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Boston Globe
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Free July events: Shakespeare on the Common, Art on the Plaza, plus the Moth Ball
The Boston Landmarks Orchestra will perform free concerts every Wednesday through Aug. 27. Michael Dwyer Advertisement PARK PHILHARMONIC Boston Landmark Orchestra performs free concerts every Wednesday on the Charles River Esplanade. This week's program includes familiar favorites by Leonard Bernstein and John Williams, and highlights works by Florence Price, a pioneering Black female composer. The concert will be preceded by a performance from the Boston String Academy, a primarily middle- and high-school-age student ensemble, at 6:30 p.m. Wednesdays, 7-9 p.m. DCR Hatch Memorial Shell, 47 David G. Mugar Way. Advertisement Shakespeare on the Common's performance of "The Tempest" in 2021. Ben Stas for The Boston Globe ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE For the 29th year, July 23-Aug. 10, performance times vary. Boston Common, Parkman Bandstand. 139 Tremont St. CURB APPEAL School may be out for the summer, but some campuses still have plenty on offer. The MassArt Art Museum's yearly Art on the Plaza offers family-friendly musical activities to get the blood pumping. Grab a complimentary scoop of ice cream, join a follow-the-leader dance session, play a game of hopscotch, or jam out to featured artists July 24, 6-9 p.m. RSVP required. MassArt Art Museum, Arne Glimcher Plaza, 621 Huntington Ave. Need to show off your Shark Week knowledge? Try your luck at Craft Hall's shark-themed trivia night. Uncredited/Associated Press AS SEEN ON TV Can't get enough of Shark Week? Test your chops on your favorite elasmobranchii with a shark-themed trivia night. Winners of each of the four rounds will win a prize. The competition is free, but participants can choose to order food from the Craft Hall's restaurants, including a selection of wines, beers, IPAs, and batch cocktails from a self-pour tap wall for 21+ contestants. July 25, 6-8 p.m. RSVP required. Craft Food Halls, 35 Cambridgepark Drive, Cambridge. Advertisement SAND ART Looking for a beach day with a view? Over the weekend, the 21st annual International Sand Sculpting Festival will bring participants from around the world to compete over three days to make the most impressive sculptural art piece out of Revere Beach sand. This year, contestants are encouraged to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution in their sculptures. If you want to make a day of it, the beach's vendors sell a variety of treats, from lobster rolls to egg rolls. July 25-27, 10 a.m. Revere Beach, Revere. The Boston Race Amity Festival will return to Faneuil Hall on July 26. Boston Race Amity Art and Music Festival INCLUSION AND ICE CREAM Faneuil turns musical on Saturday for the annual Boston Race Amity Festival, which features a wide variety of music with the goal of inspiring cross-cultural unity. The eclectic list of performers includes folk-rock band Fantastic Cat, African diasporic music group Zili Misik, and Cambridge DJ Trigga Tre, among many others. Attendees can contribute to a big collaborative mural all day, and Ben and Jerry's, the event's cohost, will be serving free ice cream from noon-5 p.m. July 26, noon -6 p.m. Faneuil Hall, 4 South Market St. Send info on free events and special offers at least 10 days in advance to . Ryan Yau can be reached at
The Star
18-07-2025
- Business
- The Star
ChatGPT will soon shop online, make PowerPoints on your behalf
FILE - The OpenAI logo is seen on a mobile phone in front of a computer screen displaying output from ChatGPT, March 21, 2023, in Boston. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File) OpenAI is rolling out new options for chatbot ChatGPT to carry out a variety of increasingly complicated tasks on a user's behalf, part of its push to bring so-called AI agents to the mainstream. ChatGPT agent, set to be unveiled during a livestreamed event on Thursday, is designed to streamline personal and professional projects, such as planning a meal and ordering ingredients for it online, or creating a slideshow for a business meeting. The tool works through OpenAI's flagship chatbot and combines the capabilities of two AI services it rolled out earlier this year: Operator, which can browse, type and click on the internet much in the way a human would; and Deep Research, which is meant to handle time-consuming online research. The San Francisco-based company said the agent features will be available immediately to its paid Pro, Plus and Team subscribers, with plans to release it later this summer to other enterprise and education customers. Some of the details of the software were previously reported by the Information. A growing number of tech companies, including OpenAI backer Microsoft Corp and rival Anthropic, are focusing on agents, or AI software that can complete multistep tasks for users with minimal supervision. OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman previously said agents will be "the next giant breakthrough' for AI. The hope is that such tools can save users time and thereby live up to the long-held promise that AI will make people more productive. For now, however, the software can still be frustrating and slow. In a demonstration of the ChatGPT agent this week, Neel Ajjarapu, OpenAI's product manager for the software, gave the chatbot a detailed prompt: Browse Etsy for vintage-style lamps that are under a couple hundred dollars and available with free shipping, then put the best-looking items in his online shopping cart and provide a URL for each one. OpenAI has also experimented with using the tool to make presentations and PowerPoints, Ajjarapu said, though he cautioned it's more for making "very early rough drafts' of presentations people can then refine. Microsoft, the company that makes PowerPoint, also offers AI tools to help professionals draft presentations. Ajjarapu said the AI model that powers the tool uses a computer and web browser to complete assignments. It can also take in feedback from the user while a task is underway and alter its approach, he said. While users are accustomed to chatting in nearly real time with ChatGPT, it can take much longer – several minutes at least – for the chatbot to complete agent-like tasks. AI agents present new safety and security risks, given the potential for AI to make mistakes or be misused by bad actors. The company said ChatGPT agent is meant to turn down some tasks, including those related to finances or legal advice. There are also a number of actions the tool will seek permission for before carrying out, including making purchases, the company said. For some tasks, such as writing emails, the service will require a user to supervise it. As with the launches of Operator and Deep Research, the company acknowledged its latest agent effort still needs work. "It is far from perfect,' said OpenAI Chief Product Officer Kevin Weil during the demonstration. "But I think if we had gone back six months ago or 12 months ago and said this was going to be possible today, we would have been pretty excited about it.' – Bloomberg
Toronto Star
02-07-2025
- Business
- Toronto Star
Toronto Star bestsellers: A new book about the ‘ominous age' of AI joins the non-fiction list
Karen Hao's bestseller 'Empire of AI' began with her coverage of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. Michael Dwyer/The Associated Press file photo
Toronto Sun
12-06-2025
- Business
- Toronto Sun
Supreme Court of Canada to hear appeal in long-running Facebook privacy case
Published Jun 12, 2025 • 3 minute read The Facebook logo is seen on a cell phone in Boston, USA, Oct. 14, 2022. Photo by Michael Dwyer / AP OTTAWA — The Supreme Court of Canada has agreed to review a ruling that concluded Facebook broke federal privacy law by failing to adequately inform users of risks to their data when using the popular social media platform. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account Last September, the Federal Court of Appeal found Facebook, now known as Meta Platforms, did not obtain the meaningful consent required by the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act between 2013 and 2015. The decision overturned a 2023 Federal Court ruling. The Court of Appeal said Facebook invited millions of apps onto its platform and did not adequately supervise them. It found that the Federal Court's failure to engage with the relevant evidence on this point was an error of law. Privacy commissioner Philippe Dufresne called the Court of Appeal decision an acknowledgment that international firms whose business models rely on users' data must respect Canadian privacy law. Facebook applied for a hearing at the Supreme Court, arguing the Court of Appeal took the wrong approach to consent and security safeguards under the privacy law. Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. It said in a written application that, rather than evaluating Facebook's multi-layered efforts to obtain meaningful consent, the Court of Appeal focused myopically on the platform's privacy policy alone. The Supreme Court, following its usual practice, gave no reasons Thursday for agreeing to hear the case. A 2019 investigation report from then-federal privacy commissioner Daniel Therrien and his British Columbia counterpart cited major shortcomings in Facebook's procedures and called for stronger laws to protect Canadians. The probe followed reports that Facebook let an outside organization use a digital app to access users' personal information, which was then passed to others. The app, at one point known as 'This is Your Digital Life,' encouraged users to complete a personality quiz but collected information about the people who installed the app and data about their Facebook friends. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Recipients of the information included the British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, which was involved in U.S. political campaigns and targeted messaging. About 300,000 Facebook users worldwide added the app, leading to the potential disclosure of the personal information of approximately 87 million others, including more than 600,000 Canadians, the commissioners' report said. The commissioners concluded that Facebook violated PIPEDA by failing to obtain valid and meaningful consent from installing users and their friends, and that it had 'inadequate safeguards' to protect user information. Facebook disputed the investigation's findings. The company has said it tried to work with the privacy commissioner's office and take measures that would go above and beyond what other companies do. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. In early 2020, Therrien asked the Federal Court to declare Facebook had violated the law. A judge ruled the commissioner failed to establish that Facebook breached the law on meaningful consent. He also agreed with Facebook's argument that once a user authorizes it to disclose information to an app, the social media company's safeguarding duties under PIPEDA come to an end. In its decision, the Court of Appeal noted Facebook's contention that users read privacy policies presented to them when they sign up to social networking websites — something the judges called 'a dubious assumption' given such documents can run to thousands of words. 'Terms that are on their face superficially clear do not necessarily translate into meaningful consent,' Justice Donald Rennie wrote for a three-member panel. 'Apparent clarity can be lost or obscured in the length and miasma of the document and the complexity of its terms.' In this case, Rennie said, a central question was whether a reasonable person 'would have understood that in downloading a personality quiz (or any app), they were consenting to the risk that the app would scrape their data and the data of their friends, to be used in a manner contrary to Facebook's own internal rules (i.e. sold to a corporation to develop metrics to target advertising in advance of the 2016 U.S. election).' 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Irish Independent
14-05-2025
- Irish Independent
Iconic Wicklow road is focus of new ‘Irish History Podcast' series
The road was constructed by British forces in the aftermath of the 1798 rebellion to quell the Wicklow rebels and bring the so-called 'bandit country' under control. The podcast is curated by Fin Dwyer from the popular Irish History Podcast, and each episode features engaging conversations with local residents, historians, and experts. Cathaoirleach of Wicklow County Council Cllr Paul O'Brien, stated: 'Whether you are a Wicklow resident or visitor, a history enthusiast, or simply curious about the Wicklow landscape, this podcast series will be of interest to you. 'I am pleased that this project is being released to coincide with the bicentennial of the death of Michael Dwyer in Australia in 1825, as he was one of the motivations behind the construction of this Military Road in the first place.' Contributors to the podcast include historian Frank Treacy, who shares the story of a unique military cemetery hidden in the mountains; Professor Graeme Warren, who offers insights into the early human history of the region and Robbie Carter, who recounts his experiences working deep underground in the lead mines at Glendasan. Additionally, Carmel O'Toole, a historian and resident of Glenmalure, provides a personal perspective on the area's cultural heritage. The series is available for free listening on the Irish History Podcast. Additionally, the Arklow Municipal District is coordinating a two-day event in Glenmalure to mark the bicentennial of Michael Dwyer's death on August 23, 1825. These events, part of Heritage Week, will include a one-day seminar on Saturday, August 23, and a bus tour of sites associated with Michael Dwyer on Sunday, August 24.
