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☆ Artificially Intelligent Help for Planning Your Summer Vacation
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-08 | by ( J. D. Biersdorfer | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The summer travel season starts in just a few weeks, but if you are looking for software that goes beyond simply booking flights and hotels, you’re in luck. Search engines enhanced by artificial intelligence can help with your research and outline full itineraries. Travel AgentGeneral-purpose A.I.-powered search tools and chatbots like Google’s Gemini spin up a list of things to do on your vacation when asked, but A.I. bots that are fine-tuned for travel queries are often more comprehensive. These bots scout destinations, plan itineraries, search for accommodations and flights, map out road trips and do more — grabbing a lot of information at once and saving you all that time-consuming web trawling.

☆ Google Employees Tune Out Antitrust Threat as Trial Comes to a Head
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-03 | by ( Nico Grant | More About Nico Grant | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

On Tuesday, Google’s employees gathered for an all-hands meeting named T.G.I.F. These companywide meetings are rarely held on Fridays these days, but the name has stuck. Executives shared highlights from a recent earnings report and cloud-computing conference, and warned workers against taking disruptive actions in the wake of internal protests against a cloud-computing contract with Israel. But no one in the meeting, two employees said, broached a topic that could have a dramatic impact on Google: its landmark antitrust trial with the Justice Department, where arguments are finally coming to an end this week. For eight months, while tech policy experts have tried to divine what a Google victory or loss would mean for the power of tech giants in the United States, Google’s employees have mostly ignored the antitrust fight, according to interviews with a dozen current and recent workers, who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to discuss the legal matter.

Organizations: Google, Justice Department Locations: Israel, United States

The U.S. government’s landmark antitrust trial against Google’s search business is nearing its conclusion. Under the Trump administration, the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission started investigating Amazon, Apple, Google and Meta, the parent company of Instagram and WhatsApp, for monopolistic behavior. The government has since sued all four companies — Google twice — in what it says is an effort to rein in their power and promote more competition. Closing arguments wrap up on Friday in Google’s first antitrust suit on allegations that it has a monopoly in internet search. and 17 states sued Amazon, accusing it of protecting a monopoly by squeezing sellers on its vast marketplace and favoring its own services.

Persons: Trump Organizations: U.S, Justice Department, Federal Trade Commission, Apple, Google, Big Tech, Amazon Locations: Google’s

☆ What’s at stake in the Google antitrust case? Billions of dollars (and the way we use the internet)
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-03 | by ( Brian Fung | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

CNN —Whenever you type a search into Apple’s Safari browser — say, on an iPhone — chances are it’s Google that returns the results. You can tell Safari to pick another search engine, but in practice most people tend to stick with Google by default. You might know that Google pays Apple enormous sums of money every year for that prime placement. Those eye-popping figures, newly unsealed this week, come from a blockbuster antitrust lawsuit against Google that’s just entered its closing stages. Nothing prevented Apple from choosing a different default search partner, Google contends.

Persons: —, Google that’s, Trump, Amit Mehta, Mehta, ” Mehta, John Schmidtlein, Google’s, Sherman, “, ” Schmidtlein Organizations: CNN, Google, Apple, Justice Department, DOJ, Microsoft

☆ The Judge Deciding Google’s Fate
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-02 | by ( Steve Lohr | More About Steve Lohr | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

One of Amit P. Mehta’s first cases after becoming a federal judge in late 2014 proved to be a crash course in antitrust. Sysco, the nation’s largest distributor of food to restaurants and cafeterias, was trying to buy the rival US Foods, and the Federal Trade Commission had sued to block the $3.5 billion deal, arguing that it would stifle competition. Judge Mehta told lawyers on both sides that he would need help educating himself. After the trial in 2015, Judge Mehta wrote a comprehensive, closely reasoned 128-page opinion and ordered a temporary halt to the deal. Within days, Sysco abandoned its acquisition plan.

Persons: Amit P, Mehta’s, Judge Mehta, Sysco Organizations: US Foods, Federal Trade Commission

The judge overseeing a landmark U.S. antitrust challenge to Google tried to poke holes in both sides’ cases during closing arguments Thursday, as he weighs a ruling that could reshape the technology industry. Judge Amit P. Mehta was presiding over the first day of closing arguments in the most consequential tech antitrust case since the U.S. government sued Microsoft in the late 1990s. The Justice Department has sued Google, accusing it of illegally shoring up a monopoly in online search. On Thursday, Judge Mehta questioned the government’s argument that Google’s dominance had hurt the quality of the experience for searching for information online. “Certainly I don’t think the average person would say, ‘Google and Amazon are the same thing,’” Judge Mehta said.

Persons: Judge Amit P, Mehta, Judge Mehta Organizations: Google, Microsoft, The

☆ Tech Industry Braces as Google Antitrust Trial Closes
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-02 | by ( David Mccabe | More About David Mccabe | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The biggest U.S. challenge so far to the vast power of today’s tech giants has reached its climax. v. Google — over whether the tech giant broke federal antitrust laws to maintain its online search dominance. Google insists that consumers use its search engine because it is the best product. Many antitrust experts expect he will land somewhere in the middle, ruling only some of Google’s tactics out of bounds. The trial is the biggest challenge to date to the vast power of today’s tech giants, which have defined an era when billions of people around the world depend on their products for information, social interaction and commerce.

Persons: Amit P, Mehta Organizations: Justice Department, Google, Apple, District of Columbia, Meta Locations: U.S

☆ Former Google workers fired for protesting Israel deal file complaint claiming protected speech
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-01 | by ( Clare Duffy | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

New York CNN —Dozens of former Google workers filed a complaint with the US National Labor Relations Board on Tuesday after they were fired or placed on administrative leave last month for protesting the company’s cloud-computing contract with Israel’s government. We are confident in our position and stand by the actions we’ve taken.”Last month’s protests involved employee sit-ins inside Google’s offices in New York City and Sunnyvale, California. No Tech for Apartheid said last week that 50 Google employees were terminated in connection with the protests. The group claimed that some of the workers fired were “non-participating bystanders” and not actively involved in the workplace activism. But affected workers say they should not have been fired for protesting the company’s actions.

Persons: “, Thomas Kurian, ”, Zelda Montes, Benjamin Sachs, Kestnbaum, that’s, Sundar Pichai, Pichai, ” Pichai, Googlers, –, Catherine Thorbecke Organizations: New, New York CNN, US National Labor Relations Board, Tech, Apartheid, Google, CNN, “, Labor, Industry, Harvard Law School, Hamas Locations: New York, New York City, Sunnyvale , California, Sunnyvale, Israel, Gaza, America

☆ How CEOs are preparing for possible employee protests
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-29 | by ( Nicole Goodkind | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +10 min

You can always choose to move on, but remember you don’t have a right to work at most companies. We can’t keep re-litigating when we also have a business to runYou speak with CEOs every day. Most of the CEOs I’ve talked to said they haven’t seen their employees protest, but they’re bracing for it. But I will say that I don’t think it will become that widespread because of how swiftly and unapologetically Google addressed it. I don’t think it will become a thing.

Persons: Sundar Pichai, Bell, Johnny C, Taylor Jr, that’s, we’re, We’re, we’ve, I’m, You’d, They’re, I’ve, Royce, Peter Valdes, “ We’re, ”, Martin Fritsches, “ That’s, Brian Fung, Sean Lyngaas, Satya Nadella, Sam Altman, Northrop Grumman, Alejandro Mayorkas Organizations: CNN Business, Bell, New York CNN, Google, Tech, Society for Human Resource Management, Companies, Royce, BMW, OpenAI, Microsoft, Department of Homeland Security, Delta Air Lines, DHS, “, Amazon Web Services, IBM, Cisco, ’, Civil Locations: New York, Israel, Chichester , England

☆ 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

☆ Google earnings: Shares surge after Alphabet to buy back billions of dollars of its own stock
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-25 | by ( Clare Duffy | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

New York CNN —Alphabet, the parent company of Google, bounced back from an absolutely dreadful day for tech shares, as its stock surged Thursday after the closing bell. Revenue from the quarter reached more than $80.5 billion, up 15% from the same period in the prior year and ahead of the $78.75 billion analysts had projected, according to FactSet estimates. Meta shares sank on Thursday after the company raised its annual expense forecast to fund its AI ambitions, despite better-than-expected earnings results Wednesday. But in addition to Google, multiple positive tech earnings reports on Thursday helped reverse what had been a sluggish day for tech stocks. Snap resultsSocial media company Snap, the parent company of social media platform Snapchat, also saw its stock climb after-hours on the heels of a rosy first-quarter earnings report that beat Wall Street’s estimates.

Persons: Sundar Pichai, ” Pichai, CNN’s Catherine Thorbecke Organizations: New, New York CNN, Google, Wall, Revenue Locations: New York

☆ Alphabet’s Revenue Jumps 15% to $80.5 Billion
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-25 | by ( Nico Grant | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

On Thursday, Alphabet, Google’s parent company, reported strong revenue growth in its latest quarter from its search engine and video platform, YouTube, as its market-leading position in online advertising continued to reap rewards despite recent fluctuations in the industry. Alphabet reported $80.5 billion in quarterly sales, up 15 percent from a year earlier, and above analysts’ estimate of $78.8 billion. Analysts had expected $18.9 billion. The company’s board also approved a $70 billion share repurchase program. Google’s search engine has proved most resilient to the fluctuations that have happened since, emphasizing its role as a gateway to the internet for billions of people.

Organizations: Google, Meta, Facebook

☆ 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

☆ Google has fired 50 employees after protests over Israel cloud deal, organizers say
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-23 | by ( Catherine Thorbecke | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

CNN —Google has fired an additional 20 workers that it says were involved in protests last week over the company’s cloud-computing contract with the Israeli government, bringing the total number of workers fired to 50, according to the group organizing the demonstrations. No Tech for Apartheid, the organizers of the protest at Google offices last Tuesday, said in a statement Monday evening that Google had fired an additional 20 workers, on top of the 30 workers terminated last week. We carefully confirmed and reconfirmed this,” the Google spokesperson said. The organizers of the protest, meanwhile, say that some of the workers fired did not cause any disruption inside Google offices. Last week, in the wake of the protests at Google, CEO Sundar Pichai sent a company-wide memo to staffers urging them to keep “politics” out of the workplace.

Persons: ”, “, Sundar Pichai, ” Pichai, Googlers Organizations: CNN, Google, Tech, Apartheid, Hamas Locations: New York, Sunnyvale , California, Israel, Gaza, America

☆ Google fires 28 employees for protesting Israel cloud deal
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-18 | by ( Hanna Ziady | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

London CNN —Google has fired more than two dozen employees who protested this week against the company’s cloud computing contract with the Israeli government. The workers were dismissed after an investigation found that they had staged protests inside Google’s offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California. In Sunnyvale, they entered the office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, according to a post on X by the group that organized the demonstration, No Tech For Apartheid. Physically impeding other employees’ work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and completely unacceptable behavior. After refusing multiple requests to leave the premises, law enforcement was engaged to remove them to ensure office safety,” the spokesperson added.

Persons: Thomas Kurian, ”, Olesya Dmitracova Organizations: London CNN, Google, Apartheid, CNN, Tech Locations: New York, Sunnyvale , California, Sunnyvale

☆ News publishers group urges government to investigate Google for blocking some California news outlets
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-16 | by ( Hadas Gold | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

The move from Google, which drew swift backlash, came over a proposed law that would require tech companies to pay for news content. On Friday, Google announced it had begun removing links to California news websites for some users in response to the bill that would force Google, Meta and others to pay news outlets for their content. “No one company should be permitted to control information so singularly that it can make decisions to the detriment of society, as Google has done in California,” Coffey said. “This is a breach of public trust and we call on Google Executives to answer for this stunt.”Charles F. Champion, the president and CEO of the California News Publishers Association, said the move by Google was suppressing California news. “Google is not above the law, and they should not be allowed to act as if they are.”

Persons: California’s Unruh, Danielle Coffey, ” Coffey, “, Tempore Mike McGuire, ”, Charles F Organizations: CNN, Google, Media Alliance, Department of Justice, Federal Trade Commission, California, Law, UCL, Pro, Tempore, California Journalism, California News Publishers Association Locations: California, America

☆ Opinion: Google’s AI blunder over images reveals a much bigger problem
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-09 | by ( Rizwan Virk | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

When asked, Gemini politely refused in some instances to generate images of historically White people, such as the Vikings. In the image space, if you asked previous AI image generators for an image of a CEO or a doctor, they initially almost always showed images of White males. Google announced its Gemini AI chatbot was pausing the generation of people in images after concerns were raised that it was creating historically inaccurate images. What makes censorship and manipulation worse with AI is that today’s AI already has a well-known hallucination problem. It may be a portent of what’s to come with AI and Big Tech leading us into Orwellian territory.

Persons: Rizwan Virk, X, Dave, I’m, OpenAI’s, Gemini, Google’s, Pope, Sundar Pichai, we’ve, ”, didn’t, Michael M, George Orwell’s “, “ Organizations: Labs, MIT, Physics, Eastern, Arizona State University’s College of Global Futures, Center for Science, CNN, HAL, Google, Vikings, Fox News Digital, Gemini, Getty, Big Tech, Microsoft, Apple Locations: zenentrepreneur.com, White, German

☆ Opinion | Happy 20th Anniversary, Gmail. I’m Sorry I’m Leaving You.
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-07 | by ( Ezra Klein | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

The Verge blames search engines. But here’s another: Our digital lives have become one shame closet after another. A shame closet is that spot in your home where you cram the stuff that has nowhere else to go. But as the shame closet grows, the task of excavation or organization becomes too daunting to contemplate. The shame closet era of the internet had a beginning.

Persons: Inboxes Organizations: Wired, Technology, Google

☆ Elon Musk announces Tesla will unveil a ‘robotaxi’ on August 8
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-05 | by ( Peter Valdes-Dapena | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

But Musk, on a Friday afternoon, when companies tend to bury news, announced on X that Tesla would unveil its robotaxi on August 8. “Tesla Robotaxi unveil on 8/8,” the Tesla CEO (and owner of X) posted. Musk has said in the past that Tesla will make a car without controls for a human to use. Musk has said the system will one day make Tesla cars incredibly valuable. Cruise has paused its testing work after one of its self-driving cars hit and dragged a pedestrian.

Persons: CNN — Elon Musk, Tesla, “ Tesla, Musk, ” Musk, ”, Kelly Funkhouser, she’s, “ You’re, “, Cruise, Waymo Organizations: CNN, Tesla, Consumer, Department of Justice

☆ Google to Delete Billions of Chrome Browser Records in Latest Settlement
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-01 | by ( Nico Grant | More About Nico Grant | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In recent months, Google has raced to settle a backlog of lawsuits ahead of major antitrust showdowns with the Justice Department later this year. On Tuesday, the company resolved its fourth case in four months, agreeing to delete billions of data records it compiled about millions of Chrome browser users, according to a legal filing. v. Google, said the company had misled users by tracking their online activity in Chrome’s Incognito mode, which they believed would be private. In December, Google resolved a suit with dozens of attorneys general claiming it strong-armed app makers into paying high fees. And in March, Google agreed to pay a Massachusetts company, Singular Computing, an undisclosed sum after being accused of stealing patent designs — a claim that Google denies.

Persons: Chasom Brown, et Organizations: Google, Justice Department Locations: Massachusetts

☆ Opinion: 25 years later, ‘The Matrix’ is less sci-fi than tech reality
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-30 | by ( Opinion Rizwan Virk | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +11 min

In 2003, Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom imagined a “technologically mature” civilization could easily create a simulated world. With simulated worlds far outnumbering the “real” world, the likelihood that we are in a simulation would be significantly higher than not. Remember, the simulations would be so good that you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a physical and a simulated world. Either the signals are being beamed directly into your brain, or we are simply AI characters inside the simulation. Already, millions of humans are chatting with AI characters, and millions of dollars are pouring into making AI characters more realistic.

Persons: Virk, X, CNN — It’s, ”, Lana, Lilly Wachowski, Philip K, Dick, Tessa, Morpheus, Laurence Fishburne, Keanu Reeves, Nick Bostrom, Elon Musk, Smith, Hugo Weaving, Carrie Ann, Moss, Musk, OpenAI, it’s, Reeves ’ Organizations: Labs, MIT, Physics, Eastern, Arizona State University’s College of Global Futures, Center for Science, CNN, Apple, Trinity Locations: zenentrepreneur.com, Oxford, Silicon, Silicon Valley

Political preferences are often summarized on two axes. models allows us to see how a model’s political preferences develop. Source: Rozado (2024), The Political Preferences of LLMsWhat determines the political preferences of your A.I. Political preferences learned from those topics may then be broadly applied across the board to many other subjects as well. If one wants to steer this process directionally, Mr. Rozado proves it is straightforward to do.

Persons: Chatbots, Tomi Um, David Rozado, Rozado’s, —, ’, Elon Musk, ” A.I, Google’s Gemini, tinker, Rozado, RightWingGPT, LeftWingGPT, chatbots Organizations: Google, Big Tech, Conservative, Government, Self, Mr, Liberal, Democratic, Yorker, YouTube, Facebook Locations: A.I, —, America

☆ Apple announces its annual developers conference is set for June 10
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-26 | by ( Samantha Murphy Kelly | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +1 min

CNN —Apple announced its annual Worldwide Developer Conference will kick off on June 10, when the company is expected to show off its latest AI advancements. The conference, which is widely anticipated each year as a major showcase for Apple software news, will run Monday, June 10 through Friday, June 14. Although last year’s WWDC focused on the unveiling of the Vision Pro mixed reality headset, which launched in stores in February, this year is expected to turn to Apple’s AI efforts. A partnership with Google would catapult Apple into the growing AI arms race. In a press release on Tuesday, the company said WWDC 2024 will also share software updates coming to the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Apple TV and Vision Pro headset.

Persons: CNN —, WWDC, they’ve, — Organizations: CNN, CNN — Apple, Apple, Google, Apple Watch

☆ Can Xerox’s PARC, a Silicon Valley Icon, Find New Life with SRI?
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-26 | by ( John Markoff | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +12 min

Can Xerox’s PARC, a Silicon Valley Icon, Find New Life with SRI? 1974 A key part of PARC office of the future vision is a network to tie office systems together. The PARC laboratory, set in the foothills just south of Stanford, is now largely empty, hosting less than 100 researchers, far from a peak of almost 400. Mr. Parekh said that the stage was now set for a second leap forward in the way humans interacted with computers. “This is our annuity for the future for investing in research,” Mr. Parekh said.

Persons: Steve Jobs, Jobs, Apple’s Lisa, IBM’s Thomas J, “, ”, Eric Schmidt, Google’s, Bernardo Huberman, Mr, Huberman, Douglas Engelbart, Siri, Bill Duvall, Charley Kline, CALO, David Parekh, Parekh, SIRI, Curtis Carlson, Charles Simonyi, Jan Vandenbrande, Research Jan Vandenbrande, Johan De Kleer, San Organizations: Xerox’s PARC, SRI, Palo, Palo Alto Research, PARC, Mr, Xerox, SRI International, Stanford Research Institute, Xerox Dover, Xerox Corporation, T’s Bell Laboratories, Watson Research Center, Bay, “ PARC, of America, Machine, UCLA, Pentagon, Apple, Macintosh, Research Projects Agency, Microsoft, Windows, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Research Locations: Palo Alto, Stanford’sy, Stanford, Silicon, Menlo Park, Los Angeles, Calif, San Francisco, San Jose

☆ Apple is getting serious about AI
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-18 | by ( Samantha Murphy Kelly | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

It comes as Apple is expected to unveil several new AI features at its developer conference in June. According to a Bloomberg report, Apple is interested in licensing and building Google’s Gemini AI engine, which includes chatbots and other AI tools, into upcoming iPhones and its iOS 18 features. A partnership with Google would catapult Apple into the growing AI arms race. Apple, Google and OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment. Behind the scenes, Apple reportedly has been working its on-device generative AI capabilities and acquiring companies, such as Canadian startup DarwinAI.

Persons: they’ve, —, Siri, OpenAI, Tim Cook, we’re, Apple, Angelo Zino, Beata Zawrzel, Wedbush Organizations: CNN, Apple, Google, Bloomberg, Learning Research, CFRA Research, Wedbush Securities, Gemini, Microsoft Locations: Cupertino

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