In what smacks of extortion to me, Nvidia and AMD have agreed to pay the US government 15% of the revenue they make from sales of high-end chips to China, in exchange for licenses to sell those chips in China. TechCrunch.com reports that Nvidia will share revenues from sales of its H20 AI chips in China, and AMD will give up a cut of MI308 chips. This truly sounds like tribute paid to a mob boss. Apparently, besides the cut to the US government, the resumption of sales of the high-end AI chips also restarted in exchange for China resuming selling rare-earth elements that are needed for rechargeable batteries in electric vehicles. 

An entire industry built on basically stealing the work of others to build its large language models is now clutching its pearls over a class-action lawsuit that could bring in up to 7 million class members, all demanding cash should they successfully prevail in litigation or a settlement. According to arstechnica.com, the suit has been brought by 3 authors as lead plaintiffs who are suing Anthropic over using their works for free to train its AI. AI industry groups are urging an appeals court to block certification of what they call the largest copyright class action ever certified, whining that it threatens to ‘financially ruin’ the entire AI industry. Up to 7 million claimants, and a possible fine for each of $150,000…yep…that’s a ton of money. The AI companies have managed to raise and spend billions on the tech already…but precious little has gone to any of the creators of the work the large language models have hoovered up…just a handful of newspapers and organizations have received some compensation. It is more difficult than you might think to prove ownership of the likes of a book, but stand by…this could be a biggie, either way it goes. 

Apple is apparently testing out a revised version of Siri with a few third party apps…including Uber, Threads, Temu, Amazon, YouTube, Facebook, WhatsApp, AllTrails, and some games. Macrumors.com says Apple is also test-driving the better Siri with its own apps. They cite Mark Gurman from Bloomberg, saying the new App Intents system will let you take action entirely with Siri voice commands. With nothing but your voice, you’ll be able to tell Siri to find a specific photo, edit it and send it off. Or comment on an Instagram post. Or scroll a shopping app and add something to your cart. Or log in to a service without touching the screen. Essentially, Siri could operate your apps like you would — with precision, inside their own interfaces. The key part…with precision…we’ll see if that actually ends up being true!

From the ‘who knew this still existed’ department….AOL is dropping its dial-up internet service on September 30th. Engadget.com notes that the service has survived some 34 years now. Of course, back in the day millions used it…and were constantly spammed with tins of CDs in the mail…or before that floppy discs…remember those? Apparently, there are still a few luddites around, now numbering in the low thousands, who still listen to the awful screeching and hissing as their wheezing dial-up modem tries to connect with the internet. Besides the dial-up service, AOL Dialer software and AOL Shield browser will head for the silicon graveyard on the last day of September.

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