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Meta asks California AG to block OpenAI’s conversion to for-profit
Facebook’s parent company Meta is supporting Elon Musk’s effort to block OpenAI’s conversion from a non-profit company into a for-profit one. As reported by The Wall Street Journal, Meta sent a letter to California Attorney General Rob Bonta arguing that allowing the shift would have “seismic implications for Silicon Valley.” And while the company asked…
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What are AI ‘world models,’ and why do they matter?
World models, also known as world simulators, are being touted by some as the next big thing in AI. AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs has raised $230 million to build “large world models,” and DeepMind hired one of the creators of OpenAI’s video generator, Sora, to work on “world simulators.” (Sora was released on…
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Arlan Hamilton announces changes at Backstage Capital, will step into advisory role
Arlan Hamilton, founder of Backstage Capital, announced Friday that her role at the firm she started in 2015 will evolve. “After 12 years of being deeply involved in the day-to-day operations, I’ve decided to transition into a chairperson and advisory position,” she wrote in a statement released online. She was previously a managing partner at…
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Why Marc Andreessen was ‘very scared’ after meeting with the Biden administration about AI
What scared him most was what some said about the government’s role in AI, and what he described as a young staff who were “out for blood. ” © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
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Klarna’s CEO says it stopped hiring thanks to AI but still advertises many open positions
Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski recently told Bloomberg TV that his company essentially stopped hiring a year ago and credited generative AI for enabling this massive workforce reduction. However, despite Siemiatkowski’s bullishness on AI, the company is not relying entirely on AI to replace human workers who leave, as open job listings — for more humans…
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‘Reasoning’ AI models have become a trend, for better or worse
Call it a reasoning renaissance. In the wake of the release of OpenAI’s o1, a so-called reasoning model, there’s been an explosion of reasoning models from rival AI labs. In early November, DeepSeek, an AI research company funded by quantitative traders, launched a preview of its first reasoning algorithm, DeepSeek-R1. That same month, Alibaba’s Qwen…
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X gains a faster Grok model and a new ‘Grok button’
XAI, Elon Musk’s AI company, may be embroiled in an escalating lawsuit with OpenAI. But that’s not stopping it from shipping new products — on a Friday night, no less. This evening, xAI revealed that it has begun to roll out an upgraded version of its flagship Grok 2 chatbot model to all users on…
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OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever believes superintelligent AI will be ‘unpredictable’
OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever spoke on a range of topics at NeurIPS, the annual AI conference, Friday afternoon before accepting an award for his contributions to the field. Sutskever gave his predictions for “superintelligent” AI, AI more capable than humans at many tasks, which he believes will be achieved at some point. Superintelligent AI will…
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OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment
A former OpenAI employee, Suchir Balaji, was recently found dead in his San Francisco apartment, according to the San Francisco Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. In October, the 26-year-old AI researcher raised concerns about OpenAI breaking copyright law when he was interviewed by The New York Times. “The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner…
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AI helps Telegram remove 15 million suspect groups and channels in 2024
Telegram launched a new page touting its moderation efforts, which have spiked since its founder’s arrest. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.