Does aspartame cause cancer? The potentially carcinogenic properties of the popular artificial sweetener, added to everything from soft drinks to children’s medicine, have been debated for decades. Its approval in the US stirred controversy in 1974, several UK supermarkets banned it from their…

Every decade or so, a new playbook emerges that fundamentally reshapes how we think about scaling businesses. In the 2000s, Apple and Nvidia showed us how to separate IP from manufacturing. In the 2010s, Salesforce taught us how to turn software into a utility with the cloud. Now, in 2024, we're…

Join the club Thousands of top tech executives, journalists, academics and civil society workers read our reporting on — and analysis of — the day's biggest events at the intersection of technology and democracy. I. At the end of last month, I attended an inaugural conference in Berkeley named the…

With artificial intelligence on the rise, Cate Blanchett fears it poses a threat beyond just Hollywood. The 2x Oscar winner recently admitted she’s “deeply concerned” about the impact AI will have on the entertainment industry, as well as the rest of the world, with the potential to “totally replace…

An authentic picture of Elon Musk. Getty Images Artificial intelligence has so much to offer to society, but AI deepfakes are creating a multi-billion dollar criminal industry. AI-generated deepfakes, especially those featuring Elon Musk, are being used to trick consumers out of savings and more,…

When better to hold a conference on artificial intelligence and the countless ways it is advancing science than in those brief days between the first Nobel prizes being awarded in the field and the winners heading to Stockholm for the lavish white tie ceremony? It was fortuitous timing for Google…

The episode could have just been another footnote in the fast-unfolding history of artificial intelligence. But in hindsight, the release of Llama 2 marked a crucial crossroads for Meta and Zuckerberg—the beginning of a remarkable comeback, all thanks to tech named after a furry camelid. By the time…

In 2016, back when it still had a robust newsroom staffed with journalists, Buzzfeed published a feature article about empty nose syndrome, a rare condition that makes people feel like they are suffocating despite having a clear airway. The article opens with the heart-wrenching of Brett Helling,…

Amazon’s total investment in the AI company now totals $8bn, with its AWS unit as Anthropic’s cloud provider The artificial intelligence startup Anthropic said on Friday it had raised an additional $4bn investment from its longtime backer Amazon.com, bringing the e-commerce giant’s total investment…

As several major publishers sell their authors’ works to tech giants for large language model fodder, MIT Press is asking authors for their input before any training deals are made, and claims that it’s been approached by AI companies to do so. On November 7, MIT Press emailed its authors with the…

Investment giant Goldman Sachs published a research paper about the economic viability of generative AI which notes that there is “little to show for” the huge amount of spending on generative AI infrastructure and questions “whether this large spend will ever pay off in terms of AI benefits and…

Dell has made another round of layoffs, which The Register understands have cut deep and seen even company veterans let go. HR exit meetings kicked off on Tuesday morning, spurring a wave of LinkedIn status changes, while others found comfort venting or trading information in online forums. Dell…

NOTE 1: for reasons explained in my previous essay, I’ll replace the common use of the term ‘ransomware’ with ‘extortion’ in this essay. NOTE 2: Also, Allan Alford was kind enough to interview me on this topic on the excellent Cyber Ranch Podcast. I will be blunt because I don’t know how much time…

The Scoop Google is laying off hundreds of people working on its voice-activated Google Assistant software and eliminating a similar number of roles on its knowledge and information product teams, a Google spokesperson confirmed to Semafor on Wednesday. Google told Semafor the restructuring would…

NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon is cutting hundreds of jobs in the unit that handles its popular voice assistant Alexa as it plows more resources into artificial intelligence. In a note to employees on Friday, Daniel Rausch, Amazon’s vice president of Alexa and Fire TV, wrote that the company is eliminating…

Resume Builder App Resume Examples Back Top Resume Examples Choose from tailored resume examples for every profession and experience level. Click on any category to explore resumes designed to showcase your skills and land your dream job. Teacher Resumes Customer Service Resumes Nursing Resumes…

Performance Max is like Skynet, but for ads Google lays off “hundreds” more as ad division switches to AI-powered sales Googlers are now building AI tools so other Googlers can be laid off. Ron Amadeo – Jan 16, 2024 5:09 pm | 217 Credit: Getty Images | Alexander Koerner Credit: Getty Images |…

Sean Hollister is a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget. Turns out Google’s postpandemic reckoning didn’t just hit the Google Hardware team responsible for Pixel, Nest, and Fitbit…

A lot has happened at XBOW since our Humans vs AI experiment, as we shifted our focus from benchmarks to real-world applications. Over the coming weeks we will be sharing some of the most interesting vulnerabilities XBOW has found in real-world, open-source targets, publishing our findings as we…

Significant “social ruptures” between people who think artificial intelligence systems are conscious and those who insist the technology feels nothing are looming, a leading philosopher has said. The comments, from Jonathan Birch, a professor of philosophy at the London School of Economics, come as…

The healthcare landscape is changing fast thanks to the introduction of artificial intelligence. These technologies have shifted decision-making power away from nurses and on to the robots. Michael Kennedy, who works as a neuro-intensive care nurse in San Diego, believes AI could destroy nurses’…

None of what I write in this newsletter is about sowing doubt or "hating," but a sober evaluation of where we are today and where we may end up on the current path. I believe that the artificial intelligence boom — which would be better described as a generative AI boom — is (as I've said before)…

Weekly writing about how technology and people intersect. By day, I’m building Daybreak to partner with early-stage founders. By night, I’m writing Digital Native about market trends and startup opportunities. If you haven’t subscribed, join 60,000+ weekly readers by subscribing here: Last week, I…

A superb new article on LLMs from six AI researchers at Apple who were brave enough to challenge the dominant paradigm has just come out. Everyone actively working with AI should read it, or at least

Note: In my last newsletter, I said that my next post would be the second part of my Facebook autopsy. Don’t worry, that’s still coming, but given the recent drama between Sam Altman, OpenAI, and Scarlett Johansson, I felt the need to write something. Don’t worry, I won’t be doing bonus posts every…

A former senior employee at OpenAI has said the company behind ChatGPT is prioritising “shiny products” over safety, revealing that he quit after a disagreement over key aims reached “breaking point”.

Breakthroughs in artificial intelligence could lead to short-term increases in unemployment, a rise in carbon emissions and leave regulators trailing in the wake of technological advances, according t

What to do when surrounded by people who are losing their minds about the Newest New Thing? Answer: reach for the Gartner Hype Cycle, an ingenious diagram that maps the progress of an emerging technol

Better click-through rates than Cyberdyne Systems Google might already be replacing some Ad sales jobs with AI When AI can make assets and text for ads, you don't need humans to do it anymore. Ron Ama

The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft over the use of its content to train generative artificial intelligence and large-language model systems, a move that could see the company receive bil

Millions of articles from The New York Times were used to train chatbots that now compete with it, the lawsuit said. A lawsuit by The New York Times could test the emerging legal contours of generativ

SummaryCompanies AI companies face delays and challenges with training new large language modelsSome researchers are focusing on more time for inference in new modelsShift could impact AI arms race fo

I went to the UX Brighton conference yesterday. The quality of the presentations was really good this year, probably the best yet. Usually there are one or two stand-out speakers (like Tom Kerwin last

Researchers have shown that it's possible to abuse OpenAI's real-time voice API for ChatGPT-4o, an advanced LLM chatbot, to conduct financial scams with low to moderate success rates. ChatGPT-4o is OpenAI's latest AI model that brings new enhancements, such as integrating text, voice, and vision…

TL;DR Oligo’s research team recently uncovered 6 vulnerabilities in Ollama, one of the leading open-source frameworks for running AI models. Four of the flaws received CVEs and were patched in a recen

TikTok owner sacks intern for sabotaging AI project 21 October 2024 João da SilvaBusiness reporter Getty Images The firm said its commercial online operations, including its large language AI models,

The generative AI hype cycle has been revelatory for many reasons. The tech industry’s dependence on boom and bust cycles to drive investment based on inflated promises was put on full display. Some o

Coding assistants have been an obvious early use case in the generative AI gold rush, but promised productivity improvements are falling short of the mark — if they exist at all. Many developers say A

OpenAI is reportedly pushing ahead with plans to become a for-profit company, as more senior figures left the ChatGPT developer after the surprise exit of its chief technology officer, Mira Murati. Th