Apple says it’s tightening macOS ‘Full Disk Access’ controls due to new risks from AI agents

Days after a journalist claimed that Meta’s Muse app on Mac read their private messages — a claim that Meta disputed — Apple announced that it’s introducing additional controls around a setting called “Full Disk Access” on macOS. The feature was designed to allow backups to function properly, but AI agents have now increased “the risks associated with this level of access,” Apple said.

Apple’s statement comes shortly after Inc. columnist Jason Aten reported that Muse knew the content of his private messages — even though he claimed to have not given the AI agent permission. The report raised questions about the level of security and trust users have in desktop-based Artificial Intelligence, which can control things on their systems and read their files and messages.

The decision to limit the Mac feature also comes after a Wired report cited that a flaw in ChatGPT’s Mac app could have allowed hackers to access sensitive data.

AI agents that run on the desktop allow users to provide their respective apps with greater access to the files, messages, and other personal content on their computers by adjusting macOS settings.

www.techcrunch.com

Nadella has lost the plot calling Copilot an OS again - it’s a web app on Windows 11!

Satya Nadella has once again called Copilot a “new OS for work” when it is clearly an app, and that too a web app. As spotted by Windows Latest, this time the analogy comes in a leadership update, less than a week after Microsoft unveiled the latest Copilot, which was when the CEO first called Copilot an OS, at least on X.

"We’re building Copilot as a new OS for work that spans every model, every form factor, and every task. Today, we’re announcing our biggest update to Copilot to date"

I already have the “new” Copilot app on my PC, albeit without Home, Code, or Autopilot, because they are still not out yet. This app, however, is the replacement for the terribly named Microsoft 365 Copilot app, and you can get it too if you update it in the Microsoft Store.

Well, the thing Nadella keeps calling an OS is a regular Windows app, and when I went through the installation folder of build 154.0.4258.37, I found that copilotapp.exe is a rebranded Microsoft Edge launcher with a complete Chromium build behind it.

Microsoft is talking about a new operating system for work, but it’s actually an app on Windows 11 that runs in a browser. This is some Inception-level stuff! READ MORE...

www.windowslatest.com

Pygmalion’s Passion: A Christian argument against the use of AI

Andrew Caspersen writes: Long before the digital age, artists have pondered both the promise and peril of artificial intelligence. Homer’s Iliad described automaton tripods made by Hephaistos that might be confused with Elon Musk’s dream of putting an Optimus robot in every home. Ovid’s Metamorphoses tells of Pygmalion, disappointed in his marital prospects, carving his perfect woman and bringing her to life with the help of Venus. She was the first romantic chatbot, a reflection of Pygmalion’s self-love. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein warns us what can happen when scientific hubris puts the creation of life and intelligence in its crosshairs. More recently, we have Frank Herbert’s Dune, with the maxim “thou shall not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.”

Yet we are here, crafting such a machine. Many, perhaps the majority of us, have deep reservations about AI, yet struggle to explain why. We think it could create trouble but also see the great benefits. As a result, nearly all the arguments have been around the outcomes of AI. This is the modern approach - judging something by what it can do, rather than what it is.

If artificial intelligence were a tree, then nearly every discussion we are currently seeing concerns its fruits. An AI optimist predicts a cure for cancer, where a pessimist sees the elimination of the doctor-patient relationship. Mass prosperity! Or is it mass layoffs? For every rotten apple I spot, another sees a juicy golden delicious. How can we make sense of it all?

Arguing about the fruits is problematic. First, predictions are tricky business. Remember when social media was supposed to bring people together? Second, Christianity focuses on the means, not the ends. We care more about whether eggs are getting cracked than how tasty the future omelette may be.

Let’s go from the fruits to the branches. Are there certain features or applications of AI that are inherently wrong? Yes! Marc Barnes uses natural law to show why conversing with a chatbot is a corruption of inter-personal communion. D.C. Schindler explains the essential duplicity of AI, which tricks the subconscious into accepting its personhood.¹ These arguments reveal the rot in some of the branches of the AI tree.

They got me thinking: is there an argument against the tree itself, from the roots to the fruits? Perhaps it goes something like this.... READ MORE...

paulkingsnorth.substack.com

U2 at 50: How Bono's band became icons of rock by singing about God

 

On Saturday, 25th September 1976, four teenagers decided to get together to make music. Fifty years of faith-fuelled songs later, Steve Stockman charts the spiritual journey of Saint Bono and his band

When the annals of 20th and 21st Century Church history are written, many heroes of the faith will make the pages. Billy Graham, Mother Teresa and Pope Francis will be among those heralded as saints who changed the global face of Christianity. But the historians would be remiss if they didn't also include the one rock band who, over the course of 50 years, have used the currency of their fame to literally change the world, and have done it from the foundation of a Christian faith.

As they reach this landmark anniversary, now is a good time to stop and reflect on the impact U2 have had on the Church and indeed the world.

September 1976 was no golden age in rock history. The top 40 was littered with bland and anaemic pop: Abba, Bay City Rollers, The Wurzels and (dare I say it) Cliff Richard. Something needed to change, and thankfully it did! The next year would see punk rock and the new wave transform the doldrums of 70s pop and prog rock. The Sex Pistols, The Jam, The Stranglers and The Ramones all brought vibrant new life.

During this gestation period, four teenagers from Mount Temple School in Dublin were getting together in the drummer’s kitchen. There was something blowing in the north Dublin air that they would later describe in the song ‘Lucifer’s Hands’: “The spirit’s moving through a seaside town / I’m born again to the latest sound / New wave airwaves swirling around my heart.”

As we celebrate 50 years of U2, it is hard not to plumb the depths of their 2014 album, Songs of Innocence, to gain some insight into what went on in Larry Mullen’s kitchen. READ MORE...

www.premierchristianity.com

29th September - Michaelmas and the Feast of All Angels

Michaelmas, celebrated on September 29, is an old church feast celebrating the angels. It also functions as one of the traditional quarter days in England, which include Lady’s Day (March 25), Midsummer (June 24), and Christmas (December 25). These days, placed near equinoxes and solstices, marked when leases began, land was exchanged, debts were paid, or servants were hired. Some also call Michaelmas the “Feast of Michael and All Angels”; it’s also known as “Goose Day” because the traditional meal on Michaelmas in England is roast goose, which supposedly brings luck against poverty in the coming year.

In the Bible, Michael is one of the chief angels of God (Daniel 10:13). In Revelation 12, Michael leads the holy angels in a battle against Satan, with the result that the devil “was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him” (verse 9). The angel’s association with spiritual warfare and the placement of Michaelmas at the beginning of the colder, darker months—when the powers of evil were believed to be stronger—make the feast of Michaelmas a plea for protection against evil.

www.gotquestions.org

‘Doom Loop’: OpenAI and Microsoft Admits LLMs Are Destroying the Web and Built on Theft

Executives working on AI at Microsoft and OpenAI admitted what its critics have been saying all along: Large language models are predatory pieces of technology that have been built on what a Microsoft executive called “an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions,” and the “largest theft of labor in human history.” An internal Microsoft document said generative AI products have created a “doom loop” that is killing “the entire web.” 

Those statements and a series of other mask-off moments feature heavily in an unredacted court filing that was unsealed Thursday in the behemoth New York Times vs OpenAI copyright lawsuit that has been winding its way through the court system for years. In a filing asking for summary judgment (basically, a filing with the court asking it to rule), lawyers for the New York Times laid out a series of admissions made by Microsoft and OpenAI executives in documents and depositions that until now had remained either sealed or redacted at the request of Microsoft and OpenAI. 

It’s easy to see why the AI companies wanted to hide this from the public. The statements, taken together, are some of the most damning indictments of the ways LLMs were trained, how they worked, and the immediate threat they pose to human labor. It is a reminder that even as AI becomes more powerful and companies try to shift the narrative to the supposed existential risk of “superintelligent” AI, the tools they have already built were created by stealing from human creativity and labor and are by definition existential threats to the human labor market.

“Millions of people around the world will soon consider large models ‘hoovering up’ all their work to be an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions,” an internal Microsoft document cited in the case read, adding “almost no one intended for content they created to be used in this fashion, nor are they compensated for its use.”

www.404media.co

The Copilot+ PC brand is dead: Microsoft and PC makers quietly pull back on tarnished Windows 11 AI PC branding

In 2024, Microsoft and Qualcomm kicked off a new category of Windows hardware it called "Copilot+ PCs" that set the baseline for a new wave of AI-first computers, and launched with exclusive features that would not be made available on PCs that didn't meet a new set of system requirements.

The launch didn't go smoothly. Copilot+ PCs were met with immediate backlash from security researchers after discovering that Copilot+ PCs blockbuster feature, Recall, was woefully insecure. This forced the company to delay Recall and ship this new category of devices without its leading AI experience.

This pretty much tarnished the Copilot+ PC brand, and over the last two years more and more OEMs have dropped the moniker from marketing materials and product names. In fact, even Microsoft has seemingly stopped mentioning it.

www.windowscentral.com