If you find TechLink to be an enrichment in your life, I invite you to write a kind little comment
below. When I'm all snuggled up in bed tonight, I'll read some of them to my cat. Then he'll have to
respect me. In the wake of an Oxford study that suggested barely anyone uses AI tools on a daily
basis, three major AI companies have rolled out feature updates for their chatbots in an attempt
to make them useful for someone other than coders and tech bros left over from the crypto bubble.
OpenAI's ostensibly less evil cousin, Anthropic, announced tool use for Claude,
allowing it to perform tasks and manipulate data. AI search engine Perplexity announced pages,
which will create research reports on any topic that can be customized, shared, or presumably
handed into your teacher. And OpenAI just gave free chat GPT users the ability to upload images
and files and use custom GPTs. Those features were previously paywalled, which, as this fan points
out, obviously points towards something special coming for paying users. OpenAI also just announced
chat GPT EDU, which basically gives schools an education discount to convince them to use it,
and it comes on the heels of a report claiming the company finally signed that rumored Apple deal
to put their AI tech in the next iPhone. That same report claims Sam Altman has discussed
transforming OpenAI from a wacky capped profit controlled by a non-profit into either a B
corporation, allowed to care about something other than benefiting shareholders, or a regular old
for-profit company. But it's only because that might be necessary to achieve a utopia designed by
Sam's machine god and populated by sentient robots after they've killed us all off, okay?
Trust him, it's worth it. TikTok is working on a modified version of its recommendation algorithm
that would not share any backend with its Chinese counterpart, Duyen, and thus potentially save
the app from being banned in the US. That's all according to insider sources who spoke to Reuters,
but not according to TikTok, who immediately tweeted that the report is misleading and inaccurate.
But seemed to be referring specifically to the claim that a US-centric algorithm
would enable ByteDance to sell TikTok. They didn't explicitly deny they're working on such an
algorithm. In fact, Crystal Hu, the report's co-author, says that when she reached out for
comment on the story, TikTok told her the info was correct. To be fair, they probably didn't
read the whole thing before getting bored and swiping up. But even if TikTok survives in the
US, it may have to deal with upcoming bills like this one from New York's governor that could
ban smartphones in schools. And then how will kids ignore their history class to watch another
kid tell them that Helen Keller wasn't real? On TikTok? Yeah, Google has confirmed that this
week's massive document leak revealing key details about how its search algorithm works
is real after taking two days to cover their ears and pretend everything's fine as required by law.
The tech giant didn't get into specifics. They only cautioned against making inaccurate assumptions
about search based on out-of-context, outdated, or incomplete information, suggesting that the
public trust Googles demonstrably inaccurate public statements instead. Google also took a
moment to put up a blog post explaining why Google's search's new AI overviews told people it was
okay to put glue in pizza sauce and eat rocks last week. Step one, it's good for you. It gave
those answers simply because prior to those screenshots going viral, practically no one
asked Google how many rocks they should eat. How would Google's search know that it wasn't okay
to eat one little rock if it had never thought about it before? Google says AI overviews cited
a satirical article recommending eating rocks because of a data void issue. There's just hardly
any info on the web about whether eating rocks is okay, formatted as an answer to the question of
how many rocks one should eat. We can all chuckle at this understandable error. It's quick bits time.
Why haven't you written a comment yet? Spotify has announced that they will be giving refunds to
customers who bought car thing. After the company announced they would be remotely bricking all
car things, they initially offered purchasers nothing. Some who complained were offered a
few months of Spotify premium, but wouldn't you know it? The company suddenly started offering
refunds not long after a class action lawsuit was filed accusing Spotify of misleading customers by
selling a product that would quickly be rendered unusable. But are they doing anything about all
the e-waste they're creating? Has the ocean or any of the fish hired a lawyer? I didn't think so.
Say you're a fish. Prove it. Google Cloud has released a public explanation for how it wound
up accidentally deleting a customer account two weeks ago. Namely, somebody on Google's end
accidentally left a parameter blank. Now that might not sound like an issue worthy of an entire
blog post from a multi-billion dollar company, but the customer in question was Unisuper,
an Australian pension fund charged with managing 135 billion Australian dollar-y-dos.
On the bright side, the accounts have been successfully restored. On the less bright side,
apparently your life savings can be wiped out in an instant if a dude named Robert Droptable
decides to sign up for a 401k. The internet archive, the organization that runs the Wayback
Machine, was hit with a several-day-long DDoS attack involving tens of thousands of fake
information requests per second, according to the Archives Director of Library Services.
While the exact motivation for the attack is unknown, a group called SN Blackmetta has taken
credit for the assault by posting what appears to be the profile picture of an edgy 14-year-old
from the early 2000s. Who could possibly understand what's going on in his dark mind?
AI company The Simulation has announced ShowRunner, an app that wants to be the Netflix of AI,
with AI-generated original series. The TV shows are pretty creative. There's one about super
intelligent AI devices, a family drama about two siblings that create an AI version of their dead
mom. There's even a horror anime about a future where humans choose to physically augment themselves
with AI technology. Even worse, they want watchers of these shows to generate their own episodes.
Yes, because the thing that will surely make AI-generated TV shows better is fan fiction.
And a creator on Chinese video site Billy Billy has gone viral on social media,
thanks to an incredibly intricate custom tank simulator for World of Tanks,
using soda bottles for shells, MetaQuest 2 as a periscope, a Logitech driving wheel,
and some kind of crank situation to control the main gun. It looks awesome. And frankly,
if we could take all the resources currently being used to generate AI slop for the internet
and build more stuff like this, I wouldn't have to fish for nice comments to read to my cat to be
happy. I was joking. I don't have a cat. What I actually require to be happy is that you come back
on Monday for more tech news, okay? Or I will cry. No pressure.