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Today β€” 23 December 2024Main stream

Business leaders share 5 ways they're taking AI from pilot to use case

23 December 2024 at 10:42
Workforce Innovation Series template with vertical, colorful stripes on the left and bottom sides. A blue-tinted photo of coworkers looking at computer monitors

Getty Images; Andrius Banelis for BI

In the business world, there are few areas that artificial intelligence hasn't touched. Many industries are rushing to adopt AI, and the technology is changing how employees collaborate and complete tasks.

Generative AI is a major buzzword for business leaders. But actually integrating AI can be a different story.

"A lot of our clients have dozens of AI pilots everywhere," Jack Azagury, the group chief executive for consulting at Accenture, said at one Workforce Innovation roundtable. "Very few have a coherent business case and a true reinvention and transformation."

How do companies move forward as the novelty of AI wears off? Business Insider's Julia Hood asked members of the Workforce Innovation board how they transitioned their AI pilots into real-world use cases. Board members shared five major ways their companies were moving AI from theory to operations.

"Before we go and tell our clients to embark on AI fully, we want to be an AI-first organization," said Anant Adya, an executive vice president, service-offering head, and head of Americas delivery at Infosys. "We want to show our clients we are using AI, whether it is in HR when it comes to driving better employee experience or when it comes to recruitment."

Members also highlighted employee training and peer-to-peer learning opportunities.

The roundtable participants were:

  • Anant Adya, an executive vice president, service-offering head, and head of Americas Delivery at Infosys.
  • Lucrecia Borgonovo, a chief talent and organizational-effectiveness officer at Mastercard.
  • Neil Murray, the CEO of Work Dynamics at JLL.
  • Justina Nixon-Saintil, a vice president and chief impact officer at IBM.
  • Marjorie Powell, a chief HR officer and senior vice president at AARP.

The following has been edited for length and clarity.


Identify early adopters, like human resources

Nixon-Saintil: Because we provide these platforms and solutions to clients, we are usually client zero. We implemented AI across our business and multiple functions, and one of the first things we did was our AskHR product, which I think answered over 94% of questions employees had.

HR employees now spend time doing higher-order work and partnerships with business units instead of answering basic questions that a virtual assistant can answer. I think that's when you start seeing a lot of the benefits of it.

Borgonovo: HR has been leading the way in terms of embedding AI to enhance the employee experience end to end, right before you hire somebody all the way to after they leave the organization. There are tons of opportunities to improve performance and productivity and provide greater personalization.


Invest in ongoing training

Adya: There are certain AI certifications and courses that everybody has to take to be knowledgeable about AI. So we are driving education in terms of what is the impact of AI, what is gen AI, what are LLMs, and how you look at use cases. And certainly educating everybody that it's not about job losses but about amplifying your potential to do more.

Powell: We have hands-on skill building. This past year we posted over 20 AI workshops helping teams integrate AI into their work. We really encourage our staff to participate. We have a product we're using behind our firewall, so they can engage and play with it. We're just telling them go ahead and try to break it, so they can give us feedback on what's working.

There was a team of people who said we want to see how you could use AI with PowerPoint or Excel. And they're finding, well, it's not so good in those things. But as it continues to grow, they'll be ready for that, and they'll know what it was able to do and what it wasn't. I think it's just making it fun, and that way it's not so scary.

Murray: Our internal large language model is now a widget on everybody's dashboard that is accessible on your landing page. Training is super important here to make people comfortable with it. Even if it's just an online module, you have to get people comfortable.

Nixon-Saintil: We've also done companywide upskilling. We had two Watsonx challenges. Watsonx is our AI data platform. This is one of the ways we've upskilled a majority of the organization. The outcome of that is there are some great ideas that employees actually ideated, and they're now implementing those ideas and solutions in different functions.

Borgonovo: Employees want to use AI, and I think they're eager to learn how to use AI to augment their jobs. For that, we built a three-tiered learning approach. One is democratizing access for everybody and building general knowledge of AI.

The second tier is much more role-specific. How do we drive new ways of working by having people in different roles embrace AI tools? Software engineering, consulting, sales β€” you name it. And then something we definitely want to build for the future is thinking proactively about how you re-skill people whose roles may be impacted by AI so they can become more comfortable doing high-level tasks or can shift to a different type of role that is emerging within the organization.

The other piece is where we're seeing the greatest demand internally, which is for knowledge management. It's gathering information from a lot of different sources in a very easy way.

Another job family that is very eager to get their hands on new AI technology is software engineering. We have taken a very measured approach in deploying coding assistants within the software-engineering community. This year we did a pilot with a subset of them using coding assistants. The idea is to just learn and, based on our learning, scale more broadly across our software-engineering community in 2025.

One of the really interesting learnings from this pilot was that the software engineers who were using the coding assistants probably the best were people who had received training. What we're learning is that before you start rolling out all of these technologies or AI-specific platforms for different job families, you have got to be really intentional about incorporating prompt training.


Unlock peer-to-peer learning

Powell: We have idea pitch competitions and a year-round idea pipeline program where people can put in ideas on how to use AI and share what they've learned. It sparks a lot of peer learning and creativity on our digital-first capabilities to help us with our digital transformation.

Then we collaborate through community. We have a generative-AI community of practice. This is somewhat like how companies have employee resource groups; we have communities of practice as well. They give employees a space to share their techniques and learn from each other and stay ahead of evolving trends. They meet monthly, they have an executive sponsor, and they have all kinds of activities and learning opportunities.

Murray: As we monitored AI use and what sort of questions were being asked, we identified super users across all departments β€” so the people who were capable of developing the most evolved prompts. I suppose those prompts are now appearing in pull-down menus to help people who maybe aren't as advanced in their use of it, because prompting is a really important part of this. And so the super users are driving everybody else to show them what's possible across the organization.


Find customer pain points to solve

Borgonovo: One of the use cases that drives not only knowledge management but also efficiencies is around customer support. Customer support is probably one of the areas that has been leading the way.

We have a customer onboarding process that can be very lengthy, very technical, involving hundreds of pages of documentation and reference materials. It was our first use case for a chat-based assistant that we processed in terms of streamlining and creating greater efficiency and a much better customer experience.


Reinforce responsible leadership

Powell: We want our leaders, people leaders particularly, to guide employees to use AI effectively and responsibly. We want to make sure they're emphasizing privacy, policy, and efficiency. So we encourage managers to point the staff toward training that we offer, and we offer quite a bit of training.

Read the original article on Business Insider

Before yesterdayMain stream

GitHub launches a free version of its Copilot

18 December 2024 at 10:00

Microsoft-owned GitHub announced on Wednesday a free version of its popular Copilot code completion/AI pair programming tool, which will also now ship by default with Microsoft’s popular VS Code editor. Until now, most developers had to pay a monthly fee, starting at $10 per month, with only verified students, teachers, and open source maintainers getting […]

Β© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

I drove family SUVs from Honda and Hyundai. The Palisade is more luxurious, but the Pilot is more practical.

15 December 2024 at 02:14
Two photos show the front and left side of a silver 2024 Hyundai Palisade Caligraphy and a red 2025 Honda Pilot Elite SUV.
The 2024 Hyundai Palisade Caligraphy (Top) and 2025 Honda Pilot Elite. The Honda may be better for families, but the Palisade felt more luxurious, in my opinion.

Benjamin Zhang/Business Insider

  • I recently drove the Honda Pilot and Hyundai Palisade midsize, three-row family SUVs.
  • The Palisade delivers a refined experience with top-notch tech content worthy of a luxury brand.
  • The Pilot's smartly designed cabin, easy-to-use tech, and superb quality are great for families.

American consumers purchase more than 2 million midsize family SUVs every year.

It's a broad segment in which brands can take vastly different approaches.

I recently had the chance to drive two popular three-row midsize SUVs, the Honda Pilot and Hyundai Palisade, that found success by appealing to the needs of different families.

The Honda Pilot is a thoroughly practical family hauler with a smooth V6 engine, easy-to-use tech, and a thoughtfully designed cabin that provides loads of space for people and cargo.

The Hyundai Palisade, on the other hand, delivers effective daily transportation with a luxurious flair rarely found in a mass-market family SUV.

Here's a closer look at how the two stack up against one another.

Which is a better deal?
Two photos show the front and left side of a silver 2024 Hyundai Palisade Caligraphy and a red 2025 Honda Pilot Elite SUV.
The 2024 Hyundai Palisade Caligraphy (Left) and a 2025 Honda Pilot Elite SUV.

Benjamin Zhang/Business Insider

The base front-wheel-drive Pilot Sport starts at $39,900, while the entry-level, front-wheel-drive Palisade SE starts at $36,650.

My well-equipped, Alabama-built Pilot Elite AWD test car started at $52,780 with an as-tested price of $54,630, while my loaded Hyundai Palisade Calligraphy AWD starts at $52,100. With fees, the Ulsan, South Korea-built SUV's as-tested price is $53,650.

Which one looks better?
Four photos show the front and rear ends of a silver 2024 Hyundai Palisade Caligraphy and a red 2025 Honda Pilot Elite SUV.
The 2024 Hyundai Palisade Caligraphy (Left) and 2025 Honda Pilot Elite.

Benjamin Zhang/Business Insider

The Pilot's blunted, truck-like front end looks great, but the Palisade's parametric jewel-style front grille takes the cake for me. It's a front facia that's both futuristic and elegant.

Which one is larger?
Two photos show the left side of a silver 2024 Hyundai Palisade Caligraphy and a red 2025 Honda Pilot Elite SUV.
The 2025 Honda Pilot Elite (Top) and 2024 Hyundai Palisade Caligraphy.

Benjamin Zhang/Business Insider

The Honda Pilot is one of the largest SUVs in its class. At 200 inches, my test car is about three and a half inches longer than the Hyundai Palisade.

It's also taller and wider than the Palisade.

The battle of the V6s
Two photos show the V6 engines under the hoods of a 2024 Hyundai Palisade Caligraphy and a red 2025 Honda Pilot Elite SUV.
The Hyundai Palisade's V6 (Left) and the Honda Pilot's V6.

Benjamin Zhang/Business Insider

While many of their contemporaries have turned to small, turbocharged four-cylinder engines for motivation, the Pilot and Palisade are both powered by smooth, naturally aspirated V6s.

The Palisade's 3.8-liter V6 produces 291 horsepower and 262 lb-ft of torque. It's paired with an 8-speed automatic transmission.

The Pilot is powered by a 3.5 liter, 285 horsepower V6 with 262 lb-ft of torque paired with a 10-speed automatic transmission.

To help save fuel, both engines are equipped with the universally loathed automatic stop-start system, while the Honda engine can also shut down three of its six cylinders when high power output isn't needed.

The EPA rates both vehicles for 19 mpg city and 21 mpg combined driving. However, the Pilot gets 25 mpg of fuel economy on the highway, one more than the Palisade.

Which has a better all-wheel-drive system?
The decal for Hyundai's HTRAC all-wheel-drive system on the rear gate of a silver Palisade SUV.
HTRAC AWD

Benjamin Zhang/Business Insider

The Pilot and Palisade are both naturally front-wheel-drive crossover SUVs with all-wheel-drive available as an optional extra.

Honda's i-VTM4 and Hyundai's HTRAC systems both operate in front-wheel drive when cruising, sending power to the back only when it detects traction loss.

What sets Honda's system apart is that it can target how much power each of the rear wheels receives, such as distributing more power to the outside rear wheel in a corner to reduce understeer and improve controllability.

Which is better to drive?
A view of a 2025 Honda Pilot Elite's front cabin from the passenger side.
The Pilot's front cabin.

Benjamin Zhang/Business Insider

Neither vehicle is particularly sporty to drive. The Pilot and Palisade lack the instant low-end torque of a turbocharged powerplant or an electric motor. The duo is also saddled with transmissions tuned for efficiency over outright performance.

Even though both models returned identical 0 to 60 mph runs of 6.9 seconds in Motor Trend's testing, the Palisade inched ahead of the Pilot in this department as it provided a more refined and pleasant driving experience.

The Palisade's drivetrain delivered power effortlessly, while it felt like the Pilot's engine and transmission combo had to strain a bit to get the vehicle going.

Which has a nicer cabin?
Two photos show the front dash of a 2024 Hyundai Palisade Caligraphy and a 2025 Honda Pilot Elite SUV.
The 2024 Hyundai Palisade Caligraphy front dash (Top) and the 2025 Honda Pilot Elite front dash.

Benjamin Zhang/Business Insider

While both the Pilot and Palisade feature spacious, smartly designed cabins with high-quality materials and excellent ergonomics, they were executed in very different ways.

The Palisade's cabin is stylish and refined. It stands out for its quiet, isolating ride, design features like the airplane seat-style wing-out headrests, and creature comforts like the massaging ergo-motion driver seat.

The Pilot shines for its practicality and thoughtful touches, which help it excel at hauling people and their stuff. One such touch is the ingenious removable middle seat module, which can quickly transform the second-row captain's chairs into bench seats to accommodate extra passengers.

Which has more passenger space?
The second and third-row seats in the back of a 2024 Hyundai Palisade Caligraphy and a 2025 Honda Pilot Elite SUV.
The second and third-row seats in a 2024 Hyundai Palisade Caligraphy (Left) and a 2025 Honda Pilot Elite.

Benjamin Zhang/Business Insider

The Pilot and Palisade have two of the roomiest passenger cabins in the segment.

The Palisade offers about an inch and a half more second-row legroom compared to the Pilot, but it trails the Pilot by an inch in third-row legroom.

Which has the best tech?
Two photos show the infotainment screen in a 2024 Hyundai Palisade Caligraphy and a 2025 Honda Pilot Elite SUV.
The infotainment screens in the 2024 Hyundai Palisade Caligraphy (Top) and a 2025 Honda Pilot Elite SUV.

Benjamin Zhang/Business Insider

The Pilot's standard seven-inch and optional nine-inch displays are verging on unacceptably small for a vehicle in this segment. Especially when compared to the Palisade's standard 12.3-inch infotainment touchscreen.

Both systems are well-sorted, easy to use, and backed up by physical switches to help make use on the go a bit easier. However, I found the Hyundai system to be a bit more intuitive to use.

Apple CarPlay and Android Auto compatibility come standard on both vehicles.

Both vehicles also come with an intercom system that allows the driver and rear cabin passengers to communicate through the SUVs' speakers.

How much cargo can they haul?
The rear cargo compartments of a silver 2024 Hyundai Palisade Caligraphy and a red 2025 Honda Pilot Elite SUV with their third-row seats folded.
The 2025 Honda Pilot Elite (Left) and 2024 Hyundai Palisade Caligraphy cargo compartments.

Benjamin Zhang/Business Insider

The Honda Pilot is ahead of the Palisade in overall cargo space, with up to 112.1 cubic feet of cargo space behind the first row versus 86.4 cubic feet for the Palisade.

My Verdict: It's a tie.
Two photos show the left front of a silver 2024 Hyundai Palisade Caligraphy and the right front of a red 2025 Honda Pilot Elite SUV.
The Hyundai wins if you're looking for luxury, but the Honda is tops when practicality is the name of the game.

Benjamin Zhang/Business Insider

The Honda Pilot and Hyundai Palisade represent excellence in the genre but through very different means.

The Palisade's level of luxury and refinement is truly noteworthy. I wouldn't feel cheated if Hyundai slapped and Genesis badge on it and jacked up the price by $10,000.

On the other hand, the Pilot's quality and thoughtful execution are the mark of a brand with a quarter century of experience building minivans that can withstand years of grueling school runs and the destructiveness of a bored, curious child.

Given their vastly different personalities, the vehicle I'd choose depends purely on my family's changing needs.

With younger children, I'd choose the Pilot's roomy, easy-to-use, and durable cabin. But as they and I grow older, count me in on the Palisade's refined, isolating ride and heated massaging seats.

Read the original article on Business Insider

Copilot Vision, Microsoft’s AI tool that can read your screen, launches in preview

5 December 2024 at 09:00

Microsoft’s AI can now read your screen β€” or rather, the websites you’re browsing. On Thursday, the company began rolling out a limited, U.S.-only preview of Copilot Vision, a tool that can understand and respond to questions about sites you’re visiting using Microsoft Edge. Gated behind Copilot Labs, an opt-in program for experimental AI capabilities, […]

Β© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

How to use Bing: Microsoft reinvented its search engine to incorporate AI

illustration of Microsoft's Bing logo
Microsoft's search engine, Bing, now has AI features built into it.

Microsoft

  • Microsoft's Bing search engine has Copilot AI features built into it.
  • Copilot, integrated into Bing, can perform tasks like writing poems and making reservations.
  • Here's how to use the AI service in Bing.

Microsoft first unveiled a revamped, AI-powered version of its search engine, Bing, last year.

The new Bing, which promised to be "more powerful than ChatGPT," runs on Microsoft's own next-generation language model called "Prometheus." The proprietary technology was developed using elements of OpenAI's most advanced GPT models as part of Microsoft's partnership with the company.

Built into the revamped search engine is Microsoft's AI chatbot, Copilot, which can perform a number of tasks the old Bing never dreamed of, like suggesting recipes, writing poems, conducting image-based search queries, and making restaurant reservations. Copilot was formerly called Bing Chat.

Microsoft's Bing was launched in 2009, more than a decade after Google's launch β€”Β and though it's come a long way since then, Bing still holds a fraction of the market share compared to Google.

And though Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella once raved that Copilot would "fundamentally transform our relationship with technology," the AI assistant has struggled to live up to the hype, both inside and outside the company.

Here's a step-by-step walkthrough of how to access and use the new Bing with Copilot.

How to use the new Bing

  1. Go to Bing.com/new in your internet browser.

    Note: You don't need to download Microsoft's web browser, Edge, but if you do, Copilot is integrated directly into the browser, with an icon in the top-right corner that lets you chat with the AI companion.

    screenshot of Bing search engine homepage
    The homepage of Microsoft's new Bing search engine.

    Bing/Microsoft

  2. There are a few ways to use AI in your search experience from the Bing homepage.
  3. One option is to click "Try now" underneath the heading "Bing generative search," located directly below the general search bar on the Bing homepage.

    screenshot of bing homepage with "try now" button pointed out
    Click "Try now" to test out the search engine's AI capabilities.

    Bing/Microsoft

    • The "Try now" button takes you to a search results page that auto-populates for the query "How can I get started with learning to play the guitar."
    • The page displays several helpful resources related to that query, including a Table of Contents with sections that guide you through the process of learning to play guitar, alongside videos and step-by-step instructions.
    screenshot of Bing search results page
    The search results page will display a helpful Table of Contents, step-by-step instructions, as well as relevant links.

    Bing/Microsoft

    • You can also type in your own query, like "How to paint a bathroom," and, depending on the query you search, the results will offer helpful sections including relevant videos, instructions, and, in this case, a section on the side for the best paint to use on bathroom cabinets.

      screenshot of Bing search results page
      Bing will show you instructions on how to paint a bathroom, a section on the best paint for bathroom cabinets, and more.

      Bing/Microsoft

  4. Another option is to click "Copilot" in the bar at the very top of the Bing homepage.

    screenshot of Bing homepage with Copilot highlighted
    Click "Copilot" at the top of the Bing homepage.

    Bing/Microsoft

    • This takes you to the Copilot homepage where you can message the chatbot.
    • In the "Message Copilot" text field at the bottom of the page, you can type something you need help with, like, for example, "Write me a poem," or "plants that survive with minimal light." The chatbot will quickly give you a detailed response β€” for example, it offered 10 options for plants that don't need much light.

      screenshot of Copilot writing a poem
      You can type a query into Copilot, like "Write me a poem about love and light."

      Copilot/Microsoft

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Google’s plan to keep AI out of search trial remedies isn’t going very well

Google got some disappointing news at a status conference Tuesday, where US District Judge Amit Mehta suggested that Google's AI products may be restricted as an appropriate remedy following the government's win in the search monopoly trial.

According to Law360, Mehta said that "the recent emergence of AI products that are intended to mimic the functionality of search engines" is rapidly shifting the search market. Because the judge is now weighing preventive measures to combat Google's anticompetitive behavior, the judge wants to hear much more about how each side views AI's role in Google's search empire during the remedies stage of litigationΒ than he did during the search trial.

"AI and the integration of AI is only going to play a much larger role, it seems to me, in the remedy phase than it did in the liability phase," Mehta said. "Is that because of the remedies being requested? Perhaps. But is it also potentially because the market that we have all been discussing has shifted?"

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Β© SOPA Images / Contributor | LightRocket

Elon Musk says human-piloted fighter jets like the F-35 are obsolete. Drone tech can't yet fill the gap.

26 November 2024 at 01:00
An F-35C Lightning II prepares for takeoff on the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS George Washington (CVN 73).
The F-35 is the US military's most advanced fifth-generation fighter, but some tech leaders like Elon Musk argue that drones are making jets like this obsolete.

US Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class August Clawson

  • Elon Musk criticized the F-35 and called crewed fighters obsolete in the drone era.
  • Musk's comments align with tech leaders advocating for drones over traditional military assets.
  • Drones can't yet replace crewed aircraft. Even if they could, a mix of both might be more effective.

Drones are changing war in ways we never thought possible, but are we to the point where uncrewed systems can replace top-dollar weapons like the F-35 stealth fighter?

Prominent tech industry figures are saying yes. Former warfighters and analysts say we aren't there yet, and replacement might not be the right call regardless.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has targeted the Pentagon's prized fifth-generation stealth jet, the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter. In a series of social media posts on X this week, he called it idiotic to continue building them and criticized the design. Pointing to Ukraine, he said human-piloted jets are "obsolete" and "inefficient" and will "just get pilots killed" as drones and counter-air threats become more prolific.

In the Ukraine war, drones are surveilling and striking enemy vehicles and troop positions. But they are not a substitute for crewed jets, which Kyiv has long sought in greater numbers even as pilots face a tough air-defense environment.

Musk's comments follow similar remarks by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who called tanks "useless" last month while urging the Army to "give them away" and "buy a drone instead." Musk went a bit further, speculating about ways adversaries could defeat the F-35's stealth.

Musk's criticism comes as he prepares to target wasteful government spending as part of Trump's Department of Government Efficiency initiative. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is the Pentagon's most expensive weapon system program, with lifetime costs expected to top $2 trillion. Musk has previously suggested the F-35, troubled by setbacks throughout its development, isn't the best fit for the military.

Four years ago, the SpaceX founder said a remotely controlled uncrewed fighter would be a better alternative to the F-35 and argued the future is autonomous drone warfare.

This week, he said that "manned fighter jets are obsolete in the age of drones."

Ukrainian drones
In the Ukraine war, drones have been a priority for combatants, but Ukraine still seeks Western fighter aircraft.

SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP via Getty Images

Drones are game-changers

Small, cheap drones are transforming land warfare by providing new options for tactical reconnaissance, targeting solutions, and threatening maneuvers. For situations where air and sea combat over vast areas might be more prevalent, like a war in the US military's priority Indo-Pacific theater, these drones are too slow with inadequate payloads and range to be sufficient.

The US also needs fast, low-observable, and maneuverable platforms that can carry advanced sensors and stand-off weaponry across great distances through potentially contested airspace.

"That's just not something that small UAVs can do," said Justin Bronk, a Royal United Services Institute airpower analyst.

Providing the full range of capabilities for this theater means larger, more sophisticated platforms with a higher price tag. Existing remotely controlled systems only meet some of the demands, some can cost as much as an F-35, and they are vulnerable to intensifying electronic warfare and surface-to-air threats.

The US military is actively developing new semi-autonomous and artificial intelligence-driven aircraft, from pilotless F-16s to collaborative combat aircraft in which a pilot directs the tasks. This space offers immense potential, with some limitations since the technology isn't yet mature.

"If I develop an aircraft that does not require a human in the cockpit, I could develop one that could pull 15 Gs, 20 Gs because you're no longer worried about the physiology of the human," said Guy Snodgrass, a retired naval aviator and former senior defense official.

Without a human pilot, "you could then strip out the cockpit, you could strip out the oxygen generation, you could strip out a lot of the life support systems," potentially freeing up space for sensors, weapons, and more, the former TOPGUN instructor said, arguing that "there are definitely advantages."

But without crewed fighter aircraft, particularly the high-end systems like the F-35, the US risks being "stuck with a huge capability gap for a significant period of time because the drone technology and the ability to not only produce it but then to incorporate it in the military and actually employ it in a tactically relevant or strategically relevant sense isn't there yet," he said.

A US Air Force F-35 fighter jet flies on its side with a jet stream behind it against a cloudy blue sky.
Some former pilots and warfighting analysts say the US military should combine drones and crewed fighter aircraft.

Andrej Tarfila/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Mixing the crewed fighters with uncrewed aircraft

In response to Musk's comments on X about their fighter this week, a spokesperson for Lockheed Martin told BI that the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is "the most advanced, survivable, and connected fighter aircraft in the world, a vital deterrent and the cornerstone of joint all-domain operations," a reference to the jet's role as a combat quarterback.

The fifth-gen stealth jet is not only a US military aircraft. It is used by nations around the world, with more planning to establish F-35 fleets. That's because the F-35 isn't just a fighter jet. It's also a bomber, electronic warfare plane, surveillance tool, battle management platform, and key communications node.

An uncrewed aircraft can't yet match that capability. "That technology is simply not there," said Mark Gunzinger, a retired US Air Force pilot and the director of Future Concepts and Capability Assessments at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

If one day drones have all those capabilities, there are still advantages to keeping human pilots flying combat missions. Combat is unpredictable and requires making decisions in uncertain situations. Autonomous systems might be less prepared to look past the data, like a false radar return, to make the smart call.

Machines are more rigid. "The flexibility that human pilots give you to use the machine and the systems that it has in relatively unforeseen circumstances or across a very wide variety of mission types and circumstances is something that's very difficult to replicate in an automatic system," Bronk said.

For the US military, wargaming scenarios have shown that the better solution is not one or the other, crewed or uncrewed.

"We need both," Gunzinger said. "And the greatest impact on warfighting, the biggest leap ahead in warfighting capabilities and capacity, is in figuring out how to combine what they both bring to the fight in the most effective way. That's the secret sauce."

Much like the US isn't solely dependent on a single energy source, US national security isn't dependent on a single capability. In this situation, uncrewed systems enhance crewed systems and vice versa. The US military is still figuring out what comes next, but theΒ F-35 is an imperfect but important bridgeΒ to that future of airpower, whether it's crewed, uncrewed, or some mix of both.

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Microsoft’s controversial Recall scraper is finally entering public preview

Over five months after publicly scrapping the first version of the Windows Recall feature for its first wave of Copilot+ PCs, Microsoft announced today that a newly rearchitected version of Recall is finally ready for public consumption.

For now, the preview will be limited to a tiny subset of PCs: Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite and Plus Copilot+ PCs enrolled in the Dev channel of the Windows Insider program (the build of Windows that includes Recall is 26120.2415). Intel and AMD Copilot+ PCs can’t access the Recall preview yet, and regular Windows 11 PCs won’t support the feature at all.

If you haven’t been following along, Recall is one of Microsoft’s many AI-driven Windows features exclusive to Copilot+ PCs, which come with a built-in neural processing unit (NPU) capable of running AI and machine learning workloads locally on your device rather than in the cloud. When enabled, Recall runs in the background constantly, taking screenshots of all your activity and saving both the screenshots and OCR’d text to a searchable database so that users can retrace their steps later.

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Β© Jason Redmond/AFP via Getty Images

Microsoft's Copilot has an oversharing problem. The company is trying to help customers fix it.

20 November 2024 at 17:15
Microsoft Copilot Microsoft Build

Microsft

  • Microsoft released tools to address security issues with its AI assistant Copilot.
  • Copilot's indexing of internal data led to oversharing of sensitive company information.
  • Some corporate customers delayed Copilot deployment due to security and oversharing concerns.

You know when a colleague overshares at work? It's awkward at best.

Microsoft's Copilot has been doing an AI version of this behavior, which has unnerved corporate customers so much that some have delayed deploying the product, as Business Insider first reported last week.

Now, the software giant is trying to fix the problem. On Tuesday, Microsoft released new tools and a guide to help customers mitigate a Copilot security issue that inadvertently let employees access sensitive information, such as CEO emails and HR documents.

These updates are designed "to identify and mitigate oversharing and ongoing governance concerns," the company explained in a new blueprint for Microsoft's 365 productivity software suite.

"Many data governance challenges in the context of AI were not caused by AI's arrival," a Microsoft spokesperson told BI on Wednesday.

AI is simply the latest call to action for enterprises to take proactive management of their internal documents and other information, the spokesman added.

These decisions are controlled by each company's unique situation. Factors such as specific industry regulations and varying risk tolerance should inform these decisions, according to the Microsoft spokesperson. For instance, different employees should have access to different types of files, workspaces, and other resources.

"Microsoft is helping customers enhance their central governance of identities and permissions, to help organizations continuously update and manage these fundamental controls," the spokesman said.

Copilot's magic β€” its ability to create a 10-slide road-mapping presentation, or to summon up a list of your company's most profitable products β€” works by browsing and indexing all of your company's internal information, like the web crawlers used by search engines.

Historically, IT departments at some companies have set up lax permissions for who can access internal documents β€” selecting "allow all," say, for the company's HR software, rather than going through the trouble of selecting specific users.

That never created much of a problem, because there wasn't a tool that an average employee could use to identify and retrieve sensitive company documents β€”Β until Copilot.

As a result, some customers have deployed Copilot, only to discover that it can enable employees to read an executive's inbox or access sensitive HR documents.

"Now, when Joe Blow logs into an account and kicks off Copilot, they can see everything," said one Microsoft employee familiar with customer complaints. "All of a sudden Joe Blow can see the CEO's emails."

Are you a Microsoft employee or someone else with insight to share?

Contact Ashley Stewart via the encrypted messaging app Signal (+1-425-344-8242) or email ([email protected]). Use a nonwork device.

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Join us today for Ars Live: Our first encounter with manipulative AI

19 November 2024 at 07:40

In the short-term, the most dangerous thing about AI language models may be their ability to emotionally manipulate humans if not carefully conditioned. The world saw its first taste of that potential danger in February 2023 with the launch of Bing Chat, now called Microsoft Copilot.

During its early testing period, the temperamental chatbot gave the world a preview of an "unhinged" version of OpenAI's GPT-4 prior to its official release. Sydney's sometimes uncensored and "emotional" nature (including use of emojis) arguably gave the world its first large-scale encounter with a truly manipulative AI system. The launch set off alarm bells in the AI alignment community and served as fuel for prominent warning letters about AI dangers.

On November 19 at 4 pm Eastern (1 pm Pacific), Ars Technica Senior AI Reporter Benj Edwards will host a livestream conversation on YouTube with independent AI researcher Simon Willison that will explore the impact and fallout of the 2023 fiasco. We're calling it "Bing Chat: Our First Encounter with Manipulative AI."

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