From foldable phones to AI-powered drones: This week's top tech news
Google to announce foldable Pixel phone at developer conference in May
CNBC saw internal marketing documents that show Google plans to announce a foldable Pixel phone at its Google I/O developer conference on May 10th. Photos show a 5.8-inch front screen that unfolds into a 7.6-inch tablet. It will supposedly include Google's Tensor G2 SoC, be water-resistant, and will claim to have the "most durable hinge on a foldable" with a cost of around $1700.
Microsoft reportedly working on new ARM-powered Surface devices
WindowsCentral's sources say Microsoft is preparing a new Surface Go featuring an ARM processor later this year. The Surface Go 4 is reportedly codenamed Tanta, and will ship with a Snapdragon 7c-based SoC in the base model, along with some design changes, and possibly 5G support for the first time. Microsoft may also ship a new 11-inch Surface Pro (codenamed Luxor) to go along with the current 13-inch model.
Samsung updates Galaxy Watch 5 and 5 Pro with automatic skin temperature check for menstrual cycle tracking
Samsung began rolling out an update to the Galaxy Watch 5 and 5 Pro to automatically check skin temperature to support tracking and predict menstrual cycles. Samsung partnered with the Natural Cycles app on the feature, and all data is encrypted on the watch.
Stability AI releases StableLM, a suite of text-generating models similar to ChatGPT
Stability AI, the folks who make the Stable Diffusion text-to-image generator, released a suite of text-generating models, similar to ChatGPT, called StableLM. The models can generate both code and text and are available on GutHub and Hugging Spaces under an open source license. The models were trained on a modification of the dataset called The Pile which is made up of open text samples taken from places on the Internet like StackExchange, Wikipedia, PubMed and more. An alpha release from StableAI was fine-tuned with open source data sets from Anthropic.
European Union launches research unit dedicated to identifying algorithmic violations
The European Union officially launched the European Centre for Algorithmic Transparency, or ECAT, as part of its existing Joint Research Centre in Sevilla, Spain. ECAT will serve as a dedicated research unit, tasked with identifying "smoking guns" related to violations of the Digital Services Act, or DSA, which won't come into full force until early 2024. However, the European Commission will "very soon" designate entities as very large online platforms and very large online search engines, who must immediately start proactively assessing systemic risks potentially posed by their algorithms.
AI-enabled crop-spraying drone reduces chemical use by up to 90%
Bloomberg reports that a Canadian startup called Precision AI has developed an AI-enabled crop-spraying drone that reduces chemical use by up to 90%. Precision AI uses drones to identify and kill weeds without spraying the rest of the crop with weed killers. Precision's model is trained on images of 15,000 plants in order to tell crops from weeds with 96% accuracy. Currently, it is supervised by a human, but if regulators allow, Precision says it can be fully autonomous. Precision AI expects to launch an on-demand service in 2024 in the US where it has approval to fly.