Tech News

Microsoft teams up with Khan Academy to make the Khanmigo AI teaching assistant free Microsoft and non-profit educational organization Khan Academy have formed a partnership that will allow all K-12 educators in the US to access the pilot version of Khanmigo for Teachers at no cost. Khanmigo is an AI-powered teaching assistant that can help teachers find ways to make lessons more fun and engaging. it will also recommend assignments, display information on a student's performance so that teachers can assess their progress and provide resources educators can use to refresh their knowledge. The tool can also quickly create lesson plans and suggest student groups for team activities. Khan Academy says Khanmigo can save teachers an average of five working hours every week. The service previously cost educators $4 a month, but Khan Academy has dropped those fees since its Microsoft partnership allows it to use the Azure OpenAI Service to power Khanmigo for free. Source-Link: engadget

A New Era in Neuroscience with Generative AI Researchers developed a groundbreaking model called Brain Language Model (BrainLM) using generative artificial intelligence to map brain activity and its implications for behavior and disease. BrainLM leverages 80,000 scans from 40,000 subjects to create a foundational model that captures the dynamics of brain activity without the need for specific disease-related data. This model significantly reduces the cost and scale of data required for traditional brain studies, offering a robust framework that can predict conditions like depression, anxiety, and PTSD more effectively than other tools. The BrainLM demonstrates a potent application in clinical trials, potentially halving the costs by identifying patients most likely to benefit from new treatments. Source-Link: neurosciencenews

Microsoft’s big bet on building a new type of AI computer Microsoft’s new Windows on Arm push is a milestone moment. It’s taken nearly five years to get to the point where the software maker is confident it has the upper hand over the MacBook Air on performance, battery life, and app compatibility. But behind the scenes, Microsoft has been working on something even bigger. While Microsoft has spent years working toward an Arm transition that will now play out throughout the summer and beyond, it’s the AI overhaul at the heart of this new generation of “Copilot Plus PCs” that could fundamentally change how we use Windows on a daily basis. I recently got the chance to hear from the leaders behind Microsoft’s big AI push, and they made it clear that this isn’t just a silicon change. Microsoft has rearchitected Windows 11 to run dozens of AI models in the background, and they believe it can reshape the experience of using a PC... Source-Link: The Verge

Google's new AI can find lost specs AI systems able to interpret information in images via a phone camera, in videos and sounds and in spoken language have been shown off by Google. In one demo a prototype AI powered assistant running on a phone was able to answer the age-old question "where did I put my glasses". It comes a day after rival OpenAI's launch of its latest AI system, GPT-4o, which included an eye-catching presentation in which it read human expressions via a phone camera, and chatted - and flirted - fluently. Google appears keen to stress its tools are as capable of this kind of so-called "multimodal" understanding as its rival. As a sign of this "anything you can do I can do better" style competition, Google had teased the capability of its systems running on a phone just ahead of OpenAI's announcement. Source-Link: BBC

Senate Passes Bill Forcing TikTok’s Parent Company to Sell or Face Ban The Senate passed legislation Tuesday that would force TikTok’s China-based parent company to sell the social media platform under the threat of a ban, a contentious move by U.S. lawmakers that’s expected to face legal challenges and disrupt the lives of content creators who rely on the short-form video app for income. The TikTok legislation was included as part of a larger $95 billion package that provides foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel and was passed 79-18. It now goes to President Joe Biden, who has backed the TikTok proposal and has said he will sign the package as soon as he gets it. A decision made by House Republicans last week to attach the TikTok bill to the high-priority package helped expedite its passage in Congress and came after negotiations with the Senate, where an earlier version of the bill had stalled. That version had given TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, six months to divest its stakes in the platform. But it drew skepticism from some key lawmakers concerned it was too short of a window for a complex deal that could be worth tens of billions of dollars. Source-Link: Hollywood Reporter

Google invests 1 billion euros in Finnish data centre to drive AI growth Analysts believe data centres' power consumption is set to massively increase due to the rapid growth in AI usage, which Google, too, cited for one of the reasons behind its investment decision, alongside its Hamina data centre in Finland already operating with 97% carbon-free energy. Finland's Nordic neighbours Sweden and Norway have recently grown increasingly critical of hosting them, with some industry experts arguing the Nordic countries should use their renewable power for products such as green steel that could leave higher surplus value in the countries. "Heat coming out of our Finnish data center will be re-routed to the district heating network in nearby Hamina, covering local households, schools and public service buildings," Google said in the statement. It added that it aimed to achieve net zero emissions across all of its operations and value chain by 2030. Source-Link: economictimes

New Windows laptops will remember everything you do on your PC, will read your screen all the time because AI Microsoft revealed Copilot+ PCs, ahead of the Build 2024 event that kicks off Tuesday, which is powered by artificial intelligence (AI). Amid the advancement of AI, Microsoft has put together a great deal of features in this new range. Recall is one of the most talked about features of the Copilot+ PCs. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella revealed that the Copilot+ PCs will use the new Snapdragon X series chipset and are optimised to run AI workloads locally with better performance. This attempt can be seen as a road to pick up in the race of AI. Source-Link: India Today

Is This the Secret to Ending Your Toxic Phone Addiction? Our smartphones have become our lifelines to the world, but they can also be our greatest burden. We feel beholden to news, information, and live texts from our loved ones and we don’t know how to let go of these tethers. But for a growing number of people, the only way to free themselves from those obligations is to let their phones die—deliberately. Several people told The Daily Beast that they intentionally refrain from plugging in their iPhones to charge when it’s in the red battery zone, hoping it will drain completely, and momentarily rid themselves of their duties and connection to people and the internet. “This week alone, I’ve let it die twice,” said 31-year-old Los Angeles-based Nikki Dunlap, who started the practice earlier this year, and habitually lets her phone die about two to four times a week. “I do it because I feel like there’s a handcuff around my wrist connected to my phone. Source-Link: The Daily Beast

Microsoft will now let customers worldwide buy Office without Teams, following EU antitrust concerns Microsoft will no longer sell its Teams collaboration software as a bundled product with its Office 365 suite anywhere in the world, the company said Monday, in the face of antitrust concerns. The decision to separate Teams from Office globally extends a previous announcement last year affecting only the European Union. And it comes after rivals such as Salesforce’s Slack complained in 2020 that Microsoft’s practices were a form of anticompetitive self-dealing. Slack’s complaint led to a European Commission antitrust investigation of Microsoft that is still ongoing. Monday’s announcement appears aimed at allaying some of those concerns, allowing customers worldwide to buy Microsoft’s Office software without Teams included and the ability to buy Teams as a standalone product for business customers. Source-Link: Edition CNN