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☆ Bitcoin's next gen tokens are here. Inside the Silicon Valley hacker house where 17 coders helped build the new memecoin market
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-22 | by ( Mackenzie Sigalos | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +10 min

Magic Eden coders gathered in an Airbnb in San Jose, California, to hack in preparation for the so-called bitcoin halving. Their goal was to spend a week hacking to prepare for the so-called bitcoin halving — an event that is baked into the chain's code and helps to stave off inflation through programmatic monetary policy. watch nowTechnically speaking, runes just enables asset issuance of fungible tokens on bitcoin's base chain. The reason this is significant to developers is because of its efficiency relative to existing BRC-20 tokens, bitcoin's widely-used fungible token standard that has already received a ton of traction. "There's definitely been an awakening of capital interest in the bitcoin layer two space," said Muneeb Ali, who co-founded Stacks — an open-source blockchain network that brings smart contracts to bitcoin.

Persons: Eden coders, Amil Husain, Magic Eden, Bitcoin, Eden's, Zedd Yin, Eden's coders, Yin, blockchain, Casey Rodarmor, Rodarmor, Casey, Nic Carter, Bill Barhydt, bitcoin, Barhydt, I've, Carter, PitchBook, There's, Muneeb Ali, Ali, Christopher Calicott, Amil Husain DeFi, Hong Fang, Fang, Goldman Sachs, Stacks's Ali Organizations: East Foothills, Fighter, Engineers, solana, Island Ventures, Venture, CNBC, Magic Eden, Austin, Trammell Venture Partners, Labs, Ribbit Capital Locations: San Jose , California, U.S, Northern California, solana, ethereum, Abra, bitcoin, San Jose, Bitcoin

☆ IBM's marketing chief explains how the company is harnessing AI to boost productivity
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-09 | by ( Lara O'Reilly | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

IBM aims to be "client zero" of the AI products it sells to clients, marketing chief Jonathan Adashek said. He said AI has augmented the work IBM staffers do and even made its ads more effective. In April 2020, our CEO Arvind Krishna said IBM is going to be the leading hybrid cloud and AI company. That means acquisitions, that means divestitures, that means prioritizing some areas of work over others. Dropping 'hybrid work' from the return-to-office vernacularI think a lot of what drives productivity in the wrong direction is when you get people not focused on the must-haves and spending more time on the nice-to-dos.

Persons: Jonathan Adashek, —, Arvind Krishna, we've, Intentionality Organizations: IBM, Service, Adobe, Masters, Java

☆ Top executives say they’re training workers on AI. Managers and employees disagree
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-01 | by ( Rachel Curry | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

There's a disconnect between the level of AI training that leadership teams believe they're giving their employees and the level of training that managers and employees think they're getting, research shows. Nearly three-quarters (73%) of C-suite executives believe their company fully embraces generative AI, including training for the technology, according to a 2023 Upwork survey. "Executives sometimes have a broad-brush approach to AI training," said Apratim Purakayastha, chief technology officer at Skillsoft. Plus, they were 1.9 times more likely to have a formal generative AI skills program in place for their workforce, as well as 3.8 times more likely to have a well-defined generative AI strategy. Generative AI, Monahan notes, can usher in a new era of productivity — if we let it.

Persons: Kelly Monahan, it's, Apratim Purakayastha, Monahan, Purakayastha, Job redesigns, Robert Solow, redesigns, that's, they're, — Organizations: Upwork's Research, IBM, Pew Research Locations: upskilling, American, Davos, Switzerland

☆ Silicon Valley's biggest ever 'dogfooding' experiment has begun. The implications are huge.
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-14 | by ( Alistair Barr | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Big Tech companies are testing AI tools internally in a massive 'dogfooding' experiment. This involves Big Tech companies taking large language models and generative AI tools and putting them to work inside their own organizations. The findings could also change how Big Tech companies operate — and how many expensive engineers they need. Big Tech companies want to sell AI tools to help businesses, developers, advertisers, creators, and other customers reach this new productivity nirvana. If these dogfooding tests go well, Big Tech companies may not need to hire as many workers in the future.

Persons: —, It's, Googler Anthony Vallone, Ruth Porat, Hugh Langley, it's, BI's Ashley Stewart, Stewart, there's, Urs Hölzle Organizations: Big Tech, Google, Microsoft, Service, Microsoft Microsoft Locations: Silicon

☆ The biggest winners and losers from the new sports streaming service
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-08 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

NEW LOOK Sign up to get the inside scoop on today’s biggest stories in markets, tech, and business — delivered daily. ESPN, Warner Bros., and Fox announced plans this week for a new sports streaming service set to launch this fall . That could put an end to cable TV as we know it , Nathan McAlone, Business Insider's deputy media editor, writes. Ashley Rodriguez, BI's media editor, has a breakdown of the six biggest questions about this new sports streamer . Games on YouTubeTV, for example, are noticeably delayed compared to cable TV broadcasts .

Persons: —, Katie Notopoulos, David Jensen, Nathan McAlone, it's, Ashley Rodriguez, Peter Kafka, BI's, Peter, Nathan, Ashley —, We've, Ashley, Fox, Rick Wilking, Reuters Leon Cooperman, Marc Rubinstein, Yi Huiman, Xi Jinping, Jordan Hart, It's, Justin Metz, Blackstone, Bob Iger, Donald Trump, Dan DeFrancesco, Hallam Bullock, Jordan Parker Erb, George Glover Organizations: Business, Service, ESPN, Warner Bros, Fox, ESPN2, ABC, FOX, Peter : Media, Nathan, Warner Bros ., NFL, Cable, Comcast, Paramount, Reuters, Signature Bank, New York Community Bancorp, Securities, Commission, that's, Apple Vision, Microsoft, BI, of Foreign Labor, Apollo, KKR, Bain Capital, Disney, Epic Games, ConocoPhillips, US Locations: New, China, Beijing, New York, London

☆ Microsoft is rolling out a Copilot tool to internal teams as it tries to get more developers to use AI, leaked message shows
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-07 | by ( Ashley Stewart | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +1 min

Microsoft is rolling out its AI Copilots internally and trying to get employees up to speed. The rollout has include pilot tests on AI and an internal hackathon, one message suggests. download the app Email address Sign up By clicking “Sign Up”, you accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy . AdvertisementMicrosoft is rolling out Microsoft 365 Copilot product to employees as it tries to get more developers to use AI, according to an internal message viewed by Business Insider. This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers.

Persons: —, Jason Zander's Organizations: Microsoft, OpenAI, Service, Business, Jason Zander's Strategic Missions, Technologies

☆ Ukraine is thinking more like Silicon Valley to defend itself against Russia's electronic warfare
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-20 | by ( Lloyd Lee | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

As a countermeasure, Ukraine has taken several steps to develop new warfare tech. In electronic warfare, jamming technology can be used to disable drones, suppress radar signals, and render GPS-guided missiles useless. AdvertisementBoth countries are engaged in electronic warfare, but Ukraine's capabilities are harder to assess, The Associated Press reported last year. The US has previously expressed concerns that Russia has been deploying jamming technology to reduce the accuracy of American-made smart bombs. The impacts of Russia's electronic warfare have made quickly seeking and developing technological countermeasures a priority for the Ukrainian government.

Persons: —, Mykhailo Fedorov Organizations: Service, Ukraine's Ministry of Digital Transformation, Associated Press, US, Royal United Services Institute, New, Himera Tech Locations: Ukraine, Ukrainian, Russia

☆ Singapore Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong to lead ruling party before general election
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-05 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Lawrence Wong attends the Singapore-India Hackathon ahead of the G20 Finance Ministers, Central Bank Governors (FMCBG) and Finance & Central Bank Deputies (FCBD) meetings in Gandhinagar on July 16, 2023. (Photo by Sam PANTHAKY / AFP) (Photo by SAM PANTHAKY/AFP via Getty Images)Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said on Sunday that Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong will take over from him as leader of the ruling People's Action Party before the next general election due by November 2025. With the PAP widely expected to continue dominating elections, Wong is likely to become Singapore's next prime minister. Lee, who has served as prime minister since 2004, is the eldest son of Singapore's founding father, Lee Kuan Yew. He announced last year that Finance Minister Wong, 50, would be his successor and promoted him to be his deputy.

Persons: Lawrence Wong, Sam PANTHAKY, Lee Hsien Loong, Wong, Lee, Singapore's, Lee Kuan Yew, DPM Lawrence Organizations: Finance, G20, Ministers, Central Bank Governors, Finance & Central Bank Deputies, SAM PANTHAKY, Getty Images, Singapore, Party Locations: Singapore, India, Gandhinagar, AFP, Lawrence

☆ 'Bracing for the impact': Founders who built on ChatGPT find out the hard way Big Tech can torpedo their work
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-03 | by ( Hasan Chowdhury | Riddhi Kanetkar | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

One founder building ChatGPT add-ons says he's "bracing" for other changes from OpenAI. Little-guy developers building complementary services to OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot have just found this out the hard way. As several techies noticed, that's pretty much killed off a bunch of startups that build "ChatGPT wrapper" apps that did precisely that. Other wrapper apps can create ad copy, sales materials, and social media posts. As one anonymous venture capitalist, who has backed a ChatGPT wrapper startup put it to Insider: "Just wait until ChatGPT has an outage and see which emperors have no clothes."

Persons: —, Sam Altman, Kevin Dietsch, Dominik Lohle, Joel Liu, Liu, Claude, Damon Chen, PDF.ai, h9KnROaWtI — Damon Chen, Nvidia's, Jin Fan, ChatGPT Organizations: Service, Google, Boston, Microsoft

☆ OpenAI just taught little-guy developers an ugly lesson
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-03 | by ( Hasan Chowdhury | Riddhi Kanetkar | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

☆ US shutdown looms: Top House Republican Kevin McCarthy faces crucial test
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-18 | by ( David Morgan | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +6 min

U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) addresses the 5th annual Congressional Hackathon on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., September 14, 2023. But hardline activism on spending, policy and impeachment have split Republicans in the House and slowed the Senate's path forward on approving bipartisan spending legislation. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries warned on Sunday that the situation amounts to a Republican "civil war." Unless the House can move forward on spending, Republican leaders say privately that they could be forced to move directly into negotiations with Senate Democrats on appropriations bills, circumventing hardliners. Other House Republicans fear that McCarthy's decision to open an impeachment inquiry of Biden could make it harder to gain cooperation on spending from Democrats.

Persons: Kevin McCarthy, Evelyn Hockstein, Joe Biden, brinkmanship, Fitch, Hakeem Jeffries, Tommy Tuberville, McCarthy, Biden, who's, Chip Roy, Patrick McHenry, Ralph Norman, Ken Buck, David Morgan, Richard Cowan, Scott Malone, Sandra Maler Organizations: REUTERS, Rights, ., Republican, U.S . Congress, Democratic, Senate, AAA, California Republican, Fox News, Department of Defense, House Republicans, White, Defense Department, Department of Veterans Affairs, Caucus, Moderate, Biden, Republicans, Washington Post, Thomson Locations: Washington , U.S, California

☆ Connections: New York Times might've found its next Wordle
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-28 | by ( Jordan Valinsky | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

New York CNN —The New York Times found instant success with Wordle. A new puzzle called Connections is officially joining the newspaper’s portfolio of games this week, following a successful summer testing phase where it became the Times’ second-most played game behind Wordle despite minimal promotion. Players will see Connections appear in the Times’ Games app and in the news app under the Play tab beginning this week. Connections is the newest hit for the New York Times. Players playing other games other than Wordle “experienced record growth over the last year,” Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien said in a recent earnings call.

Persons: New York Times Jonathan Knight, Knight, ” Knight, “, Wordle, Wordle “, Meredith Kopit Levien, ” Brian Morrissey, ” Morrissey, ” Organizations: New, New York CNN, The New York Times, Wordle, Times, Times ’, New York Times, CNN, ”, “ Locations: New York

☆ I landed a job at Google right out of college. Here are 10 things I wish I knew before starting my career.
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-07 | by ( Charlene Lee | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +15 min

Charlene Lee is a former product manager at Google who wishes she had a guide prior to starting her first job. Today, I'd like to share some of the lessons I wish I had learned before starting my career, lessons that I now teach my team. It's your job to find a good managerOne of my best managers, Paul, spent a lot of time with me early in my career. Things changed when the next box, like writing a book, started conflicting with things that weren't on the list. The start of your career is the beginning of your journey, and I hope that this guide helps you with yours.

Persons: Charlene Lee, she's, Lee, Google's, I'd, would've, Paul, wasn't, I've, didn't, Paul didn't, It's, Jon, Jon wasn't, wouldn't, —, hadn't, Carissa wasn't, Marty, Dan Gilbert, Inbal, Ralph Waldo Emerson Organizations: Google, Jon's, AngelList, Duke University Locations: Asia, New York, China, Singapore, Shanghai, —

One unit ran a "hackathon," or collaborative engineering event, of so-called generative AI, technology that produces text, images or other new content based on past data. The division, Verafin, was exploring how to imbue such AI into its product for fighting financial crime, he said, adding the technology could create investigative reports. Still, despite using other forms of AI for years, Nasdaq's latest work remains experimental; no code has been published yet drafted by AI, Peterson said. Nasdaq has accessed a preview of Amazon's answer to the generative AI race, namely Amazon Bedrock, a pick-your-preferred technology approach that includes Claude AI from the startup Anthropic. On the longer-term horizon for Nasdaq is integrating the Thoma Bravo-owned software firm Adenza, subject to closure of the $10.5 billion-deal Nasdaq announced last month.

Persons: AUSTIN, Brad Peterson, Verafin, Peterson, We're, Nasdaq's, OpenAI, Claude AI, Thoma, Jeffrey Dastin, Kenneth Li, Deepa Babington Organizations: Nasdaq, Computer, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Thoma Bravo, Thomson Locations: Austin

☆ Founders and VCs are clamoring to get into this $68 million AI hacker house. Here's how the AGI House exploded into a community hub for the red-hot Bay Area AI scene.
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-21 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

In February, the AGI House launched as a community hub for the buzzy Bay Area AI scene. Since launching in February this year, it's served as a hacker house and community hub for the Bay's exploding AI scene. Depending on the day, the residence houses between eight to ten AI founders and researchers, including a researcher from AI giant OpenAI. Stephanie PalazzoloFrom flying cars to fireside conversationsThe AGI House wasn't always the AGI House. "It's great to live in a community house where you're naturally connected to the AI founder community," she said.

Persons: Steve Jobs, Elon, it's, Demi Guo, Stephanie Palazzolo, wasn't, Andrej Karpathy, Rocky Yu, Karpathy, Sergey Brin, Kelly Peng, Yu, Jeremy Nixon, Tim Shi, Lerer Hippeau, Peng, Guo, There's, Greylock's, Corinne Riley AGI, they're Organizations: AGI, Technologies, Genesis, Foundation Capital Locations: buzzy, Hillsborough, Stanford, Alamo, LA, AGI, New York City, Stanford's

☆ Inside Amazon's rush to respond to ChatGPT. 'Amazon must be really scared about being late on all of this.'
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-12 | by ( Eugene Kim | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +10 min

"Amazon must be really scared about being late on all of this," one Amazon employee said in an interview. The same rules apply to the new Microsoft Bing search engine that uses ChatGPT's technology, an internal document said. "Since generative AI is all the rage right now, it will be included in the themes, and there will be a special award for the project that best demonstrates generative AI," the email said. Mike Blake/ReutersEmployees are still curious about Amazon's response to ChatGPT and generative AI, frequently bringing up the topic in internal town-hall meetings. He also said that Amazon's top leadership team, called the S-team, was "very excited about it" and that generative AI was a "big area of focus for us."

Persons: ChatGPT, Sam Altman, Sven Hoppe, It's, hackathons, Andy Jassy, Mike Blake, Adam Selipsky, Jassy, Eugene Kim Organizations: Amazon, Echo, Microsoft, Employees, Getty, Bloomberg, Burnham, Reuters Employees

☆ Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg touts to employees 'incredible breakthroughs' the company has seen in A.I.
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-08 | by ( Jonathan Vanian | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants his workforce to know the company is in the middle of the artificial intelligence race. During a meeting with employees Thursday in the Hacker Square pavilion at Meta's Menlo Park headquarters, Zuckerberg discussed Meta's AI efforts, a spokesperson confirmed. Meta said it's giving employees access to several internal generative AI tools to help develop prototypes, and the company is hosting a hackathon for workers to show off their AI projects. Meta executives told employees the company is still committed to releasing AI research to the open-source community. Last week, Meta told employees they will need to work at the company's offices three days a week, starting in September.

Persons: Mark Zuckerberg, Zuckerberg, we've, Axios, hasn't, Meta, Richard Blumenthal, Josh Hawley Organizations: Menlo, CNBC, Meta, Microsoft, Google Locations: Sens, R

☆ They Fled San Francisco. The A.I. Boom Pulled Them Back.
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-07 | by ( Erin Griffith | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

And tech workers have been among the most vocal groups to criticize the city for its worsening problems with drugs, housing and crime. technology — known as generative A.I., which produces text, images and video in response to prompts — there’s too much at stake to miss out. Investors have already announced $10.7 billion in funding for generative A.I. Tens of thousands of tech workers recently laid off by big tech companies are now eager to join the next big thing. “Hacker houses,” where people create start-ups, are springing up in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley neighborhood, known as “Cerebral Valley” because it is the center of the A.I.

Persons: —, Hacker Locations: San, ”, San Francisco’s Hayes Valley

☆ A Week With the Wild Children of the A.I. Boom
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-31 | by ( Yiren Lu | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +4 min

Maybe in a few decades from now, we’ll look back at all these seminal A.I. As two analysts at N.E.A., an investment firm, put it in a recent report, generative A.I. But with large language models, incumbents like Google and Microsoft have had a huge head start in both developing the technology and acquiring market share among consumers. Moreover, the capital-intensive nature of training large language models means that smaller companies like OpenAI and Anthropic creating their own large language models have few alternatives beyond making Faustian “partnerships” with tech giants. Beyond the incumbents, one beneficiary might well be the indie hacker, the kind of coder for hire who does niche A.I.

Persons: Mark Cuban, ChatGPT, Diego Basch, “, Sahil Lavingia, ” Organizations: Dallas Mavericks, Twitter, Google, Microsoft, N.E.A Locations: whiteboards, Hillsborough, HF0, S.A.S

☆ Mass event will let hackers test limits of A.I. technology
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-10 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

But now its maker, OpenAI, and other major AI providers such as Google and Microsoft, are coordinating with the Biden administration to let thousands of hackers take a shot at testing the limits of their technology. Some are official "red teams" authorized by the companies to "prompt attack" the AI models to discover their vulnerabilities. Chowdhury, now the co-founder of AI accountability nonprofit Humane Intelligence, said it's not just about finding flaws but about figuring out ways to fix them. Building the platform for the testing is another startup called Scale AI, known for its work in assigning humans to help train AI models by labeling data. "Our basic view is that AI systems will need third-party assessments, both before deployment and after deployment.

☆ How We Make Games at The Times
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-10 | by ( Deb Amlen | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

“Game Jam is a ‘hackathon’ for games,” Ms. Bell explained, “and we treat it here as a way to explore new games and new features for existing games, anything new for our game products.”But just because an idea is pitched does not mean that it will be greenlighted. “We want a handful of games that we’re really proud of, with a lot of following and engagement,” Mr. Knight said. He cited Spelling Bee and Wordle as examples of these types of games. (While Spelling Bee was made in-house, Wordle was made by Josh Wardle, a game developer, and sold to The Times.) The team breaks the game development process down into phases, and Mr. Knight and other members of the Games team shared their general process.

☆ ChatGPT Helped Win a Hackathon
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-20 | by ( Kim S. Nash | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +3 min

The ChatGPT AI bot has spurred speculation about how hackers might use it and similar tools to attack faster and more effectively, though the more damaging exploits so far have been in laboratories. In its current form, the ChatGPT bot from OpenAI, an artificial-intelligence startup backed by billions of dollars from Microsoft Corp., is mainly trained to digest and generate text. Newsletter Sign-up WSJ Pro Cybersecurity Cybersecurity news, analysis and insights from WSJ's global team of reporters and editors. PREVIEWTwo security researchers from cybersecurity company Claroty Ltd. said ChatGPT helped them win the Zero Day Initiative’s hack-a-thon in Miami last month. At the contest, Mr. Moshe and his partner succeeded all 10 times they tried, winning $123,000.

☆ Tech staffing unicorn Andela is buying a smaller industry peer, as startups are looking to combine amid a tough funding market
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-09 | by ( April Joyner | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Remote tech-talent startup Andela is acquiring the engineering assessment platform Qualified. Companies outside of tech are still hungry for engineering talent, Andela CEO Jeremy Johnson said. Founded in 2014 with an initial focus on training and hiring African engineers, Andela now connects companies with remote technical workers in 170 countries worldwide. At first glance, the deal seems to counter prevailing trends in the tech industry: Startups are widely seeking to preserve cash as venture capital funding has slowed down, and tech companies of all sizes have undergone significant layoffs. "They've all realized they have to become tech companies," he said.

The AI industry is vast, encompassing not only buzzy chatbots and conversational search engines but also things like self-driving vehicles. Big technology companies have laid off tens of thousands of workers in recent months, but workers with AI skills are still in demand. Highly educated data scientists and core AI specialists with technical know-how are still highly in demand despite recent layoffs, Forshaw said. Natural language processing is really hot right now, but data science and data analytics skills are still in high demand." Still, Kimmel— who recently launched a bootcamp for AI startups— suggests that it's best to jump in and learn alongside early builders.

☆ I helped create a 'cyber army' to help Ukraine defeat Russia. We can't fight with guns, but we can fight with our laptops.
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-19 | by ( Jyoti Mann | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Yegor Aushev appealed for volunteers for a "cyber army" to help Ukraine defeat Russia. Within the first few days of the war, we separated the cyber army into groups of between 7 to 10 people. Our call for decentralized cyber army volunteers is probably what inspired others to create their own groups, such as Ukraine's IT army, formed a few days later by the minister of digitization, Mykhailo Fedorov. Another project involved using tech to recognize who was in photos left by Russian soldiers in Bucha near Kyiv. If it was a couple hundred Russian SIMs, of course it's Russian soldiers and not tourists.

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