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☆ Kremlin Blasts Were Real. The Rest Is Hazy, Maybe Intentionally.
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Michael Schwirtz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

But whose outrage was real and whose was feigned? In this war, the battle over the narrative is as important as the battle in the field. While the Kremlin frequently lies and uses its powerful government-controlled media to craft alternative realities, Ukraine, too, has proved adept at bending the truth to serve its wartime agenda. Cutting through the competing narratives to get to the truth can prove to be a tricky thing, and that perhaps is the point. Was it a staged Russian provocation meant to justify still harsher attacks on the Ukrainian population, or perhaps against Ukraine’s leadership?

May 4 (Reuters) - Two prominent former Google (GOOGL.O) researchers who authored the groundbreaking paper that paved the way for the generative AI boom, have raised $8 million for their new startup Essential AI, four sources told Reuters. Thrive Capital had led the round in Essential AI, founded by Ashish Vaswani and Niki Parmar. Thrive Capital, founded by Joshua Kushner, is also an investor in Microsoft-backed OpenAI. Essential AI aims to build software for enterprises to use large language models, the core software of a new artificial intelligence system that has powered generative AI applications such as ChatGPT, sources said. The raise came after Vaswani and Parmar left Adept AI, a company they also co-founded in 2021 with former Google director David Luan.

☆ Russia's air force has taken a beating, but its jets could still turn the tables in Ukraine, experts say
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Michael Peck | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Russia's air force has had a limited role in Ukraine, despite numerical and technological advantages. Russia has held its air force back largely because of Ukraine's effective air-defense network. Which raises the question: If Ukrainian air defenses fade, will the Russian Air Force — known as the VKS — finally become a decisive factor in the war? Ukraine's small but resourceful air force put up spirited resistance that mitigated Russia's numerical and technological superiority, however. "So the air force, I think, would definitely be committed much more heavily if they had a chance."

☆ ChatGPT, Generative AI, and LLMs for Litigators
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +23 min

What are the basics litigators should know about how generative AI and LLMs work? Generative AI is a type of AI that generates new content or data in response to a prompt, or question, by a user. LLMs are an advanced form of generative AI that are the basis for generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) platforms, such as ChatGPT. What are the primary ethical pitfalls of using generative AI and LLMs, and how can litigators avoid them? What types of procedural and substantive issues are likely to arise in litigation stemming from the use of generative AI and LLMs?

☆ Iranian drones used by Russia in Ukraine are powered by stolen Western tech, research shows
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Tim Lister | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

Russia wants Iranian drones and ballistic missiles; Iran wants Russian investment and trade. And for the Russians, Iranian drones are a bargain substitute for much more costly missiles, stocks of which are dwindling, according to Western officials. Last October, the head of Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, said Russia had ordered about 1,700 Iranian drones of different types. “These modifications have prevented investigators from identifying the acquisition networks facilitating the international supply of key components into Iran,” CAR says. CARThe revenues from the sale of hundreds of Shahed-136 drones to Russia will likely be reinvested in further improving the industry.

☆ A divided Israel stands at a perilous crossroads on its 75th birthday
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-26 | by ( Hadas Gold | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +10 min

And weakens the pillars that hold our nation together,” Israel’s President Isaac Herzog warned this week in a speech to Jewish groups. The legislation has plunged Israel into the largest and longest protest movement in the country’s history. Frozen peace processBut as Israel celebrates 75 years since its founding with fanfare, Palestinians mark the same event with mourning. It was during the Jewish state’s creation that more than 700,000 Palestinians were forced to flee their homes in what is now Israel. “This is the end of the era of limited conflicts,” Gallant told reporters, according to the Times of Israel.

☆ Inside the AI talent wars: Tech companies are ransacking university AI programs at Stanford, MIT, and Cornell in search of engineers
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-24 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | Melia Russell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +11 min

Driven by the recent AI boom, companies are raiding top college campuses for rare technical talent. She's currently on leave from her Stanford AI Ph.D. program to focus on Moonhub. In 2011, new AI Ph.D. graduates took jobs in the tech industry and academia in about equal measure. But since then, the majority of new grads have headed to the AI industry, with nearly double the percentage of AI Ph.D. grads taking industry jobs versus academic roles in 2021, according to Stanford's Institute for Human-Centered AI's 2023 AI Index Report. "All AI companies have roles for people with Ph.D.s and without," said Attaluri, the soon-to-be researcher at DeepMind.

☆ 44 of the most promising generative-artificial-intelligence startups of 2023, according to investors
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-24 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | Samantha Stokes | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

We asked investors to name the most promising generative-AI startups of 2023. VCs were asked to name startups in their portfolios and ones with which they had no financial ties. This past year has seen doom and gloom for most of the tech world, but a small, rapidly growing group of startups have seen a renaissance. In the model layer, third-party and open-source providers like OpenAI and Stability AI train AI models that startups can build upon. Insider asked 22 top artificial-intelligence and machine-learning investors to nominate the early-stage generative-AI startups within this ecosystem they believe show the most promise.

☆ The King Of Chemo: After being diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, Iain Ward decided to cycle across the US
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-12 | by ( Ben Church | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

‘The King Of Chemo’ has almost five million followers on TikTok, where he posts motivational, and humorous, videos tracking his journey. Iain Ward‘Freakish luck’Despite his diagnosis, Ward says he appreciates the “freakish luck” that has followed him throughout his life. He had previously been looking to raise money for an epic run across the country when Phelan reached out to him via Instagram. Phelan suffers with depression and was planning to cycle across the US to raise money for mental health and suggested Ward join him for a week. To a certain extent, his diagnosis stole control of his life, but Ward doesn’t want to become defined by his illness.

☆ Inside the AI talent wars: Tech companies are ransacking university AI programs at Stanford, MIT, and Cornell in search of rare talent
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-12 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | Melia Russell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +11 min

☆ A Swashbuckling Tale of Mutiny Took Him Where ‘the Soul of Man Dies’
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-12 | by ( Alexandra Alter | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Often, his stories take a dizzying turn when Grann introduces a new set of facts or a perspective that undermines the narrative he has presented. Rather than trying to lay down a concrete version of events, Grann often invokes a queasy uncertainty that the truth can ever be known. He’s drawn to unsolvable mysteries and stories that explore the fallibility of our perceptions — including his own. “He looked for stories in which an artful manipulation of the reader was an appropriate way to illuminate the story,” said Daniel Zalewski, Grann’s longtime editor at The New Yorker. “Sometimes they were dark entertainments, but because the stakes were real, there was a gravity to them, and a morality to them.”

☆ 44 of the most promising generative-artificial-intelligence startups of 2023, according to VCs
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-10 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | Samantha Stokes | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

☆ A cross between domestic pigs and wild boars was intentionally bred in Canada. The resulting 'super pigs' escaped captivity and could be invading the US.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-04 | by ( Kelsey Vlamis | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

When the market collapsed, the "super pigs" escaped and have spread rapidly across the country. The environmentally destructive pigs may be invading the US, where feral pigs already pose problems in the South. Then the boar market peaked, collapsing in 2001, and many of the super pigs were simply let go. Others escaped, as the super pigs were stronger and more adept at getting under or over fencing. But the super pigs from Canada could easily survive the frigid winters of places like Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, or Minnesota.

☆ Vimeo CEO: Highly successful Gen Zers use these 3 tactics to improve their workplaces
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-02 | by ( Rebecca Picciotto | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

The definition of Gen Z is sometimes contested, but is roughly considered anyone born between 1997 and 2012. It's one example of how Gen Z, after more than three years of a global pandemic, has a heavy hand in shaping the next new normal. Here's how the most successful Gen Zers are already doing it, according to Sud. A lot of Gen Zers are used to quickly internalizing large amounts of information in short periods of time, for example, especially with the boom of short-form content on platforms like TikTok. "[The way we] communicate and interact in our personal lives is going to translate to work," Sud said.

☆ Dozens of AI enthusiasts gathered in San Francisco's Cerebral Valley for a summit on Thursday. Here are the top 3 takeaways from the event.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-31 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Dozens of AI enthusiasts gathered in SF's Cerebral Valley on Thursday for Eric Newcomer's AI summit. The handful of streets between San Francisco's Fillmore and Mission neighborhoods have been called a variety of names in recent times — Cerebral Valley, Bayes Valley, Hayes Valley — but on a Thursday morning in March, they were the home for dozens of AI enthusiasts, founders, and VCs looking to learn more about the space at independent journalist Eric Newcomer's Cerebral Valley AI Summit. The model to rule them allWith representation from several OpenAI competitors, including Anthropic, Adept, and Stability AI, a common question during panels was how the landscape of AI model providers would shake out. Others, like Stability AI founder and CEO Emad Mostaque, claimed that the question of AI models went beyond performance or cost to issues around transparency and accessibility. The future of codingWith the recent AI boom, a flock of startups have emerged to help developers build AI and non-AI applications.

☆ AI startup Pinecone was just valued at $700 million. Here's why VCs like Andreessen Horowitz are obsessed with it and other vector databases.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-28 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Vector database startups like Pinecone have received term sheets from top-tier VCs, Insider has learned. Similar to the investor excitement around generative AI, VCs are now flocking to another area within the buzzy AI ecosystem. Instead, a vector database can store and quickly find past responses to similar questions by understanding the meaning behind the statements without having to call the base model. Because the vector database space is so intertwined with LLMs, it's benefitted greatly from recent hype around generative AI and LLMs. "The LLM tax is real," one VC said, referring to the high valuations for buzzy vector database startups like Chroma, Weaviate, and Pinecone.

☆ I Visited Miami After the Stock Market Crash, Crypto Bubble Pop
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-26 | by ( Linette Lopez | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +13 min

And if any city is the city where you can see just how remarkably things have shifted, it's also Miami. If the draw in the 1920s was imaginary land, Miami's bubble in the 2020s was driven by imaginary money — crypto. The newcomers — and the crypto kids, especially — believed they could master Miami as easily as they had mastered the markets. The new Miami money party started to run out of libations. "There were a lot of true believers in the Miami crypto scene.

☆ 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.

☆ Candida auris is just one infection fueled by rising temperatures. See how extreme climate helps spread disease, in 3 simple charts.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-21 | by ( Morgan Mcfall-Johnsen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

Climate change may be driving the rapid spread of Candida auris, a deadly fungus, across the US. Three charts show how extreme weather and environmental changes help spread disease. Nicolas Armer/picture alliance via Getty ImagesA leading theory on this fungus's sudden emergence and wide spread is that it's fueled by climate change. Whatever survives, however, is adapted to extreme heat — including the fever our bodies produce to kill off pathogens. David Ryder/Getty ImagesHumans and their infrastructure are more vulnerable to the devastating impacts of disease when they're compromised by extreme weather.

☆ Explainer: What is Generative AI, the technology behind OpenAI's ChatGPT?
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-17 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

WHAT IS GENERATIVE AI? Like other forms of artificial intelligence, generative AI learns how to take actions from past data. The most famous generative AI application is ChatGPT, a chatbot that Microsoft-backed OpenAI released late last year. Generative AI likewise can take notes during a virtual meeting. Cybersecurity researchers have also expressed concern that generative AI could allow bad actors, even governments, to produce far more disinformation than before.

☆ Microsoft unveils AI for its office suite in increased competition with Google
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-16 | by ( Jeffrey Dastin | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

The company previewed a new AI "copilot" for Microsoft 365, its product suite that includes Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations and Outlook emails. Microsoft said AI can offer a first draft in these applications, speeding up content creation and freeing up workers' time. "We believe this next generation of AI will unlock a new wave of productivity growth," Satya Nadella, Microsoft's chief executive, said in a livestreamed presentation. Such technology learns from past data how to create content anew, powering in part Microsoft's new copilot and evolving rapidly. Microsoft also showcased how its AI can summarize email threads and even virtual meetings as they occur live in its Teams collaboration software.

☆ Microsoft unveils AI office Copilot in fast-moving race with Google
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-16 | by ( Jeffrey Dastin | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

The technology company previewed a new AI "Copilot" for Microsoft 365, its product suite that includes Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations and Outlook emails. This partly underpins Microsoft's Copilot features, along with an older GPT-3.5 model, business and application data, Microsoft said. Microsoft Word app is seen on the smartphone placed on the keyboard in this illustration taken, July 26, 2021. Similar to live notes that Google showed reporters this week, Microsoft said its Copilot can summarize virtual meetings as they happen in its Teams collaboration software. Friedman pointed to Microsoft's business chat experience as the biggest development on Thursday because it can handle tasks across applications.

☆ Trump thinks an indictment will help him. It'll give DeSantis and Pence major headaches about how to respond.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-16 | by ( Brent D. Griffiths | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Trump's indictment might appear to open the door to the Republican Party ridding themselves of him. Trump thinks the GOP voters will stand with him. The most recent national poll of Republican voters found that 77% have a favorable view of him. Among key parts of the GOP primary coalition, Trump continues to do quite well. An earlier CNN-SSRS poll found a narrower race between Trump, DeSantis, and the rest of the field, but it also showed that 34% of self-described white evangelicals would name Trump as their preferred pick for the nominee.

☆ I bought a crumbling Victorian townhouse for $18,000 and transformed it into my dream home — see inside
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-16 | by ( Kiera Fields | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +10 min

Betsy Sweeny bought a 3,025-square-foot crumbling Victorian house when she was 27 for only $18,000. Sweeny's living room during renovations. Betsy SweenySweeny's renovated living room with replica curved glass windows. It wanted staged after photos, so within 12 weeks, I finished one bathroom, the living room, the dining room, the foyer, and the exterior. The primary bedroom, living room, dining room, and baths were completely finished — the kitchen was ugly.

☆ Adept raises $350 mln in Series B funding
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-14 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: 1 min

March 14 (Reuters) - OpenAI rival Adept said on Tuesday it had raised $350 million in a Series B funding round led by General Catalyst and co-led by Spark Capital. Reporting by Ananya Mariam Rajesh in BengaluruOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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