As it prepares to transition from a nonprofit corporation to a for-profit, OpenAI says it’s convening a group of experts to “help OpenAI’s philanthropy understand the most urgent and intractable problems nonprofits face today.” This group, which OpenAI says will incorporate feedback from “leaders and communities” in health, science, education, and public services, particularly within … Read more
Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, Tumblr, WooCommerce, and a range of other online services, is reducing its workforce. The layoffs will impact 16% of staff across divisions, an Automattic blog post published Wednesday reveals. Ahead of the layoffs, Automattic’s website listed 1,744 employees, which means north of 270 people may have lost their jobs. (Automattic … Read more
Epic Games announced on Wednesday the acquisition of Loci, an AI platform for automated tagging 3D assets. The deal will help creators with the labor-intensive process of tagging as well as to help detect potential intellectual property (IP) violations. Loci, which uses computer vision models to understand 3D content, automatically tags 3D assets, making content … Read more
Amazon has submitted a bid to acquire all of TikTok, according to a new report from The New York Times. The last-minute bid comes as TikTok faces an April 5 deadline to shed its Chinese ownership or face a ban in the U.S. However, the parties involved in the deal talks do not appear to … Read more
Redwood Materials has been on an expansion tear in recent years — growth that has extended the lithium-ion battery recycling and materials startup’s footprint well beyond its Carson City, Nevada headquarters as it locked up deals with Toyota, Panasonic, and, GM, started construction on a South Carolina factory, and made an acquisition in Europe. And … Read more
Google DeepMind on Wednesday published an exhaustive paper on its safety approach to AGI, roughly defined as AI that can accomplish any task a human can. AGI is a bit of a controversial subject in the AI field, with naysayers suggesting that it’s little more than a pipe dream. Others, including major AI labs like … Read more
A new security fund aims to help apps in the fediverse — like Mastodon, Threads, and Pixelfed — to pay researchers for disclosing security bugs.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, mortgage interest rates dropped to historic lows — as low as 2.5%. Fast-forward a few years and rates soared — to highs nearing 8% in 2023, with the national average 30-year fixed mortgage APR as of April 1 still at 6.84%. The whiplash has left many people seeking to buy homes … Read more
Anthropic announced on Wednesday that it’s launching a new Claude for Education tier, an answer to OpenAI’s ChatGPT Edu plan. The new tier is aimed at higher education, and gives students, faculty, and other staff access to Anthropic’s AI chatbot, Claude, with a few additional capabilities. One piece of Claude for Education is “Learning Mode,” … Read more
Actively AI argues that most AI sales reps have “failed.” It just raised $22.5 million.
Cloud infrastructure is dominated by several large industry players: AWS, Microsoft’s Azure, and Google Cloud. While to some it may look like AI is headed in a similar direction, the founders of Parasail think AI infrastructure will look very different — and are betting their company’s fate on it. Parasail works with dozens of providers to … Read more
Patreon, a subscription platform for online creators, is ge has signed podcasting partnerships with Sony Music Entertainment and Amazon’s Wondery, the company announced on Wednesday. Patreon says the partnerships are designed to make the site a home to fan engagement and exclusive perks for shows from major podcast networks, as the company looks to expand … Read more
Roblox, the popular gaming platform geared toward preteens, has made substantial updates to its safety policy in the last year following accusations of insufficient safety measures for children, which could expose them to risks like grooming, explicit content, and violent material. The company announced Wednesday three new parental control features, including the option for them … Read more
Michael Waltz used his personal Gmail to share “potentially exploitable” information, per the report.
The Wikimedia Foundation, the umbrella organization of Wikipedia and a dozen or so other crowdsourced knowledge projects, said on Wednesday that bandwidth consumption for multimedia downloads from Wikimedia Commons has surged by 50% since January 2024. The reason, the outfit wrote in a blog post Tuesday, isn’t due to growing demand from knowledge-thirsty humans, but … Read more
Nintendo unveiled new details on Wednesday about its hugely anticipated Nintendo Switch 2 gaming console, which will be the company’s first new console since the Nintendo Switch was introduced in 2017. The Nintendo Switch 2 will be released on June 5. As its name suggests, the Switch 2 is an upgrade on the Nintendo Switch. … Read more
Tesla recorded 336,681 deliveries, its worst quarterly performance in more than two years as the brand suffers a backlash to CEO Elon Musk’s political maneuverings. The dip in sales comes as Musk continues leading DOGE, the “advisory body” that has laid off thousands of federal employees and attempted to eliminate entire agencies and programs. His … Read more
Rivian delivered just 8,640 vehicles in the first three months of 2024, the company’s worst quarterly mark since the end of 2022. But the company says the slow start won’t impact its overall guidance for the year — it still expects to deliver between 46,000 and 51,000 EVs by the end of 2025. The company … Read more
Most recent hydrogen startups have been focused on making modular electrolyzers, but Fourier has taken that trend to the extreme.
OpenAI has been accused by many parties of training its AI on copyrighted content sans permission. Now a new paper by an AI watchdog organization makes the serious accusation that the company increasingly relied on non-public books it didn’t license to train more sophisticated AI models. AI models are essentially complex prediction engines. Trained on … Read more
Accounting software company Open Ledger has launched a new product in time for tax day. Meet PokéTax, a game that helps make tax filing quite fun. Instead of tax forms, users take on Tax Trainers — gym leaders — representing different parts of a tax form, such as income, deductions, and credits. Each leader asks … Read more
The venture capital firm is reportedly in talks to invest in TikTok as part of a bid led by Oracle and other American investors looking to buy out TikTok from ByteDance, according to the Financial Times. TikTok is once again slated to be banned in the U.S. on April 5 unless its Chinese-based owner sells … Read more
Rather than divide people into demographic buckets, Northwind Climate analyzes survey responses for behavioral clues.
Zelle is shutting down its standalone app on Tuesday, according to a company blog post. This news might be alarming if you’re one of the over 150 million customers in the U.S. who use Zelle for person-to-person payments. But only about 2% of transactions take place via Zelle’s app, which is why the company is … Read more
Skylight, a startup taking on TikTok with a more open alternative, is launching its mobile app to the public on Tuesday after just ten weeks of active development. The app, which is backed by Mark Cuban and others, is now one of many to build on top of the AT Protocol — the same technology … Read more
Meta’s VP of AI research, Joelle Pineau, is planning to leave the company, she announced in a post on Facebook Tuesday. Pineau said she’s leaving in May after more than two years overseeing FAIR, Meta’s internal AI research lab led by Yann LeCun. Pineau’s exit comes as Meta ramps up its AI efforts, with the … Read more
TikTok is shutting down its Instagram competitor, TikTok Notes, on May 8. The photo-sharing app launched in testing in Canada, Australia, and Vietnam last year. The company is notifying TikTok Notes users of its decision to retire the app and is directing them to ByteDance-owned Lemon8, which isn’t surprising given that the apps are quite … Read more
The open source repository of genetic data will delete its banks of data on April 30, its co-founder confirms.
An obscure wannabe hacker’s tantalizing (and clearly sketchy) job offer has some security researchers asking, why?
In a series of posts on X on Monday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that the popularity of the company’s new image-generation tool in ChatGPT will cause unspecified product delays. “We are getting things under control, but you should expect new releases from OpenAI to be delayed, stuff to break, and for service to sometimes … Read more