Month: December 2023

Enlarge / Picture of attorney David Schwartz from his website. (credit: David Schwartz)

A lawyer representing Donald Trump's former attorney Michael Cohen filed a court brief that cited three cases that do not exist, according to a federal judge. The incident is similar to a recent one in which lawyers submitted fake citations originally provided by ChatGPT, but it hasn't yet been confirmed whether Cohen's lawyer also used an AI tool.

"On November 29, 2023, David M. Schwartz, counsel of record for Defendant Michael Cohen, filed a motion for early termination of supervised release," US District Judge Jesse Furman wrote in an order to show cause yesterday. "In the letter brief, Mr. Cohen asserts that, '[a]s recently as 2022, there have been District Court decisions, affirmed by the Second Circuit Court, granting early termination of supervised release.'"

Schwartz's letter brief named "three such examples," citing United States v. Figueroa-Florez, United States v. Ortiz, and United States v. Amato. The brief provided case numbers, summaries, and ruling dates, but Furman concluded that the cases are fake.

Enlarge / The Tesla Optimus Gen 2 robot. (credit: Tesla | Benj Edwards)

On Tuesday, Tesla released a demo video showing the latest version of its prototype humanoid robot, Optimus Gen 2. Over one year after Tesla's first public Optimus robot demonstration, which showcased shaky robots that waved and slumped over, things have apparently progressed quite a bit, assuming that the video accurately reflects the technology.

"Everything in this video is real, no CGI. All real time, nothing sped up. Incredible hardware improvements from the team," wrote Tesla Senior Staff Software Engineer Julian Ibarz on X.

After a recent episode where Google fudged an AI demonstration for the sake of marketing hype, it's best to take Tesla's claims with a grain of salt until they are independently verified in practical, real-world demonstrations. With that dose of skepticism in mind, let's take a look at what Tesla is promising in this non-production prototype robot.

Enlarge / The 2023 Cadillac Lyriq had an extremely good CarPlay implementation. But that's gone from GM EVs for MY2024 onward. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

Few things have improved the state of in-car infotainment more than the advent of the phone casting interfaces from Apple and Google. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto let you run navigation or audio apps on your phone and interact with them via the car's native infotainment screen, avoiding the need to handle your phone while driving.

That's why General Motors' decision to ditch CarPlay and Android Auto from new EVs from model year 2024 onward has been greeted with such dismay.

GM has rolled out a new infotainment platform across its new electric vehicles called Unifi. Built on the Android Automotive OS—not to be confused with the Android Auto phone casting system—a build we used in a model year 2023 Cadillac Lyriq featured the most complete implementation of CarPlay we've yet experienced, making GM's decision to ditch the systems even more frustrating.