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☆ The New A.I. Deal: Buy Everything but the Company
▼ + stars: | 2024-08-08 | by ( Erin Griffith | Cade Metz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Last week, Mr. Shazeer and Mr. De Freitas announced that they were returning to Google. research arm, along with roughly 20 percent of Character.AI’s employees, and provide their start-up’s technology, they said. Instead, Google agreed to pay $3 billion to license the technology, two people with knowledge of the deal said. About $2.5 billion of that sum will then be used to buy out Character.AI’s shareholders, including Mr. Shazeer, who owns 30 percent to 40 percent of the company and stands to net $750 million to $1 billion, the people said. While big tech companies typically buy start-ups outright, they have turned to a more complicated deal structure for young A.I.

Persons: Noam Shazeer, Daniel De Freitas, Shazeer, De Freitas, Character.AI Organizations: Google Locations: Silicon Valley

☆ China Is Closing the A.I. Gap With the United States
▼ + stars: | 2024-07-25 | by ( Meaghan Tobin | Cade Metz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

At the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai this month, start-up founder Qu Dongqi showed off a video he had recently posted online. It displayed an old photograph of a woman with two toddlers. Then the photo sprang to life as the woman lifted the toddlers up in her arms and they laughed with surprise. The technology was reminiscent of a video generator, called Sora, that the American start-up OpenAI unveiled this year. “My American friends still can’t use Sora,” Mr. Qu said.

Persons: Qu Dongqi, Sora, OpenAI, “, ” Mr, Qu, ” Organizations: Artificial Intelligence Locations: Shanghai

☆ The Push to Develop Generative A.I. Without All the Lawsuits
▼ + stars: | 2024-07-19 | by ( Nico Grant | Cade Metz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Companies like Google and OpenAI built their artificial intelligence chatbots and image generators by gobbling content from the web, spurring legal fights over copyright claims. Now, some of those copyright holders are trying to get in on the A.I. image generators with their own data, bypassing the legal worries that have shadowed the industry. While the largest tech companies have been locked in a dizzying A.I. race, visual media marketplaces, content creators and artists are pushing for licensing so that they can be paid for work that helps train A.I.

Organizations: Google, Getty

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Persons: Lobna, Hemid’s, Bouthaer el Banaisati, Hemid, —, VioGén, el Banaisati, Ana Maria Arevalo Gosen, Alice Fang Spanish, ”, Susana Pavlou, Juan José López, Jesús Melguizo, Antonio Pueyo, Pueyo, “, Mr, Juanjo Medina, “ We’re, Francisco Javier Curto, ” Francisco Javier Curto, The New York Times José, Sindicato, Serafín Giraldo, Escarraman, Stefany González Escarraman, Williams Escarraman, Escarraman’s, Eva Jaular, Jaular, Elisabeth, Ana María Arévalo, Luz, ” Luz, you’ve, María, it’s, Agudo, Ossorio, Fernando Grande, Amelia Franas, Police haven’t, Melguizo Organizations: Jan, The New York Times, VioGén, Interior Ministry, New York Times, Spanish, Council of, Mediterranean, of Gender Studies, The Times, University of Barcelona, Police, Basque Country, Times, University of Seville, United Association of Civil Guards, “, The New York Locations: Spain, Madrid, The New York Times Spain, United States, Netherlands, Britain, Canada, Germany, Catalonia, Basque, Seville, VioGén, Alicante, Liaño, Spanish, Southern Spain, Granada, Morocco

☆ How Microsoft’s Satya Nadella Became Tech’s Steely Eyed A.I. Gambler
▼ + stars: | 2024-07-14 | by ( Karen Weise | Cade Metz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Earlier this year, Satya Nadella hammered out a deal that surprised everyone outside his inner circle at Microsoft. Mr. Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, had his eyes on a Silicon Valley start-up called Inflection AI. The company’s chief executive, Mustafa Suleyman, was one of the founders of the pioneering artificial intelligence company DeepMind. He had raised more than $1.5 billion in funding and hired top researchers for his new company, but he had a not-so-great reputation as a boss. Microsoft still shelled out more than $650 million to license Inflection’s technology, hired most of its staff and put Mr. Suleyman in charge of a more than $12 billion chunk of Microsoft’s business.

Persons: Satya Nadella, Nadella, Mustafa Suleyman, Suleyman Organizations: Microsoft

☆ Ray Kurzweil Still Says He Will Merge With A.I.
▼ + stars: | 2024-07-04 | by ( Cade Metz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Mr. Kurzweil, a renowned inventor and futurist who built a career on predictions that defy conventional wisdom, made the same claim in his 2005 book, “The Singularity Is Near.” After the arrival of A.I. technologies like ChatGPT and recent efforts to implant computer chips inside people’s heads, he believes the time is right to restate his claim. Last week, he published a sequel: “The Singularity Is Nearer.”Now that Mr. Kurzweil is 76 years old and is moving a lot slower than he used to, his predictions carry an added edge. He has long said he plans to experience the Singularity, merge with A.I. But if the Singularity arrives in 2045, as he claims it will, there is no guarantee he will be alive to see it.

Persons: Kurzweil

☆ A Hacker Stole OpenAI Secrets, Raising Fears That China Could, Too
▼ + stars: | 2024-07-04 | by ( Cade Metz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Early last year, a hacker gained access to the internal messaging systems of OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, and stole details about the design of the company’s A.I. OpenAI executives revealed the incident to employees during an all-hands meeting at the company’s San Francisco offices in April 2023, according to the two people, who discussed sensitive information about the company on the condition of anonymity. But the executives decided not to share the news publicly because no information about customers or partners had been stolen, the two people said. The executives did not consider the incident a threat to national security because they believed the hacker was a private individual with no known ties to a foreign government. The company did not inform the F.B.I.

Organizations: San Locations: San Francisco

☆ OpenAI Co-Founder, Who Helped Oust Sam Altman, Starts His Own Company
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-19 | by ( Cade Metz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Ilya Sutskever, the OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist who in November joined other board members to force out Sam Altman, the company’s high-profile chief executive, has helped found a new artificial intelligence company. The new start-up is called Safe Superintelligence. It aims to produce superintelligence — a machine that is more intelligent than humans — in a safe way, according to the company spokeswoman Lulu Cheng Meservey. Dr. Sutskever, who has said he regretted moving against Mr. Altman, declined to comment. She said that as it builds safe superintelligence, the company will not release other products.

Persons: Ilya Sutskever, Sam Altman, Lulu Cheng Meservey, Sutskever, Altman, Meservey Organizations: Mr, Bloomberg Locations: OpenAI

☆ Elon Musk Withdraws His Lawsuit Against OpenAI and Sam Altman
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-11 | by ( Cade Metz | More About Cade Metz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Elon Musk withdrew his lawsuit on Tuesday against OpenAI, the maker of the online chatbot ChatGPT, a day before a state judge in San Francisco was set to consider whether it should be dismissed. The suit, filed in February, had accused the artificial intelligence start-up and two of its founders, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, of breaching OpenAI’s founding contract by prioritizing commercial interests over the public good. A multibillion-dollar partnership that OpenAI signed with Microsoft, Mr. Musk’s suit claimed, represented an abandonment of the company’s pledge to carefully develop A.I. and make the technology publicly available. Mr. Musk had argued that the founding contract said that the organization should instead be focused on building artificial general intelligence, or A.G.I., a machine that can do anything the brain can do, for the benefit of humanity.

Persons: Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, OpenAI, Musk’s, Musk Organizations: OpenAI, Microsoft Locations: San Francisco

☆ OpenAI Says Russia and China Used Its A.I. in Covert Campaigns
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-30 | by ( Cade Metz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

OpenAI said on Thursday that it had identified and disrupted five online campaigns that used its generative artificial intelligence technologies to deceptively manipulate public opinion around the world and influence geopolitics. The efforts were run by state actors and private companies in Russia, China, Iran and Israel, OpenAI said in a report about covert influence campaigns. The recent rise of generative A.I. Ben Nimmo, a principal investigator for OpenAI, said that after all the speculation on the use of generative A.I. in such campaigns, the company aimed to show the realities of how the technology was changing online deception.

Persons: OpenAI, Ben Nimmo Locations: Russia, China, Iran, Israel

☆ OpenAI Says It Has Begun Training a New Flagship A.I. Model
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-28 | by ( Cade Metz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

OpenAI said on Tuesday that it has begun training a new flagship artificial intelligence model that would succeed the GPT-4 technology that drives its popular online chatbot, ChatGPT. The San Francisco start-up, which is one of the world’s leading A.I. The new model would be an engine for A.I. OpenAI also said it was creating a new Safety and Security Committee to explore how it should handle the risks posed by the new model and future technologies. “While we are proud to build and release models that are industry-leading on both capabilities and safety, we welcome a robust debate at this important moment,” the company said.

Persons: OpenAI, San Francisco, Apple’s Siri Organizations: Security Committee Locations: San

☆ The Old-Fashioned Library at the Heart of the A.I. Boom
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-15 | by ( Cade Metz | Christie Hemm Klok | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

The two-story library has Oriental rugs, shaded lamps dotting its desks and rows of hardbacks lining its walls. It is the architectural centerpiece of the offices of OpenAI, the start-up whose online chatbot, ChatGPT, showed the world that machines can instantly generate their own poetry and prose. The building, which was once a mayonnaise factory, looks like a typical tech office, with its communal work spaces, well-stocked micro-kitchens and private nap rooms spread across three floors in San Francisco’s Mission District. But then there is that library, with the ambience of a Victorian Era reading room. Its shelves offer everything from Homer’s “The Iliad” to David Deutsch’s “The Beginning of Infinity,” a favorite of Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive.

Persons: “, David Deutsch’s “, Sam Altman Organizations: Francisco’s Mission Locations: OpenAI, Francisco’s

☆ OpenAI’s Chief Scientist and Co-Founder Is Leaving the Company
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-14 | by ( Cade Metz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Ilya Sutskever, the OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist who in November joined three other board members to force out Sam Altman, the company’s high-profile chief executive, before saying he regretted the move, is leaving the San Francisco A.I. After returning to OpenAI just five days after he was ousted, Mr. Altman reasserted his control and continued its push toward increasingly powerful technologies that worried some of his critics. Dr. Sutskever remained an OpenAI employee, but he never returned to work. “This is an emotional day for all of us,” Mr. Altman said in an interview. “OpenAI would not exist without him and certainly was shaped by him.”

Persons: Ilya Sutskever, Sam Altman, San Francisco A.I, Sutskever’s, Altman, Sutskever, ” Mr, “ OpenAI, ” Organizations: San Locations: San Francisco, Silicon, OpenAI

☆ OpenAI Unveils New ChatGPT That Listens, Looks and Talks
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-13 | by ( Cade Metz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

As Apple and Google transform their voice assistants into chatbots, OpenAI is transforming its chatbot into a voice assistant. On Monday, the San Francisco artificial intelligence start-up unveiled a new version of its ChatGPT chatbot that can receive and respond to voice commands, images and videos. system called GPT-4o — juggles audio, images and video significantly faster than previous version of the technology. The app will be available starting on Monday, free of charge, for both smartphones and desktop computers. “We are looking at the future of the interaction between ourselves and machines,” said Mira Murati, the company’s chief technology officer.

Persons: ”, Mira Murati Organizations: Apple, Google Locations: San Francisco

Apple’s top software executives decided early last year that Siri, the company’s virtual assistant, needed a brain transplant. The decision came after the executives Craig Federighi and John Giannandrea spent weeks testing OpenAI’s new chatbot, ChatGPT. Introduced in 2011 as the original virtual assistant in every iPhone, Siri had been limited for years to individual requests and had never been able to follow a conversation. The realization that new technology had leapfrogged Siri set in motion the tech giant’s most significant reorganization in more than a decade. race, Apple has made generative A.I.

Persons: Siri, Craig Federighi, John Giannandrea Organizations: Apple Locations: San Francisco, New York

☆ Judge Blocks New U.S. Rule Limiting Credit Card Late Fees
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-10 | by ( Cade Metz | More About Cade Metz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

In March, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced that a new federal rule would cap fees on late credit card payments at $8 a month, estimating that the change would save American households $10 billion a year. On Friday, a federal judge in Fort Worth temporarily blocked the rule, siding with bank and credit card company lobbyists who contend in a lawsuit that it is unconstitutional. Now, the lobbyists can continue their legal fight in U.S. District Court before Judge Mark T. Pittman, who granted the preliminary injunction. The consumer bureau’s new rule would limit issuers to an $8 fee unless they could show that more money was needed to cover their collection costs. The bureau estimated that the rule would apply to more than 95 percent of all outstanding credit card balances.

Persons: Mark T, Pittman Organizations: Consumer Financial, Bureau Locations: Fort Worth, U.S

☆ Google Unveils A.I. for Predicting Behavior of Human Molecules
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-08 | by ( Cade Metz | More About Cade Metz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Artificial intelligence is giving machines the power to generate videos, write computer code and even carry on a conversation. It is also accelerating efforts to understand the human body and fight disease. An early version of AlphaFold, released in 2020, solved a puzzle that had bedeviled scientists for more than 50 years. It was called “the protein folding problem.”Proteins are the microscopic molecules that drive the behavior of all living things. These molecules begin as strings of chemical compounds before twisting and folding into three-dimensional shapes that define how they interact with other microscopic mechanisms in the body.

Organizations: Google

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

is an investigative reporter at The Times, writing about public corruption. He has been covering the various criminal investigations into former President Trump and his allies.

Persons: Trump Organizations: The Times

☆ Even as He Faces Prison Time, Binance’s Founder Plans a Comeback
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-30 | by ( David Yaffe-Bellany | Cade Metz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

And he chatted about start-ups with Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI. After pleading guilty to a money-laundering violation in November, Changpeng Zhao, the founder of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, did not sit still. A federal judge denied his request to return home to Dubai, but Mr. Zhao, 47, was free to roam the United States. When he pleaded guilty, Mr. Zhao, once the most powerful figure in the global crypto industry, resigned as Binance’s chief executive and agreed to pay a $50 million fine. But Mr. Zhao, who goes by the initials CZ, is already looking to the future.

Persons: Sam Altman, Changpeng Zhao, Zhao, Forbes Organizations: OpenAI Locations: Montana, U.S, Telluride, Colo, Moab , Utah, Dubai, United States, Seattle

☆ 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

☆ 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

☆ 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

☆ Meta, in Its Biggest A.I. Push, Places Smart Assistants Across Its Apps
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-18 | by ( Mike Isaac | Cade Metz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

On a call with investors last spring, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, said he believed that he had an opportunity to introduce artificially intelligent assistants “to billions of people in ways that will be useful and meaningful.”A year later, he is making good on his statement. On Thursday, Meta will begin incorporating new versions of its A.I.-powered smart assistant software across its apps, which include Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Facebook. The latest technology will be rolled out in more than a dozen countries, including Australia, Canada, Singapore and the United States. software will become practically omnipresent — inside the news feed, in search bars and in chats with friends. People will be able to ask the assistant, Meta A.I., for help in completing tasks and getting information, such as what concerts might be occurring in San Francisco on a Saturday night or the best options for vegan enchiladas in New York.

Persons: Mark Zuckerberg, Meta, Meta A.I Organizations: Meta, Facebook Locations: Australia, Canada, Singapore, United States, San Francisco, New York

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