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Category Archives: Technology
Researchers surprised to find less-educated areas adopting AI writing tools faster
Since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, experts have debated how widely AI language models would impact the world. A few years later, the picture is getting clear. According to new Stanford University-led research examining over 300 million text samples across multiple sectors, AI language models now assist in writing up to a quarter of professional communications across sectors. It’s having a large impact, especially in less-educated parts of the United States.
“Our study shows the emergence of a new reality in which firms, consumers and even international organizations substantially rely on generative AI for communications,” wrote the researchers.
The researchers tracked large language model (LLM) adoption across industries from January 2022 to September 2024 using a dataset that included 687,241 consumer complaints submitted to the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), 537,413 corporate press releases, 304.3 million job postings, and 15,919 United Nations press releases.
Apple’s ‘Friday Night Baseball’ is back on March 28 with a World Series documentary in tow
Apple’s offered Major League Baseball games through the Apple TV app since 2022, and that’s continuing in 2025, with new programming at no additional cost. The company announced that “Friday Night Baseball” is coming back on March 28, and that its releasing a three-part docuseries on the 2024 World Series and a new Yankees-focused Immersive Video for the Vision Pro.
The opening weekend double-header on March 28 features a match between the Baltimore Orioles and Toronto Blue Jays at 6:30 PM ET and the New York Mets and Houston Astros at 7:30 PM ET. Apple says its season coverage will also include a rematch between the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers after their World Series face-off in 2024, a game between the Texas Rangers and Astros, and match-ups between the Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies and the Dodgers and the Mets. You can view the complete schedule for the first half of the season in Apple’s press release.
Apple TV+ subscribers will also be able to watch coverage throughout the week on MLB shows like MLB Big Inning or Countdown to First Pitch, along with game recaps and replays of classic games. What’s more interesting is the narrative documentary work Apple plans to release this season. The docuseries Fight For Glory: 2024 World Series covers the Dodgers and Yankees journey to last year’s World Series and how each team handled their post-season. Meanwhile, the small Venn diagram of Yankees devotees who also happen to be Vision Pro owners will be able to watch VIP: Yankee Stadium, a short film shot in Apple’s Immersive Video format that “gives viewers an all-access pass to one of the world’s most iconic sports venues.”
While Apple has reportedly toyed with buying the rights to NFL Prime Ticket in the past, so far the company’s sports programming only covers Major League Soccer and Major League Baseball. “Friday Night Baseball” launched for free in the Apple TV app in 2022, and was moved behind the Apple TV+ paywall in 2023. That subscription required continues in 2025, though Apple is clearly trying to sweeten the deal with some additional baseball content this season.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/apples-friday-night-baseball-is-back-on-march-28-with-a-world-series-documentary-in-tow-222335747.html?src=rss
DOGE Just Keeps Deleting Its ‘Savings’
Another $4 billion was pulled off the “wall of receipts.”
TSMC Pledges To Spend $100 Billion On US Chip Facilities
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Chipmaker TSMC said that it aims to invest “at least” $100 billion in chip manufacturing plants in the U.S. over the next four years as part of an effort to expand the company’s network of semiconductor factories. President Donald Trump announced the news during a press conference Monday. TSMC’s cash infusion will fund the construction of several new facilities in Arizona, C. C. Wei, chairman and CEO of TSMC, said during the briefing. “We are going to produce many AI chips to support AI progress,” Wei said.
TSMC previously pledged to pour $65 billion into U.S.-based fabrication plants and has received up to $6.6 billion in grants from the CHIPS Act, a major Biden administration-era law that sought to boost domestic semiconductor production. The new investment brings TSMC’s total investments in the U.S. chip industry to around $165 billion, Trump said in prepared remarks. […] TSMC, the world’s largest contract chip maker, already has several facilities in the U.S., including a factory in Arizona that began mass production late last year. But the company currently reserves its most sophisticated facilities for its home country of Taiwan.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Disney Shelves The Princess and the Frog Sequel Series Tiana
The Disney+ series would have continued Tiana’s magical adventures in New Orleans.
Trump’s Tariffs (Starting Tomorrow) Could Raise Car Prices by as Much as $12,000
And consumers will pay the added cost, not Canada or Mexico.
Mobile World Congress 2025: More Foldable Concepts, Plus Phones and Tablets You’ll Never Get to Use
Samsung and Lenovo had the most interesting folding concept devices to show off at the annual trade show in Barcelona.
Former Intel CEO Barrett Calls for Board Dismissal and Gelsinger’s Return
Former Intel CEO Craig Barrett urged the rehiring of Pat Gelsinger, who was abruptly fired two months ago, arguing he should “finish the job he has aptly handled over the past few years.”
“Pat Gelsinger did a great job resuscitating the technology development team,” Barrett wrote, criticizing the company’s current leadership under “a CFO and a product manager.” He suggested firing the Intel board rather than splitting the company.
Barrett’s comments come in response to proposals from four former board members advocating for Intel’s separation into design and manufacturing businesses. Barrett dismissed these board members as “two academics and two former government bureaucrats” lacking semiconductor industry expertise.
The former CEO praised Intel’s technological resurgence under Gelsinger, noting its capabilities now match industry leader TSMC’s 2nm technology, with additional advances in imaging technology and backside power delivery to complex chips. “Intel is backâ”from a technology point of view,” Barrett wrote, arguing the best path forward is building on current momentum rather than organizational restructuring that would disrupt the company’s 100,000-plus employees across multiple continents.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Someone Dropped Nearly $88,000 on a Pokémon Cheeto
Behold the ‘Cheetozard,’ a Charizard-shaped Cheeto that just sold for $87,840.
Watch Live: SpaceX Attempts Starship Flight 8 After Explosion Rained Debris Over the Atlantic
Monday’s test flight will attempt to deploy four Starlink simulators from the megarocket.
Call Centers Using AI To ‘Whiten’ Indian Accents
The world’s biggest call center company is using artificial intelligence to “neutralise” Indian accents for Western customers. From a report: Teleperformance said it was applying real-time AI software on phone calls in order to increase “human empathy” between two people on the phone. The French company’s customers in the UK include parts of the Government, the NHS, Vodafone and eBay.
Teleperformance has 90,000 employees in India and tens of thousands more in other countries. It is using software from Sanas, an American company that says the system helps “build a more understanding world” and reduces miscommunication. The company’s website says it makes call center workers more productive and means customer service calls are resolved more quickly. The company also says it means call center workers are less likely to be abused and customers are less likely to demand to speak to a supervisor. It is already used by companies including Walmart and UPS.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The iPhone 15 Pro will get Visual Intelligence with iOS 18.4
What started as an Apple Intelligence feature exclusive to the Camera Control-endowed iPhone 16 line is coming to older iPhones, and soon. We already knew that the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max would get Visual Intelligence at some point in the future, and thanks to 9to5Mac, we now know it’s one of several options you can assign to the Action Button in the second iOS 18.4 beta. That likely means the feature could end up in the final release of the update.
Visual Intelligence lets you draw on AI models from Google and OpenAI to find information (and websites) about anything you point your iPhone’s camera at. You can also use the feature to add information from a flyer to your calendar and oddly, identify dog breeds. Until recently, the feature had to be summoned with a long-press of Camera Control on an iPhone 16, but as of the release of the iPhone 16e, Apple made it possible to use an Action Button to pull it up, too. Considering the iPhone 15 Pro’s A17 Pro chip offers enough RAM to enable other Apple Intelligence features, it makes sense that its ACtion Button shouldn’t be left out of the fun.
iOS 18.4 is currently in beta and is expected to launch in early April. Alongside expanding the number of phones that can run Visual Intelligence, Apple is also using the update to launch a new recipe section in Apple News called Apple News+ Food. Previously, Bloomberg reported that iOS 18.4 was supposed to also mark the launch of Apple’s upgraded Siri, which is supposed to have the ability to see and take action inside of apps, but that feature is now coming later.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/the-iphone-15-pro-will-get-visual-intelligence-with-ios-184-204658321.html?src=rss
Lego’s Official Bluey Sets Are Here, for Real Life
Based on the beloved animated series, the toy release will hit retailers in June.
Congress Freaks Out Over Trump Administration’s Decision to Halt Cyber Operations Against Russia
The policy about-face seems to have left lawmakers confused and outraged.
The US Cities Whose Workers Are Most Exposed to AI
Silicon Valley, the place that did more than any other to pioneer artificial intelligence, is the most exposed to its ability to automate work. That’s according to an analysis by researchers at the Brookings Institution, a think tank, which matched the tasks that OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4 could do with the jobs that are most common in different US cities. From a report: The result is a sharp departure from previous rounds of automation. Whereas technologies like robotics came for middle-class jobs — and manufacturing cities such as Detroit — generative AI is best at the white-collar work that’s highly paid and most common in “superstar” cities like San Francisco and Washington, DC.
The Brookings analysis is of the US, but the same logic would apply anywhere: The more a city’s economy is oriented around white-collar knowledge work, the more exposed it is to AI. “Exposure” doesn’t necessarily mean automation, stressed Mark Muro, a senior fellow at Brookings and one of the study’s authors. It could also mean productivity gains. From the Brookings report: Now, the higher-end workers and regions only mildly exposed to earlier forms of automation look to be most involved (for better or worse) with generative AI and its facility for cognitive, office-type tasks. In that vein, workers in high-skill metro areas such as San Jose, Calif.; San Francisco; Durham, N.C.; New York; and Washington D.C. appear likely to experience heavy involvement with generative AI, while those in less office-oriented metro areas such as Las Vegas; Toledo, Ohio; and Fort Wayne, Ind. appear far less susceptible. For instance, while 43% of workers in San Jose could see generative AI shift half or more of their work tasks, that share is only 31% of workers in Las Vegas.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The Handmaid’s Tale Just Reminded Us There’s a Sequel Series Coming
A sixth and final season of the main Hulu series drops in April—but Margaret Atwood’s dystopian world will continue on.
TSMC to invest $100B as Trump demands more US-made chips, report says
Striking a four-year deal with President Donald Trump, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) plans to invest $100 billion in chip manufacturing plants in the US, sources told The Wall Street Journal.
According to “people familiar with the matter,” Trump will officially announce the deal later today. While still unconfirmed, TSMC’s supposed investment comes after OpenAI and Apple announced similarly vague plans to each invest $500 billion into the US in apparent efforts to get on Trump’s good side. It’s hard to tell if these plans are actually new or if companies had already planned to invest heavily without outside pressure, WSJ noted.
It’s undeniable that expanding TSMC’s US presence has long been a goal for the US. TSMC announced its first fab in 2020, initially committing $12 billion over 10 years. Since then, TSMC’s investments over time have expanded, reaching $40 billion by 2022. Last year, its investments notched up again when TSMC was awarded $6.6 billion in direct funding under the CHIPS Act to “support the company’s planned investment of more than $65 billion in three greenfield leading-edge fabs in Phoenix, Arizona,” the Commerce Department press release said. At that time, Joe Biden had promised those fabs would “manufacture the most advanced chips in the world,” putting the US “on track to produce 20 percent of the world’s leading-edge semiconductors by 2030.”
Trump’s FCC Head Warns EU Content Rules ‘Incompatible’ With Free Speech
It’s the latest warning from the Trump administration that it wants Big Tech left alone.
Rare Handwritten Copy of Famous Shakespeare Sonnet Found in Oxford Library
The recently discovered copy of Sonnet 116 “reads as a political love song” during England’s Civil Wars, according to the professor who found it.