Kozminski Techblog

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The success of the Apple brand can be attributed to its unique marketing and communication strategy with the public. Annual events conducted by Apple never fail to attract potential clients and turn them into regular customers. This time around, it is going to be no different during the upcoming Peek Performance event on March 8. The word on the street is that a new low-cost iPhone with 5G functionality could be unveiled during the event. The iPhone will also have a fingerprint reader, industry analysts believe. A midrange iPad is also in the pipeline. It is going to be an ‘updated’ version of the iPad Air which was last updated in October 2020 and currently retails for $599. During it’s spring launch event last year, Apple announced advanced MacBook Pro laptops powered by the all-new M1 chips. Apple is not as concerned about it’s low-cost device launches, rather is focusing more on its ‘traditional’ fall launches. According to media reports, Apple will hold a livestream on its official YouTube channel and the company website allowing fans and the general public to watch the ‘Peek Performance’ event on the 8th of March. It has also been prophesied that the tech giant would release iOS 15.4 which is considered to be the latest version of iPhone software with plenty of new features such as application of facial recognition to unlock the device while wearing a mask, the opportunity to accept contactless credit card payments without additional hardware. Founded almost half a century ago by Steve Jobs, Apple has become a global tech behemoth. With its ability to generate massive economic profits and lead trends throughout the tech industry, its success has established a mark not only among its customers, but also among those who have never used Apple products.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/03/02/apple-announces-march-event-where-new-budget-5g-iphone-expected.html

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OpenAI flag product – GPT-3 – was known to have problems with toxic and unwanted pieces of text. Unfortunately, systems like GPT-3 are being trained on the content found internet. That includes the misinformation, hate and toxic messages that people put out there. The result is that text generators may produce pieces that are biased, misogynistic, racist, or harmful in other ways. This is a problem not only for language models but also for chatbots, translators and other tool to generate text.

To deal with these issues, OpenAI has built a newer version that is called InstructGPT. It is said to be better at following users’ instructions as well as better adjustment of the content to the user. It is also said that InstructGPT does not make up facts as often as the previous version. As the diagrams below show, InstructGPT is showing a slight decrease in toxic outputs and improvements in ‘truthful’ area and is also more appropriate for the users.

To create an updated model the company added another layer of testing to their existing GPT-3. They used reinforcement learning to teach the model which pieces they should and should not include in the generated output. Because on the internet there is less content form minority groups, they could not train the model from scratch as it will result in a worse performing algorithm.

OpenAI however did not get rid of GPT- 3, it is still available to users, but it is not being advised to use. Also, InstructGPT is a default model for users.

Sources:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/01/27/1044398/new-gpt3-openai-chatbot-language-model-ai-toxic-misinformation/

https://openai.com/blog/instruction-following/

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This week the minister of economy in Kosovo introduced the idea to ban cryptocurrency mining. The eastern European country is facing a major energy crisis, as it’s been hit by many blackouts. The prices for energy are high at the moment, as Russia is delivering limited amounts of gas to Europe. Kosovo takes most of its power from coal, but recent technical issues and weather problems have caused supply issues, making the country import more energy than normal. The situation where energy prices are high and a ban on crypto mining is issued, creates protests where, the protesters want the resignation of Artane Rizvanolli (Minister of economy). Government of Kosovo issued a 60-day state emergency in december, which gives them more power over the funds that go into importing energy and introducing new laws such as the one that bans crypto mining. There are many opinions that this new prohibition is not supported by the legal system in the country, and one of them is: “There is not enough of a legal basis for the ban of cryptocurrency mining, considering there is no special law that regulates this issue,”- states Arber Jashari who is a legal expert. This situation is comparable to one that happened in Iran last year, where the government banned crypto mining until 6’th of March.  

Sources:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-59879760

https://www.zdnet.com/article/kosovo-bans-cryptocurrency-mining-in-face-of-energy-crisis-and-surging-electricity-prices/

Kosovo bans cryptocurrency mining amid energy crisis