Only if goods truly support it can the Matter standard facilitate the use of smart home appliances from different brands. You don’t even need to download or install any updates because Google has just announced that it has enabled Matter compatibility for its Nest and Android devices. This means that Matter can now be controlled by the Google Home speaker, Google Home Mini, Nest Mini, Nest Audio, Nest Hub (1st and 2nd gen), Nest Hub Max, and the new Nest WiFi Pro.

Additionally, Google has made Matter compatibility available for Fast Pair on Android, which will let you to connect Matter-enabled devices to your home network “as rapidly as you can pair a set of headphones.” This functionality will make it simple to integrate your devices with apps and smart home ecosystems once they are linked. The tech behemoth has also upgraded the Nest Wi Pro, Nest Hub Max, and Nest Hub (2nd gen) to include Thread border router functionality. In this manner, you can utilize them to link items that support Thread, the networking standard for low-power gadgets like smart locks.

Since 2019, the Connectivity Standards Alliance, of which Google is a member, has been working on the Matter standard to address the fragmentation issue in the smart home market and make it simpler to use products from various manufacturers. It had to postpone Matter’s release a few times before it was eventually able to roll out the standard’s version 1.0 definition and product certification program this October. It had originally planned to introduce the standard in 2021. Soon after Matter was released, Samsung said that it is collaborating with Google to make it simple to add devices that are already configured with SmartThings to Google Home and vice versa. One of the other founders of the Alliance, Amazon, also provided a list of the 17 Echo devices that will support the standard as of this month.

The number of products that are Matter-enabled is now somewhat small, but according to Google, this holiday season and early 2023 will witness an increase. With the exception of the aforementioned Google items, all devices that implement the standard will be identified by the Matter badge and will function with all other Matter devices right out of the box.

When Sony’s next VR headset launches in February 2023, the PSVR classics Moss and Moss: Book II will have native PSVR2 editions, but the catch for current owners is that they’ll have to pay full price to play them. There isn’t even a paid upgrade route, Polyarc has confirmed to Push Square, and neither title will be eligible for free PSVR to PSVR2 upgrades.

Due to a 10% PS Store discount, Moss will instead be available for $17.99, while its sequel will cost $26.99. This price is expected to expire soon. As an alternative, you can get them both together for $34.99.

Lincoln Davis, director of communications for Polyarc, provided the following explanation as to why the company chose this course of action: “For PSVR2 owners who previously bought the PSVR versions of the games, cross-buying is not configured for those titles. The appropriate implementation of new platforms for works like Moss and Moss: Book II requires a lot of time and money. And in this instance, the majority of that work was devoted to fine-tuning both games to offer gamers improved experiences that take advantage of the new hardware technology.”

According to the creator, the PSVR2 versions are configured to benefit from all the features the Sony headset boasts of, including haptic feedback, adaptive triggers, eye tracking, and a larger field of view. Additionally, it will utilize a 4K resolution at 90 frames per second with enhanced lighting and texture.

Although they claim to utilise the same features and provide a free PSVR to PSVR2 upgrade, games like After the Fall and No Man’s Sky will. It puts PSVR2 buyers in the frustrating position of having to pay for some titles all over again while receiving free access to others that promise the same exact improvements. If you want to purchase the updated version of a game you already own, Polyarc isn’t even going the Sony route and offering a $10 upgrade path. Instead, individuals who purchase the smartphone on launch day must pay full price.

Here’s an amazing example of what AI can achieve right now: In the age-old bargaining and treachery game Diplomacy, Cicero, the most recent AI from Meta, can defeat human players. It performed well while playing online at webDiplomacy.net, scoring “more than double the average of human players,” placing it “in the top 10% of participants who played more than one game.” It can determine which players need to be convinced to do what, then communicate with them using impressive and potent natural language.

No “taking over the globe” joke from me. I won’t.

In a simplified version of World War One, participants in the board game diplomacy compete for control of Europe. You move a few of your soldiers across the board each turn, but more crucially, you form alliances. You convince Geoff that you need to work together to defeat Margret’s Germany, agree to send his forces into Berlin, then covertly switch your allegiance to Margaret because she has agreed to assist you in advancing into Paris. As Meta writes in her research blog post, diplomacy is “a game about people rather than pieces.”

Smart manoeuvring obviously helps, and that’s a tactical area where sophisticated AI’s abilities unquestionably surpass those of humans. Meta will, of course, downplay this. Nevertheless, in order to win the game, you must persuade other players to support you, and Ciceros persuasive abilities are unmatched.

More details may be found in Meta’s blog post and the team’s study paper, but research scientist Mike Lewis’s twitter thread contains the most impressive information.

Each game, it sends and receives hundreds of messages, which must be precisely grounded in the game state, dialogue history, and its plans. We developed methods for filtering erroneous messages, letting the agent to pass for human in 40 games. Guess which player is AI here… 4/5 pic.twitter.com/8IMuepL7yf

— Mike Lewis (@ml_perception) November 22, 2022

It’s pretty interesting how deeply Meta’s blog post delves into what makes Cicero tick. Cicero makes predictions and tries to follow them rather than solely improving through supervised learning, where an AI trains on “labeled data such as a database of human players’ actions in previous games”:

“Citerative runs an iterative planning algorithm that balances dialogue consistency with rationality. The agent first predicts everyone’s policy for the current turn based on the dialogue it has shared with other players, and also predicts what other players think the agent’s policy will be. It then runs a planning algorithm we developed called piKL, which iteratively improves these predictions by trying to choose new policies that have higher expected value given the other players’ predicted policies, while also trying to keep the new predictions close to the original policy predictions.”

Lewis elaborates on that in another tweet, claiming that while Cicero is “designed to never intentionally backstab,” “sometimes it changes its mind…”

According to Meta, one potential use for an AI like Cicero is to develop videogame NPCs that converse realistically and comprehend your motivations. Maybe we’ll actually get to communicate with the monsters.