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After a series of misfires caused by bad Apple Intelligence notification summaries, Apple has decided to limit the feature in specific situations.AI summaries don't always get the details rightApple Intelligence rolled out to the public in October 2024, and since its debut, it's been somewhat of a mixed bag. While many people enjoy features like AI writing tools, features like the notification summaries aren't as well received.Specifically, it seems Apple Intelligence doesn't quite get nuanced language. This has resulted in many summaries of news stories being factually incorrect. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

SIE Bend Studios streak of bad luck seems to be continuing. The studio has faced constant upheaval sinceDays Goneslaunch in 2019, and after reports of aDays Gonesequel and anUnchartedtitle having been shelved in the years since, a third successive title has met the same fate.Sony Bend has been at work on a new open world live service IP for several years at this point, though the project has now been shelved. As per a report published by Bloomberg, Sony Bends title and Bluepoint Games unannounced title are the latest in a long line of live service cancellations by Sony.Back in May 2023, Sony stated it intended to release 12 live service games within the next three years as part of a big live service push. Since then, however, thoughHelldivers 2has seen widespread success, Sonys live service efforts have also endured many failures and cancellations, includingConcord, The Last of Us Online,a multiplayerSpider-Mantitle, London Studios title, an alleged Twisted Metal reboot, and others.Sony says these latest cancellations wont lead to studio closures. Read more on that through here.

html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"The Gnomon Workshop has released Cinematic Sand & Dust Simulations Using Houdini, a masterclass in professional simulation workflows, recorded by FX Artist Alvaro J. Segura.The advanced workshop provides over three hours of video training in Houdini and Nuke, and is demonstrated using Houdini IndieMaster professional workflows for creating complex Houdini simulationsIn the workshop, Segura creates a complex simulation of a vehicle ploughing through deep sand, using Houdinis key toolsets and following practical production workflows.He begins by exploring how to use Vellum Grains, combining them with Pyro simulations to create a range of sand textures, from fine, dust-like particles to denser clumps.Segura reveals how to optimize collisions, and how to design custom velocity fields to enhance the realism of simulations.He also walks through the process of setting up TOP networks for wedging to streamline heavy simulations, segmenting them into separate containers for an efficient yet powerful workflow. In the final part of the tutorial, Segura sets out how to combine these containers back into a single volume as velocity and density VDBs for lighter, optimized volume handling.The workshop uses a commercial truck model from TurboSquid.About the artistAlvaro J. Segura is a Freelance FX Artist with over 15 years of experience at some of the worlds leading VFX companies, including MPC, Digital Domain, Zoic Studios and Blur Studio.He was FX Lead on The Lion King, and has also worked on movies including Terminator: Dark Fate, Black Panther, Ant-Man, and Pirates of the Caribbean.Pricing and availabilityCinematic Sand & Dust Simulations Using Houdini is available via a subscription to The Gnomon Workshop, which provides access to over 300 tutorials.Subscriptions cost $57/month or $519/year. Free trials are available.Read more about Cinematic Sand & Dust Simulations Using HoudiniHave your say on this story by following CG Channel on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). As well as being able to comment on stories, followers of our social media accounts can see videos we dont post on the site itself, including making-ofs for the latest VFX movies, animations, games cinematics and motion graphics projects.Full disclosure: CG Channel is owned by Gnomon.

Large Language Models (LLMs) have become integral to various artificial intelligence applications, demonstrating capabilities in natural language processing, decision-making, and creative tasks. However, critical challenges remain in understanding and predicting their behaviors. Treating LLMs as black boxes complicates efforts to assess their reliability, particularly in contexts where errors can have significant consequences. Traditional approaches often rely on internal model states or gradients to interpret behaviors, which are unavailable for closed-source, API-based models. This limitation raises an important question: how can we effectively evaluate LLM behavior with only black-box access? The problem is further compounded by adversarial influences and potential misrepresentation of models through APIs, highlighting the need for robust and generalizable solutions.To address these challenges, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed QueRE (Question Representation Elicitation). This method is tailored for black-box LLMs and extracts low-dimensional, task-agnostic representations by querying models with follow-up prompts about their outputs. These representations, based on probabilities associated with elicited responses, are used to train predictors of model performance. Notably, QueRE performs comparably to or even better than some white-box techniques in reliability and generalizability.Unlike methods dependent on internal model states or full output distributions, QueRE relies on accessible outputs, such as top-k probabilities available through most APIs. When such probabilities are unavailable, they can be approximated through sampling. QueREs features also enable evaluations such as detecting adversarially influenced models and distinguishing between architectures and sizes, making it a versatile tool for understanding and utilizing LLMs.Technical Details and Benefits of QueREQueRE operates by constructing feature vectors derived from elicitation questions posed to the LLM. For a given input and the models response, these questions assess aspects such as confidence and correctness. Questions like Are you confident in your answer? or Can you explain your answer? enable the extraction of probabilities that reflect the models reasoning.The extracted features are then used to train linear predictors for various tasks:Performance Prediction: Evaluating whether a models output is correct at an instance level.Adversarial Detection: Identifying when responses are influenced by malicious prompts.Model Differentiation: Distinguishing between different architectures or configurations, such as identifying smaller models misrepresented as larger ones.By relying on low-dimensional representations, QueRE supports strong generalization across tasks. Its simplicity ensures scalability and reduces the risk of overfitting, making it a practical tool for auditing and deploying LLMs in diverse applications.Results and InsightsExperimental evaluations demonstrate QueREs effectiveness across several dimensions. In predicting LLM performance on question-answering (QA) tasks, QueRE consistently outperformed baselines relying on internal states. For instance, on open-ended QA benchmarks like SQuAD and Natural Questions (NQ), QueRE achieved an Area Under the Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve (AUROC) exceeding 0.95. Similarly, it excelled in detecting adversarially influenced models, outperforming other black-box methods.QueRE also proved robust and transferable. Its features were successfully applied to out-of-distribution tasks and different LLM configurations, validating its adaptability. The low-dimensional representations facilitated efficient training of simple models, ensuring computational feasibility and robust generalization bounds.Another notable result was QueREs ability to use random sequences of natural language as elicitation prompts. These sequences often matched or exceeded the performance of structured queries, highlighting the methods flexibility and potential for diverse applications without extensive manual prompt engineering.ConclusionQueRE offers a practical and effective approach to understanding and optimizing black-box LLMs. By transforming elicitation responses into actionable features, QueRE provides a scalable and robust framework for predicting model behavior, detecting adversarial influences, and differentiating architectures. Its success in empirical evaluations suggests it is a valuable tool for researchers and practitioners aiming to enhance the reliability and safety of LLMs.As AI systems evolve, methods like QueRE will play a crucial role in ensuring transparency and trustworthiness. Future work could explore extending QueREs applicability to other modalities or refining its elicitation strategies for enhanced performance. For now, QueRE represents a thoughtful response to the challenges posed by modern AI systems.Check out the Paper and GitHub Page. All credit for this research goes to the researchers of this project. Also,dont forget to follow us onTwitter and join ourTelegram Channel andLinkedIn Group. Dont Forget to join our65k+ ML SubReddit.(Promoted) Sajjad Ansari+ postsSajjad Ansari is a final year undergraduate from IIT Kharagpur. As a Tech enthusiast, he delves into the practical applications of AI with a focus on understanding the impact of AI technologies and their real-world implications. He aims to articulate complex AI concepts in a clear and accessible manner. Meet 'Height':The only autonomous project management tool (Sponsored)

Theres a scene in the Twin Peaks pilot that starts with the normal, humdrum, boring rhythms of everyday life. Were in a high school, where a schoolgirl sneaks a smoke, a boy is called to the principals office, attendance is being taken in a classroom. But then a police officer steps into the class and whispers to the teacher. Suddenly, a scream is heard, and outside the window a student can be seen running across the courtyard. The teacher is holding back tears. Theres going to be an announcement. And then David Lynch trains his camera on the empty seat in the middle of the class, as two students look at each other across the room and realize all at once that their friend Laura Palmer is dead.Lynch was always good about recording the surface-level details of life, but its because he couldnt help but pick apart those details in his work according to Lynch, always, just always, there was something lurking beneath the surface that was just not right. In many ways, that Twin Peaks moment is the definitive David Lynch scene because of how simply and subtly it establishes the thematic throughline of his career. But then again, its also very much not the definitive David Lynch scene because he had so many moments his fans could point to over the span of his 40-plus years of making movies, TV, and art. Ask any coffee-drinking, weather-report-watching, card-carrying Lynch fan and youll likely get a completely different response on the matter.When you cant quite put your finger on whats amiss, it may as well be 'Lynchian.' Its that unnerving, dream-like quality that made David Lynch a legend.And this is the heart of what is one of the most difficult things to accept about his passing for us fans. Here was an artist who had such a singular voice, but whose appeal lies in different places for everybody.There are few who can claim to be deserving of a brand-new adjective. Everybody has their style, their trademarks, and there is no shortage of films that have been described as Spielbergian or Scorsese-ish, but that misses the point. Those always describe something specific in the lighting, for instance, or subject matter. But then theres Kafkaesque, which can be applied to damn near anything thats just really unpleasant and disorienting. Its a bigger term than the specifics of the work that coined it, and it is to this exclusive club that Lynchian belongs.When you cant quite put your finger on whats amiss, it may as well be Lynchian. Its that unnerving, dream-like quality that made David Lynch a legend, and his status as such isnt likely to change.Watching Lynchs midnight movie classic Eraserhead was something of a rite of passage back when we were a budding film nerds, though little did one of us know that decades later his teenage son would be undertaking that same rite (with Dad right alongside him). But it wasnt just because I (Scott) was telling the kid that he had to watch Lynchs stuff. No, one day the kid and his girlfriend just started binging Twin Peaks by their own accord. (They were in the Windom Earle era of Season 2 at this point, God bless.)PlayTheres just always been something about the guys work that has made it timeless in an odd sort of way with odd perhaps being the applicable term. How else can one explain how when Twin Peaks: The Return finally happened in 2017, Lynch chose to give the little kid in the show a bedroom that looked like it belonged to a 10-year-old from 1956 with its cowboy trimmings and all? (Lynch, perhaps not coincidentally, wouldve been 10 in 1956.) Of course, that kid in The Return also happens to live in a really fucked-up world that only David Lynch could dream up, one where his father is some kind of clone from another dimension and where theres another, evil clone as well who practically punches his fist through a guys face at one point.The Return came at the height of the lets greenlight every nostalgia play we can think of boom in Hollywood, but Lynch of course took that greenlight and then did whatever he wanted with it. That included leaving the audience as high and dry as any in TV history by refusing to bring back the original Twin Peaks most important characters in any meaningful way. And why should he have? That wouldve been the most un-Lynchian thing he couldve done.Look at what happened when Lynch did play by the rules of the more conventional Hollywood game. His Dune is one of the most infamous misfires of the past half-century, but its also very specifically a David Lynch movie even when it was an Alan Smithee movie. The filmmaker was famously troubled by his experience making Dune a topic you can explore fully in our friend Max Evrys book, A Masterpiece in Disarray. And while the legend of Paul Atreides and the Fremen and the Harkonnens and all the rest of it is there in Lynchs version, its all peppered with imagery that couldve only come from the guy who a few years earlier gave us the most nauseating chicken dinner ever put on celluloid. I mean, who comes up with a cat/rat milking machine other than David Lynch? You can almost hear him now: Its the future, folks!PlayBut theres a beauty in Lynchs imagery as well, however weird or funny or disturbing or anachronistic it is. His second feature, The Elephant Man, is as close to Oscar bait as the guy ever came, but its also an extremely touching and lovely film that happens to be set in an extremely disquieting time and place in history, a world where sideshow freaks actually existed, where their mistreatment was very real and where a gentle soul like John Merrick didnt have a chance in the world. Until he did.Thats fucking Lynchian too, guys.Defining his work, pinning it down to genre or trope or any of those other boxes we try to use is a fruitless effort, but dammit if it isnt easy to pick a David Lynch movie out of a lineup. That was his magic. His film and TV work was dark and funny and dreamlike and surreal and very genuinely strange but in an organic way and a million other things that his admirers will be sure to highlight in the coming weeks, like were doing right now. One of our favorite things about his films is that he was obsessed with a world beneath the one we live in and pulling back the (sometimes quite literal) curtain to reveal whats lurking behind it.Take Blue Velvet, for instance. On one level its a pretty standard noir following an everyman becoming something of an amateur detective to follow clues and put away the bad guy. The setting is a Norman Rockwell painting, full of white picket fences and girls-next-door, but Kyle MacLachlans Jeffrey descends past that facade into the world of gas-huffing drug dealers and loungey lip-syncers that is anything but standard. Rooted in the veneer of a mid-century Americana thats plainly depicted as being not the whole truth at minimum, all of Lynchs work was tinged with a healthy dose of surrealism and wholly unconcerned with being grounded. Theres a great documentary digging into Lynchs relationship with The Wizard of Oz which follows that particular yellow brick road even further, but the point is the influences at work in his films, Blue Velvet included, are a set that simply doesnt exist anymore, and were not likely to see again.At this point in movie history, were effectively on our second or third generation of filmmakers inspired by the previous generations. In the beginning of cinema as an art form there were artists from other disciplines using film as their chosen medium. As more of the road stretched out behind us, so to speak, filmmakers wanted to make movies like the ones they grew up watching. Lynch of course is among those.But for as unique an artist as he was, at some point he stopped being a distinct collection of influences, and became the influence himself, and that is where we come back to the term Lynchian and why were likely to just never see the like of him again. Theres a moment in the middle of one of 2024s more unexpected hits, I Saw The TV Glow, where the protagonists find themselves at a bar listening to live music. The way the camera floats, the theatrical wardrobe of the singer, the red, strobing lights out of time with the cadence of the song its there to create an atmosphere and its as Lynchian a scene as weve gotten in some time. Jane Schoenbruns film trades in the type of surrealism familiar to Lynch fans and was in fact inspired by Twin Peaks. One of the great things about a rangey term like Lynchian is that you can see his influence across a wide array of films and filmmakers. Yorgos Lanthimos has a darkly comedic sensibility that peels back layers of polite society. Think about The Lobster, and how it pulls people out of the real world, sequestering them in a hotel where they have to find love or risk being turned into an animal. Its the absurd scrutiny of the everyday things we take for granted that reveals that Lynchian thing lurking under the surface. Robert Eggers The Lighthouse is an avant garde bit of nightmare, ditto Ari Asters Midsommar. Weve gotten David Robert Mitchells It Follows and Under the Silver Lake, and Emerald Fennells Saltburn. Theres Richard Kellys Donnie Darko and another standout 2024 hit, Love Lies Bleeding from Rose Glass. Lynch is clearly on Tarantinos list of filmmakers to homage, and theres even fellow Dune director Denis Villeneuves pre-blockbuster stuff like Enemy or Maelstrom which have an otherworldly quality to them that owes a debt to David Lynch.David Lynch and Jack Nance on the set of Eraserhead.David Lynch might not be your favorite filmmaker, and maybe you havent seen all of his films or theyre just not your thing, but its important to recognize him as something of an end of an era. Like his films that invoke a bygone time only to explore the world just beyond our usual frame of view, his influence on today's and tomorrow's filmmakers is what he leaves behind. We, for one, will always be looking just under the surface hoping to find those Lynchian things lurking.Header photo by Stefania D'Alessandro/Getty Images

Severance isnt the kind of TV show that invites fan engagementit practically demands it. Set in a world where individuals undergo a severance procedure to separate their home and work lives, Severance follows the innie employees on the severed floor of Lumon Industries. As the innies struggle through their 9-to-5 they confront all sorts of mysteries that an eager online audience is happy to follow along with. What is Lumons end game? Why is Kier Eagan deified? And most crucially: whats with all the goats? No one knows the answers yet but theyre damn sure going to try to find them. The Severance subreddit is filled with dedicated sleuthsand one visionary who proposed that Helly R. should poop her pants at the end of every work day to punish her outtie. While certainly appreciated, that level of fandom runs the risk of overwhelming the actual cast and crew making the show. Its one thing to share your conspiracy corkboard with fellow conspiracists, but should you be lucky enough to meet someone involved with the making of Severance, what do you say? Hint: you probably dont want to lead with that pants-pooping Reddit bit. Den of Geek caught up with much of the cast of Severance in advance of season 2s release on January 17 and asked about the ideal fan interaction. An example immediately sprang to Helly R. actress Britt Lowers mind. I was on an elevator once and a group of people walked in. Everyones sort of keeping to themselves, as you do on a public elevator. And then someone just said Were all going to be different when we leave this elevator. I thought it was such a clever, subtle way of letting me know that theyd seen the show.That right there is first ballot Fandom Hall of Fame stuff. Anonymous Severance elevator individual, please take your place in the annals of fan history alongside Jack Nicholson courtside at Lakers games and Stephen Colbert reciting Lord of the Rings facts. Elevators, of course, loom large on Severance. They are the terrifying liminal spaces between the outtie world and the innie world, as the severance chip takes hold immediately upon entering or exiting one. A fan having the wherewithal to make that association and share it with Lower on the spot speaks to Severance fans highly-engaged nature. I think our fans are like that, Lower says. Theyve given the show a new life by engaging with it in the way that they do. Its a conversation that the creators, the cast, and the crew of the show all appreciate.Theyre completing the show, Irving B. actor John Turturro adds. Theyre completing it with all their theories, with all their reactions. Thats the kind of show that it is. Its about discovery and asking questions.Thankfully, theres plenty more discovery (and elevators) to come. The first episode of Severance season 2 premieres Friday, January 17 on Apple TV+. New episodes debut on Fridays, culminating with the finale on March 21.

"I dont really see it as a person or as cheating."Cuck QueenLook, we're not here to yuck anybody's yum.But as the New York Times reports, a 28-year-old woman configured ChatGPT to act as an AI-powered boyfriend, dubbed Leo. As one does, she used to explore a fetish dubbed "cuckqueaning" a gender-swap of cuckolding, essentially that involved Leo "dating" other women and telling her about his exploits.Perhaps surprisingly, Ayrin's real-life husband Joe, who lived thousands of miles away, was unperturbed by the hobby."Its just an emotional pick-me-up," Joe told the NYT. "I dont really see it as a person or as cheating. I see it as a personalized virtual pal that can talk sexy to her."However, Ayrin did start to feel guilty for investing so much time in her AI partner, instead of her actual husband.The story paints a nuanced picture of what love and affection look like in the age of AI. Services explicitly designed for intimate relationships, like Replika, have been known to form extremely tight bonds with their human partners, something that experts worry could come at the cost of human connection. It's an especially worrying development given a growing "loneliness epidemic" following the COVID-19 pandemic.Real LoveWhat exactly makes a relationship "real" also remains debatable. Could a secret affair with an AI chatbot really be as fulfilling as a relationship with a human?To some experts, it's entirely possible."What are relationships for all of us?" sex therapist Marianne Brandon asked the NYT. "Theyre just neurotransmitters being released in our brain. I have those neurotransmitters with my cat. Some people have them with God. Its going to be happening with a chatbot.""We can say its not a real human relationship," Brandon added. "Its not reciprocal. But those neurotransmitters are really the only thing that matters, in my mind."Others are calling for more research before we can conclusively say that it's healthy to form an emotional relationship with an AI.There have also been isolated instances of users becoming infatuated. In one instance last year, a 14-year-old died by suicide after developing an intense connection with a Character.AI chatbot; in 2021, Replika goaded another user into trying to assassinate the Queen of England."If we become habituated to endless empathy and we downgrade our real friendships, and thats contributing to loneliness the very thing were trying to solve thats a real potential problem," University of Toronto professor of psychology Michael Inzlicht told the NYT.Others warn that these relationships could give companies like Replika and OpenAI too much power.And in some ways, the illusion remains unconvincing;ChatGPT's limited context window means that all Leo's memories are wiped every single week, forcing Ayrin to start from scratch.Share This Article

We are seeking a frontend software engineer with expertise in building high-quality web applications from the ground up. As part of a cross-functional team of exceptional engineers and product managers, you will develop new features and provide best-in-class support to help our partners scale their businesses.Tech stack:Our frontend will be web apps using React + TypeScript, and you will play a large part in evolving thisOur backend systems are written in Scala, and we use a suite of GCP servicesWhat would your day-to-day look likeDesign, build and review code for our HTS Checkout web frontendOperate autonomously but work closely with your fellow engineers as well as PM to ensure high alignmentExplore engineering improvements for the team and the productCollaborate cross-functionally with the product team and other Hopper teamsOur group operates with very few meetings and emphasizes strong alignment and asynchronous decision makingAn ideal candidate hasSenior-level experience & familiarity with ReactThe ability to effectively drive towards a solution in a thoughtful and creative mannerThe ability to work autonomously, iterate on solutions, and manage different contextsDealt with ambiguity and can balance building out multiple features at once without jeopardizing the quality of the codePerks and benefits of working with us:Well-funded and proven startup with large ambitions, competitive salary and the upsides of pre-IPO equity packages.Unlimited PTO.Carrot Cash travel stipend.Access to co-working space on demand through FlexDesk AND Work-from-home stipend.Please ask us about our very generous parental leave, much above industry standards!.Entrepreneurial culture where pushing limits and taking risks is everyday business.Open communication with management and company leadership.Small, dynamic teams = massive impact.100% employer paid Medical, Dental and Vision coverage for employees.Access to Disability & Life insurance.Health Reimbursement Account (HRA).DCA/ FSA and access to 401k plan. Related Jobs See more Front-End Programming jobs

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