An AI bill that has stirred up quite a bit of controversy is now on its way to California Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk. It is a rather sweeping bill that would put in safeguards for tech firms building large language…or AI models. Yahoo.com reports that if Newsom signs the bill, SB1047 would substantially alter the way AI firms operate. As you might think, there has been major pushback from many of them. Anthropic, which makes the Claude AI model, has been somewhat supportive of the bill in a wishy-washy way, and surprisingly, Elon Musk has said he ‘reluctantly’ supports the bill. Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff has also said it was important that AI models don’t get out of control. OpenAI is strongly opposed, and has gotten support for opposition from San Francisco Mayor London Breed and House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi. The bill was co-written by Democratic State Senator Scott Wiener of San Francisco. It basically codifies voluntary safety evaluations that large AI labs have already committed to. Newsom has not yet indicated whether or not he will sign the bill as of this writing.

Nissan has developed a new kind of passive cooling paint that can cool cars by as much as 21 degrees Fahrenheit! According to bgr.com, the coatings that have various meta materials that reflect sunlight away from the car are added to the vehicle’s paint job, pushing heat away. The paint works even when the car is parked in direct sunlight. Right now, they car able to apply clear top coats to the paint, but are working further on the coatings working to lower the temperature when you want a color other than white. It’s like the opposite of Henry Ford, who offered early cars in any color you liked..so long as it was black!

You can always count on some rumors out right before the next iPhones roll out touting great features that will be available on next year’s models. Now, 9to5mac.com says that next September’s iPhone 17 handsets will have more RAM and better cooling systems than the iPhone 16 models due out in about 11 days. The present iPhone 15s have 8 gigs of RAM, and that is what everyone is looking for on the iPhone 16 models. The rumor has next year’s iPhone 17 Pro Max coming with 12 gigs of RAM. Noted analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says only the Pro Max will get the 4 extra gigs of RAM. Also coming, a new vapor cooling system….which with the increased computing demands of Apple Intelligence, is probably going to be needed. Samsung already uses vapor cooling on its top smartphones. The Cliff’s Notes explanation is that vapor cooling is able to pull heat from the chip set. It should be noted that Pro Max phones account for almost 2 out of 5 iPhones sold.

OpenAI has announced that ChatGPT now has over 200 million users, double the active users of just a year ago. Axios.com reports that 92% of Fortune 500 companies are now using its products and that the use of its automated API has doubled since GPT-4o mini came out in July. CEO Sam Altman put out a statement saying “People are using our tools now as a part of their daily lives, making a real difference in areas like healthcare and education—whether it’s helping with routine tasks, solving hard problems, or unlocking creativity.” Earlier today, Bloomberg said that Nvidia, Apple, and Microsoft…the 3 most valuable tech companies, are in talks to join the funding round that would value OpenAI at over $100 billion!

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now!