Metaverse plus AI to be Everywhere?

It does make sense to add to the metaverse, but does the metaverse always make sense?

Mark Zuckerberg says generative AI is coming to ‘every single one of our products’

The company is working on chatbots for Messenger and WhatsApp and image editing tools for Instagram.   in Engadget     Karis sa Bell|@karissabe| June 8, 2023 4:47 PM

Meta’s generative AI plans are starting to come into focus. Though the company hasn’t adopted much in the way of generative AI features yet, Mark Zuckerberg has made it clear he wants Meta to be viewed as one of the leaders in the field.

Now, Axios reports that at a companywide all-hands meeting this week, Zuckerberg laid out some of Meta’s plans in more detail. The CEO reportedly briefed employees on some of the ways Meta plans to put generative AI “into every single one of our products.”

The planned features include AI “agents” for WhatsApp and Messenger, something that Zuckerberg has discussed in the past. And while Axios reports that WhatsApp and Messenger may be first to get the feature, an early version of an AI chatbot was spotted in the Instagram app this week by app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi. Screenshots he shared indicated the app could have as many as 30 different “personalities” to choose from.

Also in the works, according to Axios: generative AI photo editing in Instagram. The feature would apparently allow users to edit their photos via text prompts and then share the images back to their Story. Zuckerberg has also recently discussed — during the company's most recent earnings call — post creation tools for Facebook, as well as for the platform’s advertisers.

It’s still unclear just how soon some of these features may launch, but it sounds like Zuckerberg is hoping to see them sooner than later. The company is also hoping employees will come up with some ideas for new generative AI features of their own and is reportedly hosting an internal hackathon to inspire potential new ideas.  ... '

Robot Security Guards

Inevitable, increasing in smart application.

Robots are your new office security guard      in Axios

Jennifer A. Kingson

See Cobalt Robotics.

They stand five feet tall and glide at three miles per hour, patrolling office buildings for everything from broken fire alarms to suspicious activity: Security robots are starting to replace human guards in workplaces and beyond.

Why it matters: Despite some hiccups, robots armed with sensors and artificial intelligence are making inroads in diverse fields — from window washing and pizza making to bartending and caring for the elderly.

Driving the news: Lower costs mean it's now substantially cheaper for companies to use robots than traditional guards for 24/7 security.

Robots can check in visitors and issue badges, respond to alarms, report incidents, and see things security cameras can't.

Security robots don't get bored, tired, or distracted by their phones — and it's safer for them to confront intruders and other hazards.

Two-way communications systems allow employees to report problems or request human help by talking to the robot.

By the numbers: Using a robot guard vs. a human can save a company $79,000 per year, according to a recent report by Forrester Research.

What they're saying: "All this money has really poured into service robotics because of the money that has gone into autonomous vehicles," says Mike LeBlanc, president and COO of Cobalt Robotics, which is leading the charge to populate offices with non-human security guards.

Two views of a Cobalt Robotics robot in the office, showing how it roams hallways and has an interactive tablet that allows people to communicate with a call center.

At left, a Cobalt Robotics unit prowls hallways to scout for problems and allows people to report concerns. At right, an employee uses the robot's tablet to communicate with a specialist at a remote call center. Photos courtesy of Cobalt Robotics.

How it works: Cobalt's robots are built to the specifications of a particular building's ramps and elevators.   They roam hallways looking for possible problems — like unusual motion at night or a door that's been propped open — and report back to a human-staffed call center.

"They have fabric, so they're designed to look like a piece of high-end office furniture," LeBlanc tells Axios. "And they have a tablet on the front that allows people to interact with our 24/7 specialists at any given time."

"People can tap on the screen of the robot, a person will come up on the screen, and they'll be able to ask them what's going on," LeBlanc said. "They can say, 'There's a leak or spill over here,' or 'There's someone in the office who's making me uncomfortable.'"

Case study: Food delivery startup DoorDash is using Cobalt robots across its corporate sites, for everything from COVID-19 temperature checks to routine security patrols, alarm responses, and security escort services. ...  

OpenAI Codex Turns Written Language Into Computer Code

 How different than LoCode?

OpenAI's Codex Turns Written Language Into Computer Code

By Axios, August 11, 2021

OpenAI is releasing an improved version of its Codex AI model that can read written instructions in conversational language and transform it into working computer code.

The model is the latest example of progress in natural language processing, and points toward a future in which coders will be able to offload some of their work to AIs, and where ordinary people may be able to code without programmer training.

Codex is a descendant of OpenAI's text-generating model GPT-3. While GPT-3 was trained on a huge quantity of language data taken from the Internet, Codex was trained on both language and billions of lines of publicly available computer code.

As a result, users can issue commands in written English, and Codex will produce computer code capable of carrying out those instructions, essentially making it an English-to-Python (or any of more than a dozen programming languages in Codex's training data) computer code translator.

From Axios

View Full Article

China Takes on Cashierless Tech

Alternative tech idea:

Why China's take on cashierless tech might be the right one in Axios

China's retail giants might be ahead of US innovators, such as Amazon, in creating no-checkout retail locations, Erica Pandey writes. While US companies are focused on a hands-free payment experience, Chinese retailers are letting consumers use QR codes to pay quickly and easily, she writes. ... "