August 17, 2023

IN THIS ISSUE

🛰️ Satellite hack bags team a big cash prize

🚘 Self-driving car gets stuck in wet concrete

🗣️ Google is testing an AI-based life coach

UP FIRST

A team of cyber researchers takes control of a satellite in special contest

The satellite was placed in orbit especially for the competition

A team of cyber researchers from Italy has won the first Hack-A-Sat competition to use a real satellite orbiting Earth.

Organized by the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Space Force's Space Systems Command, the aim of the contest is to improve the security of satellites by identifying weaknesses in their systems.

Previous Hack-A-Sat competitions used simulated satellites on the ground, but this year’s used a specially developed CubeSat called Moonlighter that was put into orbit by SpaceX in June.

Five teams competed in the Hack-A-Sat competition as part of the annual DEF CON hacker convention in Las Vegas.

The entrants were told to hack into the Moonlighter satellite by taking control of it and directing it to take a picture of a target before downloading the captured image to a ground station.

The winning team, called mHACKeroni, collected a cash prize of $50,000 for its efforts.

SELF-DRIVING CARS

An autonomous car just got stuck in wet concrete

It happened in San Francisco where Cruise and Waymo were recently given greater freedom to operate their robotaxi services

A self-driving car operated by General Motors-backed Cruise got stuck on Tuesday when it drove into a patch of wet concrete.

A San Francisco resident snapped a photo of the stuck Cruise car and shared it with local news outlet San Francisco Gate.

“It thinks it’s a road and it ain’t because it ain’t got a brain and it can’t tell that it’s freshly poured concrete,” the resident told the publication, adding that the self-driving car had no passengers inside at the time.

The incident occurred just days after California's Public Utilities Commission made a landmark decision when it voted to allow autonomous-car companies Cruise and Waymo to expand their paid ridesharing services in San Francisco to all hours of the day instead of just quieter periods.

The vote was heralded as a breakthrough moment for the industry, but this latest incident shows that the technology still has some issues when it comes to the safe navigation of public roads.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Google testing AI-based life coach

It's part of efforts by Google to better compete with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI

Google’s AI team is working on a bunch of new tools that could turn generative-AI chatbots like Bard and ChatGPT into personal life coaches, according to a New York Times report.

The team is aiming to get generative AI to perform “at least 21 different types of personal and professional tasks, including tools to give users life advice, ideas, planning instructions, and tutoring tips,” according to documents and other materials seen by the news outlet.

Some researchers are reported to be testing the AI-powered tool’s ability to answer “intimate questions about challenges in people’s lives.”

The move by Google to explore using generative AI for life coaching suggests a more confident approach to the technology after Google’s AI safety experts reportedly said last year that users could experience “diminished health and well-being” and a “loss of agency” if they took life advice from AI.

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