Paul Stenhouse: Tech expert Paul Stenhouse on Microsoft's A.I 'recall'

Paul Stenhouse, ZB’s ‘texpert’ joins Jack Tame to discuss some recent developments in A.I.  

Stenhouse said “Every company wants to be seen as a leader – largely to the eyes of Wal Street if I'm being honest.” 

There's a new word to know in the world of AI: "Slop" Found an AI generated article that seems like it's regurgitated garbage? Well, there's a word for that! 

"Slop" is the term that is gaining traction to describe low-quality or junk AI content, helped by an article in the New York Times. Think "spam", but for content.  
 
Microsoft is effectively putting the launch of one of its new AI features on hold because of security concerns 

The new Copilot Plus PCs come with a features called "Recall" which effectively takes screenshots of what you're doing and stores them so you can go back to check what that price was for that item, or recover a sentence from an email you decided you preferred. 

The feature was going to be turned on by default, which only last week Microsoft reversed, announcing it would be "opt-in" and include additional secure login requirements. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast
from NEWSTALKSB.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Twenty four to two eleven, non Newstalks EDB. Microsoft has
effectively put the launch of one of its big new
AI features on hold because security concerns. This isn't the
first time it's happened with the launch of new AI.
All these big companies are rushing out. There are various
AI products, but not everything's been perfect. In our text,
Bert Paul Stenhouse has the details of Microsoft's issues. Hey Paul,

(00:37):
good morning.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
Yeah, it's such a hot topic at the moment, and
every company wants to be seen as the leader, largely
to the eyes of Wall Street, if I'm being honest Jet,
because they see that AIS the next big thing and
they know that a open AI is at the moment
the leader. So they're kind of thinking, which are these
big tech companies, the Microsoft's, the Googles, the Metas are
going to be the one to kind of take this

(00:58):
to the masses. And yeah, Microsoft had really big on
AI with their new co Pilot Plus PCs. I mentioned
some when they launched or when they first announced them.
First of all, they need a branding update because co
Pilot Plus is a mouthful, but these computers were basically
designed with AI in mind. That was the whole thing.

(01:19):
And one of the big features that they wanted to
launch was called Recall. Now, it basically takes screenshots of
everything you're doing on your computer, right so anything you're
you've typed, or anything you've seen or so think of
it as like a web browsing history, but kind of
on steroids and across every application you have on your computer.

(01:41):
They've had to put that on hold. I've had to
basically say we're not going to launch this because it's
just kind of riddled with issues. And Microsoft last week
had said that it was not going to be turned
on by default. So they basically had already admitted that, Okay,
we see that, you know, maybe not everybody wants this
new feature turned on. You're going to have to opt in. Well,

(02:03):
this week they've gone the step further and said, actually,
we're only going to put it out to those who
are in their insider program, which is the people who
get the early access to the features. Because they say
it's so they can provide a quote, trusted, secure, and
robust experience for all customers. I think what they're really
saying behind the scenes is that there are just so

(02:25):
many security concerns with this type of feature. I mean,
the first one is, Okay, if it's a work computer,
can your employer see every single thing that you're looking at,
including things that might not be for work. What about
if you accidentally put your password into the wrong box
and it doesn't have the dashes, are they going to
see that? What about API keys, confidential material? You know, like,

(02:47):
there's a bevy of issues that are there. But worse
is that apparently some hackers had found a way to
get access to those you know, hundreds thousands, hundreds of thousands,
millions of images that would have been stored and all
of the metadata because it was unencrypted. So all you
had to be was like you have to be a
bad actor and install some ransomware on a computer and

(03:09):
suddenly had you had access to every single thing that
had effectively been on the person's screen. Sounds like a nightmare.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
I mean Microsoft's Microsoft.

Speaker 3 (03:19):
Realized that it's a nightmare and are now basically delaying
it because it's not quite ready.

Speaker 1 (03:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
Yeah, in the world of AI, there is now another
word to add to the various tech lingo, and this
one's not too complicated. I love it slop.

Speaker 3 (03:36):
Slop, and it's and it's actually needed, Like it's a word.
The word has come into use because it's needed. AI produces,
you know, the one. The way that it was described
originally was hallucinations, where it just kind of made some
things up and kind of you know, maybe connected some
dots that shouldn't have connected. But this is when the

(03:58):
AI is generating lots of those things together. So like
you like we think of email having spam, the AI
can have slop. So what that basically is is when
it when it's like producers just low quality kind of
junk content. Maybe maybe you know, like it's an article

(04:19):
that seems like it's overly created by AI, it feels
a little kind of off. Maybe it's like, uh, you know,
maybe it's Google suggesting that you add non toxic glue
to a pizza, or you know, or maybe some bad
AI generated We can just start referring to that as slop.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
Yeah, I like that slop. It works well. Hey, thanks Paul,
you take care and we will catch you sing out
our Textbert post in house.

Speaker 1 (04:45):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
to News talks ' b from nine am Saturday, or
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