Today's Hallucination HQGoogle Builds 'Pied Piper.' No, Really.
Google's TurboQuant algorithm can compress an AI model's working memory — the information it holds while thinking — by up to six times. The internet immediately noticed it shares a name with the fictional compression startup from Silicon Valley, which is either a bold tribute or a catastrophic oversight by someone in naming. Important caveat: this is still a lab result, not a product. So the Pied Piper comparisons may be premature. The show's version didn't exactly go smoothly either.
Source: TechCrunch
Your Encryption Has Until 2029. Clear Your Schedule.
Google has revised its estimate for "Q Day" — the point at which quantum computers become powerful enough to crack today's standard encryption — from "sometime vaguely later" to 2029. That's uncomfortably soon. The company is now urging the entire industry to abandon RSA and elliptic curve encryption, which currently protect most of the internet, before a quantum computer strolls through them like a warm knife through butter. Four years is not much runway to rebuild the padlock on, well, everything.
Source: Ars Technica
Disney's AI Adventure Is Going Brilliantly, If You Ignore the Bits That Aren't
Josh D'Amaro became Disney's CEO less than a week ago and has already inherited two problems, which seems like a lot. OpenAI has shuttered its Sora image-generation programme — the one Disney partnered with for $1 billion — and Disney's metaverse ambitions are performing about as well as every other metaverse. It turns out betting heavily on unproven technology while also betting heavily on different unproven technology is a strategy with some inherent risk. Someone should have put that in a report.
Source: The Verge
An AI That Helps Mathematicians Do the Thing They're Already Extremely Good At
Axiom Math, a Palo Alto startup, has released Axplorer — a free AI tool built to help professional mathematicians spot patterns that might crack long-unsolved problems. It's a refined version of an earlier tool called PatternBoost, and it won't solve proofs for you; think of it less as a calculator and more as a very attentive colleague who never sleeps and has read everything. Whether mathematicians, a group not historically known for welcoming shortcuts, will embrace it remains the more interesting experiment.
Source: MIT Technology Review
Sanders and AOC Would Like the Data Centres to Stop, Please
Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have introduced legislation to freeze all new data centre construction until Congress passes comprehensive AI regulation. Data centres are significant consumers of water and electricity, which is the actual concern here — not merely slowing down tech companies, though that may be a secondary satisfaction. The bill faces the same headwinds as most legislation proposing to pause an industry currently moving at full speed. Still, someone has to stand in the road.
Source: TechCrunch
As always, reality is subject to change — usually without adequate compression.
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