Several Pixel 7 owners have complained on social media about the phone’s rear camera glass shattering spontaneously.

As spotted by Android Police, reports from across Twitter and Reddit detail Pixel 7 owners’ experiences with the camera glass suddenly cracking or shattering. The majority of people claim they didn’t bump their phone into anything and that they didn’t drop it. Some complaints point to a sudden change in temperature as the potential culprit for the shattering glass.

If significant temperature changes are the culprit here, it could explain why the issue started showing up now. Over the last few weeks, many places in North America have experienced lower temperatures, thanks in part to a wicked winter storm. We may continue to see reports of this problem as winter continues. So far, my Pixel 7’s camera glass has remained intact, but that could change if I need to spend time outside on a particularly cold day.

Unfortunately for Pixel 7 owners, Google hasn’t publicly acknowledged the problem is a manufacturing defect, although support did assure one Pixel 7 owner that the company was aware of the issue. Some of the reports include details of frustrating interactions with Google’s support. Some of those ended with support telling people the damage was their fault and they would need to pay upwards of $400 USD (roughly $542 CAD) to replace the entire back panel. Others got lucky and Google support agreed to replace their phones.

If Google decides the problem is a manufacturing defect — it seems like it is to me, but unfortunately, it’s not up to me — then affected Pixel 7 owners will be able to get their phones fixed under warranty. Hopefully, Google will make that decision sooner rather than later.

Source: Reddit, (2), Twitter, (2), (3), (4) Via: Android Police

Are you tired of boring, robotic chatbots that always seem to be one step behind in your conversations? Well, fear not, because ChatGPT is here to save the day!

At least, so says ChatGPT about itself in response to prompts I gave it. I’ve finally had a chance to play around with the new chatbot developed by OpenAI and see what it could do. Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT), for those unfamiliar, runs on OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 family of large language models launched as a prototype in November 2022. It’s currently free to use and OpenAI plans to monetize it in the future.

ChatGPT has so far proven somewhat impressive in its ability to generate detailed responses to a myriad of queries, although it’s not always factually accurate. When playing around with ChatGPT, I found myself swinging back and forth between being impressed and being disappointed.

For example, I asked it to write a MobileSyrup story about itself, which generated the following:

And when I asked it to make that response funnier, it gave me this:

Both responses are fine, but neither are particularly mind-blowing in my book. Moreover, the “funny” response wasn’t all that funny.

I also asked ChatGPT to generate a review of the iPhone 14, but it told me the iPhone 14 didn’t exist. I think it messed up the response because, as indicated by a warning on the main ChatGPT page, it has “limited knowledge of world and events after 2021,” and the iPhone 14 came out earlier this year.

Other prompts I gave to ChatGPT included asking it whether iPhone or Android was better, to which it spat out what I think is a reasonable comparison between the two. I was also pleasantly surprised when ChatGPT was able to generate several ideas for Magic: The Gathering Commander decks. However, the suggestions were somewhat basic, and when I asked for a decklist based on one of the suggestions, there wasn’t much synergy, and it provided incorrect information about some of the cards. You can view those prompts below:

I did a few other prompts with ChatGPT as well, ranging from complex questions like asking for solutions to the housing crisis to simpler stuff, like fun activities to do with an eight-month-old. When it came to suggesting ideas or information, ChatGPT generally did okay as long as you keep an eye out for inaccuracies. However, when ChatGPT did miss, it would miss hard — for example, I asked it what impact ChatGPT will have on education, and it responded with, “I don’t know what ChatGPT is.” Neat.

Ultimately, I’m interested to see what comes of ChatGPT, but I think so far it’s somewhat overhyped. I’m sure it’ll be a powerful tool eventually, but for now, it still needs some work.

How to try ChatGPT out for yourself

Want to try out ChatGPT for yourself? It’s actually pretty easy to get started. Here’s what to do:

Head to the OpenAI website and click ‘Try’ at the top of the page (or just click this link).
You’ll be prompted to sign in with your OpenAI account. If you don’t have one, you can make one for free.
Once signed in, you should see the above screen along with a spot to enter text at the bottom. You can then start entering prompts.
Conversations are stored on the side of the page so you can return to them later.

That’s all you need to do to try ChatGPT. It’s worth noting that you might not be able to access it right away — after I made an OpenAI account last week, I had to wait several days because there wasn’t enough capacity for me to use ChatGPT. However, once I got access, I haven’t had any issues using it.

The deals are still going on at Amazon this week. What is being dubbed as Boxing Week Sale brings massive discounts to its Alexa-enabled smart home speakers. Both the Echo Show 5 and Echo Show 8 can save you up to 45 percent.

Check out the deals below:

Echo Show 8 (2nd Gen, 2021 release) for $99.99 (save 41%)
Echo Show 8 (2nd Gen, 2021 release) in Charcoal for $99.99 (save 41%)
Echo Show 5 (2nd Gen, 2021 release) in Charcoal for $54.99 (save 45%)
Echo Show 5 (2nd Gen, 2021 release) in Deep Sea Blue for $54.99 (save 45%)
Echo Show 5 (2nd Gen, 2021 release) in Glacier White for $54.99 (save 45%)

MobileSyrup utilizes affiliate partnerships. These partnerships do not influence our editorial content, though we may earn a commission on purchases made via these links that helps fund the journalism provided free on our website.

Source: Amazon Canada

IT World Canada (ITWC), in association with sister U.S. tech publication TechNewsDay, has launched a Mastodon social network site for those who work with or have a keen interest in technology.

This new Mastodon instance is exclusively dedicated to those who want to share their knowledge and their passion for technology. It is a community that shares common interests on our Canadian-based server, but can also participate in a much larger, global community.

Mastodon has been the number one choice of those who want to participate in social media, but are disillusioned with what Twitter has become. As the antics at the bird-site continue, Mastodon has grown enormously, at a rate of thousands of new users every hour. It now has close to nine million registered members. It may or may not be a replacement for Twitter, but it is an alternative for those who are frustrated or worn down by the craziness and circus antics on Twitter.

It is in that spirit that we created our community on TechNews.Social.

“Those of us who follow and work with technology tend to be more logical and analytical in their thinking,” said Jim Love, chief information officer (CIO) of IT World Canada. “We don’t have time for conspiracy theories and crazy ideas. We’re looking for places we can find thoughtful, analytical and trustworthy information about technology and its impact on our professional and personal lives. We’ve seen top-flight journalists be banned from Twitter. We’ve seen the industry icons like Brian Krebbs say that they’ve had enough and move to Mastodon. So we got the idea that we could use the structure of Mastodon to create a technology-oriented community.”

TechNews.Social not only invites people of similar interests to join, it also follows the most reputable and interesting tech journalists from all over the Mastodon federation.

Why a community that welcomes and follows tech journalists?

To understand why this makes sense, you must have a basic understanding of how Mastodon works and how it is different from Twitter.

First, instead of a monolithic commercial entity, Mastodon is a federation of servers linked together by a standard protocol. People can choose their own server or community, knowing that the community is connected to a federation of other communities that they can engage with as they choose.

This federated structure is what the initial creators of Twitter proposed is what Twitter should have been.

Another difference between Twitter and Mastodon is that Mastodon has no ‘algorithm’ that manipulates what is placed in your news feed. Nor is there a popularity contest – the number of followers or the number of likes you get does not push you ahead of anyone else. There is no way for an ‘owner’ to manipulate what you see, no way to buy influence, or game an algorithm.

The Mastodon user is given real freedom to choose who they interact with, based on that structure.

Mastodon allows the member of a local instance to choose what they see and who they interact with. They can choose to just see everyone in their local instance (LOCAL), joining a community of people who share similar interests.

You can participate and share information or have discussions in that community or you can interact with just the people who you follow from anywhere in the federation by switching your viewpoint to your home view (HOME).

There is a third option, one that allows an even wider view. In this view, you can see and interact with those people anywhere in the federation who are followed by anyone on your home server (FEDERATED).

Technews.social welcomes people of similar interests and will select the best of the world’s tech journalists to follow, even those who are not on our local server.

To join, simply go to technews.social and follow the prompts. You will need to be approved, but it will not take long.

Don’t worry about being a “newbie.” So far, Mastodon is a pretty open and welcoming place. Part of that may come from the fact that most everyone is new.

If you don’t have even a basic knowledge of how to use Mastodon, check out these resources. For a very basic guide, we think that Buffer is very understandable. You can skip the part about finding a server and just go to technews.social. If you want to dive a little deeper, we found that this guide is a really understandable resource.

ITWC and TechNewsDay will offer webinars in the coming weeks to provide more information. While time is always limited, we’ll try to respond to questions posted on the site. Direct message (DM) @therealjimlove.

This is purely an experiment, but one that we hope will enrich us all as a community and offer us truly social interaction.

We look forward to engaging with you on this new social media adventure. Please join us.

The post New Mastodon site dedicated to technology news and information launches – technews.social first appeared on IT World Canada.

This month marks the one-year anniversary of the discovery of the Log4j2 vulnerability. Technically, it’s a 2021 cybersecurity event. However IT and infosec leaders spent much of 2022 hunting for and patching applications using the buggy open-source logging library module.

If they’re smart, they’ll keep doing it in 2023, says one expert.

“Many CISOs may still be thinking this is an exploit that is particular to a couple of vendors, and once they’ve patched their current software, this problem has gone away,” said Robert Falzon, head of engineering at Check Point Software Canada.

“There are [IT] systems that kick in only once or twice a year, and those systems may be vulnerable and overlooked from a checking perspective.

“It is still being exploited,” he said, and will be “for some time to come.”

“This component still exists in thousands of pieces of software across the entire spectrum of enterprises, from big to small. And despite the fact that Microsoft may have patched their current servers and software … there are organizations that are running other applications that are not being updated because they are not a piece of code that Microsoft or Linux has access to upgrade.”

It can be hard for IT administrators to trace if you don’t have the tools, he said. “Attackers are targeting these in a much more effective way now, because they’re mapping the environment of organizations that have this exposure,” Falzon added.

Briefly, Apache Log4j is a free, open-source Java-based logging framework that collects and manages information about system activity. In a July report, the U.S. government’s Cyber Safety Review Board said Java developers have embedded it into thousands of software packages and services.

The problem in Log4j version 2 was introduced by the developers in 2013, and only discovered in November 2021. At that point, it was privately reported to Apache. However, before Apache could release a fix, it was publicly disclosed, triggering a race to find and patch the hole before it was exploited by threat actors.

The race wasn’t always won by the good guys. Check Point has seen nation-state threat actors exploiting the vulnerability. Cisco Systems’ Talos threat intelligence service reported the Mirai botnet attempting to exploit it. The U.S. report said an unnamed cybersecurity company investigated multiple ransomware incidents that leveraged the Log4j vulnerability from January through to March. That U.S. report also mentions that a news story said hackers had exploited the vulnerability at the Belgian Defense Ministry.

While threat actors were — and still are — trying to find vulnerable applications, many software developers haven’t gotten the message. According to Sonatype’s Log4j Vulnerabile Downloads Dashboard, about 25 per cent of the Log4j downloads every day are vulnerable versions of the library.

One good thing about the discovery it is that has increased the pressure on software developers to improve the quality of their code through rigorous processes, including creating a software bill of goods so purchasers will know what it comes with.

It has also put a spotlight on three major problems: how easy it is for threat actors to plant malware in open-source repositories such as GitHub, NPM and PyPI under spoofed library names; the difficulties faced by individuals who try to maintain open-source code in their spare time; and the need for every IT department to have a complete inventory of all the applications employees are authorized to use for work.

“The Log4j event highlighted fundamental adoption gaps in vulnerability response practices and overall cybersecurity hygiene,” said the U.S. report. “These gaps highlighted challenges in raising awareness within organizations; coordinating trusted and authoritative sources of information; mitigating at scale; measuring the enormity of the risk; and synchronizing the understanding of threats and corresponding defensive action.”

In their recent 2022 Mass Exploitation report [registration required], researchers at GreyNoise Intelligence noted that the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s GitHub database of software affected by the Log4j weakness stopped receiving regular updates earlier this year. The last update showed either “Unknown” or still “Affected” status for about 35 per cent (1,550) of products catalogued. “Attackers know what existing products have embedded Log4j weaknesses, such as the popular VMWare Horizon, and have already used the exploit in ransomware campaigns,” the report says. “If you have not yet dealt with your internal Log4j patching, now would be a good time to get that into Q4 2022 and H1 2023 plans.”

“This is a new dynamic for many organizations,” said Falzon, “who don’t even realize they have these resources internally, and that they are both critical and exploitable.”

Over time, systems that look for vulnerable versions of Log4j2 will get better, he added, and as IT departments upgrade their security infrastructure, there will be fewer successful exploits. But the hole will continue to exist “for some time to come.”

In its report, the Cyber Safety Review Board said IT departments should:

•have a documented vulnerability response program;
•continue to proactively monitor for and upgrade vulnerable versions of Log4j;
• prioritize applying software upgrades (using mitigations sparingly) to avoid errant conditions that would create exposure over the long term (for example, configuration mistakes that expose vulnerable attack surfaces);
• use robust business processes that prevent the reintroduction of vulnerable versions of Log4j (otherwise known as regressions);
• take a risk-based approach to remediate Log4j so they can address other high-severity vulnerabilities.

Application developers and maintainers should:

• establish a comprehensive approach to code maintenance that encompasses consistent secure development processes, and accounts for software security assessments and vulnerability management operations, as well as patch creation and co-ordinated disclosure;
• implement communication processes and mechanisms that provide consistent and relevant security messaging to software package users, noting all recommended data to include in a security advisory;
• leverage Integrated Development Environment (IDE) tools and add-ons for assisting in secure software development, consistent with NIST’s Secure Software Development Framework;
• integrate source code scanning and tools that provide software maintenance status and versions to heighten their situational awareness of applications and software used within the environment.

The report — issued six months after the discovery of the hole, said Log4j has become an endemic vulnerability that will be exploited for years to come.

The post Log4j2 vulnerability on year later: ‘It is still being exploited’ first appeared on IT World Canada.

2022 was a whirlwind of gear, content and more, but if I have to pick five things that I liked over the year, it would be the following.

That said, a lot of my favourite things from 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 are still applicable, so check those out if you’re interested.

Fujifilm X-H2S

My trusty 16-55mm felt right at home on the X-H2S.

My friend David convinced me to go Fuji years ago, and while I’ve loved my cameras and the brand, it’s been hard to watch the competition from Canon and Sony outstrip Fuji with autofocus and other tech improvements.

However, that all changed with the launch of the flagship X-H2S this year. This camera is packed with innovation, and I was blown away by how much smarter it felt than my ageing X-T3 from 2018. While it may not have been the camera for me since I don’t need all the top-of-the-line perks, it restored my faith in the brand and got me excited to see what 2023 offers. Hopefully, we can even get an updated X100 camera.

Read or watch the full review here.

Teenage Engineering Computer-1

While I’ve worked mainly on a MacBook Pro 14 since I bought one last year, I still love the PC building space, and this case blew me away. Its retro design and small size made it perfect for me.

As someone who was always annoyed with how big computers were, the prospect of a tiny one was enough. I haven’t built a machine in my copy yet, but my partner Alex did, and she loves it. Typically a Mac girl, she fell in love with this case and hasn’t looked back.

You can read my full thoughts on the case or watch a video from Alex here. 

iOS 16

This year Apple finally took a big swing at iPhone customization, and it’s fantastic. The company’s latest update makes the iOS lock screen more personal, and with widgets, it can be more functional, too.

I haven’t been this happy with an iOS update in a long time, so this, combined with the new Camera continuity updates, has kept me believing that the Apple ecosystem still isn’t going to be beaten by Google or Samsung any time soon.

You can read or watch my full thoughts on the update here.

Huawei MateView

I’ve been on a quest to find a good square monitor to be my main workstation at home and the MateView is hard to beat. This monster has a 28-inch screen with a 3:2 aspect ratio giving me about an inch of extra usable space at the top and bottom of the screen.

It’s fantastic for working, and its 4K panel is bright and colourful. It’s technically been factory calibrated, but I found I needed to tweak it more to match the spectacular panel on my MacBook Pro 14.

It’s also got a non-removable stand that is somewhat of a downside but comes with some worthwhile tradeoffs. Plus, it has a small on-desk footprint, and the brushed metal looks nice. There are 90 watts of power passthrough via USB so I can charge my laptop, Apple Watch, phone and more just from the monitor stand. There’s also a built-in speaker, meaning you don’t need clunky speakers on your desk. They’re not perfect, but they’re more than enough, and I use them all the time when connected to my Windows PC. Overall it’s a pricey piece of kit, but side-by-side with things like Apple’s Studio Display, it paints a very appealing picture.

Making videos memories

The last thing I truly fell in love with during 2022 was making videos. From cruising through the Utah mountains in an EV to trying my best to document the chaos of WWDC, I had a blast creating tech videos.

Not only was it the creative outlet I never knew I needed, but it’s also taken me to some crazy places and taught me skills that I’ve always wanted to learn, from lighting and angles to edits and camera movement. I’ve become obsessed with it all, and I want to take this moment to thank anyone who watched and supported over the year. We have some big plans for video in 2023, so the channel will go dark for a while, but I have one last big blowout at CES to cover, so stay tuned for that. Again, thanks, and I hope everyone has a fantastic 2023.

Check out the YouTube channel below. Some of my favourites include the Cadillac Lyric, the DJI Mini 3 Pro and the OnePlus 10 Pro review.

Samsung always has a massive presence at CES, so it’s nice to see the company sharing the spotlight with some startups it helped fund.

Four in-house Samsung startups and eight external companies are supported in what the company calls a startup accelerator. Samsung says that it’s nurtured over 500 small companies over the past five years and these companies represent the tech giant’s commitment to finding new ideas.

The four in-house small companies are as follows:

Meta-Running, a metaverse platform to learn proper running form
Porkamix, a metaverse platform that provides an interactive concert experience
Soom, a new meditation experience with real-time feedback
Falette, a 3D digital transformation for home fabric products

The eight outside companies’ support are listed below:

NdotLight, a web-based 3D design solution
NEUBILITY, an urban delivery service through self-driving robots
40FY, a digital mental health care app service from examination to treatment,
CELLICO, a micro-bionic eye for patients with retinal disease
Plask, an AI and browser-based motion capture and animation editing tool
Wrn Technologies, writing training and content creation services using Generative AI
Catius, a multi-turn conversational AI companion for children
Erangtek, an IoT micro repeater for home users to improve call quality

Source: Samsung

The Rogers-Shaw merger saga continued along its bumpy path in 2022, following pushbacks from more than one competition watchdog, some short-lived wins, new ventures, and disillusionment after one too many failed mediation processes.

Rogers investors were hoping for some respite before Christmas, but the Competition Tribunal has yet to arrive at a decision on the deal, two weeks after the two telecom giants, Rogers and Shaw, filed their closing arguments in a court battle with the Competition Bureau. 

Here’s a summary of key events:

In March 2021, Rogers proposed a C$26 billion takeover of Shaw Communications, a move that would reduce the number of Canadian wireless operators from four to three. The deal had to be approved by the Competition Bureau, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) and the Ministry of Innovation, Science, and Economic Development (ISED).

A year later, after the CRTC approved the deal following its own five-day hearing, the Competition Bureau blocked the merger, arguing the deal would hurt competition.

Following a two-day long failed mediation process with the bureau in July, in August 2022 Rogers and Shaw announced the $2.85 billion sale of Shaw’s wireless carrier company, Freedom Mobile, to Quebecor’s subsidiary Videotron, in hopes of allaying concerns regarding Rogers’ market dominance.

That move also failed to convince antitrust regulators, leading the two telecom giants to confront the Competition Bureau in a court fight that started in November, hoping to seal the 20-month long M&A (merger and acquisition) battle.

Here are some of the arguments filed during the six-week long court hearings:

The Competition Bureau’s main arguments revolved around the risk of increased cell phone bills and poorer service, set to affect millions of people.

“The merged entity will have the ability and incentive to raise prices and lower quality immediately following the closing of the proposed merger. Terms of service allow carriers to change any term of their contract, including fees, simply by giving 30 days’ “notice”. Prices can increase rapidly. This means consumers are likely to incur a welfare loss even before they return to the market to select a new wireless plan.”

The bureau also leveraged the July 8th Rogers outage to demonstrate the telco’s already poor network reliability.

The number of distinct networks in Western Canada will also go down from three to two, resulting in less competition and less investment, the competition watchdog’s lawyer affirmed.

Moreover, the commissioner argued that the defence of the telcos regarding the intent to help Canadian companies achieve the economies of scale needed to counter foreign competition, is baseless. “Rogers is buying a domestic rival, not to compete internationally, but to consolidate its domestic position by removing an effective regional competitor.”

The bureau’s lawyer also argued that the sale of Freedom Mobile to Quebecor would put Videotron in ‘severe vulnerability’, creating an “unprecedented relationship of dependence between Big Three competitor and Videotron, a much smaller, regional player and one significantly smaller than Shaw.” Videotron, he argued, had previously accused Rogers of sabotaging its Quebec network-sharing agreement.

Shaw Mobile as a standalone wireless company was a disruptive force, the bureau argued, as it “promoted vigorous competition” by offering bundled service options at lower prices to a mounting number of new subscribers. The Big 3 (Rogers, Bell, Telus) responded with their own price discounts and larger data packages that are profitable to consumers.

In response, Rogers’ lawyers affirmed that Shaw, in fact, faced a bleak outlook without the Rogers takeover and argued that the deal was “pro-competition”, allowing the combined entity of Rogers and Shaw to compete better in Canada’s concentrated telecom market.

The role of competitor carrier Telus was particularly dissected during the hearings, as the telcos argued how both Rogers and Shaw had been steadily losing market share to Telus, which prompted price hikes. “Everybody acknowledges that Rogers will face the same competitive pressure applied by Telus because it is by far the dominant player in British Columbia, and Alberta,” the telcos’ lawyers argued.

Furthermore, testimony from Quebecor revealed that it could launch 5G wireless services outside of Quebec within three months of acquiring Freedom, and that it would get four years of free backhaul (infrastructure that connects the core of a network to the gear at its edges) network access from Rogers.

During closing arguments, the telcos emphasized that the bureau has been unable to prove that the alleged harm of lessened competition outweighs the efficiencies of the deal. Referring to competition law as “the intellectualization of common sense”, the lawyers questioned whether the “draconian” measures pushed for the sake of competition policy are “faithful to the commercial realities of the industry and to regulatory policy,” and whether blocking the deal is in the interests of consumers.

The Competition Bureau, on the other hand, stressed that Rogers-Shaw-Quebecor’s claimed efficiencies from the proposed divestiture are not cognizable.

If there no decision is reached before the end of this year, Rogers will face hundreds of millions of dollars in fees to its lenders, and risks a lawsuit from Shaw if things do not go as planned.

Chief Justice Paul Crampton said that the Competition Tribunal recognizes the financial risks that Rogers faces, but will take the time needed to produce “a solid, robust decision.”

The post Rogers-Shaw merger battle: 2022 roundup first appeared on IT World Canada.

Now that OpenAI’s ChatGPT is in the public domain, the big discussion point being pondered revolves around what impact it will have on society as a whole, and in the enterprise.

When it comes to the latter, London, Ont.-based Info-Tech Research Group describes the release as a “watershed moment in the history of generative AI, as it can deliver human-like conversations on diverse topics, including writing poetry, debugging code and even assisting with troubleshooting software and hardware issues.”

Earlier this month, the research firm organized a webinar that explored the potential uses of a chatbot it says that, unlike other chatbots or intelligent software assistants, is much more adept at engaging in dialogue with its users, and can even respond to feedback, request clarification, and iterate on its answers based on a user’s response.

The information session, which was moderated by Jeremy Roberts, research director at Info-Tech, and Jack Hakimian, the organization’s senior vice president of workshops and advisory research, examined three specific areas in which generative AI could be used in the enterprise:

Enterprise Support: ChatGPT or another conversational AI tool could serve as the back end of an information concierge that automates enterprise support. According to the firm’s research, “chatbots already exist, but ChatGPT could be a game changer.”
Customer Interaction: The automated workflow of current chatbots or website search functions can frustrate users when they return a list of semi-related results. With that in mind, research revealed that “generative AI can answer queries more cheaply, intelligently direct users to appropriate products and services, and improve the customer journey so substantially as to be a differentiator.”
Product Development: Key business applications for generative AI include generating marketing copy, summarizing long documents, and authoring communications, says Info-Tech. “Anyone who creates content can see their workflow supplemented with an intelligent solution like ChatGPT.”

Roberts suggests there are a “few steps that IT departments should take to refine their use case for generative AI. First, (they) should review their capability map for high-value processes, then conduct a basic cost-benefit analysis for the technology, and finally, explore the vendor landscape to find the solution that meets their requirements.”

There were three key recommendations that came out of the online seminar that IT managers should consider:

First, ChatGPT and other generative AI solutions are tools – nothing more – and as such, there are “things that this technology is especially good at and others that is not especially useful for. The key is to understand your business processes and highlight opportunities to reduce friction, increase the quality of the service experience and drive efficiency.”
Secondly, though it may be appealing to to implement an aggressive AI strategy, IT teams should start with augmentation. Generative AI, says Info-Tech, “is an incredible technology, but it’s still not self-sufficient. It still needs guidance and feedback from human curators.”
Third, talk to a lawyer and seek legal advice before implementing the technology. Chatbots that manage workflows are not complicated, the firm says, “but a bot that will interact with users and customers and produce content could expose you to legal risk.”

In an interview with IT World Canada, Roberts said that in terms of security precautions once ChatGPT is commercialized and can be purchased, standard practices that exist currently within an IT organization will need to be followed.

As for next steps, he said that OpenAI is in the research phase with the language tool, and while it is currently free to download and has well over one million downloads in circulation, he questioned whether “they can continue to subsidize all of our fun indefinitely.”

According to a recent report from Reuters, the San Francisco-based company founded by Elon Musk, who is no longer involved, and investor Sam Altman, and backed by US$1 billion in funding from Microsoft Corp., is expecting its business to surge.

The story goes on to say that three sources briefed on OpenAI’s recent pitch to investors said the organization expects US$200 million in revenue next year and US$1 billion by 2024.

Microsoft, for one, said Roberts, is “probably going to expect some sort of a return on their investment at some point. They are nice people, but they are not a charity. I suspect that we will see (ChatGPT functionality) gradually built into Microsoft products, but it will be fascinating what that might look like. Is it going to be another feature that they don’t charge extra for that OpenAI licenses, or is it going to be a whole new product – Clippy coming back, but actually useful this time?”

What is also likely going to happen is that, due to the compute costs of the ChatGPT launch, which Altman has described as “eye watering,” OpenAI will more than likely “slap some sort of paywall on it,” he said.

The launch of the tool represents major leap forward in the bot world, he said, one that is far more advanced than the bot “writing you poetry in the style of John Milton about the burrito that you left in the microwave too long.

“Now they are getting the Napoleon Dynamite fan fiction of Twilight. The thing about technology and societal change as a whole is it tends to happen very slowly, and then all at once. OpenAI was like that for technology in a way that not a lot of things have been recently.”

Also of interest is the impact the arrival of ChatGPT will have on Google, and whether or not it will impact the organization’s overall revenue model.

“The challenge isn’t technical for them,” says Roberts, adding that they could likely introduce a similar AI tool on Google.com “and create a sensation. I just don’t think they have figured out what the end game is.”

The post Info-Tech session for IT execs goes ‘behind the hype’ of ChatGPT first appeared on IT World Canada.

Every month, PlayStation offers a handful of games at no additional cost to its PlayStation Plus subscribers.

Now, the company has revealed the trio of titles hitting PlayStation Plus Essential in January 2023. (PlayStation will announce January’s PS Plus Extra and Premium games in the coming days.)

This month’s highlight is Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Respawn’s 2019 Souls-like action-adventure game, which is free on both PS4 and PS5. The sequel, Jedi: Survivor, will release on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC on March 17th, 2023.

January’s other two free PS Plus games are the platformer Axiom Verge 2 (PS4/PS5) and online action-RPG Fallout 76 (PS4).

All three games will be free through PS Plus starting January 3rd. Meanwhile, December’s free PS Plus Essential games will remain available until January 2nd.

Image credit: EA

Source: PlayStation