DIRS.INFO The most relevant business & tech news

As experts warn that images, audio and video generated by artificial intelligence could influence the fall elections, OpenAI is releasing a tool designed to detect content created by its own popular image generator, DALL-E. start-up acknowledges that this tool is only a small part of what will be needed to fight so-called deepfakes in the months and years to come. On Tuesday, OpenAI said it would share its new deepfake detector with a small group of disinformation researchers so they could test the tool in real-world situations and help pinpoint ways it could be improved. “This is to kick-start new research,” said Sandhini Agarwal, an OpenAI researcher who focuses on safety and policy. “That is really needed.”

Persons: OpenAI, ”, Sandhini Agarwal

☆ A New Diplomatic Strategy Emerges as Artificial Intelligence Grows
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-06 | by ( David E. Sanger | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

American and Chinese diplomats plan to meet later this month to begin what amounts to the first, tentative arms control talks over the use of artificial intelligence. A year in the making, the talks in Geneva are an attempt to find some common ground on how A.I. will be used and in which situations it could be banned — for example, in the command and control of each country’s nuclear arsenals. The fact that Beijing agreed to the discussion at all was something of a surprise, since it has refused any discussion of limiting the size of nuclear arsenals themselves.

Locations: Geneva, Beijing

☆ Wayve, an A.I. Start-Up for Autonomous Driving, Raises $1 Billion
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-06 | by ( Adam Satariano | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Wayve, a London maker of artificial intelligence systems for autonomous vehicles, said on Tuesday that it had raised $1 billion, an eye-popping sum for a European start-up and an illustration of investor optimism about A.I.’s ability to reshape industries. Previous investors in Wayve include Yann LeCun, Meta’s chief A.I. Wayve was co-founded in 2017 by Alex Kendall, a Cambridge University doctorate student focused on computer vision and robotics. Unlike generative A.I. systems made by Wayve serve as the brains for physical objects, be they cars, robots or manufacturing systems.

Persons: Uber, Yann LeCun, Wayve, Alex Kendall Organizations: Microsoft, Nvidia, Cambridge University, OpenAI, Google Locations: London, Wayve

But there’s an overlooked set of winners as well: utilities and energy companies. The power demands of the huge data centers that underpin the A.I. Wall Street is taking notice — but the climate effect isn’t getting as much attention. Tech’s energy needs are coming into focus as investors get to grips with how much of an “energy hog” generative A.I. Analysts at Wells Fargo see the A.I.

Organizations: Microsoft Locations: Wells

☆ Is Your Law Firm Using A.I.? Tell Us How.
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-06 | by ( Noam Scheiber | More About Noam Scheiber | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Law firms are increasingly relying on generative artificial intelligence to produce research and draft documents. We’d like to hear from lawyers working with generative A.I., including contract lawyers who have been brought on for assignments related to A.I. Your answers may help us better understand the use of A.I. We won’t publish your name or any part of your submission without contacting you first. If you prefer to share tips or thoughts confidentially, you can do so here.

Apple | Spotify | Amazon | YouTube Listen to and follow ‘Hard Fork’We asked listeners to tell us about the wildest ways they have been using artificial intelligence at work. This week, we bring you their stories. Then, Hank Green, a legendary YouTuber, stops by to talk about how creators are reacting to the prospect of a ban on TikTok, and about how he’s navigating an increasingly fragmented online environment. And finally, deep fakes are coming to Main Street: We’ll tell you the story of how they caused turmoil in a Maryland high school and what, if anything, can be done to fight them. Guests:Hank Green, YouTuber and co-founder of ComplexlyAdditional Reading:

Persons: Hank Green Organizations: Apple, Spotify, Complexly Locations: Maryland

☆ 8 Daily Newspapers Sue OpenAI and Microsoft Over A.I.
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-30 | by ( Katie Robertson | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Eight daily newspapers owned by Alden Global Capital sued OpenAI and Microsoft on Tuesday, accusing the tech companies of illegally using news articles to power their A.I. All are owned by MediaNews Group or Tribune Publishing, subsidiaries of Alden, the country’s second-largest newspaper operator. In the complaint, the publications accuse OpenAI and Microsoft of using millions of copyrighted articles without permission to train and feed their generative A.I. products, including ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot. This, it said, reduced the need for readers to pay subscriptions to support local newspapers and deprived the publishers of revenue both from subscriptions and from licensing their content elsewhere.

Persons: OpenAI, Paul, Paul Pioneer Press — Organizations: Alden Global Capital, Microsoft, New York Daily News, The Chicago Tribune, The Orlando Sentinel, The Sun Sentinel, San Jose Mercury News, The Denver Post, Orange County Register, Paul Pioneer Press, U.S . Southern, of, MediaNews Group, Tribune Publishing Locations: Florida, Orange, U.S, of New York, Alden

☆ Friends From the Old Neighborhood Turn Rivals in Big Tech’s A.I. Race
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-29 | by ( Cade Metz | Nico Grant | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Today, they are two of the most powerful executives in the tech industry’s race to build artificial intelligence. Dr. Hassabis, 47, is the chief executive of Google DeepMind, the tech giant’s central research lab for artificial intelligence. Mr. Suleyman, 39, was recently named chief executive of Microsoft AI, charged with overseeing the company’s push into A.I. In 2010, they were two of the three founders of DeepMind, a seminal A.I. research lab that was supposed to prevent the very thing they are now deeply involved in: an escalating race by profit-driven companies to build and deploy A.I.

Persons: Mustafa Suleyman, Hassabis, Demis, —, Suleyman Organizations: National Health Service, Queen Elizabeth’s, Google, Microsoft, Big Tech, DeepMind Locations: Syrian, Cypriot, London

Since mid-March, the financial pressure on several signature artificial intelligence start-ups has taken a toll. Inflection AI, which raised $1.5 billion but made almost no money, has folded its original business. Stability AI has laid off employees and parted ways with its chief executive. And Anthropic has raced to close the roughly $1.8 billion gap between its modest sales and enormous expenses. “You can already see the writing on the wall,” said Ali Ghodsi, chief executive of Databricks, a data warehouse and analysis company that works with A.I.

Persons: Anthropic, ”, Ali Ghodsi Organizations: Google, Microsoft, Meta, A.I Locations: Silicon Valley

☆ 10 Years, 100 Stories: The Work That Defines the Upshot
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-27 | by ( The Upshot Staff | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +20 min

Ten years ago this week, The New York Times introduced the Upshot, a section devoted to explaining “politics, policy and everyday life.” That’s a wide scope, by design. As a result, more than 5,000 articles later, the Upshot has been many things to many readers. To mark our 10th birthday, we’ve collected 100 stories that embody the Upshot. WordleBot Eden Weingart/The New York Times When Wordle first became popular, several people on the internet claimed, plausibly, that they had come up with the “best” opening word. Force of Ship Impact Was on the Scale of a Rocket Launch Erin Schaff/The New York Times We think of the Upshot as a place where back-of-the-envelope calculations can be both helpful and welcome.

Persons: ”, Nate Cohn’s, we’ve, Kevin Quealy, John Branch, John, Patrick Thomas, tut, Trump, pollsters, Obamacare, Leif Parsons, We’re, Jason Henry, Tony Luong, Jordan, ‘, Ruth Fremson, Laurel, ’ Rodrigo Corral, Alex Welsh, Paul Romer, Tim Enthoven, Barack Obama, epidemiologists, It’s, you’re, WordleBot Eden, Wordle, Lila Barth, McCabe, Tom Brady, ChatGPT, —, Erin Schaff Organizations: New York Times, Facebook, Yankees, Red, State Newspaper, ESPN, The Athletic, The Times, You’re, Voters, Trump, Mr, Times, Siena College, Walmart, The New York Times, Jordan Siemens, Health, New, Nike, Democratic, Twitter, America, Iowa, Iowa Democratic, Cancer, Hit, Biden, Insurance, Roe America, Disorders, Republican, Republican Party of, U.S, Budget, NASA, National, Traffic, Administration, Yorkers, Force Locations: It’s, Red Sox, State, America, Dakota, Ireland, Chipotle, Japan, U.S, United States, Siena, New Pennsylvania, District, Iowa, Covid, York City, New York, Pennsylvania, Roe, Tonga, Arizona, York, Holland

☆ In Race to Build A.I., Tech Plans a Big Plumbing Upgrade
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-27 | by ( Karen Weise | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

If 2023 was the tech industry’s year of the A.I. It may not sound as exciting, but tens of billions of dollars are quickly being spent on behind-the-scenes technology for the industry’s A.I. Companies from Amazon to Meta are revamping their data centers to support artificial intelligence. They are investing in huge new facilities, while even places like Saudi Arabia are racing to build supercomputers to handle A.I. has become a story about building a massive technology infrastructure, Meta said on Wednesday that it needed to spend billions more on the chips and data centers for A.I.

Persons: Meta Organizations: Amazon, Microsoft, Meta Locations: chatbot, Saudi Arabia

Meta’s A.I. But for investors, that’s not enough — and that’s a warning to other tech giants set to announce their own financial results in the coming days. That makes clear that while Wall Street loves the opportunities that A.I. The company plans to spend $35 billion to $40 billion this year — much of that on the technology — up from a forecast of $30 billion to $37 billion. It also expects second-quarter revenue to come in at $36.5 billion to $39 billion, below analyst estimates.

Persons: Meta’s, Meta, that’s, Mark Zuckerberg Organizations: Facebook, Wall, Meta

☆ Microsoft Reports Rising Revenues as A.I. Investments Bear Fruit
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-25 | by ( Karen Weise | More About Karen Weise | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Profit hit $21.9 billion, up from $18.3 billion. A year after Microsoft began its push to put A.I. into everything it does, the company said sales of its flagship cloud computing product, Azure, had grown 31 percent. push has helped it gain market share from Amazon, the leading cloud services provider. In January, the company said 53,000 customers were using its cloud A.I.

Persons: Microsoft’s Organizations: Microsoft, Revenue, Amazon

☆ ‘To the Future’: Saudi Arabia Spends Big to Become an A.I. Superpower
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-25 | by ( Adam Satariano | Paul Mozur | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

On a Monday morning last month, tech executives, engineers and sales representatives from Amazon, Google, TikTok and other companies endured a three-hour traffic jam as their cars crawled toward a mammoth conference at an event space in the desert, 50 miles outside Riyadh. The lure: billions of dollars in Saudi money as the kingdom seeks to build a tech industry to complement its oil dominance. To bypass the congestion, frustrated eventgoers drove onto the highway shoulder, kicking up plumes of desert sand as they sped past those following traffic rules. A lucky few took advantage of a special freeway exit dedicated to “V.V.I.P.s” — very, very important people.

Persons: eventgoers Organizations: Amazon, Google Locations: Riyadh

☆ Meta’s Profits More Than Double, While Spending on A.I. Rises
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-24 | by ( Mike Isaac | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Profit was $12.4 billion, up from $5.7 billion a year earlier. “It’s been a good start to the year,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, referring to the company’s A.I. efforts and “healthy growth across our apps.”But Meta’s efforts on A.I., which require substantial computing power, come with a lofty price tag. The Silicon Valley company said it planned to raise its spending forecast for the year to $35 billion to $40 billion, up from a previous estimate of $30 billion to $37 billion. infrastructure, including data centers, chip designs and research and development costs.

Persons: “ It’s, ”, Mark Zuckerberg Organizations: Revenue, FactSet Locations: A.I

☆ The Meta-morphosis of Mark Zuckerberg
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-24 | by ( Vanessa Friedman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

In the run-up to Meta’s first-quarter earnings report this week, a video image of Mark Zuckerberg suddenly started going viral. Not because of the artificial intelligence assistant he was touting or because of the expected ad revenue growth, but because of the silver chain he was wearing around his neck. “Mark Zuckerberg made an announcement about something Meta is doing with A.I., but I could not listen to or retain a second of it because when I look at the Reel of him talking, all I see is necklace,” Amy Odell wrote in her Substack, Back Row.

Persons: Mark Zuckerberg, “ Mark Zuckerberg, Meta, Amy Odell

☆ Meta’s A.I. Assistant Is Fun to Use, but It Can’t Be Trusted
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-24 | by ( Brian X. Chen | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In the last few days, you may have noticed something new inside Meta’s apps, including Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp: an artificially intelligent chatbot. This is Meta’s response to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the chatbot that upended the tech industry in 2022, and similar bots including Google’s Gemini and Microsoft’s Bing AI. The Meta bot’s image generator also competes with A.I. Unlike other chatbots and image generators, Meta’s A.I. assistant is a free tool baked into apps that billions of people use every day, making it the most aggressive push yet from a big tech company to bring this flavor of artificial intelligence — known as generative A.I.

Persons: ”, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Bing, A.I, — Organizations: corgi, Meta Locations: New York, San Francisco

☆ Microsoft Makes a New Push Into Smaller A.I. Systems
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-23 | by ( Karen Weise | Cade Metz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

systems, the tech industry’s mantra has been bigger is better, no matter the price tag. Now tech companies are starting to embrace smaller A.I. On Tuesday, Microsoft introduced three smaller A.I. The smallest Phi-3 model can fit on a smartphone, so it can be used even if it’s not connected to the internet. And it can run on the kinds of chips that power regular computers, rather than more expensive processors made by Nvidia.

Organizations: Microsoft, Phi, Nvidia

☆ Opinion | This Conversation Made Me a Sharper Editor
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-23 | by ( The Ezra Klein Show | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

But it’s the crucial step in the creative process that takes work that’s decent and can turn it into something great. [You can listen to this episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” on the NYT Audio app, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.] Adam Moss is widely known as one of the great magazine editors of his generation: He remade The New York Times Magazine in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and during his 15 years as editor in chief of New York magazine, shaped that outlet into one of the greatest print and digital publications we have. It’s a celebration of the hard, human work that goes into the creative act. It’s a book, really, about editing.

Persons: “, Ezra Klein, Adam Moss, he’s Organizations: Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google, New York Times Magazine, New York

☆ A.I.-Generated Child Sexual Abuse Material May Overwhelm Tip Line
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-22 | by ( Cecilia Kang | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

A new flood of child sexual abuse material created by artificial intelligence is threatening to overwhelm the authorities already held back by antiquated technology and laws, according to a new report released Monday by Stanford University’s Internet Observatory. technologies have made it easier for criminals to create explicit images of children. The organization’s CyberTipline, created in 1998, is the federal clearing house for all reports on child sexual abuse material, or CSAM, online and is used by law enforcement to investigate crimes. “Almost certainly in the years to come, the CyberTipline will be flooded with highly realistic-looking A.I. content, which is going to make it even harder for law enforcement to identify real children who need to be rescued,” said Shelby Grossman, one of the report’s authors.

Persons: doesn’t, ”, Shelby Grossman Organizations: Stanford, National Center for

☆ Spurred by Teen Girls, States Move to Ban Deepfake Nudes
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-22 | by ( Natasha Singer | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Caroline Mullet, a ninth grader at Issaquah High School near Seattle, went to her first homecoming dance last fall, a James Bond-themed bash with blackjack tables attended by hundreds of girls dressed up in party frocks. A few weeks later, she and other female students learned that a male classmate was circulating fake nude images of girls who had attended the dance, sexually explicit pictures that he had fabricated using an artificial intelligence app designed to automatically “strip” clothed photos of real girls and women. Ms. Mullet, 15, alerted her father, Mark, a Democratic Washington State senator. Although she was not among the girls in the pictures, she asked if something could be done to help her friends, who felt “extremely uncomfortable” that male classmates had seen simulated nude images of them. Soon, Senator Mullet and a colleague in the State House proposed legislation to prohibit the sharing of A.I.-generated sexuality explicit depictions of real minors.

Persons: Caroline Mullet, James Bond, Mullet, ” Ms Organizations: Issaquah High School, Democratic Washington State, State House Locations: Seattle

☆ Generative A.I. Arrives in the Gene Editing World of CRISPR
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-22 | by ( Cade Metz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Generative A.I. technologies can write poetry and computer programs or create images of teddy bears and videos of cartoon characters that look like something from a Hollywood movie. Now, new A.I. The company is expected to present the paper next month at the annual meeting of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy. Much as ChatGPT learns to generate language by analyzing Wikipedia articles, books and chat logs, Profluent’s technology creates new gene editors after analyzing enormous amounts of biological data, including microscopic mechanisms that scientists already use to edit human DNA.

Persons: ChatGPT Organizations: American Society of Gene, Cell Locations: Berkeley, Calif

☆ Retailers Get ‘Phygital’
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-19 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Some experts say phygital (“physical” + “digital”) does a better job of describing how online and brick-and-mortar shops should work together to create a seamless customer experience. That became a necessity during the pandemic, when things like QR codes, digital payment options and contactless order pickups helped ease people’s fears about contracting the virus. Plus, some say phygital captures how retailers are incorporating augmented reality and A.I. Barry Collier, an entrepreneur who helped develop Neopets, a game with virtual pets, points to Ikea’s mobile app, which allows people to virtually sample couches and curtains in their own homes before making a purchase, as an example of phygital innovation. Sephora does a similar thing with makeup.

Persons: Barry Collier

☆ Emily Henry Is Proud to Be Called a Romance Writer
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-18 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Currently, Elise Bryant’s “It’s Elementary,” Calahan Skogman’s “Blue Graffiti” and Yangsze Choo’s “The Fox Wife.”Describe your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how). Either way, I’m laughing, crying and by the end, calling someone I love to let them know what they mean to me. Describe your ideal way to procrastinate from writing. I don’t know if it’s ideal, but I know a lot about “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City,” if that answers your question. I absolutely loved Tia Williams’s “A Love Song for Ricki Wilde.”What books are you embarrassed not to have read yet?

Persons: Elise Bryant’s, I’ve, “, Mhairi McFarlane, bender, Emma Straub’s “, Sherry Thomas, Tia Williams’s “, Ricki Wilde, ” Locations: Salt Lake City

☆ How A.I. Tools Could Change India’s Elections
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-18 | by ( Suhasini Raj | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

For a glimpse of where artificial intelligence is headed in election campaigns, look to India, the world’s largest democracy, as it starts heading to the polls on Friday. An A.I.-generated version of Prime Minister Narendra Modi that has been shared on WhatsApp shows the possibilities for hyperpersonalized outreach in a country with nearly a billion voters. In the video — a demo clip whose source is unclear — Mr. Modi’s avatar addresses a series of voters directly, by name.

Persons: Narendra Modi, Mr Locations: India

Search resuls for: "A.I"

25 mentions found