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Tech leaders pen letter demanding AI pause: are we moving too quickly?

Written by STEP Software on . Posted in Blog. No Comments on Tech leaders pen letter demanding AI pause: are we moving too quickly?

WHAT THEY’RE ASKING FOR The letter, Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter, was published by the Future of Life Institute, a non-profit organization partially backed by Elon Musk. It says, “Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable.” The signees are asking all AI research labs to halt, for at least 6 months, the training of any AI tool that is considered more powerful than the current state-of-the-art, GPT-4. They suggest using the pause to build and implement common...

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Twitter source code gets leaked online. Here’s why it matters.

Written by STEP Software on . Posted in Blog, StringN. No Comments on Twitter source code gets leaked online. Here’s why it matters.

THE SECRET SAUCE, NO LONGER SECRET The New York Times reported on March 26th that Twitter had sent a copyright infringement notice to GitHub. The company asked the developer forum to remove a repository containing what it said was leaked source code. GitHub removed the code the same day, and while it was not immediately known when the leak first occurred, the Times reported the code had been exposed for a number of months. The optics are troubling. Any leak of source code is worrisome for any company. For a software or platform company, however, it’s infinitely worse. Source...

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AI chatbots go next-level – and productivity apps are their next target

Written by STEP Software on . Posted in Blog. No Comments on AI chatbots go next-level – and productivity apps are their next target

EVERYTHING CHANGED As we wrote about recently, ChatGPT’s arrival marked a significant inflection point in the tech industry, as it represented the general public’s first direct exposure to a full-on AI-based platform. Up until now, these technologies largely existed in labs. The global release of ChatGPT turned this once-sci-fi-seeming technology into an everyday reality as millions of regular folks logged in and tried it out. ChatGPT’s public debut has understandably spurred a flurry of activity among major tech companies as they jockey for position in this chaotically accelerating...

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As business concerns over AI ethics continue to worsen, new best practices emerge

Written by Carmi Levy on . Posted in Blog. No Comments on As business concerns over AI ethics continue to worsen, new best practices emerge

EARLY AND BUGGY Since ChatGPT was first made available for public consumption in late 2022, it has served as the poster child for the generative AI revolution. It has also become something of a proving ground for millions of AI newbies still trying to figure out how all of this applies to them. But like any new technology, it comes with its own dark side. AI chatbots tend to “hallucinate”. Also known as going rogue, they can just as easily return outright lies the longer we interact with them. These imperfections are largely based on the fact that their training methods...

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STEP Software celebrates 18 years – and looks to the future

Written by STEP Software on . Posted in Blog. No Comments on STEP Software celebrates 18 years – and looks to the future

RESET THE CLOCK If we’re being really nitpicky – we’re developers, so we pretty much are – STEP Software’s history actually goes back 20 years, to 2003. That’s when our co-founder, Jim Freeman, developed an RSS reader and registered the overcow.com domain. Why Overcow? Because it was the era of snappy, memorable, unconventional tech products and company names. And Jim wanted to pay homage to legendary Far Side cartoonist Gary Larson, who loved speaking about cows almost as much as he did. If Larson saw his other characters as being the bosses of the cows, then Jim thought...

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Ongoing Twitter outages speak volumes about infrastructure’s importance

Written by STEP Software on . Posted in Blog, StringN. No Comments on Ongoing Twitter outages speak volumes about infrastructure’s importance

A GATHERING STORM Whether it’s an API error, or simply a notification that you’ve exceeded your allowed number of followed accounts, it falls well short of a complete outage or a network-wide meltdown. To the typical end-user presented with these errors, Twitter is still largely operational, but it seems to be experiencing a series of annoying glitches here and there. Over time, the annoyance factor adds up. None of this is enough to trigger a mass response from the platform’s 300 million users. Yet. But it is enough to highlight an unwelcome increase in the reports of intermittent...

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TikTok bans are a long overdue wakeup call for mobile security

Written by STEP Software on . Posted in Blog. No Comments on TikTok bans are a long overdue wakeup call for mobile security

A GATHERING STORM The Canadian move echoes similar moves in recent weeks by the U.S. government, the European Union, and at least half of all American states. It falls short of a full-on national ban, however such legislation has been proposed in the U.S. Nevertheless, this marks a serious foreign policy rebuke from Canada to China. The growing global turbulence around TikTok reinforces the disparity between its populist perception as a non-threatening app, and accusations that it represents a major security threat on a personal, organizational, and national...

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ChatGPT’s arrival reinforces the need to embrace – not ban – AI chatbots

Written by STEP Software on . Posted in Blog. No Comments on ChatGPT’s arrival reinforces the need to embrace – not ban – AI chatbots

WELCOME TO THE NEXT REVOLUTION Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been one of those on-the-horizon technologies for what seems like forever. But public interest and engagement has been somewhat limited. That’s largely because it’s been accessible mostly to developers, researchers, and laboratories. OpenAI’s decision to release ChatGPT to the public in November seems to have changed the game markedly. By opening up its consumer-friendly chatbot to everyday users, the organization, co-founded by Elon Musk, has sparked a global explosion of interest. At the same time, all...

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Building a mobile-friendly website? Do these 8 critical things first.

Written by STEP Software on . Posted in Blog. No Comments on Building a mobile-friendly website? Do these 8 critical things first.

Note: This article continues our look at mobile-friendly websites, and why it has become essential for all businesses to have a mobile-first web presence. For guidance on making the business case within your own organization, check out our earlier article – Your business needs a mobile-friendly website. Here’s why. THE WORLD LEADS WITH MOBILE There is no longer any doubt that we live in a mobile world. Data from Statista confirms we’ve already passed something of a tipping point, and there’s no going back. According to this research firm, just over 59% of global...

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Your business needs a mobile-friendly website. Here’s why.

Written by STEP Software on . Posted in Blog. No Comments on Your business needs a mobile-friendly website. Here’s why.

THE SMARTPHONE AGE Chances are that your business has already done a great job shifting into the digital space. You’ve probably got a decent website, reasonably active social accounts, and a pretty good range of ways for customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders to contact you. But it’s not enough. While you’ve been busy doing all the things necessary to build your brand, the world has changed around us. The desktop PC is no longer the dominant piece of hardware –at home or in the office. We live in a mobile world now, We can work wherever there’s connectivity – meaning...

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