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Evening Standard
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Jon Weeks

The AI chatbot that lets you haggle for discounts - Tech & Science Daily podcast

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A so-called ‘secret chatbot’ has been discovered on some shopping sites, that lets you negotiate the price of products.

It is called Nibble AI, a bot that pops up when you hit a ‘negotiate’ button, and it offers you a discount on whatever is in your basket.

Earlier this year, London-based software engineer George McGowan used the bot to get an eight per cent discount on a mattress from Eve Sleep.

But it appears the bot isn’t easy to trick into making a mistake, as we have seen in the past with Google’s Bard model and ChatGPT.George posted on X that he attempted to secure the £949 mattress for £500, but Nibble firmly rejected the offer, responding with “There are low offers, and then there’s…That. I can’t accept, sorry.”

Researchers at Nottingham Trent University have discovered that horses are much smarter than first thought, after they performed better than expected in a complex reward-based game.

Louise Evans, a PhD candidate based at NTU tells Tech & Science Daily how they discovered that when denied treats for not following the rules of the game, the horses were able to instantly switch strategies to get more rewards.

According to the researchers, the findings suggest horses have the ability to form an internal model of the world around them to make decisions and predictions, a technique known as model-based learning.

Louise explained how this research can help inform welfare standards for horses.

Inspired by the Japanese art of origami, a team of scientists from Oxford and Cambridge have developed tiny folding brain implants that can fit through a small surgical slit about 6mm wide, that they say could significantly reduce the amount of brain surgery needed for epilepsy patients.

The condition affects one in 100 people in the UK, and is caused by bursts of electrical activity in the brain that temporarily affect how it works, leading to frequent seizures.

The research team said the implants can cover an area five times larger once fully unfurled on the brain’s surface, and it’s hoped they will help pinpoint where epileptic seizures originate within the brain.

Tributes have been pouring in for former CEO of YouTube Susan Wojcicki who died aged 56 after battling lung cancer.

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet wrote in a public memo "She is as core to the history of Google as anyone, and it’s hard to imagine the world without her. She was an incredible person, leader, and friend who had a tremendous impact on the world."

Tech YouTuber Marques Brownlee, aka MKBHD, posted on X that “she took on one of THE most stressful positions and handled it with grace and vision and was incredibly gracious behind the scenes in ways most people never got to see”.

Also in this episode:

  • Perseid meteor shower: How you can see the shooting stars
  • Eco Wave Power officially kicks off the first MW Scale Wave Energy Project in Portugal
  • Blasting 'glitter' into Mars' atmosphere could make it more habitable, say scientists

Listen above, find us on Apple, Spotify or wherever you stream your podcasts.

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