Connect with us

Technology

Discord might use AI to help you catch up on conversations

Published

on

Discord might use AI to help you catch up on conversations

Discord has become the place for gaming communities on the internet. The company just celebrated its 10th anniversary, and its impact is now big enough that it’s available directly on PlayStation and Xbox and was ripped off by Nintendo for the Switch 2’s GameChat.

But as it tries to grow, one of the big challenges Discord faces is that, for big or longer-running communities, it can be hard to know where to start, hard to catch up to the speed of real-time conversations, and hard to sift through the potentially huge amounts of conversations and channels. A lot of communities used to form around forums, but Discord just isn’t a good replacement for that kind of structured messaging, as covered by Aftermath’s Luke Plunkett.

“This is something we want to solve,” Peter Sellis, Discord’s SVP of product, tells The Verge. “It is not our intention to lock a bunch of this knowledge into Discord.”

One way Discord wants to tackle the problem is add features that are “more amicable to structured knowledge sharing, like forums, that we could probably do a better job of investing in and is something we want to do for game developers,” Sellis says.

Another involves LLMs. “There’s an incredible opportunity now with large language models and their ability to summarize conversations,” he says. That could help Discord take a long conversation between multiple people — “what is essentially a really poorly structured shareable object,” he says — and boil it down to “something that could be more shareable and then potentially syndicated to the web.”

Advertisement

Sellis couldn’t share many other details, and couldn’t give a timeline for when any of this might be ready: “I haven’t seen a solution that we feel great about yet.”

Discord wants to do it right, he says — especially because a solution that makes information more easily accessible outside of Discord could involve a lot of work for server moderators and admins. “We have a very sensitive radar for stuff that causes them a bunch of work that doesn’t give them the return they need,” he says. (It’s wise not to piss off your moderators.)

None of this was imminent, if it even happens at all. That said, “I assure you that this is something that people within Discord feel the pain of themselves,” Sellis says. “And when our engineers and product designers and product managers feel it personally, they generally want to solve it.”

Another big challenge Discord faces is how to build the product to serve both the needs of giant community servers and the tiny servers where groups hang out — especially when, according to Discord, 90 percent of “all activity on Discord” happens in “small, intimate servers.”

Sellis calls it “one of the biggest challenges for the team” — but also says that it’s “honestly the biggest opportunity.” He says that Discord thinks about how it can make people “feel comfortable in both these spaces, understand that there are different types of spaces, and the technology is familiar, but still different in both of these places.”

Advertisement

Sellis says that the biggest Discord server is Midjourney, a key company in text-to-AI image generation that lets you generate visuals right inside Discord. Midjourney became popular because it turned the “single-player game” of generating AI images into a multiplayer community. “You can just watch people try things, experiment, fail, succeed, embarrass themselves, etc. And that made it kind of like a collective action.”

He says Discord is seeing something similar with the recently launched Wordle app on the platform, too, which lets you compete with your friends.

That all speaks to some of Discord’s larger vision. Sellis is seeing a trend that “everything is starting to kind of look like a game” and “Discord can be used as a social layer on any game to essentially improve its engagement, its socialness, and its multiplayer capacity. That’s something we like and are going to lean into.”

And as for Nintendo’s GameChat? “I would say imitation is a very sincere form of flattery,” Sellis says. “Hard to imagine being more flattered than being copied by Nintendo.”

Advertisement

Technology

Valve’s huge SteamOS 3.8 update adds long-awaited features — and supports Steam Machine

Published

on

Valve’s huge SteamOS 3.8 update adds long-awaited features — and supports Steam Machine

Not only is it the first release to support the upcoming Steam Machine living room gaming PC, it comes with long-awaited features for Valve’s handhelds and more support for other companies’ handhelds than we’ve seen to date — including Microsoft and Asus’ Xbox Ally series, the Lenovo Legion Go 2, the OneXPlayer X1, and additional support for MSI, GPD, Anbernic, OrangePi, and Zotac.

The one that excites me most: Valve is adding genuine hibernation and “memory power down” modes to the Steam Deck — though just the LCD model to start — which should help extend battery life when you hit the power button or leave them idle. Some Windows machines currently last longer than the Steam Deck when asleep, because they self-hibernate to save power, while the Steam Deck has an instant-on sleep mode.

Plus, Valve has finally added a setting in its gaming mode to let you use your Bluetooth headset microphones — something I’ve been asking for since the beginning. (Valve did add it to the Linux desktop mode last year.) And the Steam Deck LCD is finally getting Bluetooth Wake re-enabled, so you can turn on your TV-connected Deck with a wireless controller from your couch.

The update comes with all sorts of improvements for the Linux desktop modes that sound like they’ll come in handy on a Steam Machine plugged into a TV or monitor, too, including desktop HDR, VRR display support, per-display scaling, “improved windowing behavior for games running in Proton,” and an upgrade to KDE Plasma 6.4.3 among other things.

And for a Steam Machine or Steam handheld plugged into a home entertainment system, they can now detect how many audio channels you have over HDMI to enable surround sound. (I believe surround sound was already a thing, so perhaps this is just a different and better automatic implementation.)

Advertisement

There’s also a new Arch system base and an updated graphics driver.

Perhaps most surprisingly, the “Non-Deck” section of the changelog is huge. Valve says long-pressing your power button should work “across a wide variety of devices” to power off, restart, or switch to the desktop mode. You should be able to change your processor’s power modes on the Xbox Ally now, and night mode and screen color settings should work on AMD Z2 Extreme handhelds in general.

There’s also “Greatly improved video memory management with discrete GPU platforms,” you can limit how far the battery charges in any of the Lenovo Legion Go handhelds (in desktop mode), and it should fix “washed out colors for Zotac and OneXPlayer handhelds with OLED.”

There’s a lot in this update, and it’s possible I missed a feature you care about, so check out the whole changelog here and below.

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Technology

Fox News AI Newsletter: Wall-climbing robots swarm US Navy warships

Published

on

Fox News AI Newsletter: Wall-climbing robots swarm US Navy warships

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

Welcome to Fox News’ Artificial Intelligence newsletter with the latest AI technology advancements.

IN TODAY’S NEWSLETTER:

WATCH: Wall-climbing robot swarms crawl US Navy warships as China’s fleet surges

OPINION: AI comes with a hefty charge, and you are the one who gets stuck with the bill

Advertisement

Dell workforce shrinks 10% for third consecutive year

Swarms of wall-climbing robots will soon be crawling across U.S. Navy warships in a $71 million effort to slash repair delays and boost fleet readiness as China continues expanding its naval power.  (Gecko Robotics )

TECH AT SEA: WATCH: wall-climbing robot swarms crawl US Navy warships as China’s fleet surgesFox News Digital reports on a new development in naval technology, featuring wall-climbing robot swarms that are crawling on U.S. Navy warships. This advancement comes at a critical time in defense politics as China’s naval fleet continues to surge in size and capability.

WALLET SHOCK: OPINION: AI comes with a hefty charge, and you are the one who gets stuck with the bill – In this opinion piece, the author discusses the economic implications of the growing artificial intelligence industry. The article argues that the hefty costs associated with AI development and its massive energy infrastructure will ultimately be passed down, leaving everyday consumers to foot the bill.

Dell Technologies headquarters in Round Rock, Texas, US, on Sunday, Nov. 26, 2023.  (Sergio Flores/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Advertisement

COST CRUNCH: Dell workforce shrinks 10% for third consecutive year – Fox Business reports that Dell’s workforce has shrunk by ten percent. This marks the third consecutive year of workforce reductions for the major technology company amid shifting economic conditions and corporate restructuring.

AIMING HIGH: FULL AUTONOMY: AI pilot technology advances towards military capability – Merlin CEO Matt George details how the company is using artificial intelligence to enable military and commercial aircraft to operate fully autonomously on Fox Business’ ‘The Claman Countdown.’

Single family homes in a residential neighborhood in San Marcos, Texas, US, on Tuesday, March 12, 2024. (Photographer: Jordan Vonderhaar/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

SHOULD I BUY?: Homebuyers, sellers turning to AI chatbots for advice – Prairie Operating Co.’s Lou Basenese and real estate broker Kirsten Jordan discuss how artificial intelligence is impacting homebuyers and sellers on ‘Fox Business In Depth.’

DISRUPTION IS HERE: Charles Payne: AI disruption is here – Fox Business host Charles Payne discusses the economic impact of the rise in artificial intelligence on ‘Making Money.’

Advertisement

BUILDING HER BUSINESS: How Angie Hicks turned Angi into a home services giant and AI player – Angi co-founder Angie Hicks discusses entrepreneurship, company growth and how she built out her business on ‘Mornings with Maria.’

FOLLOW FOX NEWS ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Facebook
Instagram
YouTube
X
LinkedIn

SIGN UP FOR OUR OTHER NEWSLETTERS

Fox News First
Fox News Opinion
Fox News Lifestyle
Fox News Health

DOWNLOAD OUR APPS

Fox News
Fox Business
Fox Weather
Fox Sports
Tubi

WATCH FOX NEWS ONLINE

Fox News Go

Advertisement

STREAM FOX NATION

Fox Nation

Stay up to date on the latest AI technology advancements, and learn about the challenges and opportunities AI presents now and for the future with Fox News here.

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Technology

A rogue AI led to a serious security incident at Meta

Published

on

A rogue AI led to a serious security incident at Meta

For almost two hours last week, Meta employees had unauthorized access to company and user data thanks to an AI agent that gave an employee inaccurate technical advice, as previously reported by The Information. Meta spokesperson Tracy Clayton said in a statement to The Verge that “no user data was mishandled” during the incident.

A Meta engineer was using an internal AI agent, which Clayton described as “similar in nature to OpenClaw within a secure development environment,” to analyze a technical question another employee posted on an internal company forum. But the agent also independently publicly replied to the question after analyzing it, without getting approval first. The reply was only meant to be shown to the employee who requested it, not posted publicly.

An employee then acted on the AI’s advice, which “provided inaccurate information” that led to a “SEV1” level security incident, the second-highest severity rating Meta uses. The incident temporarily allowed employees to access sensitive data they were not authorized to view, but the issue has since been resolved.

According to Clayton, the AI agent involved didn’t take any technical action itself, beyond posting inaccurate technical advice, something a human could have also done. A human, however, might have done further testing and made a more complete judgment call before sharing the information — and it’s not clear whether the employee who originally prompted the answer planned to post it publicly.

“The employee interacting with the system was fully aware that they were communicating with an automated bot. This was indicated by a disclaimer noted in the footer and by the employee’s own reply on that thread,” Clayton commented to The Verge. “The agent took no action aside from providing a response to a question. Had the engineer that acted on that known better, or did other checks, this would have been avoided.”

Advertisement

Last month, an AI agent from open source platform OpenClaw went more directly rogue at Meta when an employee asked it to sort through emails in her inbox, deleting emails without permission. The whole idea behind agents like OpenClaw is that they can take action on their own, but like any other AI model, they don’t always interpret prompts and instructions correctly or give accurate responses, a fact Meta employees have now discovered twice.

Continue Reading

Trending