Developers can now build fully functional AI-powered voice agents with the OpenAI API, the company announced this week. This major update includes new text-to-speech and speech-to-text models to support seamless integration of voice capabilities into apps. The keynote highlight is an updated text-to-speech engine with better “steerability,” or having developers instruct the AI to respond
When people hear or see something that is not there, we call it a hallucination. But did you know that computer systems based on artificial intelligence are capable of something like that? While they do not dream or see visions, AI technologies can generate false or misleading results that look real. In the tech world,
Our Solar System can seem like a tidy bunch of planets now, but four billion years ago, it was a collisional cosmic war zone of mayhem and newly forming worlds. Earth itself suffered a violent crash with a sister protoplanet—a collision that formed our Moon—and the remnants of the collision still linger deep in our
The Tesla Cybertruck has long been touted as a marvel of modern engineering, with a futuristic look and an impressive list of features. Even with its rough-around-the-edges exterior and cutting-edge amenities, however, it seems that not everything is holding together—literally. Where early grievances centered on such issues as poorly aligned panels and subpar build quality,
As we plow headlong into the age of artificial intelligence, there is a uncomfortable fact that we can’t escape: the same digital economy that powered AI now threatens the foundations of our democracy. From AI-fueled disinformation to widespread job replacement and everyday erosion of privacy, the dangers are piling up. International surveys regularly place disinformation
Identifying the initial symptoms of dementia has just got a lot easier, thanks to a new hand-held device designed by researchers at the University of Missouri. Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is usually the initial warning sign that Alzheimer’s disease or dementia might be looming. Diagnosing it as early as possible is crucial—it provides physicians with
Elon Musk’s growing involvement with DOGE (a spending reform initiative) is troubling some of his biggest backers that he’s getting too distracted from his core businesses—especially Tesla. “I hope his involvement with DOGE is temporary so that he can focus more on his companies,” investor Chris Tsai said in an interview with The Guardian over
Elon Musk accused the Biden administration of leaving two NASA astronauts floating “for political reasons” in space. He made the accusation during an appearance on one of Sean Hannity’s Fox News shows in which he appeared alongside former President Donald Trump. Astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore were stranded at the International Space Station after
The new book, Plant Power, by University of Sydney Charles Perkins Center chef Marzio Lanzini and Professor Luigi Fontana, is a no-holds-barred, evidence-based cookbook about what to eat more of to become healthier and live longer. Combining Fontana’s expertise in longevity research with Lanzini’s culinary skills, the book is part of their work in the
Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have taken an interesting photo at the heart of our Milky Way: Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole, is always flashing in bursts of light. These dazzling flares, produced by the spinning disk of gas and dust that encircles the black hole, are of every shape and
DeepSeek’s large language model, R1, has faced increasing scrutiny over its security weaknesses. While the firm maintains that R1 performs well on reasoning tasks, recent security studies have exposed a number of vulnerabilities that seriously call into question how robust models are against such an attack. Performance versus Security: A Double-Edged Sword DeepSeek-R1 is designed
With less than a month until the U.S. Supreme Court hears TikTok’s challenge to the government’s b@n on the app, President-elect Donald Trump has stepped in with a request to delay the hearing until after his inauguration later this month. Trump’s legal team is trying to buy time to negotiate a settlement of the issue
The great concern of Geoffrey Hinton, a British-Canadian computer scientist sometimes called one of the “godfathers of AI,” was immense with the breakneck development in artificial intelligence described as “a potentially very dangerous technology.” He added, “This demands much caution and thoughtful regulation so it can be used responsibly. Professor Hinton, this year’s Nobel Prize
The best AI tools available in the market have moved from the realm of science fiction to reality, seamlessly, and become an integral part of everyday life. Among the most well-recognized are ChatGPT and Gemini. The release of ChatGPT toward the end of 2022 marked a milestone in the history of AI as it brought
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal from TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, challenging a federal law that mandates the sale of TikTok or faces a ban in the United States. This decision comes amid ongoing national security concerns regarding the app’s Chinese ownership and its potential implications for American users’ data privacy.
