What could Google monopoly ruling mean for you?

Google is much more than just search.
Just look at Android, a firm it bought for $50m (£39.3m) in 2005, which now runs on the majority of smartphones - or YouTube, a $1.65bn acquisition in 2006, which now generates many multiples of that in revenue each year.
The argument might be that all of these can remain under Google, but the actual search engine should be spun off into a separate business.
That might cause consternation for Alphabet executives. But as long as Google remained the default search engine on devices, the average consumer would be unlikely to notice the difference.
"Any such move would certainly be met with years of litigation and regulatory bun-fighting, but it seems to be far more 'on the table' than at any time in Google’s history," said Gareth Mills, Partner at legal firm Charles Russell Speechlys.

Source-Link: BBC

Google paid Apple for default search engine status. A staggering $22 billion

In November, lawsuit documents indicated that Google was paying 36 percent of the total revenue that it earns from searches conducted on Safari, and now it turns out that equates to $20 billion.

Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc, paid Apple $20 billion in 2022 for Google to be the default search engine in the Safari browser on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

The information was revealed in court documents Google provided in its antitrust dispute with the United States Department of Justice, reported Bloomberg.

Source-Link: businesstoday

Nvidia delays next gen AI chip as investors issue ‘bubble’ warning

Nvidia highly anticipated “Blackwell” B-200 artificial intelligence chip will reportedly be delayed, sending the near-term future of the entire AI industry into a state of uncertainty.

Tech news outlet The Information claims that a Microsoft employee and at least two other people familiar with the situation have stated that the new chip’s launch date has been pushed back by at least three months due to a design flaw.

While Nvidia hadn’t given a public launch date, CEO Jensen Huang recently announced that the company would begin sending engineering samples “this week” on July 31 at the SIGGRAPH event in Denver, Colorado.

Source-Link : MSN

The Next Wave of AI is Memory and Personalisation

Echoing the same, recently on the ‘Unconfuse Me’ podcast, Sam Altman and Bill Gates held a discussion on the next evolution of AI tools. Altman mentioned that “customisation and personalisation is very important for GPT-4, allowing users to tailor its style and assumptions to their needs”. Additionally, Sam mentioned that the system aims to incorporate personal data, including email, calendar, and appointment preferences, as well as connect to external data sources.

With personalisation came the worry of systems knowing too much about oneself. For instance, a user raised the concern of AI “owning memories,” with responses suggesting AI could become an extension of oneself, similar to smartphones. Thus, raising the question of trust and security.

Source-Link: analyticsindiamag

Our Entire Approach to AI Is Flawed

AI’s ROI is potentially far worse, and ironically, much of our problem this century is not the lack of productivity or performance but poor decision support.

Last week, I attended a Computex prep event. As I watched the presentations, I noticed a familiar undercurrent of productivity. I remain concerned that if we improve speeds significantly but do not also improve the quality of the related decisions, we’ll be making mistakes at machine speeds, which may not be survivable.

Let’s talk about that this week, and we’ll close with my Product of the Week, which is the airline I just took to Taiwan. It was so much better than United, which I usually use for international trips, that I figured I’d point out why so many non-U.S. airlines are significantly better than U.S. carriers.

Source-Link: technewsworld

Telegram update brings enhanced location sharing, birthday reminders and more features

The highlight of this update is undoubtedly the newfound capability to view one's own profile as others on the platform would see it. Previously teased in Telegram 10.11, this feature now allows users to see and edit their profiles directly within the app, adding a layer of personalization and control, reported 9to5google.
Additionally, Telegram users can now receive birthday reminders for their contacts, complete with celebratory animations and year-specific content. This delightful feature adds a touch of festivity to the platform and can be easily customized or disabled according to user preferences.
Furthermore, the update introduces the option to pin up to three stories and add birthdays to receive greetings with a festive profile display. Channel owners can also enhance accessibility by adding a preview of their channel to their profile for convenient access.

Source-Link: hindustantimes

Google’s greenhouse gas emissions are soaring thanks to AI

As Google has rushed to incorporate artificial intelligence into its core products — with sometimes less-than-stellar results — a problem has been brewing behind the scenes: the systems needed to power its AI tools have vastly increased the company’s greenhouse gas emissions.

AI systems need lots of computers to make them work. The data centers needed to run them, essentially warehouses full of powerful computing equipment, suck up tons of energy to process data and manage the heat all of those computers produce.

The end result has been that Google’s greenhouse gas emissions have soared 48% since 2019, according to the tech giant’s annual environment report. The tech giant blamed that growth mainly on “increased data center energy consumption and supply chain emissions.”

Source-Link: Edition CNN

Study reveals why AI models that analyze medical images can be biased

That research team has now found that the models that are most accurate at making demographic predictions also show the biggest “fairness gaps” — that is, discrepancies in their ability to accurately diagnose images of people of different races or genders. The findings suggest that these models may be using “demographic shortcuts” when making their diagnostic evaluations, which lead to incorrect results for women, Black people, and other groups, the researchers say.

“It’s well-established that high-capacity machine-learning models are good predictors of human demographics such as self-reported race or sex or age. This paper re-demonstrates that capacity, and then links that capacity to the lack of performance across different groups, which has never been done,” says Marzyeh Ghassemi, an MIT associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science.

Source-Link: MIT

Will AI Tools for Data Analysis Replace Data Analysts?AI and Data Analysis are two closely related scientific areas, that have been developing rapidly for the last several years. As technology continues to evolve, the question arises: Will AI tools for data analysis replace data analysts?

This article aims to describe how AI is related to Data Analysis, what it can do, and will AI tools for data analysis replace data analysts. Starting with the introduction to AI and its fundamental aspects, to how it is going to affect the world in the distant future, the article addresses that and also focuses on how AI is associated with Data analysis.

The moderate generation of AI comprises Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Generative AI. While generative AI is the capability to produce materials and contents like images, sound, and music, Machine Learning is a specific type of GI that prepares an algorithm to feed information to make a prediction.

Source-Link: analyticsinsight

What Meta should change about Threads, one year inIt’s been a year since Meta pushed out Threads in an attempt to take on the platform now known as X. At the time, Mark Zuckerberg said that he hoped it would turn into “a public conversations app with 1 billion+ people on it.”

Meta’s timing was good. Threads launched at a particularly chaotic moment for Twitter, when many people were seeking out alternatives. Threads saw 30 million sign-ups in its first day and the app has since grown to 175 million monthly users, according to Zuckerberg. (X has 600 million monthly users, according to Elon Musk.)

But the earliest iteration of Threads still felt a little bit broken. There was no web version, and a lot of missing features. The company promised interoperability with ActivityPub, the open-source standard that powers Mastodon and other apps in the fediverse, but integration remains minimal.

Source-Link: engadget