2017 June 09 | AIVAnet

9

Jun

Samsung’s pen-equipped Notebook 9 Pro arrives in late June

We were delighted by Samsung’s lightweight Notebook 9 back at CES. The Pro version unveiled at Computex last week promised more power, a 2-in-1 configuration and, most importantly, the tech titan’s proprietary built-in pressure-sensitive S Pen stylus. Today, Samsung announced that preorders on BestBuy.com open June 11th before it launches in stores on June 26th, starting at $1100 13.3-inch model and $1300 for the slightly souped-up 15-inch.

The S Pen is the Pro’s most distinguishing upgrade from the standard Notebook 9, though it’s the same one that comes with the Galaxy Tab S3 and Galaxy Book. Just like with those devices, ejecting the S Pen from the Pro’s dock prompts a pop-up that gives you access to the Air Command or Windows Ink workspaces, which is more integrated functionality than competing laptops that similarly include a stylus.

Like the regular Notebook 9, the pro models are powered by Intel’s seventh-generation Core i7 processors — in this case, the 7500U chips. While the stock versions of the normal laptops cap out at 8GB of DDR4 dual-channel RAM, the 15-inch Pro comes with 16GB RAM. The beefed-up larger size also ditched the normal Notebook 9’s NVIDIA 940MX GPU in favor of an AMD Radeon 540 with 2GB of discrete RAM. Both Pro models come with a 256GB SSD.

As for ports, both Pros come with two USB 3.0 and one USB-C, as well as an HDMI, 3.5mm headphone and MicroSD. While the smaller model weighs just shy of three pounds, the extra oomph in the 15-inch pushes its weight to 3.79 pounds. Both only come in Titan Silver.

Source: Samsung

9

Jun

Acer’s new Aspire desktop targets PC gamers with AMD’s Ryzen 5 CPU, GeForce GPU

Why it matters to you

PC gamers on a budget who are looking for an inexpensive pre-built solution have several new options from Aspire based on a new processor from AMD and Nvidia’s GeForce graphics cards.

Just ahead of the E3 2017 gaming convention in Los Angeles, Acer introduced a new affordable desktop for PC gamers, the Aspire GX-281. Currently, it’s served up in several configurations starting at $800, packing AMD’s new Ryzen 5 1400 processor, and Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1050 and GTX 1050 Ti graphics cards. There are slight differences in the configurations to meet the needs of all PC gamers on a tight budget, such as a secondary SSD with 256GB of storage.

AMD’s Ryzen 5 desktop processor family launched in April. The chip used in Acer’s new desktop is at the bottom of the quartet packing four cores, a base speed of 3.2GHz, and a boost speed of 3.4GHz. It retails for around $170 on its own, falling in line with AMD’s goal of cramming huge amounts of performance into small price tags. By contrast, AMD’s current top-of-the-line CPU is the Ryzen 7 1800X with eight cores, a base speed of 3.6GHz, and a boost speed of 4.0GHz for $460.

Currently, we know of three configurations: the GX-281-UR17 for $800, the GX-281-UR16 for $850, and the GX-281-UR11 for $800. Here is the hardware foundation:

Processor:
AMD Ryzen 5 1400
Graphics:
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 (w/2GB GDDR5)
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (w/4GB GDDR5)
System memory:
8GB DDR4 @ 2,400MHz (supports 64GB max)
Storage:
1TB hard drive (7,200RPM)
1x DVD-RW optical drive (8x)
1x 256GB SSD (depending on model)
Connectivity:
Wireless AC
Bluetooth 4.0 LE
Ports (front):
1x USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-C
1x Microphone jack
1x Headphone jack
1x USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-A
1x SD card reader
Ports (back):
1x Gigabit Ethernet
2x USB Gen2 Type-A
4x USB 2.0 Type-A
1x DisplayPort 1.4
1x HDMI 2.0b
1x DVI-D
Audio:
High Def Audio with 5.1 Surround Sound
Power supply:
500 watts
Expansion slots:
1x M.2 slot for stick-shaped SSDs
1x PCI Express 3.0 x16
Dimensions (inches):
6.89 x 18.24 (D) x 15.67 (H)
Included peripherals:
USB keyboard
USB optical mouse
Operating system:
Windows 10 Home 64-bit

Overall, there’s definitely lots of love here for the money. The use of the GTX 1050 or the GTX 1050 Ti card will depend on the model, such as the GX-281-UR17 sporting the GTX 1050 and the GX-281-UR16 providing the GTX 1050 Ti. The vanilla GTX 1050 has 640 CUDA cores and a base speed of 1,354MHz while the GTX 1050 Ti packs 768 CUDA cores and a base speed of 1,290MHz (the more cores you have, the better).

The two USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A ports are an added bonus, providing transfer speeds of up to ten gigabits per second. By comparison, the “blue” USB 3.1 Gen1 ports (formerly USB 3.0) only does up to five gigabits per second while the old-timer USB 2.0 port only achieves up to a slower 480 megabits per second. USB 3.1 Gen2 is capable of supporting additional displays, storage devices, and more. Too bad this PC doesn’t provide Thunderbolt 3 connectivity, though.

“The armor-shaped black chassis is highlighted with red arrow-like design features and red front LED lights for a commanding look and appeal,” the company says.

Acer is rolling out its Aspire GX-281 desktops now, starting at $800. They will be available on Amazon, Micro Center, Newegg, and other online retailers.

9

Jun

AI may beat humans at everything in 45 years, experts predict

Why it matters to you

Artificial intelligence is coming. These experts offer up a possible timescale, and some practical solutions.

Predicting the future of AI isn’t easy. Every decade since artificial intelligence was first formed as its own discipline in 1956, there’s been a prediction that artificial general intelligence (AGI) is just a few years away — and so far we can safely say that most of them have been shy of the mark.

A new survey, conducted by the University of Oxford and Yale University, draws on the expertise of 352 leading AI researchers. It suggests that there’s a 50-percent chance that machines will be bettering us at every task by the year 2062. However, plenty more milestones will be hit before then. These include machines which are better than us at translating foreign languages by 2024, better at writing high school essays than us by 2026, better at driving trucks by 2027, better at working retail jobs by 2031, capable of penning a bestselling book by 2049, and better at carrying out surgery by 2053. Asian respondents predicted these events happening much sooner than North American researchers.

All human jobs, researchers predict, will be automated 120 years from now.

“We are interested in when powerful AI will be developed, and what will happen as a result,” Katja Grace at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute in Berkeley, California — one of the lead authors of the survey — told Digital Trends. “So we asked directly about when ‘human-level’ AI might be developed in a few different ways, and also about things that indirectly bear on when we expect powerful AI, but which we think researchers may know more about, like acceleration in their own field. We also asked them about what they thought would happen, both in terms of how good or bad it might be overall, and in terms of things like whether it will affect technological progress in a big way. We found a wide diversity of views, but with enough opinion finding relatively near dates and relatively high levels of risk as plausible that we think this warrants more attention.”

As with any work that predicts the future of technology beyond just the next few years, there’s absolutely no guarantee this is close to accurate — but it certainly makes for some interesting reading.

Perhaps the most valuable aspect of the study is to make us think about things that could be put into place now to prepare for such an eventuality. According to Grace, this includes supporting AI safety research, choosing how funding is allocated now in accordance with the future we want to create, and rethinking the jobs market.

You can read the study, titled “When Will AI Exceed Human Performance? Evidence from AI Experts,” here.