Tech News

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Microsoft said it is pouring $3.3 billion into building a data hub in Wisconsin that aims to train employees and manufacturers on how to best use artificial intelligence. President Joe Biden will appear at the site in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, on Wednesday to highlight the administration’s efforts to invest in job growth in America. The news comes six years after the Trump administration announced a $10 billion investment by tech manufacturer Foxconn with the promise to bring 13,000 jobs to the area on the same Wisconsin land, a plan that never materialized. The new center aims to create 2,300 union construction jobs and 2,000 permanent jobs over time, according to Microsoft. The company told CNN it will use the AI center to train about 100,000 workers. It also plans to open a lab on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee to help companies and manufacturers infuse the technology into their businesses. Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella earned a master’s degree in computer science at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, according to his company profile. The president’s visit to the key battleground state will also present an opportunity for the White House to try to highlight some of the Biden administration’s key first term achievements and specifically, funding from legislation like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the so called “Chips Act,” which invests in semiconductor chip manufacturing in the United States, that will boost the Badger State. In a fact sheet released by the White House ahead of the president’s visit, the administration says that 177,000 jobs have been added in Wisconsin – 4,000 specifically in Racine – since the president took office in 2021. Last year, Biden signed an executive order on AI aimed to get entrepreneurs access to technical assistance and resources, help small businesses commercialize AI breakthroughs, and expand grants for AI research in areas such as healthcare and climate change. #AiNews #Microsoft #US

Microsoft said it is pouring $3.3 billion into building a data hub in Wisconsin that aims to train employees and manufacturers on how to best use artificial intelligence. President Joe Biden will appear at the site in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, on Wednesday to highlight the administration’s efforts to invest in job growth in America. The news comes six years after the Trump administration announced a $10 billion investment by tech manufacturer Foxconn with the promise to bring 13,000 jobs to the area on the same Wisconsin land, a plan that never materialized. The new center aims to create 2,300 union construction jobs and 2,000 permanent jobs over time, according to Microsoft. The company told CNN it will use the AI center to train about 100,000 workers. It also plans to open a lab on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee to help companies and manufacturers infuse the technology into their businesses. Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella earned a master’s degree in computer science at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, according to his company profile. The president’s visit to the key battleground state will also present an opportunity for the White House to try to highlight some of the Biden administration’s key first term achievements and specifically, funding from legislation like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the so called “Chips Act,” which invests in semiconductor chip manufacturing in the United States, that will boost the Badger State. In a fact sheet released by the White House ahead of the president’s visit, the administration says that 177,000 jobs have been added in Wisconsin – 4,000 specifically in Racine – since the president took office in 2021. Last year, Biden signed an executive order on AI aimed to get entrepreneurs access to technical assistance and resources, help small businesses commercialize AI breakthroughs, and expand grants for AI research in areas such as healthcare and climate change. #AiNews #Microsoft #US

Apple unveils new iPad Pro with ‘outrageously powerful’ AI-powered chip Apple is hoping its latest iPad lineup will breathe new life into its sluggish tablet market. In a pre-recorded live streamed event from its Cupertino, California headquarters, the company introduced the latest versions of its iPad Pro and iPad Air tablets, and an all-new Apple Pencil Pro. CEO Tim Cook said Tuesday’s announcement marked “the biggest day for iPad since its introduction.” At the heart of the new iPad Pro is Apple’s new custom M4 processor, which delivers 4 times the performance as its existing iPad Pro models. Considering Apple’s latest MacBook lineup currently runs on the M3 chip, this is, as Cook put it, an “outrageously powerful chip for AI.” The company is expected to show off its first batch of AI-tools for the iPhone and iPad at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference in June. The latest iPad Pro comes in two sizes: 11 inches and 13 inches. Apple said the 11-inch model is its thinnest yet, at 5.1 mm, and less than a pound. The display combines two OLED panels to maximize brightness. The iPad Pro comes in two finishes, silver and space black. #TechNews #Apple #Ipad

TikTok sued Tuesday to block a US law that could force a nationwide ban of the popular app, following through on legal threats the company issued after President Joe Biden signed the legislation last month. The court challenge sets up a historic legal battle, one that will determine whether US security concerns about TikTok’s links to China can trump the First Amendment rights of TikTok’s 170 million US users. The stakes of the case are existential for TikTok. If it loses, TikTok could be banned from US app stores unless its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, sells the app to a non-Chinese entity by mid-January 2025. In its petition filed Tuesday at the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, TikTok and Bytedance allege the law is unconstitutional because it stifles Americans’ speech and prevents them from accessing lawful information. The petition claims the US government “has taken the unprecedented step of expressly singling out and banning” the short-form video app in an unconstitutional exercise of congressional power. “For the first time in history,” the petition said, “Congress has enacted a law that subjects a single, named speech platform to a permanent, nationwide ban, and bars every American from participating in a unique online community with more than 1 billion people worldwide.” The White House referred questions about TikTok’s legal challenge to the Justice Department, which didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The lawsuit follows years of US allegations that TikTok’s ties to China could potentially expose Americans’ personal information to the Chinese government. #TechNews #TikTok #US #Ban

Nintendo says it plans to announce the followup to its popular Switch console by March 2025. “We will make an announcement about the successor to Nintendo Switch within this fiscal year,” Shuntaro Furukawa, the company’s president, wrote on X on Tuesday. “It will have been over nine years since we announced the existence of Nintendo Switch back in March 2015.” The announcement will be welcome news to fans who have been salivating for years over the prospect of a potential Switch successor, which Nintendo bosses have remained tight lipped about. Sales have been flagging recently. The company expects to sell 13.5 million Switch units in the current financial year, according to Reuters, compared to sales of 15.7 million units last year. Nintendo has a long and storied track record of reinventing the wheel for both consoles and games, and the Switch has been one of its most successful products to date. When it first launched in 2017, it took the world by storm primarily for its portability. At a time when major rivals like Playstation and Xbox were developing stationary consoles with increasingly impressive graphics and processing power, Nintendo opted for another route. The handheld Switch could be used both as a console for a television at home, and also be thrown into a bag and played on the move. While its graphic performance was much lower than its Sony and Microsoft rivals, consumers didn’t mind thanks to the plethora of entertaining and often family friendly games in Nintendo’s stable. Over the last seven years, little has changed in terms of the Switch’s development with three distinct models currently available for prospective owners. There’s the Nintendo Switch OLED and its rich, immersive screen; the standard Nintendo Switch with its tried-and-true hybrid design; and the cheaper and smaller Nintendo Switch Lite for those who mainly play on the go. #TechNews #Nintendo #Videogames #Consoles

Millions of Americans could soon lose home internet access if lawmakers don’t act The Affordable Connectivity Program has helped more than 23 million low-income US households pay for internet service. They could face higher bills or get kicked off their plans when it expires in April.  Every week, Cynthia George connects with her granddaughter and great-grandson on video calls. The 71-year-old retiree reads the news on her MSN homepage and googles how to fight the bugs coming from her drain in Florida’s summer heat. She hunts for grocery deals on her Publix app so that her food stamps stretch just a little further. But the great-grandmother worries her critical lifeline to the outside world could soon be severed. In fact, she fears she might soon have to make a difficult choice: Buy enough food to feed herself — or pay her home internet bill. Courtesy Cynthia George George is one of millions of Americans facing a little-known but fast-approaching financial cliff, a catastrophe that policy experts say is preventable but only if Congress acts, and quickly. By as soon as May, more than 23 million US households risk being kicked off their internet plans or facing skyrocketing bills that force them to pay hundreds more per year to get online, according to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The looming disaster could affect nearly 1 in 5 households nationwide, or nearly 60 million Americans, going by Census Bureau population estimates. Such broad disruptions to internet access would affect people’s ability to do schoolwork, to seek and do jobs, to visit their doctors virtually or refill prescriptions online, or to connect to public services, widening the digital divide between have and have-nots and potentially leading to economic instability on a massive scale. #TechNews #Internet #Costs

  The US government on Thursday banned internet service providers (ISPs) from meddling in the speeds their customers receive when browsing the web and downloading files, restoring tough rules rescinded during the Trump administration and setting the stage for a major legal battle with the broadband industry. The net neutrality regulations adopted Thursday by the Federal Communications Commission prohibit providers such as AT&T, Comcast and Verizon from selectively speeding up, slowing down or blocking users’ internet traffic. They largely reflect rules passed by a prior FCC in 2015 and unwound in 2017. The latest rules show how, with a 3-2 Democratic majority, the FCC is moving to reassert its authority over an industry that powers the modern digital economy, touching everything from education to health care and enabling advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence. With Thursday’s party-line vote, the FCC redefined internet service as similar to legacy telephone lines, a sweeping move that comes with greater regulatory power over the broadband industry. And the FCC said it would step in to override state or local policies that conflict with the federal net neutrality rule. Leading FCC officials have said restoring net neutrality rules, and reclassifying ISPs under Title II of the agency’s congressional charter, would provide the FCC with clearer authority to adopt future rules governing everything from public safety to national security. Some of the issues the FCC will be further empowered to address after the change include spam robotexts, internet outages, digital privacy and expanding high-speed internet access, FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said when she first announced the proposal in September. #TechNews #US #Ban #NetNeutrality

Google paid Apple $20 billion in 2022 to be Safari’s default search engine 😳 Source: Bloomberg

When Ana Schultz, a 25-year-old from Rock Falls, Illinois, misses her husband Kyle, who passed away in February 2023, she asks him for cooking advice. She loads up Snapchat My AI, the social media platform’s artificial intelligence chatbot, and messages Kyle the ingredients she has left in the fridge; he suggests what to make. Or rather, his likeness in the form of an AI avatar does. “He was the chef in the family, so I customized My AI to look like him and gave it Kyle’s name,” said Schultz, who lives with their two young children. “Now when I need help with meal ideas, I just ask him. It’s a silly little thing I use to help me feel like he’s still with me in the kitchen.” The Snapchat My AI feature — which is powered by the popular AI chatbot tool ChatGPT — typically offers recommendations, answers questions and “talks” with users. But some users like Schutz are using this and other tools to recreate the likeness of, and communicate with, the dead. The concept isn’t entirely new. People have wanted to reconnect with deceased loved ones for centuries, whether they’ve visited mediums and spiritualists or leaned on services that preserve their memory. But what’s new now is that AI can make those loved ones say or do things they never said or did in life, raising both ethical concerns and questions around whether this helps or hinders the grieving process. “It’s a novelty that piggybacks on the AI hype, and people feel like there’s money to be made,” said Mark Sample, a professor of digital studies at Davidson College who routinely teaches a course called “Death in the Digital Age.” “Although companies offer related products, ChatGPT is making it easier for hobbyists to play around with the concept too, for better or worse.” #AiNews #Dead #Sad