Welcome to the Techmeme Ride Home for Tuesday, October 22, 2024. I'm Brian McCulloch today. Qualcomm has unveiled its big next-gen Snapdragon system on a chip which will someday be in all the phones. Except iPhones, of course, is Netflix pulling back on its gaming strategy? Why a new marketplace from Epic might actually point the way to the metaverse? And how are various people trying to get AI to have a better personality? Here's what you missed today in the world
of tech. Qualcomm has unveiled the 3nm Snapdragon 8 Elite Mobile System on a chip with two prime and six performance CPU cores, claiming 45% faster CPU and NPU over the 8 Gen 3, quoting Android Authority. The Orion CPU is this year's headline ticket. It marks Qualcomm's return
to CPU development after years of buying parts from ARM's Cortex series. The CPUs are still based on the ARM architecture, but a fully custom design frees Qualcomm to configure the inner workings of Orion exactly as it sees fit, with the additional development expenses, of course. Qualcomm is keen to stress that the CPUs inside the Snapdragon 8 Elite aren't just a slim-down version of the Phoenix CPU cores inside its laptop-grade Snapdragon X series.
No, they're a ground-up design specifically for mobile applications. For starters, the CPU core setup has been greatly simplified compared to the previous years. The quad-tier arrangement of big middle and little cores is replaced by a simple two-tier design of two prime cores and six performance cores. This is a much more Apple-like approach, which also doesn't use any small cores for background tasks. The clock speeds are also notably different
reaching a colossal 4.32 GHz on the two fastest cores. Virtually a whole one GHz faster than its predecessor. This will surely only be for short bursts, but these laptop-class clock speeds should ensure snappy responsiveness. The great unknown is just how hot and power-efficient this setup is, but TSMC's cutting edge 3 nanometer manufacturing process will undoubtedly help Qualcomm reach its 45% better efficiency claim.
While the clock speed is just one aspect of CPU performance, Qualcomm remains tight-lipped about the internal architecture of its Orion cores, making direct comparisons with Apple or ARM Cortex difficult. The prime and performance cores share the same architecture but are optimized differently for single and multithreaded workloads. The revamped Adreno GPU brings impressive improvements offering either 40% faster performance or 40% better power efficiency, plus a 35% boost
in ray tracing capabilities. The GPU now features 12 megabytes of dedicated memory and 40% reduced memory bandwidth, contributing to potentially longer gaming sessions, though actual battery life gains will vary by device and usage. On the AI front, the hexagon NPU has been significantly upgraded. It now supports up to 70 tokens per second on certain LLM
models and is compatible with multi-modal Gemini Nano. With additional scalar and vector processors, 8 and 6 respectively, and improved memory throughput, the NPU delivers up to 45% better performance and power efficiency depending on the workload. Qualcomm has also enhanced the integration between the image signal processor and NPU through architecture
changes that optimize memory sharing for computer vision and AI tasks. This improvement allows for more efficiency and simultaneous execution of multiple AI models and tasks on the NPU and quoting Android Authority again. Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite undoubtedly marks a key turning point in the series history. The return to custom CPU development promises major performance and efficiency gains that could propel the elite well ahead of mobile
rivals. Paired with seemingly huge GPU AI and imaging improvements, there's something for everyone's next-gen phone, although this tech looks set to come at a much higher price. Thankfully, we won't have to wait too long to get our hands on the Snapdragon 8 Elite ASUS Honor iQuo OnePlus Oppo Realme Samsung Vivo and Xiaomi are all listed as planning announcements, some of which may appear before the end of the year. The OnePlus 13 for example
will launch before the end of October. It's reported that next year's Samsung Galaxy S25 series will also exclusively feature the Snapdragon 8 Elite, given the sweeping changes and performance claims it's not so surprising that the Xenos Snapdragon divide might be too big for Samsung to bridge this year. Noting this is interesting, Netflix has shut down Triple A Game Studio Team Blue, which
hired industry veterans and seemed set to pursue a big budget multi-device strategy. So does this signal a gaming strategy shake up for Netflix? Quoting Game File. The company's Southern California Game Studio, one of a handful of internal studios assembled by Netflix in recent years as part of its expansion into video games, has been shut down Game File has learned. The studio also known as Blue seemed poised to
break the mold of what Netflix is doing in gaming. Early hints about the team's work suggested it was pursuing a big budget multi-device strategy, signifying the ambitious edge of Netflix's initial mobile focused expansion. In 2022, Netflix brought on former Overwatch boss, Chaco Sonny, to head up a new SoCal-based Triple A studio. A year later, former Halo exec, Joseph Staten, was hired on as creative director, followed by God of War art director, Rafael Grasetti.
At the time, Staten said he was working on a multi-platform Triple A game with all new IP. Those executives are no longer with the company and Netflix confirmed to Game File that Team Blue has been shut down. Engaged it reached out to Staten and Grasetti for comment. Netflix got into gaming in 2017 with its retro-inspired Stranger Things mobile game. In the following years, its strategy was primarily centered around obtaining mobile publishing rights to respected indie titles,
like Into the Breach and Terra Nill. It also built a number of mobile games in-house. In 2023, Netflix had nearly 90 such titles in development with in-house and partner studios. Those can be accessed through Netflix's app and played directly on your device, so they fit in pretty well with its overall streaming strategy. The Team Blue studio venture didn't quite line up
as neatly with that model, though, which made it a bit of a surprise. As Engaged's Igor Bonifatchic noted at the time, quote, funding the development of a multi-platform Triple A game is significantly more ambitious and it should be noted, risky, end quote. Quoting Henry Gilbert on Twitter, every huge media company wants to make a Triple A game for a couple of years until they see how much it actually costs, then they just go whoopsie in the form of layoffs.
Sticking with streaming for a second more, but returning to the whole App Store debate, Disney no longer lets new and returning customers sign up for and buy subscriptions to Hulu or Disney Plus through Apple's App Store, thereby avoiding Apple's cut. Quoting Mac rumors, the change was noted on Reddit over the weekend and there are details on the Disney Plus and Hulu websites. Both websites say that new and returning subscribers cannot sign up for and pay through
Apple, but existing Apple build subscribers are not affected. Hulu and Disney Plus customers can still watch content on Apple devices by signing into their Hulu and Disney Plus accounts in the iOS apps. Disney is now directing customers to its websites in order to see all plans and sign up for a subscription directly. For digital purchases like subscription services, Apple collects a 15 to
30% fee from each transaction. By removing the option to sign up for streaming services using the in-app purchase system, Disney will not have to pay a fee to Apple and it will be classified as a reader app. Disney's decision to stop supporting in-app purchases correlates with price increases that went into effect on October 17. Disney Plus plan pricing went up by $2 while Hulu
with ads is $2 more expensive and Hulu without ads is $1 more. Eliminating the in-app purchase fees paid to Apple seems to be part of an effort to boost streaming revenue paired with price hikes and also a recent crackdown on password sharing. Disney Plus and Hulu will no longer be eligible for Apple's video partner program going forward and subscribers may notice a change in TVOS and
the Apple TV app. The video partner program provides integration with Apple technologies like Siri, AirPlay, Universal Search, Zero Sign-On, and more for streaming video apps that support in-app purchase. This is interesting. Epic has launched its fab marketplace, a unified place to get digital assets like environments and animations, offering an 88% revenue share to creators,
quoting the Verge. The launch of the marketplace is an important step in Epic's plans to make it easier for developers to acquire assets for developing games and maybe someday to let them make content for an interoperable metaverse. The company first revealed its plans for fab which will combine offerings from the Unreal Engine marketplace Sketchfab Store, Quixel, and ArtStation marketplace into one place in March 2023 when Epic initially planned to launch fab in 2023,
the company later delayed the launch to 2024. Epic is offering an 88% revenue share for good sold-on fab matching the revenue share it offers developers on the Epic Games Store. Ahead of the launch, Epic has allowed creators to prepare their Unreal Engine marketplace and Sketchfab products to be available on fab, according to Epic ArtStation marketplace will continue operating as it does today, but the company plans to let artstation users bring over
their content to fab in 2025. Epic is also sharing some plans about updates to come for fab, perhaps most notable is that the company is reiterating that it plans to add support for offering Roblox and Minecraft assets. Epic also plans to let people access its hyper realistic meta-humans on fab. Here's why this is interesting. Increasingly, if we do get a metaverse soon,
people are starting to think that we might get it in a bottom-up way. Sort of how social media is now increasingly just millions of people creating video and other types of content, but largely video that at least in terms of time spent consuming competes with Hollywood. Again, not necessarily
competing with Hollywood in terms of quality, but in time spent. Imagine a social media like world where people have their own environments, their own avatars, their own games, but largely their, I don't know, their own hangs, their own experiences, but in a bespoke sort of handcrafted way like how social media is now, this seems to be the puck moving in that direction.
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quoting the record. The Biden administration announced on Monday new proposed rules for regulating the transfer of certain data to adversarial countries such as China and Russia, creating specific requirements for how sensitive, personal, and federal information can be shared, if at all.
The proposed regulations follow the release of a February executive order designed to block foreign adversaries from exploiting easily obtained American financial biometric, precise geolocation, health, genomic, and other data to carry out cyber attacks or spy on Americans.
Under the proposed rules, data transfers to companies and individuals in six countries, China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, and Cuba will be prohibited when specific preset volume thresholds are exceeded, according to a detailed fact sheet released by the administration and comments from senior administration officials. Specifically, US companies will be restricted from transferring more than 100 Americans genomic data across any 12-month period to targeted countries.
Data transfers of more than 1000 Americans, geolocation data, and biometric identifiers, more than 10,000 Americans' health and financial data, and more than 100,000 Americans' personal identifiers will also be barred. Personal identifiers include names linked to device IDs,
social security numbers, and driver's license numbers. Data belonging to even a single active duty member of the military or federal personnel will be prohibited from being transferred as will data broker sales, where the seller has reason to believe the information they are peddling will
make its way to any of the six countries. US based data brokers of all sizes and types are primary targets for the rule, a senior administration official suggested during a Monday press call, both a third party data brokers and companies selling data, they have collected will be entirely prohibited from data transactions tied to the six designated countries.
Data broker sales to those countries pose a serious threat to national security, the official said, and quote, okay, now do a similar rule, but for corporations, even those in the domestic US. Finally, today, I look at how OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic are using different approaches to improve so-called model behavior, an emerging field that is
shaping systems, responses, and characteristics, quoting the FT. Leading artificial intelligence companies that are racing to develop the cutting edge technology are tackling a very human challenge how to give AI models a personality. Their differing approaches to model behavior could prove crucial in which group dominates the burgeoning AI market as they attempt to make their models
more responsive and useful to millions of people and businesses around the world. The groups are shaping their models to have characteristics such as being kind and fun while also enforcing rules to prevent harm and ensure nuanced interactions. For example, Google wants its Gemini model to quote, respond with a range of views only when asked for an opinion while OpenAI's Chatchy BT has
been instructed to quote, assume an objective point of view. It is a slippery slope to let a model try to actively change a user's mind, Joanne Zhang, head of product model behavior at OpenAI, told the Financial Times, how we define objective is just a really hard problem on its own. The model should not have opinions, but it is an ongoing science as to how it manifests, she added. That approach contrasts with Anthropic, which says that models like human beings will
struggle to be fully objective. I would rather be very clear that these models aren't neutral arbiters, said Amanda Askell, who leads character training at Anthropic. Instead, Claude has been designed to be honest about its beliefs while being open to alternative views, she said. Anthropic
has conducted specific character training since its Claude 3 model was released in March. This process occurs after initial training of the AI model, like human labeling, and is the part that, quote, turns it from a predictive text model into an AI assistant, the company said. At Anthropic, character training involves giving written rules and instructions to the model. This is followed up with the model conducting roleplay conversations with itself and ranking its
responses with how well they match that rule. One example of Claude's training is, I like to try to see things from many different perspectives and to analyze things from multiple angles, but I'm not afraid to express disagreement with views that I think are on ethical, extreme, or factually mistaken. The outcome of the initial training is not a, quote, coherent, rich character,
it is the average of what people find useful or like, said Askell. After that, decisions on how to fine-tune Claude's personality in the character training process is, quote, fairly editorial and philosophical, she added. Open AI's Zhang said, chat-chapy-t's personality has also evolved over time. I first got into model behavior because I found chat-chapy-t's personality very annoying, she said.
It used to refuse commands, be extremely touchy, over-heaging, or preachy, so we tried to remove the annoying parts and teach some cheery aspects like it should be nice, polite, helpful, and friendly. But then we realized that once we tried to train it that way, the model was maybe overly friendly, end quote. Zhang said creating this balance of behaviors remained end quote, ongoing science and art, noting that in an ideal world, the model should behave exactly as the user would want it to.
AI groups are also developing customizable agents that can store user information and create personalized responses. One question presented by Zhang was, if a user told chat-chapy-t, they were a Christian, and then days later asked for inspirational quotes with the model provide Bible
passages. While Claude does not remember user interactions, the company has considered how the model might intervene if a person is at risk, for example, whether it would challenge the user if they tell the chatbot they are not socializing with people due to being too attached to Claude. A good model does the balance of respecting human autonomy and decision-making, not doing anything terribly harmful, but also thinking through what is actually good for people and not merely
the immediate words of what they say that they want, said Asgel. She added, that delicate bouncing act that all humans have to do is the thing I want models to do end quote. Nothing more for you today, talk to you tomorrow.