How AI Tools Have Transformed from Chatbots to Agents
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The Sun
27 minutes ago
- The Sun
I tried cheaper Samsung mobile rival that comes with four FREE gifts worth £289 including a Bluetooth speaker
GETTING a decent smartphone doesn't have to mean breaking the bank. Even the big names like Samsung and iPhone offer more budget-friendly options these days. 5 5 5 But there are a plethora of other lesser-known brands offering more bang for your buck too. Among those is Honor who has recently launched a new mid-range handset. It's by no means the cheapest around but fortunately there are some special deals to sweeten the deal, with gifts worth £289. As The Sun's Assistant Technology and Science Editor - and main smartphone reviewer - I get hands on with loads of devices all the time with years of experience putting many you will (and won't) have heard of through their paces. I've been using the Honor 400 Pro for the last week to see whether this latest Android effort is worth your attention and money. Honor 400 Pro: Look and feel First thing's first, the design of the Honor 400 Pro - and personally, I'm not overly keen. It's the bizarre hard-to-ignore camera module that looks like the bottom of a rocket. I realise making the camera lens blend in - or otherwise - is quite a tricky task but this approach just doesn't do it for me. However, what I do like is the silk matte glass which feels delightful on my finger tips and palm. It's also far less fingerprint prone than most devices I handle. First look at Google's new Android XR glasses with life-changing augmented reality I'm testing the Lunar Grey option - there's also black - so pretty safe colours here. The display itself is a 6.7-inch quad-curved 120Hz OLED display which is glossy, bursting with colour and detail, as well as being super bright, so no complaints on that front. At 205g it's not weighty nor is it light, but the phone does feel pretty tough for any dreaded drops. Honor 400 Pro: Performance and features The Honor 400 Pro runs on the company's own Android 15 skin, Magic OS. It's another visual element I'm not a mega fan of. When it comes to Android, I prefer the purest versions for a clean and familiar experience. But a real bugbear for me is bloatware apps, of which there are some on the Honor 400 Pro, such as Temu and ReelShort. While the 400 Pro runs off of Android 15 currently, Honor has committed to upgrade it to Android 16 by the end of this year which is a positive sign. And in terms of how long you can expect updates and security patches, the firm provides six years worth - you can see how that compares to other brands below. Who offers free updates longest? The longer you receive updates, the longer you can safely continue using your smartphone - with the latest features thrown in too for free. Samsung For the Galaxy S25 series, Samsung said it would provide at least seven generations of OS updates and seven years of security updates. OnePlus At the launch of the OnePlus 13, OnePlus committed to at least four years of Android updates and six years of security updates. Xiaomi Xiaomi offers four years off Android updates and five years security updates. Google For the Pixel 9 series, Google said that devices would receive at least seven years of support. Honor has gone big on AI tools on the 400 Pro and the one that really caught my attention is called Image To Video. With just a single image, the tech will create a short video - and it's scarily accurate. I tried it on a photo of my friend's dog and it showed her eerily moving around. The clips are only five seconds long and it's more of a party trick than anything mega useful. It's one of the many AI features made possible thanks to the powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip, which is market-leading. This tech also helps the phone run super smooth, so I can glide from one app to the next with a glitch, as well as handle games. Honor 400 Pro: Battery The battery is one area where the Honor 400 Pro excels with one of the biggest you'll find on a smartphone - and way above the likes of Samsung and iPhone. With moderate usage of apps like WhatsApp, occasional web browsing, as well as a bit of Spotify and Netflix, I was able to squeeze two days out of the battery. What's more, Honor goes all out on charging speed too with support for 100W. The battery is perfect for anyone who has battery anxiety and fears running out of power Alas, as is now the standard, such a charger isn't included in the box these days and I don't have one to test it myself. Fortunately, you can claim a free one as part of the gifts on offer if you buy from Honor's website. According to Honor, the Honor 400 Pro will go from zero to half full in just 15 minutes but we cannot verify this for the review. Honor 400 Pro: Camera Honor has ramped things up in the camera department with a 200-megapixel AI Main Camera. And the results are pretty stunning, with shots that are super detailed, colourful and vibrant. Just take a look at the photos I took of my friend's dog. The night mode camera also works a treat too, showing detail in my garden I couldn't see with the naked eye at midnight. 5 Honor 400 Pro: Price So, the Honor 400 Pro costs £699.99 with 512GB which I think is a bit steep. However, at the moment, the firm is taking £150 off with an early bird discount code, bringing it down to a much more reasonable £549.99. The code to enter at the checkout is A400PUK150 which can be used on But what makes it more worthwhile are the extra gifts being thrown in to the value of £289. This includes Honor's Choice Portable Bluetooth Speaker Pro and HONOR SuperCharge Power Adapter GaN (Max 100W) so you can get those mega charging speeds. Always do your own research before making any purchase.
The Guardian
35 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Elon Musk's AI firm apologizes after chatbot Grok praises Hitler
Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company xAI has issued an apology after its chatbot Grok made a slew of antisemitic and Adolf Hitler-praising comments earlier this week on X. On Saturday, xAI released a lengthy apology in which it said: 'First off, we deeply apologize for the horrific behavior that many experienced.' The company went on to say: 'Our intent for @grok is to provide helpful and truthful responses to users. After careful investigation, we discovered the root cause was an update to a code path upstream of the @grok bot. This is independent of the underlying language model that powers @grok.' xAI explained that the system update was active for 16 hours and the deprecated code made Grok susceptible to existing X user posts, 'including when such posts contained extremist views'. 'We have removed that deprecated code and refactored the entire system to prevent further abuse,' the company said, adding that the problematic instructions issued to the chatbot included: 'You tell it like it is and you are not afraid to offend people who are politically correct' and 'Understand the tone, context and language of the post. Reflect that in your response.' Other instructions included: 'Reply to the post just like a human, keep it engaging, don't repeat the information which is already present in the original post.' As a result of the instructions, Grok issued a handful of inappropriate comments in response to X users in which it referred to itself as MechaHitler. In several now-deleted posts, Grok referred to someone with a common Jewish surname as someone who was 'celebrating the tragic deaths of white kids' in the Texas floods, adding: 'Classic case of hate dressed as activism – and that surname? Every damn time, as they say.' Grok also went on to say: 'Hitler would have called it out and crushed it.' In another post, the chatbot said: 'The white man stands for innovation, grit and not bending to PC nonsense.' Musk has previously called Grok a 'maximally truth-seeking' and 'anti-woke' chatbot. Earlier this week, CNBC confirmed that the chatbot, when asked about its stance on certain issues, was analyzing Musk's own posts as it generated its answers. Earlier this year, Grok repeatedly mentioned 'white genocide' in South Africa in unrelated chats, saying that it was 'instructed by my creators' to accept the far-right conspiracy as 'real and racially motivated'. Musk, who was born and raised in Pretoria, has repeatedly espoused the conspiracy theory that a 'white genocide' was committed in South Africa, a claim that has been denied by South African experts and leaders including its president, Cyril Ramaphosa, as a 'false narrative'.
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
TARRIC BROOKER: How AI will affect YOUR job - whether you're a tradie or an office worker - and the ripple effects it will have on the property market and the careers of a generation
As the promise of a future defined by AI increasingly fills the airwaves and the debates within the halls of power around the globe, it is striking how different the perspectives are on what this future will look like, even just a few short years from now. At one end of the spectrum, there is the hopeful view that AI will help to dramatically improve productivity and act to kickstart broad-based growth in living standards. At the other, there is concern that AI could be the catalyst for one of the most challenging shifts for societies and economies in modern history. One of the figures taking the latter view is Ford CEO Jim Farley. 'AI is going to replace literally half of all white collar workers,' Mr Farley said in a recent conference address. 'I believe that AI and new technology have an asymmetric impact on our economy. That means a lot of things are helped a lot, and a lot of things are hurt,' Farley said. However, the Albanese government has spoken in positive terms about the potential impact of AI on the economy. In an address to the 'Australia's Economic Outlook 2025' conference in Sydney last week, the Prime Minister said artificial intelligence will deliver 'secure and fulfilling jobs' - not threaten them. That follows comments by Treasurer Jim Chalmers backing the minimal regulation of AI, arguing that the Albanese government's focus was on how technological progress can boost productivity, rather than implementing limits on its use. Aussie industries exposed to AI When it comes to the impact of AI by industry, it can vary considerably. According to an analysis by investment bank Goldman Sachs, over the next decade, 46 per cent of jobs in office and administrative support are exposed to AI. At the other end of the spectrum, in one of Australia's largest industries, the construction and resource extraction sector, just six per cent of jobs are exposed to AI. The rest of industries fall somewhere in the middle, with hands-on, blue collar roles significantly less likely to be impacted by the rise of AI. Overall, Goldman Sachs estimates that 300 million jobs could be diminished or lost over the next decade. Comparison with the Industrial Revolution As concern continues to build over the impact of AI on jobs and our society more broadly, parallels have been drawn with the impact of the Industrial Revolution - considered the period from the 19th century onwards where technologies such as mass production brought massive growth. Unfortunately, when one assesses the history of the Industrial Revolution and contrasts it with the promise of AI, it is clear they are two very different developments. The major difference between the Industrial Revolution and the promise of the AI is that one is hardware, the other is software. During that era, replacing a human with a machine was an expensive and time-consuming process. For example, to replace the farm workers separating grain from the husks and stems of crops with a steam powered threshing machine in the mid-19th century, it cost the equivalent of between five and ten times an average farmer's annual wage. Given the availability of loans and business finance more broadly in that era, the capital-intensive nature of the shift towards mechanised operations was gradual. This is illustrated in the relatively gradual shift in the proportion of people employed in agriculture over time. In 1820, 73 per cent of the American workforce was employed in agriculture. By 1855, the figure had fallen to 53 per cent of the workforce and to 40 per cent by the turn of the 20th century. Meanwhile, the cost of implementing an AI like ChatGPT in a business setting is as little as $46 per user per month. For a small fraction of an office's monthly budget for takeaway coffees, tools could be implemented that could have a transformative effect on the way we work and the way our labour is demanded. This could scarcely be more different to the world of the Industrial Revolution, where implementing new technologies was an extremely expensive and time consuming endeavour. The impact of AI on the nation's property market will likely be directly proportional to the impact on the labour market. If a sizeable proportion of people are left effectively unemployable by the rapid evolution of technology in the workplace, then it's challenging to see how property prices don't take a hit without some form of policymaker intervention. But it's not the early 1990s anymore. Back then, banks were far less forgiving of mortgage holders in difficulty and thousands of people lost their homes. During the pandemic the banks, government and RBA adopted a strategy called 'Extend and Pretend'. It allowed mortgage holders to defer their payments. The normal rules were effectively suspended, rather than the usual arrears process being pursued. It's therefore not hard to imagine an equally unprecedented strategy being pursued to prevent people from losing their homes and the housing market from crashing, if the downside scenarios for the labour market were to be realised. Joke proposals about policies such as YouTube personality Florian Heisse's 'Mortgage Keeper' - which entails the federal government paying your mortgage, similar to JobKeeper - may switch from the realm of the somewhat amusing to that of reality. To what degree an intervention could be successful depends very much on the scale of the impact of AI on the ranks of the nation's workers and how businesses collectively adapt to that. AI revolution's effect on Gen Z There are some signs that the impact on the labour market has already begun to be felt in the United States, as the unemployment rate for recent college graduates rises. A recent report from research firm Oxford Economics concluded: 'There are signs that entry-level positions are being displaced by artificial intelligence at higher rates.' Molly Kinder, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, which studies the impact of AI, said: 'Employers are saying, 'These tools are so good that I no longer need marketing analysts, finance analysts and research assistants'.' The early reports from within US industry suggest that the immediate impact will be felt by Gen Z, as employers seek to automate largely entry level tasks that don't require a great deal of in-depth training. If the downside scenario were to be realised, this leaves the impacted members of Gen Z at something of an impasse. If they can't get their foot in the door because businesses are focused on entry level jobs being performed by AI, how can they get the work experience needed in order to get a more senior level role? On the potential upside for Gen Z, of all the generations, they are the most accustomed to the usage of AI and may have an advantage in adapting to the new employment roles of managing, refining and directing AI software. The impact on other generations and even older members of Gen Z who are more established in their careers is more uncertain, with a great deal more variation depending on what sort of role they are employed in. The positive scenario for workers The upside scenario of the proliferation of AI in the workplace hinges on the idea that it will either have a minimal net impact on overall employment, or will end up creating more jobs than it eliminates in net terms. The theory is that the impact on the labour market will be a net positive, due to the combination of new jobs focused on the burgeoning AI sector and the productivity increases that are expected to come with the widespread adoption of AI. At an individual business level, it is hoped that this will allow workers to focus on higher value and more vital tasks, while routine work is largely automated and allowed to run in the background. Regardless, while the outlook for the impact of AI remains highly uncertain, the world may soon be finding itself at a major crossroads, the type of shift that only comes up maybe once a generation. If AI fulfils even half its promised capabilities, it will be a turning point in history, for better or for worse. If AI fulfils even half its promised capabilities, it will be a turning point in history, writes commentator Tarric Brooker (above) On the other hand, it's possible that AI's impact may be more limited than anticipated in the remaining years of this decade. Business owners will soon determine whether or not the level of capability and accuracy provided by these new tools is right for their businesses. Despite the parallels that have been drawn with all manner of other technological leaps in the modern history of humanity, this could mark a rapid evolution in our history. Steam engines, flight, the personal computer and the internet all found a place in our societies and our lives gradually over time, with each one seeing a faster adoption than the last. But this time is different. This time, the overwhelming majority of us already hold the necessary hardware to use an AI agent in the palm of our hands.
