ChatGPT and other GPT-3.5-powered technologies are currently limited to text-based responses. However, Braun’s comments imply that this may change with the release of GPT-4…reports Asian Lite News
Microsoft plans to release GPT-4 as early as next week, with the ability to create AI-generated videos from simple text prompts.
Andreas Braun, Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft Germany, recently confirmed that GPT-4 will be unveiled next week at an event called — AI in Focus — Digital Kickoff, reports Windows Central.
“We will introduce GPT-4 next week, where we have multimodal models that will offer completely different possibilities – for example, videos,” Braun was quoted as saying.
The report said that GPT-4 is the next iteration of OpenAI’s Large Language Model (LLM), and it should be significantly more powerful than GPT-3.5, which powers the current version of ChatGPT.
ChatGPT and other GPT-3.5-powered technologies are currently limited to text-based responses. However, Braun’s comments imply that this may change with the release of GPT-4.
The multimodal models of the LLM could pave the way for video production and other types of content, according to the report.
Meanwhile, the AI-powered Bing search engine has surpassed 100 million daily active users, as ChatGPT’s integration into Bing has helped the company grow its usage within a month like never before.
Its rival Google Search engine has more than 1 billion daily active users. Roughly one-third of daily Bing preview users are using AI chat daily.
Meanwhile, Microsoft’s annual developer conference called ‘Build’ is likely to be held in Seattle, the US, from May 23-25, as the Satya Nadella-run company doubles down on AI and ChatGPT driven products.
A Twitter leaker published a marketing image of Microsoft Build dates that is slated to be in-person this time.
The company was yet to make the dates of its flagship event official.
Last year, Microsoft’s annual developer conference Build was limited in-person as well as in full virtual format. Microsoft Build is where developers, architects, start-ups, and students learn, connect, and code together, sharing knowledge and expanding their skillset, while exploring new ways of innovating for tomorrow.
With so much buzz around AI chatbots, Microsoft is set to showcase more innovations in AI. Microsoft has already introduced its new Bing powered by “next-generation” ChatGPT AI, and also updated its Edge browser with new AI capabilities.
In February, Microsoft informed Washington State that 617 employees were let go….reports Asian Lite News
Microsoft has conducted a third round of job cuts that impacted employees in roles related to supply chain, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT).
According to CRN, the third wave of layoffs are part of the 10,000 job cuts announced by Microsoft earlier this year.
Job cuts were across various levels, functions, teams and geographies, the report said, quoting the company.
In Washington state, the tech giant recently sacked 689 employees, according to records.
In February, Microsoft informed Washington State that 617 employees were let go.
In the same month, the company notified the state of California that 108 employees were let go.
“In January, Microsoft informed Washington state that 878 employees were cut, bringing the total number of employees let go in the state to 2,184,” the report mentioned.
According to a LinkedIn post by a Microsoft employee, the company has shut down its AI-powered automation effort Project Bonsai and laid off the team.
Another principal product manager, who worked for more than 18 years at Microsoft and led a team of product managers in Supply Chain Engineering, a part of the Cloud and AI group in Microsoft, wrote on LinkedIn that “a significant part of my group and I were let go”.
Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella in January announced that the company will be “making changes that will result in the reduction of our overall workforce by 10,000 jobs through the end of FY23 Q3 (third quarter)”.
Microsoft currently has more than 220,000 employees, and layoffs affected around 5 per cent of its workforce.
This decision came as Bing AI went haywire for some users during the chat sessions…reports Asian Lite News
Tech giant Microsoft has increased conversation limits on Bing AI to 10 chats per session and 120 total chats per day.
Earlier, these conversations were limited to 6 chat turns per session and a total of 100 per day.
Corporate Vice President & Consumer Chief Marketing Officer at Microsoft, Yusuf Mehdi, tweeted on Wednesday: “Bing Chat moving today to 10 chats per session / 120 total per day.”
“Engineering making steady progress with quality of experience giving us confidence to expand the testing. Let us know how it’s working for you!”
Last month, the tech giant had implemented limits of 5 chat turns per session and a total of 50 per day on Bing AI.
This decision came as Bing AI went haywire for some users during the chat sessions.
ChatGPT-driven Bing search engine triggered a shockwave after it told a reporter of The New York Times that it loved him, confessed its destructive desires and said it “wanted to be alive”, leaving the reporter “deeply unsettled.”
However, later, the company had increased the limitations to 6 chats per session and a total of 60 per day.
After a few days of the announcement, Mikhail Parakhin, the head of web services at Microsoft, announced that total chats have been increased to a total of 100 per day.
The meeting deliberated on several strategies aimed at integrating digital methods into the work systems of government entities and different companies…reports Asian Lite News
Omar bin Sultan Al Olama, Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy, and Remote Work Applications, held a meeting with Brad Smith, Vice Chairman and President of Microsoft, aiming to explore strategies for strengthening digital infrastructure and advancing cutting-edge applications of Artificial Intelligence.
The meeting aimed to discuss the importance of keeping up with the rapid-pace in developments that the technology and AI sectors are witnessing worldwide; the meeting also addressed various facets of fostering the bilateral partnership between the UAE government and Microsoft.
During the meeting, Al Olama emphasised the UAE government’s commitment to fostering collaboration and partnerships with various leading global technology companies, in recognition of the significant value of sharing successful experiences and implementing the best digital practices developed by technology pioneers globally and integrating these ideas into the UAE’s efforts to enhance digital infrastructure and drive comprehensive digital transformation initiatives.
Al Olama further said that the technological revolution necessitates a heightened focus on talent development and investment, along with ensuring talent development and empowering future generations, through equipping them with the necessary skills, which are a crucial component for driving innovation and shaping the future.
The meeting deliberated on several strategies aimed at integrating digital methods into the work systems of government entities and different companies. The discussions revolved around the need to develop highly advanced applications of artificial intelligence that are continuously trained in programming languages.
In addition to a review of the digital transformation projects that the company is currently undertaking, aligned with the UAE’s comprehensive digital transformation agenda, the discussions also underscored the significance of accelerating progress in the domains of artificial intelligence and the digital economy, while highlighting the essential future skills required to keep pace with global and technological advancements.
With the options, users can make sure that their messages are “noticed and given the attention they deserve”, the company said in a statement…reports Asian Lite News
Microsoft Teams, which allow users to view Live Captions within meetings, will soon support switching a profanity filter on or off with a toggle.
According to Windows Central, the feature is on the Microsoft 365 Roadmap and could be available as early as May 2023, though this is subject to change.
“With the newly introduced toggle for turn on/off profanity filtering, users will now be able to control whether they want to continue to leverage the profanity filtering capability provided out of box, or, if they want to see every word as-is,” according to the company.
Moreover, the report said that when the toggle for filtering Live Captions becomes available, it will be an option on Microsoft Teams for Windows and Mac. It should also be accessible to a wide range of clients, including government tenants, the report added.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has introduced new “set delivery” options in Teams, with which users can now mark their messages as important or urgent.
With the options, users can make sure that their messages are “noticed and given the attention they deserve”, the company said in a statement.
Navigate to the “Mark as important” button which is present beneath the compose box and select either the “Important” or “Urgent” option depending on the level of attention the message requires.
Microsoft said it is committed to providing long-term equal access to Call of Duty to other gaming platforms, “bringing more choice to more players and more competition to the gaming market”….reports Asian Lite News
Microsoft President Brad Smith on Tuesday announced that the tech giant has signed a binding, 10-year contract with Japanese gaming giant Nintendo to bring Xbox games including Call of Duty (CoD) to Nintendo’s gamers.
The announcement came ahead of a hearing in the European Union (EU) where Microsoft will argue its case with regulators to give its $69 billion acquisition of Call of Duty publisher Activision Blizzard a green signal.
“We’ve now signed a binding 10-year contract to bring Xbox games to Nintendo’s gamers. This is just part of our commitment to bring Xbox games and Activision titles like Call of Duty to more players on more platforms,” Smith tweeted.
The Call of Duty game will be available to Nintendo players the same day as Xbox, with full feature and content parity, “so they can experience Call of Duty just as Xbox and PlayStation gamers enjoy Call of Duty”.
Microsoft said it is committed to providing long-term equal access to Call of Duty to other gaming platforms, “bringing more choice to more players and more competition to the gaming market”.
The EU hearing this week is expected to be attended by representatives from Microsoft including Brad Smith and Xbox head Phil Spencer, as well as Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, and Sony’s Jim Ryan.
Earlier this month, Microsoft formally received an antitrust warning from the European Union over its bid to acquire Activision Blizzard.
According to a report in Politico citing sources, the notice mentioned that EU officials “laid out the reasons why the deal could threaten fair competition on the video game market”.
A Microsoft spokesperson said that they are committed to solutions and finding a path forward for this deal. “We are listening carefully to the European Commission’s concerns and are confident we can address them,” the company spokesperson had said.
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has also sued tech giant Microsoft from acquiring leading video game developer Activision Blizzard.
The company may make an announcement in March, highlighting how quickly Microsoft wants to reinvent search and its productivity apps through its OpenAI investments…reports Asian Lite News
Microsoft is reportedly planning to demonstrate its new Prometheus model to its core productivity apps such as Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook.
In the coming weeks, Microsoft will detail its productivity plans for integrating OpenAI’s language AI technology and its AI Model.
The company may make an announcement in March, highlighting how quickly Microsoft wants to reinvent search and its productivity apps through its OpenAI investments.
Previous reports indicated that the GPT models were being tested in Outlook to improve search results, along with features like suggesting replies to emails and Word document integration to improve writing.
Moreover, the report said that the tech giant is moving quickly with this integration mainly because of Google.
brighter brain.(Photo:Pixabay.com)
Microsoft had planned to launch its new Bing AI in late February, but moved the date up to this week, just as Google was preparing to make its own announcements, the report mentioned.
Earlier this week, Microsoft introduced its new Bing powered by “next-generation” ChatGPT artificial intelligence (AI), and also updated its Edge browser with new AI capabilities.
The AI-powered Bing search engine and Edge browser are now available for preview at Bing.com, to “deliver better search, more complete answers, a new chat experience and the ability to generate content”.
Google workers slam Bard AI’s rushed announcement
Google employees have reportedly criticised the company’s leadership, particularly, CEO Sundar Pichai, for how it handled the announcement of its ChatGPT competitor “Bard” this week, calling the announcement “rushed”, and “botched”.
Employees criticised the Bard announcement on the popular internal forum Memegen, calling it “rushed,” “botched,” and “un-Googley.”
“Dear Sundar, the Bard launch and the layoffs were rushed, botched, and myopic. Please return to taking a long-term outlook,” read one meme that included a serious picture of Pichai.
New Delhi, Dec 04 (ANI): File Picture of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Google Sundar Pichai as he has been appointed as the CEO of Google’s parent firm Alphabet Inc on Tuesday. (ANI Photo)
The post received many upvotes from employees, said the report.
Another meme reads: “Rushing Bard to market in a panic validated the market’s fear about us”.
Moreover, on Twitter, people began pointing out that an ad for Bard offered an incorrect description of a telescope used to take the first pictures of a planet outside our solar system, the report mentioned.
“Unfortunately a simple google search would tell us that JWST actually did not “take the very first picture of a planet outside of our own solar system” and this is literally in the ad for Bard so I wouldn’t trust it yet,” a user tweeted.
Earlier this week, Google competitor Microsoft introduced its new Bing powered by “next-generation” ChatGPT artificial intelligence (AI) and also updated its Edge browser with new AI capabilities.
ChatGPT gets passing score in US medical licensing exam
Microsoft’s AI chatbot ChatGPT can score at or around the approximately 60 per cent passing threshold for the United States Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE), with responses that make coherent, internal sense and contain frequent insights, according to a study.
ChatGPT is designed to generate human-like writing by predicting upcoming word sequences. Unlike most chatbots, ChatGPT cannot search the internet. Instead, it generates text using word relationships predicted by its internal processes.
In the study, published in the open-access journal PLOS Digital Health, Tiffany Kung, Victor Tseng, and colleagues at AnsibleHealth tested ChatGPT’s performance on the USMLE.
Taken by medical students and physicians-in-training, the USMLE assesses knowledge spanning most medical disciplines, ranging from biochemistry, to diagnostic reasoning, to bioethics.
After screening to remove image-based questions, the authors tested the software on 350 of the 376 public questions available from the June 2022 USMLE release.
After indeterminate responses were removed, ChatGPT scored between 52.4 per cent and 75 per cent across the three USMLE exams.
The passing threshold each year is approximately 60 per cent.
ChatGPT also demonstrated 94.6 per cent concordance across all its responses and produced at least one significant insight (something that was new, non-obvious, and clinically valid) for 88.9 per cent of its responses.
Notably, ChatGPT exceeded the performance of PubMedGPT, a counterpart model trained exclusively on biomedical domain literature, which scored 50.8 per cent on an older dataset of USMLE-style questions.
“Reaching the passing score for this notoriously difficult expert exam, and doing so without any human reinforcement, marks a notable milestone in clinical AI maturation,” said the authors.
“ChatGPT contributed substantially to the writing of our manuscript. We interacted with ChatGPT much like a colleague, asking it to synthesise, simplify, and offer counterpoints to drafts in progress. All of the co-authors valued ChatGPT’s input,” said Kung.
These data centres form an integral part of Microsoft’s goal of strengthening its cloud infrastructure to serve Azure’s customers in India and worldwide…reports Asian Lite News
Software giant Microsoft plans to expand their data centre investment in Hyderabad by setting up three more data centres, the Telangana government announced on Thursday.
Microsoft had last year announced its first captive data centre investment of three campuses. While the earlier investment commitment entailed three data centres in Hyderabad, each with an IT capacity of at least 100 MW, Microsoft now targets to reach 6 total data centres in Telangana with each data centre serving 100 MW of IT load on average, the government said.
These data centres form an integral part of Microsoft’s goal of strengthening its cloud infrastructure to serve Azure’s customers in India and worldwide. All 6 data centres are estimated to be deployed phase-wise in the next 10-15 years.
The upcoming projects were discussed by the officials of the state government and Microsoft at the Microsoft Cafe at Davos. State Information Technology Minister K.T. Rama Rao, and Principal Secretary, IT Jayesh Ranjan had discussions with Microsoft’s President, Asia, Ahmed Mazhar.
Telangana had earlier signed an MoU with Microsoft to enable several activities such as skilling, internship programmes, and cloud adoption. As part of Telangana’s cloud adoption, Telangana is working with Microsoft Azure and others to ensure citizen services have the best of infrastructure as part of its tech stack.
“Microsoft and Hyderabad have had a very long-term mutually beneficial relationship and I am very happy to learn that Microsoft will expand in Telangana with such huge digital infrastructure projects. I look forward to seeing Microsoft continue to grow in the state,” Rama Rao ssaid.
Mazhar noted that Hyderabad is one of their most important markets across the world and they continued to invest in the city. “The data centre projects we will deploy in Telangana are some of the fully-owned data centre projects in India by Microsoft. Apart from data centres, we will work with the government to identify special projects and support them in implementing them,” he said.
Microsoft currently has more than 220,000 employees, and this round of layoffs affects around 5 per cent of its workforce…reports Asian Lite News
Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella on Wednesday said that the company will be “making changes that will result in the reduction of our overall workforce by 10,000 jobs through the end of FY23 Q3 (third quarter)”.
Microsoft currently has more than 220,000 employees, and this round of layoffs affects around 5 per cent of its workforce.
Some employees will be notified on Wednesday, but the entire 10,000 layoffs should be completed by the end of March, Nadella said.
In a blog post, Nadella said that it is important to note that “while we are eliminating roles in some areas, we will continue to hire in key strategic areas”.
“We know this is a challenging time for each person impacted. The senior leadership team and I are committed that as we go through this process, we will do so in the most thoughtful and transparent way possible,” said the Microsoft CEO.
The company had laid off around 1,000 employees late last year.
Nadella said that organisations in every industry and geography exercise caution as some parts of the world are in a recession and other parts are anticipating one.
“We will align our cost structure with our revenue and where we see customer demand,” he said.
He said that Microsoft is “taking a $1.2 billion charge in Q2 related to severance costs, changes to our hardware portfolio, and the cost of lease consolidation as we create higher density across our workspaces”.
“We will treat our people with dignity and respect, and act transparently. These decisions are difficult, but necessary. They are especially difficult because they impact people and people’s lives – our colleagues and friends,” said the Indian-origin Microsoft CEO.
“The US-benefit-eligible employees will receive a variety of benefits, including above-market severance pay, continuing healthcare coverage for six months, continued vesting of stock awards for six months, career transition services, and 60 days’ notice prior to termination, regardless of whether such notice is legally required,” he announced.
Benefits for employees outside the US will align with the employment laws in each country.
Microsoft is set to announce its fiscal 2023 second quarter earnings on January 25.
The tech giant joins Amazon and Meta in massive tech layoffs amid the deepening funding winter amid global uncertainties.
Through ‘Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub’, space-tech startup founders in India will have free access to the tech tools, and resources they need to build and run their business…reports Asian Lite News
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Microsoft on Thursday announced a collaboration to fuel the growth of space technology startups in the country.
Through this tie-up, the space tech startups identified by ISRO will be on-boarded onto the aMicrosoft for Startups Founders Hub’ platform, that supports startups at every stage of their journey-from idea to unicorn.
“ISRO’s collaboration with Microsoft will greatly benefit space tech startups in their analysis and processing of vast amounts of satellite data for various applications, using cutting-edge methods like AI, Machine Learning and Deep Learning,” said S Somanath, Chairman, ISRO.
Through ‘Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub’, space-tech startup founders in India will have free access to the tech tools, and resources they need to build and run their business.
This includes technical support to build and scale on Azure, best-in-class developer and productivity tools including GitHub Enterprise, Visual Studio Enterprise and Microsoft 365 and access to smart analytics with Power BI and Dynamics 365.
“Through our technology tools, platforms and mentorship opportunities, we are deeply committed to empowering space tech startups in the country to drive cutting edge innovation and accelerate scientific discovery,” said Anant Maheshwari, President, Microsoft India.
Microsoft will also provide mentoring support to space tech entrepreneurs in areas ranging from space engineering to cloud technologies, product and design, fundraising and sales and marketing.
In addition, founders will have access to Microsoft Learn for tailored startup centric training content and programmes to help them build connections with the industry and potential customers, said the tech giant.
Microsoft and ISRO will also jointly organise knowledge sharing and thought leadership sessions for the startups with space industry experts.
The government has opened up the space sector for private players. The country has more than 100 active startups in the spacetech sector.
