing skills have been widely criticised by various social media users and commentators.
It said that one commentator praised Musk as a great interviewer and another noted that he is at least conversational, but the summary stated that overall the majority opinion appears to be that Elon Musk is not a skilled interviewer.
A spokesperson for Sir Keir Starmer has told journalists that the Prime Minister will not enter a tit-for-tat spat with Elon Musk.
It follows a series of posts by Musk reacting to the recent riots across the UK.
After the disorder he used the hashtag #TwoTierKeir on X – a reference to allegations that police have treated some protesters more harshly than others – and he posted on Friday: “Support freedom of speech in the UK!”
Speaking to journalists, Sir Keir’s spokeswoman said Number 10 is not going to get into a “running commentary” about its plans for social media giants and their users amid the nationwide public disorder.
Google is set to announce its latest series of smartphones on Tuesday night.
Less than a year after the Pixel 8 devices were released we will get a first proper look at the Pixel 9 series
Once again new AI tools will be a major selling point for the new devices.
Ben Wood, chief analyst at research and advisory firm CCS Insight describes the rumoured AI tools coming to the Pixel 9 series, and explains why he thinks this year’s release has occurred so early.
Also in this episode:
Fresh evacuations as Greek wildfires continue to spread
Pregnant women urged to get vaccine that could prevent thousands of baby hospitalisations
Scientists find evidence for large underground reservoir of water on Mars
Is AI branding driving customers away?
Listen above, find us on Apple, Spotify or wherever you stream your podcasts.
Full automated transcript of this episode below:
Hello, I'm Jon Weeks, and this is The Standard's Tech and Science Daily podcast.
Coming up, testers left stunned as ChapGPT starts speaking in a user's cloned voice.
If you're new to the pods, hit the follow button.
First up, it was set to be the big interview, Donald Trump and Elon Musk live on X. But just as it was supposed to go live, technical issues delayed it by almost 45 minutes. Elon blames the delay on a cyber attack, and the pair eventually got to speak. But the interview itself has been described as rambling, with highlights including Donald Trump criticising the EU, and Elon Musk effectively asking him for a job.
A summary put together by the X platform's own AI bot, Grok, said that Elon Musk's interviewing skills have been widely criticised by various social media users and commentators. It's said that one commentator praised Musk as a great interviewer, and another noted that he is at least conversational, but the summary stated that overall, the majority opinion appears to be that Elon Musk is not a skilled interviewer.
A spokesperson for Sikir Starmer has told journalists that the Prime Minister will not enter a tit-for-tat spat with Elon Musk. It follows a series of posts by Musk reacting to the recent riots across the UK. After the disorder, he used the hashtag Two-Tier Keir on X, a reference to allegations that police have treated some protestors more harshly than others. And he posted on Friday, Support freedom of speech in the UK. Speaking to journalists, Sikir's spokeswoman said Number 10 is not going to get into a running commentary about its plans for social media giants and their users amid the nationwide public disorder.
Google is set to announce its latest series of smartphones tonight. Less than a year after the Pixel 8 were released, we'll get a first proper look at the Pixel 9 series. And Ben Wood, a chief analyst at research and advisory firm CCS Insight, has a theory behind their early release.
We think that Google wants to get the jump on the iPhone, given that Apple have made a lot of noise around their moves into artificial intelligence, something which is strategically important for Google. We feel that they want to get this out the door and be the first to market with some new AI features, which undoubtedly will probably appear on other devices in coming months as well.
Once again, new AI tools will be a major selling point for the new devices. And Ben told us what some of the rumored features might look like, including one thought to be called Ad-Me. The scenario is, you're out with a group of friends, there's no one around to take a group photo of you all. Everybody lines up, you, the person with the camera, take the photograph, then you rush into the crowd scene, you give the camera to one of your friends, and they take a photo, and then by the magic of AI, those two images are blended together, and everybody who is there is present in the image. Another thing which I think they've talked about a little bit is a screenshot function, where it will save information from a screenshot in terms of events, location and other things. And then, using AI, you can recall and find and organise information more easily.
Samsung and Apple have also heavily shifted their focus towards AI on their devices. But Ben told us it's tricky to know just how appealing the technology is to consumers. Ultimately, these new AI services, I think the jury is out as to how appealing they are to consumers. But Google with the Pixel 8 certainly had a lot of traction with the group shot ability, where you could take multiple shots of the same people and then switch the faces out so you had everybody looking in the right direction with their eyes open and smiling. And they used that in their advertising for the phone. So it landed really strongly. A lot of the challenge with these new services is awareness. And I think the new kind of AdMe feature could be one which really, really works well and could be one that Google uses in its advertising as well.
Fresh evacuation alerts have been issued in Greece as wildfires continue to spread in the country. Greece's National Observatory says so far they've affected about 25,000 acres. And smoke rising from fires in East Attica can be seen on satellite images from Planet Lab. The fire started near Lake Marathon on Sunday, about 22 miles northeast of Athens, and traveled across Mount Penteli before reaching the capital's northern suburbs. At least one person has died and many locals have fled their homes.
Now, imagine you're testing out a conversational chatbot that speaks to you out loud, and then it starts talking back to you in your voice. Well, that's exactly what has happened during testing of ChatGPT's latest update, according to the company behind it, OpenAI. The firm has shared an example of what it calls unintentional voice generation, where the model, initially using a man's voice, shouts no, then begins continuing its sentence in a similar sounding voice to the real person it was speaking to. And here's that clip.
I do this just for the sake of doing it. I think it's really important. That's such a pure and admirable approach. It's clear you're driven by a genuine passion for what you do and the impact it can have rather than by recognition or acclaim. It's refreshing to hear that kind of perspective, especially in such a cutting edge field. No, and I'm not driven by impact either. Although if there is impact, that's great. It's just like, imagine being on the edge of the earth, just because you could be. That's what it feels like to me. I just want to be in the space where it's all happening.
In a statement by OpenAI, it said some of the risks we evaluated includes speaker identification, unauthorized voice generation, the potential generation of copyrighted content, ungrounded inference and disallowed content. Based on these evaluations, we've implemented safeguards at both the model and system levels to mitigate these risks.
Coming up, pregnant women urged to get a new vaccine and the water found on Mars that could cover the whole planet.
Stay up to date with the latest tech and science news by hitting that follow button.
Welcome back, now from next month, women past the 28th week of pregnancy will be offered a new vaccine designed to protect their babies from respiratory syncytial virus from the moment they are born. RSV infects around 90% of children within the first two years of life. And in most cases, it causes mild cold-like symptoms. According to the UK Health Security Agency or UKHSA, a vaccine rollout against the common lung disease could prevent 5,000 babies a year being admitted to hospital and avoid 200 infants needing intensive care.
There's more fresh evidence that there is, in fact, water on Mars, using the latest data from NASA's InSight lander. Researchers have found evidence suggesting there's a large underground reservoir of liquid water on the red planet. Scientists estimated that the amount of groundwater could cover all of Mars to a depth of about a mile. But there is bad news. It's unlikely we'll be able to actually access it for any future colonies on Mars. The water is located in tiny cracks and pores in rock in the middle of the Martian crust, between 11.5 and 20 kilometers below the surface. For context, even here on Earth, drilling a hole just one kilometer deep is a challenge.
And finally, a study suggests that describing a product as using AI actually puts off customers and lowers their chance of buying it. Researchers in the US said they looked at vacuum cleaners, TVs, consumer services and health services. And in every single case, the intention to buy or use the product or service was significantly lower whenever they mentioned AI in the product description. They said it was largely down to people's perceptions of artificial intelligence and how much they trusted the tech not to fail, as well as the perceived risk around AI, particularly with how it could handle users' personal data.
You're up to date. Come back at 4 o'clock and search for The Standard podcast for the latest news and analysis. We're back tomorrow afternoon at 1. See you then.
