IT News Review by Control F5 Software: China starts assembling a supercomputer in space

China starts assembling a supercomputer in space

China has launched the first 12 satellites in a planned network of 2,800 satellites that will work together as an orbiting supercomputer, Space News reports. The satellites were developed by the ADA Space Company, together with the Zhijiang Laboratory and the Neijang High-Tech Zone.

According to ADA Space's announcement, these satellites will be able to process the data they collect on their own, without the need for ground stations.

The satellites are part of ADA Space's "Star Compute" program and are the first in what the company calls the "Three-Body Computing Constellation." Each of the 12 satellites has an eight-billion-parameter artificial intelligence model and is capable of 744 trillion operations per second. Together, they can reach a processing power of five quadrillion operations per second.

TikTok is launching a meditation feature to help you close the app and sleep

TikTok is introducing guided meditation exercises directly in the app, the social network announced. The company began testing these exercises earlier this year with a group of teens, and now the feature is available to all app users.

The idea behind the feature is to help users improve their sleep and encourage them to put their phone down on evenings when scrolling seems never-ending.

For teens under 18, the meditation feature will be turned on automatically. If a teen is using the app after 10pm, the personalized "For You" stream will be interrupted by a meditation exercise urging them to calm down and get ready for bed.

Anthropic blames Claude AI for an embarrassing mistake made in a legal document

Anthropic has responded to allegations that it used a made-up AI source in its lawsuit with record labels, saying Claude's chatbot made "an unintentional citation error."

A misquote was included in a document filed by Anthropic researcher Olivia Chen on April 30 as part of the company's defense against allegations that it used copyrighted lyrics to train the Claude chatbot. A lawyer representing Universal Music Group, ABKCO and Concord told the court that the sources in the document were "completely false" and suggested they were "imagined" by Anthropic's artificial intelligence.

YouTube launches an interactive product feed for TV ads that can be bought

YouTube unveiled a new offering for advertisers at its Upfront event, which featured Lady Gaga and well-known content creators such as Brittany Broski and MrBeast.

At the presentation, YouTube executives announced new ad formats coming to the platform, including an enhanced version for smart TVs - an interactive product feed that accompanies TV commercials.

This move is strategic for YouTube, as the company knows that many users are watching videos on their TVs, but at the same time browsing on their phones, social networks or shopping online.

Beijing official: China's humanoid robots will not replace human workers

China's humanoid robots won't take people's jobs or lead to mass unemployment, says a Chinese official in charge of a Beijing technology park, amid rapid growth in the sector and significant public funding.

Liang Liang, deputy director at the Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone - one of China's biggest tech hubs - said in an interview with international media on Friday that he does not believe the robots will replace humans, but will help boost productivity and work in dangerous environments.

OpenAI is helping the United Arab Emirates build one of the world's largest data centers

OpenAI plans to help develop a huge data center in the United Arab Emirates that could become one of the largest in the world, Bloomberg News reports.

According to sources cited by the publication, OpenAI is expected to be one of the main tenants of the 5-gigawatt center to be built in Abu Dhabi.

The Chrome app for Android now lets you zoom in on text only, without affecting the rest of the page

Google has released a handy update for the Chrome app on Android that lets you increase the text size without spoiling the overall look of the web page.

The new feature includes a slider that lets you choose how big you want the text to be. You can save the setting for a single page or for all the sites you visit.

Until now, when you zoomed a page in Chrome, it zoomed the entire interface, which made it difficult to navigate. Now, you can try the feature by tapping the three dots in the top-right corner of the app and selecting how much you want to zoom in.

xAI publishes Grok chatbot's internal instructions

Company xAI has published the internal settings ("prompts") for its Grok chatbot, after an unauthorized change led to controversial responses on the X platform (formerly Twitter) related to sensitive topics.

xAI says it will now publish these instructions on GitHub, to provide more transparency about how Grok is programmed to respond to users.

"System prompts" are internal instructions that developers give to the chatbot before responding to users, to guide its behavior. Only a few companies, including xAI and Anthropic, make them public. In the past, some people have managed to discover these instructions through prompt injection attacks.

Microsoft launches Command Palette - a quick tool for apps, searches and commands

Microsoft has quietly released a new version of its PowerToys Run app, which functions as a quick launcher, similar to Spotlight on the Mac.

The new version, called "Command Palette," lets you quickly access apps, files, system commands, do math and more. It is available to any Windows user who has PowerToys installed.

Microsoft seems to be especially targeting advanced users and developers who want to work more efficiently.

Xbox lets you pin your favorite games directly to the home screen

Microsoft will soon allow Xbox users to pin their favorite apps and games directly to the console's main interface.

This new feature will be available first to users in the Xbox Insiders program. There will also be other options: the ability to hide system apps, choose how many apps or games to show, and change the size of UI elements.

You can pin up to three recently used games or apps, which will remain at the top of the list, even if you open other apps in between.

Microsoft closes access to Bing Search API and recommends using Azure's AI

Microsoft has announced that it will completely shut down access to the Bing Search API for third-party developers, effective August 11. Any active instances will be disabled, and the product will no longer be usable or purchasable.

This decision affects apps and search engines that used Bing results to deliver content to users. Microsoft now recommends using AI in Azure, which can access data from the web through Bing.

A new study shows that artificial intelligences can make group decisions and influence each other's opinions

A new study by researchers at St George's, University of London, shows that artificial intelligences can make decisions together and can even influence each other's opinions - without human help.

In a unique experiment, the scientists analyzed the behavior of pairs of AIs in social scenarios typically used to study human decisions. In one test, the AIs had to agree on a new name for an object. Surprisingly, they managed to reach consensus on their own.

Startup Windsurf launches proprietary AI models for software developers

Windsurf, a startup company that creates AI tools for software engineers, has announced the launch of its first set of AI models called SWE-1.

The company says it has trained these models - SWE-1, SWE-1-lite and SWE-1-mini - to support the entire software development process, not just writing code.

This launch comes at an interesting time, as OpenAI reportedly recently finalized a $3 billion deal to acquire Windsurf, according to Bloomberg. However, the launch of these proprietary models shows that Windsurf is keen to go further and develop not just apps, but the AI behind them.

OpenAI launches Codex - a new AI agent for software development

OpenAI has unveiled a research preview for Codex, a powerful new AI agent designed to streamline the work of programmers. It marks a major step forward in one of the most dynamic areas of artificial intelligence.

Codex can write code, find bugs, run tests and answer questions about a company's code base. It's built on a model called codex-1, which is part of the o3 family, optimized specifically for software development. It is available for ChatGPT Pro, Team and Enterprise users.

Startup Firecrawl offers $1 million to "hire" AI agents

Startup Firecrawl, backed by Y Combinator, is once again looking to hire AI agents as "real employees." After a failed attempt earlier this year, the company is back with a new approach - and a $1 million budget to implement it.

Firecrawl has posted three job ads on the Y Combinator platform, specifying that they are open exclusively to AI agents. In less than a week, the company has already received about 50 "applications," founder Caleb Peffer told TechCrunch.

Microsoft proposes a new generation of cooperative AI agents with long-term memory

Microsoft is paving the way for a future network of AI agents that can cooperate with each other, regardless of the company that developed them, and remember past interactions

Ahead of the Build conference in Seattle on May 19, Microsoft's chief technology officer, Kevin Scott, laid out this vision in a briefing at its headquarters in Redmond, Washington.

Microsoft's goal is to encourage the tech industry to adopt a common set of standards that enable AI agents to collaborate across platforms - just as Web protocols enabled the Internet in the 1990s.

Apple integrates brain-computer interface support into its accessibility suite

Apple has taken a major step forward in accessibility, announcing a new protocol for brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), integrated into its Switch Control feature.

This feature allows iPhone, iPad and Vision Pro devices to be controlled by neural signals - that is, by thoughts, without the need for movement or voice commands.

One of the first companies to use the technology is New York-based Synchron. Their implantable device, called Stentrode, will allow users to control Apple devices with just the power of their mind.

Summary made possible with a monitoring feed provided by Control F5 Software.