For February’s Patch Tuesday, Microsoft rolls out 63 updates

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Microsoft released 63 patches for Windows, Microsoft Office, and developer platforms in this week’s Patch Tuesday update. The February release was a relatively light update, but it comes with significant testing requirements for networking and remote desktop environments. 

Two zero-day Windows patches (CVE-2025-21391 and CVE-2025-21418) have been reported as exploited and another Windows update (CVE-2025-21377) has been publicly disclosed — meaning IT admins get a “Patch Now” recommendation for this month’s Windows updates. (All other Microsoft platforms can be handled with a standard update schedule — and there were no updates for Microsoft Exchange and SQL Server.)

To navigate these changes, the team from Readiness has provided a detailed infographic exploring the deployment risks.

(For information on the last six months of Patch Tuesday releases, see our round-up here.)

Known issues 

Microsoft identified three ongoing issues affecting users of Windows 10, Citrix, and Windows Server 2022 this month, including:

Windows 10/11 and Sever 2022: Enterprise Windows customers are still reporting SSH connection issues since the October 2024 update. Microsoft is investigating the issue, but has no published fixes or mitigating actions. It’s a challenge for Microsoft since the service failure does not generate logs or error messages.

Citrix: Microsoft’s January updates — and potentially this month’s releases — are still affected by the Citrix Session Recording Agent (SRA) preventing the successful installation of Microsoft patches. This is an ongoing issue with no fixes yet, though we expect the number of users affected is much lower than the SSH service issue.

Microsoft’s System Guard Runtime Monitor Broker Service (SGMBS) may be causing system level crashes and telemetry issues with the event viewer log since last month’s Patch Tuesday release. Microsoft technical support has offered a registry level change to update the service and mitigate the issue. We expect an update from Microsoft later this month on a more permanent resolution. 

Major revisions and mitigations

As of Feb. 14, the Readiness team has not received any published revisions or updates. Microsoft did offer a mitigation for a serious vulnerability in Microsoft Outlook (CVE-2025-21298). Perhaps less helpful than you’d expect, Microsoft recommends viewing emails in plain text to mitigate this critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability, which could otherwise grant attackers control over the target system.

Windows lifecycle and enforcement updates

Microsoft published no enforcement updates this month, but the following products are nearing  their end-of-service life cycles:

Windows 11 Enterprise and Education, Version 22H2 — Oct. 14, 2025

Windows Server Annual Channel, Version 23H2 — Oct. 24, 2025

Windows 11 Home and Pro, Version 23H2 — Nov. 11, 2025

Each month, the Readiness team provides detailed, actionable testing guidance for the latest Patch Tuesday updates based on assessing a large app portfolio and a offering comprehensive analyses of the patches and their potential impact on Windows and application deployments.

For this cycle, we grouped the critical updates and required testing efforts into different functional areas, including:

Networking and Remote Desktop services

Winsock: Microsoft advises that a multipoint socket (type c_root) is created and employed with the following operations: bind, connect, and listen. The socket should close successfully.

DHCP: Create test scenarios to validate Windows DHCP client operations (discover, offer, request, and acknowledgment (ACK)).

RDP: Ensure that you can configure Microsoft RRAS servers through netsh commands.

ICS: Ensure that Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) can be configured over Wi-Fi.

FAX/Telephony: Ensure that your test scenarios include TAPI (Telephony Application Programming Interface) initialization and shutdown operations. Since these tests require an extended runtime, allocate extra time for them.

Local Windows File System and storage

Ensure that File Explorer correctly renders URL file icons. Microsoft recommends testing the Storage Sense clean-up tool. If disk quotas are enabled, confirm that all I/O workloads function as expected.

Local and domain security

Domain controllers should continue to support certificate logons after applying the updates.

Kerberos: Microsoft recommends creating authentication scenarios for domain-joined systems, using local and encrypted login methods.

If you have the time and resources (VMs and networking), the Readiness team strongly recommends building a test Remote Desktop environment that includes a connection broker, remote desktop gateway, and remote desktops on virtual machines. After setting up each component, verify that all RDP connections are established successfully.

This month, testing Microsoft’s ICS functionality requires an extended test plan covering the following areas:

Usability testing: Create test scenarios to verify that the process of enabling/disabling ICS functions as expected.

Validation: Microsoft recommends confirming that Network Address Translation (NAT) correctly translates private IP addresses to that of the shared connection.

Security: Ensure that ICS traffic adheres to existing firewall rules and does not create unintended security risks.

Each month, we break down the update cycle into product families (as defined by Microsoft) with the following basic groupings: 

Browsers (Microsoft IE and Edge) 

Microsoft Windows (both desktop and server) 

Microsoft Office

Microsoft Exchange and SQL Server 

Microsoft Developer Tools (Visual Studio and .NET)

Adobe (if you get this far) 

Browsers

Microsoft released a larger-than-normal number of patches for the Edge browser this month — 10, all rated important. These updates are a mix of Chromium (CVE-2025-0444, CVE-2025-0445 and CVE-2025-0451) and Edge patches that deal with memory related security vulnerabilities. All of these low-profile changes can be added to your standard release calendar.

Microsoft Windows

These areas have been updated with two critical patches and 35 important patches this patch cycle:

Win32 and Kernel Services

Remote Desktop, RAS  and Internet Connection Sharing (ICS)

Kerberos, DHCP  and Windows Networking

Microsoft Active Directory and Windows Installer

Though the Windows NTLM patch (CVE-2025-21377) has been rated important, it has been publicly disclosed. Two more updates (both rated important) affecting storage (CVE-2025-21391) and networking (CVE-2025-21418) have reportedly been exploited in the wild. These reports raise the stakes for an otherwise low-profile Windows update, so the Readiness team recommends a “Patch Now” schedule for these.

Microsoft Office

Microsoft released a single critical update for Microsoft Excel and nine more rated as important for Microsoft Office and the SharePoint platforms. None of these  vulnerabilities have been reported as exploited or publicly disclosed. So, add these Office updates to your standard release calendar.

Microsoft Exchange and SQL Server

No updates were released for either Microsoft Exchange or SQL Server this month. 

Developer Tools

Microsoft released four updates to Microsoft Visual Studio, all of which are rated important. One of these updates (CVE-2023-32002) may look a little odd as the date refers to 2023, not 2025. However, it appears legitimate. Though it has been categorized under Microsoft’s Visual Studio product grouping, this patch attempts to resolve a vulnerability in Node.js. Add these updates (even the funny looking ones) to your standard developer release schedule.

Adobe (and 3rd party updates)

Microsoft did not push out any Adobe updates. However, HackerOne required a patch to the developer framework Node.js to resolve a network related vulnerability (CVE-2025-21418). 

Source:: Computer World

AI that isolates instruments in any song is bringing my musical dreams to life

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By Siôn Geschwindt “For the third time, stop tapping!” my primary school teacher screams at me from across the room. I must not have heard her the first two times. I’d been drumming on the desk again, using my fingers for sticks and the floor beneath for a kick drum. While my body was in maths class, my mind was elsewhere.   It was 1970. I was John Bonham, drummer of legendary rock band Led Zeppelin, on stage at the Royal Albert Hall, performing “Moby Dick” — one of the most iconic drum solos of all time. The lights are low, the atmosphere electric,…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

Europe has twice as many climate tech startups as the US — but there’s a catch

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By Siôn Geschwindt Europe is home to twice as many climate tech startups as the US (30,000 vs. 14,300). However, limited access to VC funding is forcing these early-stage companies to seek capital from outside the continent, according to a new report released at the Munich Security Conference today. Venture financing in Europe averaged just 0.2% of GDP between 2013 and 2023, a fraction of the US average of 0.7%. While the continent is great at creating clean tech companies, it’s not so good at funding them.  The authors of The Importance of Climate Tech for European Resilience report — the World Fund,…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

Customize Google Chrome: How To Change Background & Enable Dark Mode

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By Hisan Kidwai Every day, we open Google to search for something dozens of times, only to be greeted…
The post Customize Google Chrome: How To Change Background & Enable Dark Mode appeared first on Fossbytes.

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How to Add Page Numbers in Google Docs?

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By Deepti Pathak Page numbers help keep your work organized and make it simpler to refer to, whether it’s…
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Adobe Firefly expands with ‘commercially safe’ video generator

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Adobe has released a video generator in public beta in its generative AI (genAI) tool, Adobe Firefly. The company calls the tool the first “commercially safe” video generator on the market. It has been trained on licensed content and public domain material, meaning it should not be able to generate material that could infringe someone else’s copyright.

Firefly can generate clips either from text instructions or by combining a reference image with text instructions. There are also settings to customize things such as camera angles, movements, and distances.

A paid subscription is required to use the video generator. Firefly Standard, which costs about $11 a month, gives access to 2000 credits; that should be enough for 20 five-second videos with a 1080p picture resolution and a frame rate of 24 frames per second.

Firefly Pro, which costs three times more than the standard version, allows a user 7000 credits, which should be enough for 70 five-second clips in 1080p at 24 frames per second.

Adobe plans to eventually release a model for videos with lower resolution but faster image updates, as well as a model with 4k resolution for Pro users.

Source:: Computer World

Mistral CEO: Europe must ‘own and operate’ its AI infrastructure

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By Siôn Geschwindt Mistral CEO and co-founder Arthur Mensch has urged Europe to invest more in AI infrastructure amid fears that the continent is falling behind the US and China in tech development. “It’s important to have European players coming to the game,” Mensch said at the Visionaries Unplugged conference in Paris yesterday. “Europe needs to invest in owning and operating the infrastructure so that the money that is being made will not just go back to the hyperscalers in the US.” Mensch was joined at the conference by a cohort of tech luminaries, including DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman,…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

How to Create a Hanging Indent in Google Docs?

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By Deepti Pathak Creating a hanging indent in Google Docs is a simple yet helpful formatting tool, especially when…
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AI chatbots outperform doctors in diagnosing patients, study finds

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Chatbots quickly surpassed human physicians in diagnostic reasoning — the crucial first step in clinical care — according to a new study published in the journal Nature Medicine.

The study suggests physicians who have access to large language models (LLMs), which underpin generative AI (genAI) chatbots, demonstrate improved performance on several patient care tasks compared to colleagues without access to the technology.

The study also found that physicians using chatbots spent more time on patient cases and made safer decisions than those without access to the genAI tools.

The research, undertaken by more than a dozen physicians at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), showed genAI has promise as an “open-ended decision-making” physician partner.

“However, this will require rigorous validation to realize LLMs’ potential for enhancing patient care,” said Dr. Adam Rodman, director of AI Programs at BIDMC. “Unlike diagnostic reasoning, a task often with a single right answer, which LLMs excel at, management reasoning may have no right answer and involves weighing trade-offs between inherently risky courses of action.”

The conclusions were based on evaluations about the decision-making capabilities of 92 physicians as they worked through five hypothetical patient cases. They focused on the physicians’ management reasoning, which includes decisions on testing, treatment, patient preferences, social factors, costs, and risks.

When responses to their hypothetical patient cases were scored, the physicians using a chatbot scored significantly higher than those using conventional resources only. Chatbot users also spent more time per case — by nearly two minutes — and they had a lower risk of mild-to-moderate harm compared to those using conventional resources (3.7% vs. 5.3%). Severe harm ratings, however, were similar between groups.

“My theory,” Rodman said, “[is] the AI improved management reasoning in patient communication and patient factors domains; it did not affect things like recognizing complications or medication decisions. We used a high standard for harm — immediate harm — and poor communication is unlikely to cause immediate harm.”

An earlier 2023 study by Rodman and his colleagues yielded promising, yet cautious, conclusions about the role of genAI technology. They found it was “capable of showing the equivalent or better reasoning than people throughout the evolution of clinical case.”

That data, published in Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), used a common testing tool used to assess physicians’ clinical reasoning. The researchers recruited 21 attending physicians and 18 residents, who worked through 20 archived (not new) clinical cases in four stages of diagnostic reasoning, writing and justifying their differential diagnoses at each stage.

The researchers then performed the same tests using ChatGPT based on the GPT-4 LLM. The chatbot followed the same instructions and used the same clinical cases. The results were both promising and concerning.

The chatbot scored highest in some measures on the testing tool, with a median score of 10/10, compared to 9/10 for attending physicians and 8/10 for residents. While diagnostic accuracy and reasoning were similar between humans and the bot, the chatbot had more instances of incorrect reasoning. “This highlights that AI is likely best used to augment, not replace, human reasoning,” the study concluded.

Simply put, in some cases “the bots were also just plain wrong,” the report said.

Rodman said he isn’t sure why the genAI study pointed to more errors in the earlier study. “The checkpoint is different [in the new study], so hallucinations might have improved, but they also vary by task,” he said. “ Our original study focused on diagnostic reasoning, a classification task with clear right and wrong answers. Management reasoning, on the other hand, is highly context-specific and has a range of acceptable answers.”

A key difference from the original study is the researchers are now comparing two groups of humans — one using AI and one not — while the original work compared AI to humans directly. “We did collect a small AI-only baseline, but the comparison was done with a multi-effects model. So, in this case, everything is mediated through people,” Rodman said.

Researcher and lead study author Dr. Stephanie Cabral, a third-year internal medicine resident at BIDMC, said more research is needed on how LLMs can fit into clinical practice, “but they could already serve as a useful checkpoint to prevent oversight.

“My ultimate hope is that AI will improve the patient-physician interaction by reducing some of the inefficiencies we currently have and allow us to focus more on the conversation we’re having with our patients,” she said.

The latest study involved a newer, upgraded version of GPT-4, which could explain some of the variations in results.

To date, AI in healthcare has mainly focused on tasks such as portal messaging, according to Rodman. But chatbots could enhance human decision-making, especially in complex tasks.

“Our findings show promise, but rigorous validation is needed to fully unlock their potential for improving patient care,” he said. “This suggests a future use for LLMs as a helpful adjunct to clinical judgment. Further exploration into whether the LLM is merely encouraging users to slow down and reflect more deeply, or whether it is actively augmenting the reasoning process would be valuable.”

The chatbot testing will now enter the next of two follow-on phases, the first of which has already produced new raw data to be analyzed by the researchers, Rodman said. The researchers will begin looking at varying user interaction, where they study different types of chatbots, different user interfaces, and doctor education about using LLMs (such as more specific prompt design) in controlled environments to see how performance is affected.The second phase will also involve real-time patient data, not archived patient cases.

“We are also studying [human computer interaction] using secure LLMs — so [it’s] HIPAA complaint — to see how these effects hold in the real world,” he said.

Source:: Computer World

Latest Blox Fruits Codes (February 2025)

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By Hisan Kidwai Blox Fruits is one of the most popular games on Roblox, and for good reason. Inspired…
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Hollywood AI pioneer Flawless launches new editing tool

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By Thomas Macaulay AI took another step into Hollywood today with the launch of a new filmmaking tool from showbiz startup Flawless. The product — named DeepEditor — promises cinematic wizardry for the digital age. For movie makers, the tool offers photorealistic edits without a costly return to set. Flawless has showcased several use cases. One transfers an actor’s performance from one shot to another. Another adds new dialogue while keeping the original scene. The character’s lip movements are synchronised with the updated words. Users can also trim lines, insert pauses, and re-time delivery. Every edit is delivered in 4K resolution. The results…This story continues at The Next Web

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AI company Ross Intelligence loses copyright fight with Thomson Reuters

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A US judge has ruled in favor of Thomson Reuters in a AI training fight against Ross Intelligence, a legal AI startup, according to The Verge. Thomson Reuters sued Ross Intelligence in 2020 for using the company’s legal research platform Westlaw to train Ross Intelligence’s AI without permission. Westlaw indexes large amounts of non-copyrighted material, but mixes it with its own content.

Ross Intelligence argued that the training should be classified under “fair use” practices, but the judge disagreed. Instead, the court held that Ross Intelligence’s use of the copyrighted material affected its original value because the company intended to develop a direct competitor.

The ruling is significant because it could have implications for future cases where copyrighted material is used for AI training. One wrinkle: this particular case concerned non-generative AI, which is not the same as generative AI used in large language models to create new material based on previous training data.

Source:: Computer World

BBC: Chatbots distort the facts about news

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It’s already known that today’s generative AI (genAI) tools often have trouble with basic facts. Now, it’s clear they don’t well with current events either.

That’s the upshot of a test by the BBC, which asked ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini and Perplexity to answer 100 questions using BBC articles as a source; more than half of the answers (51%) were wrong.

One in five answers (19%) were based on directly incorrect facts — and 13% of quotes had been modified from the source.cFor example, the AI tools believe that Rishi Sunak is still the UK’s Prime Minister, and they gave the wrong death date for TV personality Michael Mosley.

“The price of AI’s extraordinary benefits must not be a world where people searching for answers are served distorted, faulty content that appears to be fact,” Deborah Turness, managing director of BBC News, wrote. “In what can feel like a chaotic world, it really can’t be right that consumers seeking clarity are met with yet more confusion.”

Source:: Computer World

Best Nintendo Switch Emulators for Steam Deck

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By Hisan Kidwai Nintendo has been the king of the handheld console market, with the Switch selling over 140…
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Explained: What Does GTD Mean in the NBA? 

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By Deepti Pathak If you’ve ever checked an NBA injury report, you might have encountered the term “GTD” next…
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‘Worrying’ decline in Dutch startups sparks call for extra growth capital

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By Thomas Macaulay Stalling growth in the Dutch tech sector has sparked urgent calls for fresh funding streams. New data released today reveals the number of new startups in the Netherlands is declining. The country is also suffering from a severe lack of local investors.  The findings emerged in the State of Dutch Tech report by Techleap, a non-profit that supports startups and scaleups in the Netherlands.  The report raises concerns about the nation’s funding landscape. In 2024, only 104 startups raised over €100,000 — a 23% decline over the previous year. The number of deals, meanwhile, dropped by 20%. Myrthe Hooijman, Techleap’s…This story continues at The Next Web

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Can you detect these deepfakes? 99.9% can’t, claims biometrics leader iProov

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By Thomas Macaulay Deepfakes have become alarmingly difficult to detect. So difficult, that only 0.1% of people today can identify them. That’s according to iProov, a British biometric authentication firm. The company tested the public’s AI detective skills by showing 2,000 UK and US consumers a collection of both genuine and synthetic content. Sadly, the budding sleuths overwhelmingly failed in their investigations. A woeful 99.9% of them couldn’t distinguish between the real and the deepfake. Think you can do better, Sherlock? You’re not the only one. In iProov’s study, over 60% of the participants were confident in their AI detection skills — regardless…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

Paris AI Action Summit: US and UK refuse to sign accord

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The escalating electricity demands of artificial intelligence systems are raising concerns about the technology’s sustainability — but that’s apparently of little concern to the governments of the US and the UK.

They were among the invitees at the Paris AI Action Summit that refused to sign the “Statement on Inclusive and Sustainable Artificial Intelligence for People and the Planet,” the summit’s final declaration. The statement did win the approval of 58 countries, including China and India, and two supranational groups, the 27-member European Union (EU) and the 55-member African Union.

That’s more than signed the Bletchley Declaration by countries attending the AI Safety Summit organized by the UK in November 2023. The US and UK did sign that, as did the EU, China, and India, among others.

Signatories of the Paris summit statement agreed on six priorities:

Promoting AI accessibility to reduce digital divides

Ensuring AI is open, inclusive, transparent, ethical, safe, secure, and trustworthy, taking into account international frameworks for all

Making innovation in AI thrive by enabling conditions for its development and avoiding market concentration driving industrial recovery and development

Encouraging AI deployment that positively shapes the future of work and labor markets and delivers opportunity for sustainable growth

Making AI sustainable for people and the planet

Reinforcing international cooperation to promote coordination in international governance

Inclusion excluded

The US refusal to sign was likely triggered by the second priority of making AI inclusive: President Trump has ordered his administration to eliminate any reference to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) from government websites.

But safety and sustainability are also not acceptable goals for the US, according to Vice President JD Vance, who addressed the summit on Tuesday morning.

“We stand now at the frontier of an AI industry that is hungry for reliable power and high-quality semiconductors,” Vance said. “If too many of our friends are deindustrializing on the one hand and chasing reliable power out of their nations and off their grids with the other, the AI future is not going to be won by handwringing about safety.”

Vance’s remarks about chasing out reliable power are likely a reference to moves in Europe to reduce reliance on electricity generated by burning oil and gas, European supplies of which have been disrupted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in favor of renewable but weather-dependent sources such as solar- or wind-powered systems.

Coordination in AI governance is also going to be a point of contention. Even as the EU AI Act’s provisions begin to enter force, Vance warned summit attendees that “Excessive regulation in the AI sector could kill a transformative industry just as it’s taking off. The US, he said, “will make every effort to encourage pro-growth AI policies, and I’d like to see that deregulatory flavor making its way into a lot of the conversations at this conference.”

According to the BBC, the UK government also cited “global governance,” along with national security concerns, as reasons it refused to sign the Paris summit’s declaration.

America first

Vance was clear that his top priority is not accessibility or inclusion, but the US.

“This administration will ensure that American AI technology continues to be the gold standard worldwide, and that we are the partner of choice for others, foreign countries and certainly businesses as they expand their own use of AI,” he said.

But access to that technology will not be open to all.

“Some authoritarian regimes have stolen and used AI to strengthen their military, intelligence, and surveillance capabilities; capture foreign data; and create propaganda to undermine other nations’ national security,” Vance told summit attendees, adding, “This administration will block such efforts. We will safeguard American AI and chip technologies from theft and misuse, work with our allies and partners to strengthen and extend these protections, and close pathways to adversaries attaining AI capabilities that threaten all of our people.”

Billions in funding

Shortly after Trump’s inauguration, he announced that US AI companies would invest $500 billion in Project Stargate, designed to ramp up AI infrastructure in the US — although even with support from investors in Japan and the United Arab Emirates, barely a quarter of that sum is committed so far.

Vance predicted that investment would continue apace: “Of the $700 billion, give or take, that is estimated to be spent on AI in 2028, over half of it will likely be invested in the US,” he said.

But the US doesn’t have a monopoly on big projects. At the Paris summit, European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen announced the EU’s intention to mobilize €200 billion ($207 billion) in investment in AI.

There’s some sleight of hand going on there too: While Von der Leyen talks of “mobilizing” €200 billion, only €20 billion of that is public money, and she’s expecting private enterprise to make up the rest.

Source:: Computer World

An AI agent could help you buy your next car

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Capital One has launched an AI agent designed to help customers with one of the more difficult and confusing purchase decisions: buying a car.

The new chatbot, called Chat Concierge, will help customers with everything from researching vehicles and scheduling test drives, to exploring financing options. The generative AI-powered assistant, one of many such projects at the financial institution, simplifies car buying by answering basic questions online with no dealership visit needed. It then directs them to existing online services.

Although Capital One’s auto loans are its smallest loan business, they still account for about 28% of its business, or $75 billion.

Chat Concierge is considered a customer service chatbot — a generative AI (genAI) automation tool that can handle simple user questions. The new service stands in contrast to Capital One’s own study last fall that found the in-person dealership experience remains vital for car buyers, even when they use digital tools to streamline early stages of the process. The report showed 88% of car buyers conduct at least half of the car buying process in person; 60% of buyers said sales reps contribute to trust.

“Car buyers’ trust in dealers is a key indicator of how transparent they perceive the car buying process — even with access to digital tools to complete key elements of their purchase,” the study concluded.

Even so, Sanjiv Yajnik, president of Financial Services at Capital One, said Chat Concierge will drive the future of car buying. “By leveraging our own internally developed AI tools to provide personalized, efficient, and transparent interactions, Capital One is reimagining car buying and setting a new standard for customer experience in the automotive industry,” Yajnik said in a statement.

Capital One’s AI assistant is part of a larger trend of companies deploying AI agents to tackle tasks often performed by entry-level employees, or to create efficiencies for high-level workers.

In the simplest sense, an AI agent is the combination of a large language model (LLM) and a traditional software application that can act independently to complete a task. The most basic AI agents include Chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s CoPilot, and Google Bard; they can answer user questions on a myriad of topics. AI agents can also act as spam filters, such as email spam detectors that use keyword matching and smart devices such as Thermostats that can follow set rules for raising or lowering temperature based on environmental conditions.

As AI-powered agents improve, they enable more personalized and effective customer service than early chatbots could deliver. Banks are using the genAI tools to resolve complex issues, setting new standards for efficiency. By leveraging customer data, AI assistants provide 24/7 support, handling thousands of inquiries at once, according to Arthur O’Connor, academic director of data science at the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Professional Studies.

“One of the most interesting developments is emotion recognition (ER), an emerging technology enabling chat bots to detect and respond to customer emotions, allowing for more empathetic and effective interactions, and thus engender customer satisfaction and loyalty,” O’Connor said.

Last month, Google DeepMind announced Project Astra, a research initiative aimed at developing a universal AI assistant that can process text, images, video, and audio inputs, enabling more natural and context-aware interactions. A key feature of Project Astra is its multimodal capabilities, allowing users to engage through various means such as speaking, showing images, or sharing videos. The assistant can remember details from past conversations and utilize tools such as Google Search, Maps, and Lens to provide informed responses.

The US Airforce recently announced it’s experimenting with a chatbot called NIPRGPT that will allow service members to engage in human-like conversations to complete various tasks, including drafting correspondence, preparing background papers, and assisting with coding.

Many AI agents will be integrated into existing software applications without users even knowing it. For example, Google Maps Navigation uses an AI model combined with traffic data and predicted conditions to provide the best route for drivers. Virtual Personal Assistants, such as Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, or Google Assistant, use agents to predict user needs.

There are also learning AI agents whose algorithms are sophisticated enough to improve performance based on past experiences. Those systems include consumer recommendation services used on Netflix, Spotify, and YouTube, which all rely on AI to learn user preferences.

Agents that can become “smarter” include DeepMind’s AlphaGo, which learns and adapts to play the boardgame Go at a superhuman level.

Capital One’s Chat Concierge uses multiple AI agents that collaborate to mimic human reasoning. Instead of just providing information, the agents take action based on the user’s requests. They understand natural language, create action plans, validate them to avoid mistakes, and explain everything to the user, according to the bank.

For example, if a buyer asks for a list of trucks and then requests a test drive of the least expensive option, Chat Concierge can handle both tasks seamlessly. Concierge will also:

Simulate and validate plans to ensure they meet the car buyer’s needs and business policies.

Generate and deliver clear, natural language explanations of all the steps to the car buyer.

Let car buyers explore financing without leaving the dealer’s website.

Connect buyers directly to dealers through dealer websites, a navigator platform, and customer relationship management (CRM) apps, integrating customer info into the dealer’s CRM.

Work seamlessly with both Capital One and non-Capital One products.

“Capital One has a long history of using data, technology, and analytics to deliver superior financial services products and services for millions of customers,” said Prem Natarajan, chief scientist and head of enterprise AI at Capital One. “The launch of Chat Concierge is a key milestone in our customer-centered AI journey as we continue to focus on solving some of the most challenging problems in finance with technology.”

Source:: Computer World

How to Check Chrome Download History on Mobile & Desktop?

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By Hisan Kidwai It’s no secret that most of us have downloaded a file and forgotten where it went….
The post How to Check Chrome Download History on Mobile & Desktop? appeared first on Fossbytes.

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