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Last week Google introduced a radical shake-up of search that presents users with AI-generated answers to their queries. Now the company says it will soon start including ads inside those AI Overviews, as the automatic answers are called.

Google on Tuesday announced plans to test search and shopping ads in the AI summaries, a move that could extend its dominance in search advertising into a new era. Although Google rapidly rolled out AI Overviews to all US English users last week after announcing the feature at its I/O developer conference, its unclear how widely or quickly ads will start appearing.

Screenshots released by Google show how a user asking how to get wrinkles out of clothes might get an AI-generated summary of tips sourced from the web, with a carousel of ads underneath for sprays that purport to help crisp up a wardrobe.

Googles AI Overviews are meant to keep users from shifting to alternatives such as ChatGPT or the startup Perplexity, which use AI-generated text to answer many questions traditionally thrown at Google. How and when Google would integrate ads into AI Overviews has been a significant question over the companys ChatGPT catch-up strategy. Search ads are the company's largest revenue generator, and even subtle changes in ad placements or design can spur big swings in Googles revenue.

Courtesy of Google

Google shared few details about its new Overview ad format in its announcement Tuesday. Ads will have the opportunity to appear within the AI Overview in a section clearly labeled as sponsored when theyre relevant to both the query and the information in the AI Overview, Vidhya Srinivasan, Googles vice president and general Manager for ads, wrote in a blog post.

AI Overview will draw on ads from advertisers existing campaigns, meaning they can neither completely opt out of the experiment nor have to adapt the settings and designs of their ads to appear in the feature. Theres no action needed from advertisers, Srinivasan wrote.

Google said last year when it started experimenting with AI-generated answers in search that ads for specific products would be integrated into the feature. In one example at the time, it showed a sponsored option at the top of an AI-generated list of kids hiking backpacks. Google says the early testing showed that users found ads above and below AI summaries helpful. Googles much smaller rival Bing shows product ads in its Bing Copilot search chatbot, but in tests on Monday, WIRED didnt trigger any ads in Bings competitor to AI Overview.

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Google Search's New AI Overviews Will Soon Have Ads - WIRED

Microsoft launched a range of Copilot Plus PCs yesterday that includes new AI features built directly into Windows 11. Behind the scenes, the company now has more than 40 AI models running on Windows 11 thanks to a new Windows Copilot Runtime that will also allow developers to use these models for their apps.

At Microsoft Build today, the company is providing a lot more details about exactly how this Windows Copilot Runtime works. The runtime includes a library of APIs that developers can tap into for their own apps, with AI frameworks and toolchains that are designed for developers to ship their own on-device models on Windows.

Windows Copilot Library consists of ready-to-use AI APIs like Studio Effects, Live Captions Translations, OCR, Recall with User Activity, and Phi Silica, which will be available to developers in June, explains Windows and Surface chief Pavan Davuluri.

Developers will be able to use the Windows Copilot Library to integrate things like Studio Effects, filters, portrait blur, and other features into their apps. Meta is adding the Windows Studio Effects into WhatsApp, so youll get features like background blur and eye contact during video calls. Even Live Captions and the new AI-powered translation feature can be used by developers with little to no code.

Microsoft demonstrated its Recall AI feature yesterday, allowing Copilot Plus PCs to document and store everything that you do on your PC so you can recall memories and search through a timeline. This is all powered by a new Windows Semantic Index that stores this data locally, and Microsoft plans to allow developers to build something similar.

We will make this capability available for developers with Vector Embeddings API to build their own vector store and RAG within their applications and with their app data, says Davuluri.

Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge

Developers will also be able to improve Windows new Recall feature by adding contextual information to their apps that feeds into the database powering this feature. This integration helps users pick up where they left off in your app, improving app engagement and users seamless flow between Windows and your app, says Davuluri.

All of these improvements inside Windows for developers are the very early building blocks for more AI-powered apps on top of its new Arm-powered systems and the NPUs coming from AMD and Intel soon. While Microsoft is building the platform for developers to create AI apps for Windows, its now banking on this being an important part of the next decade of Windows development. Onstage at Build today, Davuluri stood in front of a slide that read Windows is the most open platform for AI, signaling just how important this moment is for Microsoft.

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Microsoft's new Windows Copilot Runtime aims to win over AI developers - The Verge

It occurred to me this morning that I will soon be explaining to a friend or relative what an AI PC is and what theyre meant to do with it.

The answer seems obvious to me because Ive been covering AI and PCs for decades. But as I try to articulate the meaning, I stumble:

None of that comes close to capturing it. What makes more sense is this:

A PC that works the way they promised it would when we first started computing.

Instead of a dense box full of information, memories, and apps that can go through it all, its a wonder box that anticipates your intentions, takes actions on your behalf, and never leaves you wondering, How do I do that?

Granted the AI PCs youll see this summer are still not quite that. However, there will be hints of that power and potential.

Microsofts one-button Copilot access across the new Surface Windows PCs it builds, and myriad partner laptops and desktops are not just marketing stunts. The Copilot button might initially be considered a when all else fails button. You hit it, and Copilot might rescue you because it lets you ask your question in a way that makes sense to you. An AI PC will know itself as you know yourself. It will know more about the computes inner workings, settings, and AI-compliant apps than you do and might not make you wade through apps, settings, and menus to get results.

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Any applications menu system is a developers best guess at the intentions of millions of users, and when you try to satisfy everyone, you usually satisfy no one.

AI-integrated machines will outstrip the rudimentary intelligence of your average PC and apps with something approaching human reasoning. This act could make your PC like the digital partner you always wanted. Unlike tiny AI-infused gadgets like Rabbit R1 and Humane AI, they wont insist you learn a new usage paradigm. These AI PCs look like your old PCs, which means you use them as you want, in whatever way makes you happy, and tap into that new AI superpower on an as-needed basis.

If my friends and relatives also ask about how the PC can be so smart, where all that intelligence resides, and if every question they ask ends up in the hands of a third party, thats when the conversation might get a little more complicated.

Breaking down this complex issue, Id explain that most AI PCs will take a half-and-half approach. Some intelligence will be right there, in the brand new AI Brain or NPU, but the rest could reside on cloud servers owned by Microsoft, Apple, or even Google. Choosing your new AI PC will come down to who you trust to keep your queries private.

Im also pretty sure this explanation will hold up next month when Apple introduces its own AI Macs (theyre also PCs, by the way)

Yeah, this is what Ill say if someone asks me.

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This is how I plan to explain AI PC to my confused friends and relatives - TechRadar

For the past six months, the Columbia Institute of Global Politics and Mozilla have been working with leading AI scholars and practitioners to create a framework on openness and AI. Today, we are publishing a paper that lays out this new framework.

During earlier eras of the internet, open source technologies played a core role in promoting innovation and safety. Open source technology provided a core set of building blocks that software developers have used to do everything from create art to design vaccines to develop apps that are used by people all over the world; it is estimated that open source software is worth over $8 trillion in value. And, attempts to limit open innovation such as export controls on encryption in early web browsers ended up being counterproductive, further exemplifying the value of openness.

The paper surveys existing approaches to defining openness in AI models and systems, and then proposes a descriptive framework to understand how each component of the foundation model stack contributes to openness.

Today, open source approaches for artificial intelligence and especially for foundation models offer the promise of similar benefits to society. However, defining and empowering open source for foundation models has proven tricky, given its significant differences from traditional software development. This lack of clarity has made it harder to recommend specific approaches and standards for how developers should advance openness and unlock its benefits. Additionally, these conversations about openness in AI have often operated at a high level, making it harder to reason about the benefits and risks from openness in AI. Some policymakers and advocates have blamed open access to AI as the source of certain safety and security risks, often without concrete or rigorous evidence to justify those claims. On the other hand, people often tout the benefits of openness in AI, but without specificity about how to actually harness those opportunities.

Thats why, in February, Mozilla and the Columbia Institute of Global Politics brought together over 40 leading scholars and practitioners working on openness and AI for the Columbia Convening. These individuals spanning prominent open source AI startups and companies, nonprofit AI labs, and civil society organizations focused on exploring what open should mean in the AI era.

Today, we are publishing a paper that presents a framework for grappling with openness across the AI stack. The paper surveys existing approaches to defining openness in AI models and systems, and then proposes a descriptive framework to understand how each component of the foundationmodel stack contributes to openness. It enables without prescribing an analysis of how to unlock specific benefits from AI, based on desired model and system attributes. Furthermore, the paper also adds clarity to support further work on this topic, including work to develop stronger safety safeguards for open systems.

We believe this framework will support timely conversations around the technical and policy communities. For example, this week, as policymakers discuss AI policy at the AI Seoul Summit 2024, this framework can help clarify how openness in AI can support societal and political goals, including innovation, safety, competition, and human rights. And, as the technical community continues to build and deploy AI systems, this framework can support AI developers in ensuring their AI systems help achieve their intended goals, promote innovation and collaboration, and reduce harms. We look forward to working with the open source and AI community, as well as the policy and technical communities more broadly, to continue building on this framework going forward.

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Releasing a new paper on openness and artificial intelligence - Mozilla & Firefox

Cooler Master just released a new line of CryoFuze 5 'AI Thermal Paste' that comes in six different colors. The company uses zinc oxide and aluminum powder to make the colorful thermal paste, while also claiming that it uses 'nano-molecular technology' to deliver stable performance.

While the added colors are likely just a gimmick or for creators filming their PC builds, the bigger claim here is the thermal pastes performance and stability across a wide range of temperatures. According to the CryoFuze 5 China product page, the thermal paste has a thermal conductivity coefficient of 12.6 W/mK, giving it better performance than all other thermal pastes weve tested in our Best Thermal Paste for 2024 guide, save for the SYY 157 that has a rating of 15.7 W/mK. It won't match the values you can get from liquid metal thermal pastes, however, which offer thermal conductivity ratings of 73 W/mK or higher.

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Cooler Master uses the AI branding on CryoFuze 5, but there is nothing AI about a thermal paste solution. While perhaps Cooler Master could've designed it for AI processors, especially as next-generation AI chips like Intels Falcon Shores and Nvidias B100 and B200 GPUs have TDPs higher than 1,000 watts, the CryoFuze 5's thermal performance isnt that far ahead of its competitors.

The CryoFuze 5 might not mean much for the average PC builder. But enthusiasts looking for style points on their video builds might love it (even though no one will ever see it again once the PC is assembled, unless they take the CPU cooler off). This also isnt the first colored thermal paste from Cooler Master, as it already sells the CryoFuze Violet thermal grease.

More importantly, the CryoFuze 5s high thermal conductivity (for a thermal paste) allows overclockers to push high-performance silicon even more. This is particularly crucial for builders using more exotic solutions, like using the EKWB AIO liquid-cooler designed for delidded CPUs, or those who replace the stock heat spreader on the processor with a custom one from Thermal Grizzly.

The stability of Cooler Masters colorful thermal paste adds another advantage, especially for overclockers who aim to get the most out of their silicon. If youre one of the few who use liquid nitrogen to cool your PC, you'll appreciate the CryoFuze 5's ability to work from -50C to 240C.

Liquid metal should still perform better than the CryoFuze 5, but it comes with the added risk of shorting components as it's a conductive material. While the color options and AI branding are likely just for marketing purposes, its improved performance should help enthusiasts looking to redline their systems.

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Cooler Master introduces colored 'AI Thermal Paste' CryoFuze 5 comes with nano-diamond technology - Tom's Hardware