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GPT-5.2 Arrives as OpenAI Scrambles To Respond To Gemini 3's Gains

Slashdot.org - Thu, 12/11/2025 - 13:45
OpenAI on Thursday released GPT-5.2, its latest and what the company calls its "best model yet for everyday professional use," just days after CEO Sam Altman declared a "code red" internally to marshal resources toward improving ChatGPT amid intensifying competition from Google's well-received Gemini 3 model. The GPT-5.2 series ships in three tiers: Instant, designed for faster responses and information retrieval; Thinking, optimized for coding, math, and planning; and Pro, the most powerful tier targeting difficult questions requiring high accuracy. OpenAI says the Thinking model hallucinated 38% less than GPT-5.1 on benchmarks measuring factual accuracy. Fidji Simo, OpenAI's CEO of applications, denied that the launch was moved up in response to the code red, saying the company has been working on GPT-5.2 for "many, many months." She described the internal directive as a way to "really signal to the company that we want to marshal resources in this one particular area." The competitive pressure is real. Google's Gemini app now has more than 650 million monthly active users, compared to OpenAI's 800 million weekly active users. In October, OpenAI's head of ChatGPT Nick Turley sent an internal memo declaring the company was facing "the greatest competitive pressure we've ever seen," setting a goal to increase daily active users by 5 percent before 2026. GPT-5.2 is rolling out to paid ChatGPT users starting Thursday, and GPT-5.1 will remain available under "legacy models" for three months before being sunset.

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4 highlights from Google Beam in 20254 highlights from Google Beam in 2025Director Business Development

GoogleBlog - Thu, 12/11/2025 - 13:30
Google Beam, our first true-to-life 3D video communication platform, made great progress in 2025.Google Beam, our first true-to-life 3D video communication platform, made great progress in 2025.
Categories: Technology

College Campuses Have Become a Front Line in America's Sports-Betting Boom

Slashdot.org - Thu, 12/11/2025 - 13:10
Since the Supreme Court struck down the federal prohibition on sports betting in 2018, 39 states have legalized the activity, and college campuses have emerged as ground zero for what appears to be a generational gambling problem among young men. A 2023 NCAA survey found that 60% of college students have gambled on sports, and 16% of 18-to-22-year-olds engage in what the organization classifies as problematic gambling. A Siena University poll from January found that 28% of men aged 18-to-34 who use sports-betting apps have had trouble meeting a financial obligation because of a lost bet. Timothy Fong, a psychiatry professor at UCLA, says every one of his recent clients has been an 18-to-24-year-old man seeking help for a sports-betting or cryptocurrency addiction. John Simonian, a personal-bankruptcy lawyer in Rhode Island, says he never used to see young men filing for bankruptcy -- now it's common. On November 7th, the NCAA announced it had uncovered three separate betting scandals in men's basketball where athletes intentionally played poorly in games on which they or a friend had placed wagers.

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Take the web for a fresh spin with GenTabs, built with Gemini 3Take the web for a fresh spin with GenTabs, built with Gemini 3Senior Product Manager for AI Innovation, ChromeDirector, Creative Lab

GoogleBlog - Thu, 12/11/2025 - 13:00
GenTabs is part of a new Google Labs experiment that proactively creates custom web applications to help you navigate the webGenTabs is part of a new Google Labs experiment that proactively creates custom web applications to help you navigate the web
Categories: Technology

The Game Awards Are Losing Their Luster

Slashdot.org - Thu, 12/11/2025 - 12:36
The Game Awards, which broadcasts tonight on Twitch, YouTube, and Prime Video, has become the biggest night on the video game calendar since launching in 2014, but the show's treatment of developers has drawn increasing criticism. At the 2023 ceremony, acceptance speeches were often cut off after roughly 30 seconds while Hideo Kojima received five minutes to discuss his upcoming game OD -- enough time for 13 acceptance speeches, Aftermath calculated. That year's show also ignored the industry's mass layoffs entirely; host Geoff Keighley acknowledged the labor crisis only at the 2024 ceremony. The show's Future Class program, launched in 2020 to celebrate game makers representing an inclusive future for the industry, has quietly ended. No new class has been named for two years. "At this time, we are not planning a new Future Class for this year," organizer Emily Weir told Game Developer.

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Build with Gemini Deep ResearchBuild with Gemini Deep ResearchProduct ManagerGroup Product Manager

GoogleBlog - Thu, 12/11/2025 - 12:00
We have reimagined Gemini Deep Research to be more powerful than ever, now accessible to developers via the new Interactions API.We have reimagined Gemini Deep Research to be more powerful than ever, now accessible to developers via the new Interactions API.
Categories: Technology

Interactions API: A unified foundation for models and agentsInteractions API: A unified foundation for models and agentsGroup Product ManagerDeveloper Relations Engineer

GoogleBlog - Thu, 12/11/2025 - 12:00
Google’s Interactions API is a unified interface for interacting with Gemini models and agents.Google’s Interactions API is a unified interface for interacting with Gemini models and agents.
Categories: Technology

December Demand Gen Drop: Five things to know for the new year.December Demand Gen Drop: Five things to know for the new year.

GoogleBlog - Thu, 12/11/2025 - 12:00
Demand Gen can help you reach new audiences while they're streaming, scrolling or shopping. On average, 68% of Demand Gen conversions came from users who did not see the…
Categories: Technology

Why Switzerland Is Weighing a 10 Million Population Limit

Slashdot.org - Thu, 12/11/2025 - 11:44
An anonymous reader shares a report: Growing support for far-right parties is pressuring European governments to introduce stricter controls on immigration. Switzerland is set to vote on a proposal that would take the idea to the next level -- imposing a cap on its population [non-paywalled link]. The initiative could lead eventually to a blanket ban on new arrivals if the number of residents rises from around 9 million currently to above 10 million, with little distinction made between refugees, skilled workers and top managers on six-figure salaries. Citizens will likely vote on the proposal next year under the country's unique system of plebiscites on constitutional amendments and policy, and polls suggest there's a chance they'll approve it. The risk is it could lead to shortages of critical skills that end up harming Switzerland's competitiveness. The outcome will show how far citizens are willing to go to preserve some of the traits that made their country such an appealing destination. [...] The right-wing Swiss People's Party, or SVP, won 28% of the vote in the last election with a campaign that presented Swiss citizenship as a privilege, not a right. It came up with the idea of a population limit in 2023, presenting it as a way to preserve the Swiss lifestyle and protect its environment from excessive human activity.

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AI Hackers Are Coming Dangerously Close to Beating Humans

Slashdot.org - Thu, 12/11/2025 - 11:13
Stanford researchers spent much of the past year building an AI bot called Artemis that scans networks for software vulnerabilities, and when they pitted it against ten professional penetration testers on the university's own engineering network, the bot outperformed nine of them. The experiment offers a window into how rapidly AI hacking tools have improved after years of underwhelming performance. "We thought it would probably be below average," said Justin Lin, a Stanford cybersecurity researcher. Artemis found bugs at a fraction of human cost -- just under $60 per hour compared to the $2,000 to $2,500 per day that professional pen testers typically charge. But its performance wasn't flawless. About 18% of its bug reports were false positives, and it completely missed an obvious vulnerability on a webpage that most human testers caught. In one case, Artemis found a bug on an outdated page that didn't render in standard browsers; it used a command-line tool called Curl instead of Chrome or Firefox. Dan Boneh, a Stanford computer science professor who advised the researchers, noted that vast amounts of software shipped without being vetted by LLMs could now be at risk. "We're in this moment of time where many actors can increase their productivity to find bugs at an extreme scale," said Jacob Klein, head of threat intelligence at Anthropic.

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Disney Puts $1 Billion Into OpenAI, Licenses 200+ Characters for AI-Generated Videos and Images

Slashdot.org - Thu, 12/11/2025 - 10:22
Disney is investing $1 billion in OpenAI and has entered into a three-year licensing deal that will let users generate AI-powered short videos and images featuring more than 200 characters from its Disney, Marvel, Star Wars and Pixar franchises. The new features are expected to launch in 2026 through Sora, OpenAI's short-form video platform, and ChatGPT. A selection of user-generated short videos will also be available to stream on Disney+. The licensing agreement excludes any talent likenesses or voices. Disney will receive warrants to purchase additional OpenAI equity as part of the arrangement, and its employees will gain access to OpenAI tools including ChatGPT for building new products.

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