Following the announcement that Gemini is coming to cars, Volvo is using I/O 2025 to announce a new expanded partnership with Google. The companies' new deal makes Volvo's cars reference hardware for future Android Automotive OS development, and means Volvo drivers will be "among the first to benefit" when Gemini fully replaces Google Assistant in cars. Volvo describes itself as Google's "lead development partner for new features and updates," making the company's cars the first to receive new updates to the Android Automotive OS. Google offers Android Auto as its CarPlay-like solution for beaming a software interface from your phone to in-car displays, but its Automotive OS is more complete, running on your vehicle locally and connected to car controls for A/C and more. You can already experience Android Automotive OS in Volvo's EX90, for example. Google's current vision for Android in cars is, perhaps unsurprisingly, focused on getting drivers to talk to Gemini. In a car with the assistant, you'll be able to ask Gemini to send a message, pull up directions, or answer the more open-ended, natural language questions that Gemini Live is designed to handle. If it works as advertised, it seems better than pecking at a screen, and Volvo notes it could "help reduce your cognitive load so that you can stay focused on driving." There's no release date for when you can expect Gemini to show up as your driving copilot, but at the very least this new partnership means it'll be in Volvos first.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/volvo-expands-its-google-partnership-to-bring-new-features-like-gemini-to-cars-sooner-070020853.html?src=rss

PNY reveals its lineup of microSD Express cards for Nintendo Switch 2.

Palo Alto Networks reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue for the latest quarter but missed on gross margin.

The buzz in Silicon Valley around AI agents has many asking: What’s real and what’s hype? Box’s cofounder and CEO, Aaron Levie, helps decipher between fact and fiction, breaking down the fast-paced evolution of agents and their impact on the future of enterprise AI. Plus, Levie unpacks how AI is really being adopted in the workplace and what it takes to legitimately build an AI-first organization. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. I talked with Marc Benioff at Salesforce several months ago about his embrace of AI agents, but the use of his agents hasn’t quite taken off the way he hoped. I know you launched Box AI Studio to help organizations build their own custom AI agents. I’m curious how that’s going. So far, it’s either at or exceeding our expectations on all the use cases that customers are coming up with. So we’re pretty blown away about what we’re starting to see. We’re still very early days to be clear, but the rate of adoption is going fairly exponential, and the imagination that customers now have on this is blowing us away.  I’ve rarely been in a customer conversation, either one-on-one or at a dinner, where I’m not hearing about a new idea that the customer has for Box AI that we did not already have on a whiteboard. And what’s exciting—and this is counterintuitive, I think, to a lot of folks outside of AI—you initially sort of see AI in sci-fi and sometimes in news headlines, The New York Times or whatever, as like, “Okay, it’s going after jobs. It’s going to replace these types of work.” From my anecdotes, I’ve had at least 100 interactions with customers in the first quarter of this year, the vast majority, 80%, I’m guessing, the bulk of the time of AI use case kind of conversation was spent on things that the company didn’t do before AI. So it wasn’t, “Hey, I want to take this type of work, and I want AI to go replace it.” There’s a type of work that we never get around to in our company. I want AI to go and do that, because finally, it’s affordable for me to deploy AI agents at the kind of work that we could not fund before. It’s opening up people’s imagination to, “Hey, I’m like sitting on 50,000 customer contracts. What if I could have an AI agent go around all those customer contracts, and figure out which customers have the highest propensity to buy this next product from me?” And this is not something that they would have people ever do. So it’s not replacing anybody’s job. They never said, “Oh, let’s have 50 people go read all the contracts again.” It just never happened. But now, if it only costs them $5,000 for an AI agent to go do that, they would do that all day long. And then guess what? When they get those insights, they’re probably going to now have more work for the humans in their business to go and do as a result of this, that hopefully, if it’s effective, drives more growth in their business—which then causes even more productivity, and then ultimately hiring and growth. And so it’s not kind of everybody’s first instinct, but most of the use cases that we’re hearing about are things where, “Because it is now affordable to deploy AI at a problem, I’m actually expanding the set of things my company can go do, and then the work that we can now execute on.” And that’s not only very, I think, exciting, but I think it’s going to be the default case for most AI adoption in the enterprise. In some of the conversations that I have, it feels almost like some of the businesses and leaders, they don’t really know what they’re looking for from AI. And hearing you, it sounds a little bit like you have to think about your mindset on it a little differently to open up and find those things that are most valuable to you. Yes. Yeah, every business is going to be different because some of the upside is a virtue of your business model. What are the core parts of your business model that, as a result of access to information, can change or be modified or improved? If I am a law firm, I could either reduce my cost, because now AI is going to do more of the, let’s say, paralegal work, or I could expand my service offerings, because now, all of a sudden, my team can venture into more domains because they can take their expertise and use AI to augment that. The default assumption is, “Oh, no, it’s going to go after the hours of a law firm.” But once this technology hits an individual business, they can actually decide to expand their customer base. They can go after, previously, customers that would’ve been unprofitable for them to serve. So these industries are not as static and zero-sum. The software industry . . . on one hand, everybody says, “Okay, if AI can do coding, then will we hire fewer engineers?” And in general, my argument is that we’ll probably hire as many—if not more—engineers if AI can get really good at coding, because what will happen is the productivity rate of our engineer goes up, which means that we can then ascribe a higher degree of value per engineer in the company. So your ROI is even better on each of those positions? Exactly. And take something like sales. If we can make a sales rep able to sell 5% more, because we give them better data, and they can prepare for a customer meeting that much better, or they can understand exactly the best pitch because they have access to all of Box’s data and they can ask it questions, I’m not going to just bank that as 5% more profit. Because what will happen is we’re going to internally, in some planning session, we’re going to get greedy, and we’re going to say, “Wait a second, that 5% gain that we just got in sales productivity, what if we reinvested that back into the sales team to grow even faster and get that much more market share?” And so you have an entire economy of companies making those individual decisions of, “Do you bank the profit, or do you use it to go and accelerate growth?” And what we tend to know from history is that the companies that get too greedy on the profit side, you just end up leaving yourself vulnerable to being outflanked by competitors. So capitalism has a pretty convenient way of almost driving the sort of productivity gains of these types of innovations to get reinvested back into the business. You’ve been talking about running Box in an AI-first way, and encouraging other leaders to do it. Are you like Shopify and Duolingo, who’ve announced that staffers have to justify anything that’s not AI-produced? What does AI-first mean? Yeah. So for us, AI-first means that we want to use AI as a means of driving an acceleration of the customer outcome, an acceleration of decision-making, an acceleration of building new features. So just think about it as mostly a metric of speed. On one hand, you could think about AI as going after like a massive work, and you could say AI is going to remove some part of that massive work and do it instantly, so the massive work goes down, or think about work as a timeline, and not a mass. All we’re doing is trying to get through each step so that way, we can get to the next step and so on. And everything’s faster. And everything’s faster. So I want to have us use AI to move faster down the timeline, not just purely to reduce the total mass of work that we’re doing. There’s probably one pronounced difference versus, let’s say, the Duolingo memo. There’s some emerging idea, which is sort of you have to prove that AI can’t do this thing for you to get then head count, and our general instinct is actually the opposite. If you can prove that you can use AI, then that’s actually when you will get head count, because what we want is we want the dollars of the business to go back into the areas that are the increasing areas of productivity gain, because those areas will then be higher ROI for us over time.

Sitting on public benches can sometimes be a tricky situation, depending on what kind of person you are. If you’re naturally an extrovert, you probably wouldn’t mind sharing a bench with a stranger and might even strike up a conversation with that other person. If you’re not that comfortable with social interactions with strangers, you will probably choose to sit somewhere unoccupied by another person. But what if the bench was built to challenge not just how we sit but also how we interact with other people? In the heart of Einbeck, Germany, a unique public installation is redefining the concept of communal seating. Berlin-based artist Martin Binder’s latest creation, the “Balance Bench,” is more than just a place to rest—it’s a compelling exploration of cooperation, communication, and shared space. At first glance, the Balance Bench appears to be a minimalist piece of furniture, constructed from oak slats atop a sleek, powder-coated steel frame. However, its design deviates from traditional benches by resting on a single central cylinder instead of four legs. Designer: Martin Binder This unique structure means the bench cannot be used alone; it requires at least two people to sit on opposite ends to achieve balance. If one person attempts to sit alone, the bench tips, making it unusable without mutual effort. Well, yes you can still probably use it but you would have to find the balance yourself or be watched by other people as you try to sit on it properly. The bench’s mechanics compel users to engage with one another, fostering a sense of community and shared responsibility. Originally intended for a public art festival in 2021, the project was delayed due to the pandemic’s restrictions. Now, four years later, the installation serves as a poignant reflection on how the pandemic has altered our interactions in public spaces. Situated in the Garden of Generations in Einbeck, the Balance Bench invites park-goers to engage in a shared experience. Its design challenges individuals to communicate and adjust their positions to achieve balance, transforming a simple act of sitting into an interactive social exercise. The bench accommodates up to eight people along its 4.5-meter length, making it a focal point for community interaction. Binder’s installation not only provides a functional seating option but also serves as a catalyst for conversation and connection. By integrating principles of cooperation and mutual awareness into its design, the Balance Bench exemplifies how public art can foster community engagement and reflect societal values. The post Communal bench is also a kinetic installation to foster interaction first appeared on Yanko Design.

An arson attack in Colorado had detectives stumped. The way they solved the case could put everyone at risk.

Apple kicked the popular game out of the App Store nearly five years ago, prompting a court battle that was partially resolved on Tuesday.

Macworld If you want to add some quick edits to a photo or video, Apple’s free Mac apps – Photos and Preview – can do a good job, but for anything more advanced you’ll need a dedicated image editing app like Adobe’s Photoshop. For years now it has been the industry standard, due to its wide range of features and capabilities, but it does come with a substantial subscription fee that might be a bit too much for the casual user. Here’s how to get a copy of Photoshop on your Mac, or, failing that, the next best thing. Plus, because you can’t beat free, we’ll also explain your options for getting Photoshop on Mac at no cost, as well as rounding up the Best Mac free image and photo editors. If you’d like to get the same software on your tablet, read How to get Photoshop on iPad. How to get Photoshop free on a Mac: Adobe Express As Photoshop is professional-grade software, you won’t be able to get the full version for free aside from the 7-day trial that we’ll cover below. However, Adobe does offer a stripped down version that covers a lot of the same ground if your demands aren’t too high. Adobe Express is a free, online web app that offers a range of editing tools, such as the ability to crop, reshape, flip, and recolor images. You can also add text (there are plenty of templates and fonts to choose from), make the background of an image transparent, quickly put together collages, and generally improve the style and form of your photos and videos. Adobe Express comes with access to 1 million+ royalty-free stock images you can use for posters or social media content, plus you get 5GB of storage. Adobe If you want more advanced features, including Generative AI for instantly creating images, removing backgrounds in video, one-click resizing, a much larger selection of stock images, not to mention 100GB of storage, then you can sign up to Adobe Express Premium for $9.99/£9.98 p/m, with the option to cancel at any time. There’s also a free 30-day trial so you can see if Premium gives you all the Photoshop capabilities you need, without spending any money. If you’re happy to work online rather than with a dedicated app, and you’re not after the high-end editing features, either Adobe Express or Adobe Express Premium are probably the ones to go for, plus you have those trials to ensure whether the tools you need for your particular workflows are included. How to get full Photoshop for free If you want to use the full version of Photoshop, then there is the aforementioned free trial, or you could sign up to a short-term subscription to at least keep the costs down. Trial: The first option is a Photoshop trial. There is a 7-day free trial that gives you access to the full program, with no restrictions. While Adobe advertises the free 7-day trial, you can actually get 14 days free, because you can cancel within 14 days of your initial order and get fully refunded. In fact, you could, theoretically, get 21 days free if you had the trial and then canceled your subscription after 13 days. Don’t forget though, as you’re then liable to pay 50% of the entire 1yr contract if you miss the deadline. Monthly subscription: The second option is signing up for a subscription on a monthly rather than an annual basis. This won’t give you Photoshop for free, but the option will allow you to access all the features of the software on a shorter-term basis, then cancel when you no longer need it. We’ll run through the various subscription options in the sections below. Adobe To explain how it works we need to explain the difference between Adobe’s two monthly subscription packages: one is cheaper ($22.99/£21.98 a month) because it is part of an annual plan; the other is a more expensive option ($34.49/£32.98 a month), but you can cancel without having to pay Adobe anything. Adobe doesn’t list these options on the site, instead you have to click the Buy Now button then you can select from the three options: Annual – Billed monthly, Monthly, and Annual – Billed upfront. Photoshop with 100GB of cloud storageU.S.U.K.Annual plan paid monthly$22.99£21.98Annual plan paid upfront$263.88£262.51Monthly plan (cancel at any time)$34.49£32.98Buy it hereBuy it here Adobe explains the legal terms of the various contracts here. Basically, if you sign up for the cheaper ‘annual contract, paid monthly’ and then choose to end your subscription you will be able to do so, but if you end the contract after the first 14 days “you’ll be charged a lump sum amount of 50% of your remaining contract obligation and your service will continue until the end of that month’s billing period.” This is a slightly better scenario than if you were paying annually – in that case, your contract will continue to the end of the term. You wouldn’t get any money back. This is why the best option, in this case, is to sign up for a month-to-month contract. In this case, the contract will automatically renew every month, but should you choose to cancel (we explain how to cancel below) you will be able to use Photoshop until the end of that month, at which point your contract will cease. If you need Photoshop, but you don’t want to tie yourself into a contract with Adobe, this could be the best option for you. However, you should note that you will lose access to anything you have saved in Adobe’s cloud after 90 days. If these options aren’t quite what you’re after, you can always look for alternatives to Photoshop, as there are some excellent apps currently available. We also have a round-up of the Best Mac free image and photo editors, which includes options such as Seashore and Gimp. How to get Photoshop on a Mac without an annual subscription If you were hoping to buy a copy of Photoshop to own, as in not paying on a subscription basis, we have some bad news for you: Adobe no longer sells what is known as a ‘perpetual license’ for Photoshop and its other apps. There is one option though: you can buy Photoshop Elements. Photoshop Elements is designed for amateur rather than pro photographers, but it does offer a number of photo editing features that might be sufficient for your needs. One very important thing to note though is that Adobe has changed how Elements works, so that when you make your purchase you’re only getting a 3-year licence. That means, once the three years are up, the app will stop working, although you’ll still be able to access all of the work you created. You can buy a copy of Photoshop Elements directly from Adobe’s website for $99.99/£86.99. (Buy Photoshop Elements from Adobe). See our review of Photoshop Elements for more information. You can also buy Photoshop Elements on the Mac App Store for $99.99/£99.99. The benefit of Photoshop Elements is that you can buy it outright and install it on your Mac. You will have access to features like masks, layers, colorisation, image manipulation and other useful, more consumer-level effects with Elements. If you’re a creative professional though, or are used to the full-blown version of Photoshop, then you may find too many tools missing from the box. If you want to take a look there’s also a 7-day free trial of Photoshop Elements so you can take the software for a test run. If you don’t care about how up-to-date your software is you might be interested in buying a secondhand copy of Photoshop, or an old Mac with Photoshop installed. Just be aware that Adobe doesn’t support all older versions in terms of updates, so the ones you find might not be compatible with later iterations of macOS, plus newer Macs won’t run old versions of Photoshop. You’ll also need to confirm that the software license hasn’t already been used, as usually these are non-transferable. And generally, we would advise against buying a used Mac (unless it’s certified refurbished). For more information read: What version of macOS can my Mac run? If a subscription to Photoshop isn’t for you, and Photoshop Elements isn’t enough, we recommend you look at alternatives to Photoshop, many of which have comparable features with the benefit of being available to buy outright. The best options include PixelMator Pro, Affinity Photo and others. See: Best Photoshop alternatives for Mac. Is there an education discount for Photoshop? There is one other way you can save money while getting a copy of Photoshop for your Mac. If you are in education then you may qualify for a discount. However, you can’t sign up for a reduced price on the Photoshop-only tier, you have to get the entire Creative Cloud collection, which includes Photoshop and a large collection of other Adobe apps. The student and teacher deal for Creative Cloud does represent quite a hefty reduction. At the time of writing, Students and Teachers pay $19.99/£16.24 a month, which is around 70% less than the normal subscription rate. Photoshop for Mac price If you have accepted that you need to pay for a subscription to Photoshop you will want to know how much it costs. There’s not actually a straightforward answer: it depends on how you want to buy it. Whether you love or hate the subscription model, there are a few options to choose from if you want to get a copy of Photoshop: Photoshop: If you just want the single Photoshop app you can have that for $20.99/£19.97 a month if you sign up for a year, or $31.49/£30.34 a month if you just pay on a monthly basis. Sign up on Adobe’s website. Photography Plan: However, the Photography Plan is actually the best deal. It includes Photoshop, Lightroom (for web and mobile), and Lightroom Classic (for desktop), plus 1TB of storage. The bundle costs $19.99/£19.98 a month, but you will be on a contract for a year as there’s no monthly option. Sign up on Adobe’s website. Plan: Photography Plan with 1TB cloudU.S.U.K.Annual plan paid monthly$19.99£19.97Annual plan paid upfront$239.88£238.42Monthly plan (cancel at any time)n/an/aBuy it hereBuy it here Business: If you are a business user you ought to sign up for the Business option where you can get a single Photoshop license for $37.99/£27.99 ex VAT a month per license. It’s worth noting that all the Adobe CC apps, including Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere Pro, and Acrobat, cost $89.99/£65.49 (ex VAT) per license a month. Sign up on Adobe’s website.  How to cancel a Photoshop subscription The ease with which you can end your Photoshop contract is one of the benefits of Adobe’s decision to switch from selling copies of Photoshop outright to a subscription model. It also means that you only need to pay for Photoshop for as long as you need it. So if it’s just for a short-term project you can unsubscribe as soon as the work is done. Here’s how to cancel your subscription: Sign in to the Adobe web page where plans are managed. Sign in to your Adobe account. Under the My Plans tab find Manage Plan (or View plan) and click on that. Now click on Cancel plan. Give your reason for cancellation. Click on Continue. Best alternatives to Photoshop on Mac? There is plenty of great photo and image editing software available on macOS, many of which come with lower price tags than Adobe products. One of our favorites is Affinity Photo 2 from Serif, which boasts a wide range of powerful tools, a friendly interface and costs $69.99/£67.99 as a one-off payment, and also offers a 30-day free trial. Seriff Another popular choice is GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), which is completely free and comes with an incredible range of tools and features. The interface can take a little getting used to, which is not uncommon with open-source software, but once you get to know your way around, you’ll be amazed at what you can achieve. There’s also a large collection of tutorials for the software on YouTube, so if you’re willing to put in the time then it’s a powerful suite that will cost you nothing at all. We also recommend you read Best Mac for photo editing. You may also be interested in: How to get Adobe Illustrator on a Mac and How to get InDesign on a Mac.

On a week like this, it’s hard not to feel like you’re living in dueling realities. On one side, you’ve got the futuristic vision Google is telling you about at its annual developer event, Google I/O. The company waxed on for nearly two hours about how its Gemini generative AI assistant will help provide even more complex answers from the web, make purchases and complete bookings on your behalf, and generally just do all the Gemini stuff it does now faster and better. (And it isn’t alone: Just a day earlier, Microsoft told us at its Build event how Copilot will soon act as an “enterprise brain” and “suggest ideas” as you type — even, conceivably, offering to create entire legal agreements on your behalf.) If you believe what these companies are saying (along with the same sorts of surreal-seeming realities being laid out by OpenAI and — well, practically every other tech player out there these days), we’re living in an era where artificial intelligence is always on the brink of a life-changing breakthrough. What’s especially wild is that none of this is even that big of a leap from what these same sorts of systems have already been promising and the way they’ve been framed for months — for casual individual use, sure, and also for serious company business. And that, my friend, is an ever-increasing liability for anyone who still cares about getting things right. [Get level-headed knowledge in your inbox with my free Android Intelligence newsletter — three things to know and try every Friday, straight from me to you.] Behind the generative AI curtains Let’s back up for a second and talk about what all of these generative AI tools actually are — and aren’t. The real issue here isn’t that this type of technology isn’t in any way valid or useful — far from it. It’s just that it isn’t designed to do or currently even capable of doing what nearly every tech company out there is breathlessly telling us it can handle in our personal and professional lives. At their core, Gemini, ChatGPT, and other such systems are powered by a type of technology known as a large language model — or LLM, for short. In the simplest possible terms, an LLM looks at massive amounts of real-world language data and then uses that to learn patterns and predict the most likely next word over and over, in response to any prompt it’s given. In other words, these engines don’t truly understand context or “think” about the answers they’re giving you in any human-like sense. They merely predict words, based on patterns observed in sprawling sets of human-created data, and then string those words together to form sentences and, eventually, entire paragraphs and documents whenever they’re summoned and given a task. Somehow, that’s translated into tech companies plastering them into every possible place and presenting them as the end-all answers for every possible purpose — everything from replacements for search to replacements for writing in Gmail, Google Docs, and other such places. (The situation is even more extreme in other non-Google arenas, too — like with Microsoft’s legal-document-creating disaster-waiting-to-happen.) And we don’t need to rely on theoretical examples to see just how dangerous of a situation this can create. Artificial intelligence, genuine jeopardy The reality of these systems’ limitations has been showing itself time and time again for quite a while now, in scenarios that are all too real and should serve as a serious wake-up call for any company — or even individual — buying into the hype. Plain and simple, these things don’t know what they’re saying. They string together characters that sometimes make sense but are also extremely likely to include errors and often even flat-out fabricated nonsense. When they do get something right, it’s mostly just by chance. And you, as the user, have no way of immediately detecting the difference. For instance, across the broader genAI landscape — with the exact same foundational limitations affecting Gemini and all these other similar systems: Just last week, Anthropic — the company behind the business-popular genAI chatbot Claude — had to apologize in court after learning its system completely made up a legal citation the company’s lawyer used as part of an ongoing copyright case. (I’ll take irony for $500, Alex!) Days earlier, a California judge discovered “numerous false, inaccurate, and misleading legal citations and quotations” in a submitted brief apparently created with the aid of AI. Last month, a company relying on an AI “support agent” was forced to apologize when it learned said agent was making up nonexistent policies while interacting with customers. In an experiment, Carnegie Mellon University created a simulation in which AI agents were tasked with handling low-level chores at a realistically structured software company — performing the same sorts of feats at which these systems are promised to be proficient. They failed miserably. In the oft-cited area of genAI coding expertise, researchers are finding case after case where the systems invent package names that don’t exist and lead to all sorts of time- and money-wasting errors — not to mention troubling security vulnerabilities. The Columbia Journalism Review tested eight different genAI search engines and found they got all sorts of information wildly wrong — offering incorrect and fabricated info and even nonexistent citations — and, worse yet, they served up those inaccuracies with an astonishing amount of confidence. Lest you think this is an artifact of long-dated early versions of these engines, the instances above are all from the past few months. (They’re also just a surface-level sampling of the many, many examples of generative AI failure that pop up practically every day at this point.) Worse, as reported in The New York Times earlier this month, the act of “AI hallucination” — a fancy euphemism for “their tendency to serve up lies and inaccuracies” — only seems to be getting worse as the systems get more powerful. Yet somehow, hardly anyone seems to be taking notice — or letting that reality get in the way of the much more enticing vision the tech industry is desperate to sell us. Just this week, a new report revealed that a whopping half of tech execs expect these very same sorts of error-prone AI agents to function autonomously in their companies within the next two years — which, translated out of corporate geek-speak, essentially means they’ll be replacing human workers and operating with little to no supervision. Crikey. How long will it take for everyone to wake up? Time for a generative AI reset Google and all the other companies behind these tools — along with the corporate number-crunchers, clout-chasing LinkedIn bros, and mainstream media outlets blindly buying into the hype — like to pretend that all the stuff we just went over somehow isn’t a serious and immediately disqualifying issue for these systems. But no matter what sorts of impressive demos and over-the-top marketing materials they sling at us, the reality here in the real world is that these large-language model chatbots simply aren’t reliable when it comes to providing accurate answers and information. So, sure:  They’re incredibly handy as “legal advisors” — until you realize how the technology actually works and how likely it is to (a) get information wildly wrong and (b) flat-out make up facts along the way. They’re fantastic as “search engines” — until it dawns on you that 20% of what they tell you is likely to be inaccurate. And they’re wonderfully useful as “coding assistants” and “customer service agents” — if you conveniently look past the constant instances of them screwing stuff up and costing you business. What’s especially troubling is the justification that these generative AI helpers are at least getting better and growing less likely to get stuff wrong. Even if you set aside the aforementioned data challenging that notion, a system getting something wrong 5%, 10%, or even 20% of the time is arguably worse than one that gets stuff wrong half the time (or more). Think about it: If something’s wrong constantly, people are at least likely to notice and realize that it’s useless as an info-providing tool. But when it’s wrong only once or twice out of every 10 or 20 uses, it’s especially dangerous — as users will be lulled into a false sense of security and less likely to be watching for those errors. Now, again, all of this isn’t to say these genAI systems aren’t at all useful or worth using. They can be quite helpful — if you think of them in the right way. The problem is mostly that that reality doesn’t align with the much broader vision that tech companies are trying to peddle. But if you think of these systems as narrowly limited starting points for certain types of specific tasks, they can actually save you time and make your life easier. With that in mind: No, Gemini and other such generative AI services aren’t instant answer engines, nor are they digital lawyers or even coders. But they can be useful note-takers and info-organizers. They can be quite helpful as image analyzers and manipulators. They can work wonders when it comes to creating polished presentations without all the usual effort, too — or creating calendar events without the typical clunkiness. They can even be valuable brainstorming partners, in a sense, or deep-dive research assistants. But, critically, it’s up to you to think about how you’re using ’em and to treat their offerings as simple starting points — ways to save you the early steps of seeking out sources and stumbling onto ideas as opposed to a single-step replacement for critical human thinking. At the end of the day, one lucky instance doesn’t discount the very real and completely unpredictable risk of random fabrications and inaccuracies. And, clearly, it’s entirely on us to use these tools wisely and take ’em for what they are: word prediction engines that can be helpful in certain limited, specific scenarios — not the all-purpose magic answer machines some companies desperately want them to be. Ready for more no-nonsense Googley insights? Join my free Android Intelligence newsletter to cut through the hype and get plain-English perspective on the news that matters.

A slew of new Elgato Stream Decks have been announced, aimed at everyone from the usual individuals, through network users and DIY fans, and even on to other manufacturers.A new version of the 15-key Stream Deck features scissor-keys instead of membrane onesElgato's Stream Deck may have begun as an accessory for gamers and streamers, but it's become a whole series of devices for Mac productivity. Now Elgato has announced four new variants designed to expand the Stream Deck's use and widen its appeal.The four new additions to the Stream Deck range are: Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums