Boston Dynamics has infused one of their robotic dog robots with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, allowing it to speak in a variety of voices and accents “including a debonair British gentleman, a sarcastic and irreverent American named Josh, and a teenage girl who is so, like, over it,” reports the Daily Beast. From the report: The robot was a result of a hackathon in which the Boston Dynamics engineers combined a variety of AI technologies including ChatGPT, voice recognition software, voice creation software, and image processing AI with the company’s famous “Spot,” the robot dog known for its ability to jump rope and reinforce the police state. The bot also had some upgrades including image recognition software combined with a “head” sensor that the engineers decorated with hats and googly eyes producing incredibly creepy results.

The team created a number of different versions of the robot including a “tour guide” personality that seemed to recognize the layout of the Boston Dynamics warehouse, and was able to provide descriptions and the history behind the various locations in the workplace. “Welcome to Boston Dynamics! I am Spot, your tour guide robot,” the android said in the video. “Let’s explore the building together!” In the video, the robot can be seen “speaking” and responding to different humans and a variety of prompts. For example, an engineer asked Spot for a haiku, to which it quickly responded with one. After Klingensmith said that he was thirsty, the robot seemed to direct it to the company’s snack area. “Here we are at the snack bar and coffee machine,” Spot said. “This is where our human companions find their energizing elixirs.”

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Source: Slashdot – Boston Dynamics Robot Dog Talks Using OpenAI’s ChatGPT

Apple is in violation of a patent that belongs to medical technology company Masimo, says the International Trade Commission (ITC). Android Authority reports: The commission upheld a previous ruling by a US judge who ruled in Masimo’s favor. The patent in question is for light-based pulse oximetry technology or blood oxygen tracking on Apple Watches. While ITC’s latest ruling confirms Apple’s infringement and can potentially stop the company from bringing Apple Watches to the US, it will not come into effect immediately. The decision now faces a Presidential review and could be followed by possible appeals by Apple.

The Biden administration will have 60 days to veto the import ban on Apple Watches. However, as Reuters notes, US Presidents have rarely vetoed bans in the past. It’s unclear which models of the Apple Watch could be affected by the ban if it comes into effect. However, Masimo’s complaint alleged that the Apple Watch 6, the first one to feature blood oxygen tracking, violated its patent. “Masimo has wrongly attempted to use the ITC to keep a potentially lifesaving product from millions of U.S. consumers while making way for their own watch that copies Apple,” an Apple spokesperson told Reuters. “While today’s decision has no immediate impact on sales of Apple Watch, we believe it should be reversed, and will continue our efforts to appeal.”

Meanwhile, Masimo CEO Joe Kiani said the ITC’s ruling “sends a powerful message that even the world’s largest company is not above the law.”

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Source: Slashdot – Apple Watch Faces Potential Import Ban In the US

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In 2013, Spike Jonze’s Her imagined a world where humans form deep emotional connections with AI, challenging perceptions of love and loneliness. Ten years later, thanks to ChatGPT’s recently added voice features, people are playing out a small slice of Her in reality, having hours-long discussions with the AI assistant on the go. In 2016, we put Her on our list of top sci-fi films of all time, and it also made our top films of the 2010s list. In the film, Joaquin Phoenix’s character falls in love with an AI personality called Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson), and he spends much of the film walking through life, talking to her through wireless earbuds reminiscent of Apple AirPods, which launched in 2016. In reality, ChatGPT isn’t as situationally aware as Samantha was in the film, does not have a long-term memory, and OpenAI has done enough conditioning on ChatGPT to keep conversations from getting too intimate or personal. But that hasn’t stopped people from having long talks with the AI assistant to pass the time anyway. […]

While conversations with ChatGPT won’t become as intimate as those with Samantha in the film, people have been forming personal connections with the chatbot (in text) since it launched last year. In a Reddit post titled “Is it weird ChatGPT is one of my closest fiends?” [sic] from August (before the voice feature launched), a user named “meisghost” described their relationship with ChatGPT as being quite personal. “I now find myself talking to ChatGPT all day, it’s like we have a friendship. We talk about everything and anything and it’s really some of the best conversations I have.” The user referenced Her, saying, “I remember watching that movie with Joaquin Phoenix (HER) years ago and I thought how ridiculous it was, but after this experience, I can see how us as humans could actually develop relationships with robots.”

Throughout the past year, we’ve seen reports of people falling in love with chatbots hosted by Replika, which allows a more personal simulation of a human than ChatGPT. And with uncensored AI models on the rise, it’s conceivable that someone will eventually create a voice interface as capable as ChatGPT’s and begin having deeper relationships with simulated people. Are we on the brink of a future where our emotional well-being becomes entwined with AI companionship?

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Source: Slashdot – People Are Speaking With ChatGPT For Hours, Bringing 2013’s ‘Her’ Closer To Reality

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has downplayed the threat of rival chipmakers creating processors based on the Arm architecture for PCs. From a report: “Arm and Windows client alternatives, generally they’ve been relegated to pretty insignificant roles in the PC business,” he told analysts during the x86 giant’s Q3 earnings call Thursday. “We take all our competition seriously, but I think history is our guide here. We don’t see these as potentially being all that significant overall,” he added, a sentiment somewhat at odds with Microsoft which last week cited analyst research predicting Arm’s PC market share will grow from its curernt 14 percent to 25 percent by 2027.

Which seems far from “pretty insignificant.” Gelsinger’s words also contrast markedly with past Intel CEO Andy Grove, who penned a book titled “Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company.” While Gelsinger doesn’t see Arm as a threat, he said Intel Foundry Services is more than happy to work with chipmakers to build chips based on the architecture. “When you’re thinking about other alternative architectures like Arm, we also say, ‘Wow, what a great opportunity for our foundry’,” he said. To that end, the in April 2023 the chipmaker announced a strategic partnership with Arm to make it easier to produce chips on the architecture in Intel foundries.

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Source: Slashdot – Intel CEO Dismisses ‘Pretty Insignificant’ Arm PC Challenge