Today in Tech

In our weekly technology news roundup, the Today in Tech crew chats about a report suggesting that demand for AI devices, hardware and servers will cause a global semiconductor and chip shortage. Analyst Jack Gold joins the show to discuss this and the potential rumors around Qualcomm and Intel merging, as well as Meta’s new AR/VR and AI offerings, and what’s going on with OpenAI and the potential for a Jony Ive-designed stand-alone generative AI device.

Some very high-profile headlines around the use of generative AI by lawyers, courtrooms banning the technology and concerns about the accuracy of results are giving many in the legal space a chance to re-evaluate whether the technology is beneficial. Ken Crutchfield, vice president and general manager of Legal Markets, Wolters Kluwer, chats with Keith about different ways lawyers are beginning to use generative AI tools, and whether we will see some innovative examples of the technology in the future.

In our weekly technology news roundup, the gang discusses Amazon’s new return-to-the-office mandate for a full five-day workweek, how OpenAI’s new ‘reasoning’ model is still producing some “fibbery”, and how companies keep trying to push new AR glasses on a skeptical market. Analyst Jack Gold joins the show as guest co-host to discuss these and other news items.

Is the next phase of artificial intelligence now here? OpenAI’s new ‘reasoning model’ expands the technology that is trained to answer more complex questions in math, science and coding. Meanwhile, the death of James Earl Jones has raised the spotlight on whether the voice of Darth Vader will live on through AI technologies. Analyst Jack Gold joins the show this week as guest co-host to discuss these tech news stories and others.

The integration of generative AI with general-purpose and public-facing robots will enable companies to provide friendlier robots that assist humans with physical tasks, in addition to lessening any fears and other dystopian attitudes towards a robotic and AI future. Jerome Monceaux, founder and CEO of Enchanted tools, talks with Keith about the future of physical robots, as well as whether AI avatars will also be more human-looking or character driven.

Apple made a big splash with new iPhone models, watches and updated Airpods, but the big question on everyone’s minds was the AI features. What would they be like, when is it coming? Computerworld’s Ken Mingis and Macworld’s Michael Simon discuss the Apple ‘Glowtime’ event with Keith and Chris on our latest episode.

Despite some feelings of disillusionment around generative AI technologies, there continues to remain large investments in the space. Brandon Mahne, guest co-host, joins Keith and Chris to discuss the $1 billion of investment in Safe Superintelligence (SSI), Anthropic expanding to the enterprise, and OpenAI considering raising subscription pricing for its new large language models. The three also discuss failures of the streaming service advertising platforms, right on the cusp of political ads invading these services, and whether gamers will be able to play top games on AI-based PCs.

With a more than 10x explosion in the number of available large language models (LLMs) for companies looking to deploy a generative AI projects, you might assume that all of the models “are basically the same.” Vikram Chatterji, co-founder and CEO at Galileo, joins the show to discuss the major differences between LLMs and what parameters companies need to explore before choosing one for their project.

Both Apple and Microsoft are in talks with OpenAI to help the generative artificial intelligence company raise additional funds, which could make the company valued at over $100 billion. Will the extra cash mean that the company can improve its large language models to make genAI more useful? Brandon Mahne, guest co-host and CTO at Glasshouse, joins the show to discuss this and other technology news from the week, including whether we think sunlight “on demand” is brilliant or foolhardy.

The massive outage that occurred in July via CrowdStrike and Microsoft has put a lot of IT teams on notice, with leaders thinking about “what’s next?” Krishna Prasad, CIO and Chief Strategy Officer at UST, joins the show to discuss what tech leaders need to do in order to prepare and prevent possible bad recovery processes for future tech outages.