New research warns about the dangers of teaching LLMs on the output of other models, showing that undesirable traits can be transmitted “subliminally” from teacher to student, even when they are scrubbed from training data. The peer-reviewed study from researchers at Anthropic demonstrated that LLMs can transfer negative traits to “student” models, even when evidence…
No one can tell software developer Kamila Szewczyk that newer is better: She just fixed a 20-year-old bug in Enlightenment E16, the old-school Linux window manager she favors partly because, she tells us, it is actually finished software. For those unfamiliar, E16 is the long-lived DR16 branch of Enlightenment, a still-developing Linux window manager that…
Watch out for more Fortinet vulns! Two critical bugs in Fortinet’s sandbox could allow unauthenticated attackers to bypass authentication or execute unauthorized code on vulnerable systems. Luckily, the security vendor has issued fixes – so patch now – and so far, there are no reports of active exploitation. But considering that the vulnerabilities are now…
OPINION Back in December 2017, an obscure American soft drinks company changed its name from Long Island Iced Tea to Long Blockchain. Never mind that the company had no background in technology. Forget about the strange borrowed name – Long Island iced tea was actually a generic name for a very strong cocktail that was…
Police in the Indian city of Nashik conducted a sting operation at Tata Consultancy Services and allegedly found instances of sexual harassment and other revolting behavior. Nashik police last week published a notice [PDF in Marathi] about its investigation, which involved a special investigation team that, according to Indian media reports, sent six women undercover…
Microsoft’s GitHub last week told Copilot customers that they’d have to reduce their use of the AI service to ease the strain on company servers. This follows the company’s discovery last month of a token counting bug that appears to have broken the company’s pricing model. “As GitHub Copilot continues to rapidly grow, we continue…
Google markets its Chrome browser by citing its superior safety features, but according to privacy consultant Alexander Hanff, Chrome does not protect against browser fingerprinting – a method of tracking people online by capturing technical details about their browser. “There are at least thirty distinct fingerprinting techniques that work in Chrome right now, today, as…
People ask AI for all kinds of advice, including the kind of questions you’d ask a physician. However, the next time you’re tempted to query ChatGPT if that growth on your face is skin cancer, consider this: research shows today’s leading AI models fail at early differential diagnosis in more than 8 out of 10…
YouTube’s time management settings now have an option to put a zero-minute time limit on Shorts, effectively removing them from your app in Android and iOS. The option is an update to the Shorts timer YouTube originally announced in October; the lowest previous option was 15 minutes. The feature was expanded in January to give…
Apple’s $599 MacBook Neo ($499 for students) has sent shockwaves through the PC ecosystem, and now Microsoft is responding with deals targeting students in the US. A new “Microsoft College Offer” is launching today, which will see the software giant bundle 12 months of free Microsoft 365 Premium and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with select…