IT News Round-up Dec 2021

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IT News Round-up Dec 2021

Join us as we look back at some of the more interesting tech-related stories from December. There were exciting developments from Meta and another example of the power of artificial intelligence. You can also read about Google finding themselves in hot water in our IT News Round-up Dec 2021.

Read our November IT news summary here and do please provide your feedback in the comments section below!

Meta Releases Horizon Worlds

This BBC story describes how the rebranded Facebook has released its social virtual reality space after over a year of testing*.

This is the first major release since their renaming and heralds the start of their “metaverse of connected digital worlds”. Users can build their own mini-games and activities and Horizon Worlds is free to players using Meta’s Oculus Quest 2 headsets.

*Read about the importance of software testing.

AI Participates In Oxford Union Debate

Another interesting December article from BBC News is this one on AI arguing for and against itself in a debate.

Post-graduate students studying Artificial Intelligence for Business devised the project. A Megatron LLB Transformer was used for the debate and given prior access to data including the whole of Wikipedia.

The intriguing debate saw the AI argue that to stop such technology becoming too powerful there would have to be “no AI at all”.

Google Fined By Russia For Illegal Content Breach

This article from The Guardian revealed a £73 million fine for the tech giant for its failure to delete “illegal” content.

In what is the first revenue-based fine of its kind in Russia, Google must pay 7.2bn roubles for “a repeated failure to delete [illegal] content”. Google will study the court ruling before any next steps are decided upon.

NB: You may be asked to register to The Guardian to read the full article.

That is all for our ‘IT News Round-up Dec 2021’ – did we select the most interesting pieces from the month? We would also love to hear from you if you require help with IT support and services!