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☆ People taking obesity drugs Ozempic and Wegovy gain weight once they stop medication
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-29 | by ( Annika Kim Constantino | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Patients taking blockbuster obesity drugs Ozempic or Wegovy will pack the pounds back on after they stop taking the medications. Studies have similarly shown weight rebound in people who stop taking Ozempic. So has Ozempic, which was first authorized to treat diabetes and is now being used off-label for weight loss. The shortage and other factors like out-of-pocket costs without insurance or unpleasant side effects have forced some people to stop taking Ozempic or Wegovy. Conde-Knape said so far data indicate that weight loss is maintained with long-term use of the drugs.

☆ Google's AI teams are experiencing a brain drain. Here's where its top researchers are now.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-23 | by ( Thomas Maxwell | Hugh Langley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

Top AI researchers have been leaving for startups where their work can have more impact. That frustration over Google's slow movement has been corroborated by other former Google researchers who spoke to Insider. Niki Parmar left Google Brain after five years to serve as a co-founder and CTO of Adept, though like Vaswani she recently left for a stealth startup. Lukasz Kaiser left Google Brain after over seven years to join OpenAI in 2021. Sharan Narang, another contributor to the T5 paper, left Google Brain in 2022 after four years.

☆ Computing networking pioneer Metcalfe wins top industry prize
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-22 | by ( Stephen Nellis | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

March 21 (Reuters) - Computing networking pioneer Bob Metcalfe on Wednesday won the industry's most prestigious prize for the invention of the Ethernet, a technology that half a century after its creation remains the foundation of the internet. The Association for Computing Machinery credited Metcalfe, 76, with the Ethernet's "invention, standardization, and commercialization" in conferring its 2022 Turing Award, known as the Nobel prize of computing. The Ethernet got its start when Metcalfe, who later went on to co-found computing network equipment maker 3Com, was asked to hook up the office printer. Metcalfe said previous generations of AI "died on the vine because of a lack of data." And the brain teaches us that connecting them is where it's at," Metcalfe said.

☆ Open-source software braces for trade war
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-27 | by ( Pete Sweeney | Thomson Reuters | Asia Economics Editor Pete Sweeney Joined Reuters Breakingviews In Hong Kong In September Previously He Served As Reuters' Chief Correspondent For China Economy | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +6 min

HONG KONG, Feb 27 (Reuters Breakingviews) - The open-source software movement has been an unprecedented driver of global innovation and productivity growth. As with most Chinese handset makers, founder Ren Zhengfei relied on Android’s open-source code to run his company’s smartphones. Beijing has reciprocated, per a Nikkei report, by instructing its own tech companies not to incorporate ChatGPT into their platforms - a rare example of a mutual firewall. Dividing the world into competing open-source camps would mark another reverse for free trade. Follow @petesweeneypro on TwitterCONTEXT NEWSRegulators have told major Chinese tech companies not to offer ChatGPT services, the Nikkei news service reported on Feb. 22 citing sources with direct knowledge, causing shares in Chinese companies building chatbots to fall.

☆ The new Bing is acting all weird and creepy — but the human response is way scarier
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-23 | by ( Adam Rogers | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

It's a profit-making move designed to leverage our very human tendency to see human traits in nonhuman things. Look, I don't think we don't need to treat chatbots with respect because they ask us to. Making chatbots seem as if they're human isn't just incidental. So the real issue involving the current incarnation of chatbots isn't whether we treat them as people — it's how we decide to treat them as property. The robots don't care."

☆ Sam Altman is tech’s next household name — if we survive the killer robots
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-17 | by ( David Ingram | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +11 min

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, walks from lunch during the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference on July 6, 2022, in Sun Valley, Idaho. Sam Altman may be tech's next household name, but many Americans probably haven't heard of him. To anyone outside San Francisco, Altman would probably seem like just another young tech CEO. That worldview flared up into controversy in 2017 when Altman wrote a blog post criticizing political correctness, saying tech entrepreneurs were leaving San Francisco over it. "I realized I felt more comfortable discussing controversial ideas in Beijing than in San Francisco," he wrote.

☆ Google's moonshot factory is coming down to Earth
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-10 | by ( Hugh Langley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

The project, known internally by its codename, "Valkyrie," was the typical science-fiction-sounding idea that Google's self-described "moonshot factory" was designed to dream up. But amid a lack of successful launches and a tech industry facing economic headwinds, insiders say the lab is now hitting the hard-reset button and rethinking its purpose within Alphabet, Google's parent company. X swapped standard corporate titles like "Communications Lead" and "Manager" for grander and more-nebulous names like "Factory Whisperer" and "Firestarter." Its internet-balloon unit, Google Loon, meant to bring people in rural areas online, was shuttered in January 2021. "I think the infusion of VC people is a good thing," one former senior X employee said.

☆ Generative AI Startups Attract Business Customers, Investor Funding
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-25 | by ( Angus Loten | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +5 min

Based on keyword prompts, generative AI platforms can then mimic these sources to produce fanciful stories and pictures of their own. Other generative AI startups offering enterprise applications include Replikr, a New Zealand startup that uses generative AI to create customer-service avatars, and Dutch startup Musico Ltd., which can be used to create original copyright-free advertising jingles. GoCharlie.AI, an early-stage startup based in San Francisco, in May launched a generative AI marketing assistant designed to create promotional social-media posts. By promising to save workers hours of productive time creating promotional materials, the commercial value proposition around generative AI has always been clear, he said. Rowan Curran, an AI and data science analyst at IT research firm Forrester Research Inc., said he expects generative AI to impact enterprises from top to bottom.

Bogenschutz and his team specifically set out to test whether or not psilocybin, in addition to sessions of therapy, could cut cravings and help people with alcohol use disorder stay sober. Earlier research from institutions around the world has indicated that psilocybin has the potential to treat a variety of addiction disorders, including alcohol use disorder, opioid use disorder and addiction to smoking. Jon KostasWhen he began the psilocybin trial at age 25, he was consuming almost 23 drinks in a single bender. At the beginning of the first dose sessions, participants were given eye masks and headphones that played classical music. Bogenschutz said the rule of thumb with alcohol addiction treatment is that about one-third of patients who seek treatment will get better.

Meanwhile, French company Aryballe is also working on AI systems that are able to distinguish between thousands of different flavors. The researchers combined a depth sensor with a standard camera to capture shades of reds, greens, and blues on the edges of transparent objects. Aterra/Getty ImagesThe AI system then collects that data and combines it with a database containing thousands of different smells. Systems that can 'taste' thousands of foodsGastrograph AI is a platform created by Analytical Flavor Systems Inc. Greenies/FacebookYunzhu Li, a researcher at MIT, is working on an AI system capable of establishing a relationship between an image and the touch of a surface.

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