DIRS.INFO The most relevant business & tech news

☆ The big cybersecurity risks when ChatGPT and AI are secretly used by employees
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-30 | by ( Mikaela Cohen | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Soaring investment from big tech companies in artificial intelligence and chatbots — amid massive layoffs and a growth decline — has left many chief information security officers in a whirlwind. But not every company has its own GPT, so companies need to monitor how workers use this technology. PCs were similar, so we're seeing the equivalent now with generative AI." "If you're a corporation, you don't want your employees prompting a publicly available chatbot with confidential information," Chui said. Protection of confidential information, regulation of where the information gets stored, and guidelines for how employees can use the software — all are standard procedure when companies license software, AI or not.

☆ Wall Street analysts say Amazon is still a buy, but investors should ‘stay patient’ on AWS
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Sarah Min | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Amazon is still a buy after its latest earnings results, even with some weakness in Amazon Web Services, according to Wall Street analysts. The online retail stock initially jumped Thursday night after Amazon reported better-than-expected revenue in its first quarter . Amazon shares were last down about 1% in the premarket. AMZN 1D mountain Amazon shares 1-day However, analysts stayed bullish long term on Amazon, citing continued upside in retail, but they urged investors to "stay patient" on AWS and look toward the long-term opportunity in cloud services. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs' Eric Sheridan reiterated his buy rating on Amazon, and raised his 12-month price target to $165 from $145.

☆ Tech giants are pouring money into A.I. as they cut costs elsewhere
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Kif Leswing | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

He said Google is using AI to improve the conversion rate of ads and reduce the amount of "toxic text" that goes into AI models. "There will be a small number of companies that want to invest that time and money and we will be one of them at Amazon," Jassy said. A concept he's particularly excited about is "AI agents," which often refer to AI programs that can carry out goals. "At this point we are no longer behind in building out our AI infrastructure," Zuckerberg said. Zuckerberg said the company would need to "continue investing," but would do so after it launches its generative AI products and gets a better grasp on the resources required.

☆ Meta shares pop 15% on guidance, sales increase
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-27 | by ( Rohan Goswami | In Rohangoswamicnbc | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Mark Zuckerberg told the world in Oct. 2021 that he was rebranding Facebook to Meta as the company pushes toward the metaverse. Meta shares gained more than 15% in premarket trading Thursday, as analysts and investors digested positive guidance for the upcoming fiscal quarter and an unexpected sales increase for the first quarter of 2023. Meta reported first-quarter earnings per share of $2.20, beating the consensus estimate of $2.03, and revenue of $28.65 billion versus the $27.65 billion expected by analysts. As with other large-cap tech companies, analysts expect that artificial intelligence will be a positive point for Meta. Morgan Stanley holds an overweight rating for Meta and upped its price target from $250 to $300.

☆ Analysts see even more gains ahead for Meta Platforms after latest earnings report
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-27 | by ( Brian Evans | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Analysts liked what they saw from Meta Platform 's latest earnings report. The company projects revenue between $29.5 billion and $32 billion, while analysts expected sales of $29.5 billion, per Refinitiv. Goldman's Eric Sheridan also hiked his price target to $300, noting Meta maintained its momentum from the fourth quarter of 2022. Meanwhile, Bank of America's Justin Post noted that Meta's revenue recovery can drive the next leg higher for the stock. He also hiked his price target on Meta shares to $305 from $270, implying upside of 45.6%.

☆ Missed the A.I. rally? HSBC names 4 Chinese stocks set to benefit from the trend
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-26 | by ( Ganesh Rao | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

However, for investors who might have missed that run-up in such stocks, HSBC has identified four Chinese stocks that are still set to benefit from the growing trend. The bank believes that demand for training these artificial intelligence systems will be the critical driver for A.I. The table below shows four stocks, all of which are specialist hardware manufacturers targeting AI systems, HSBC is bullish toward: The bank's positive outlook on A.I. According to the Asia-focused investment bank, there are significant opportunities within hardware supply chains and software providers when investing in new developments within A.I. Other stocks HSBC highlighted include A.I.

☆ Analysts see more improvement ahead for Alphabet after latest earnings report
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-26 | by ( Brian Evans | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Analysts are upbeat after better than expected quarterly results from Google parent company Alphabet . Despite a challenging macroeconomic environment that has caused companies to pull back advertising, Alphabet also beat analyst expectations on ad revenue. Alphabet stock gained more than 3% in extended trading after the earnings beat. GOOGL YTD mountain Shares of Alphabet gained after a quarterly earnings beat on Wednesday. "We expect GOOGL shares to continue to build its short-term momentum as company specific events (Google I/O, Google Marketing Live, etc.)

☆ Elon Musk threatens to sue Microsoft over using Twitter data for its A.I.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( Kif Leswing | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Twitter CEO Elon Musk threatened to sue Microsoft on Wednesday, accusing the software giant of illegally using the social media company's data to train its artificial intelligence model. "They trained illegally using Twitter data," Musk tweeted. Microsoft develops its own so-called large language models (LLMs) and sells access to OpenAI's models. Training data from social networks is valuable because it captures informal, back-and-forth conversations. As these new AI models move from research labs and universities into the corporate world, the owners of the data are starting to make demands.

☆ Reddit to AI companies: Pay up if you're using our content
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-18 | by ( Britney Nguyen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Reddit said it plans to start charging companies for access to its data that is used to train AI. Major players in the AI race like OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google train AI models using Reddit's data, NYT reported. "The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable," Steve Huffman, cofounder and CEO of Reddit, told The Times. Huffman told The Times that Reddit's API will still be free for developers building applications to help people with using Reddit. Most developers and third parties who use Reddit's API have been notified by email, the company said.

☆ What the loss of Samsung search engine business could mean for Alphabet's stock
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-18 | by ( Brian Evans | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

A weekend report from The New York Times said Samsung is thinking of switching its default search engine to Microsoft's Bing. Samsung represents roughly 27% of the smartphone market and has a 60% share of Android phones, according to Barclays. Barclays estimates that Samsung represents about $20 billion of Google's gross revenue and $7.3 billion of operating income. If the cellphone maker were to move away from the search engine, Google may have to recapture 70% of lost queries organically to recoup the lost operating income, the firm found. He thinks Google will remain the search engine heavyweight and successfully integrate Bard to rival Bing's use of ChatGPT.

☆ Nvidia's top A.I. chips are selling for more than $40,000 on eBay
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-14 | by ( Kif Leswing | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Nvidia's most-advanced graphics cards are selling for more than $40,000 on eBay , as demand soars for chips needed to train and deploy artificial intelligence software. The prices for Nvidia's H100 processors were noted by 3D gaming pioneer and former Meta consulting technology chief John Carmack on Twitter. The H100, announced last year, is Nvidia's latest flagship AI chip, succeeding the A100, a roughly $10,000 chip that's been called the "workhorse" for AI applications. Microsoft spent hundreds of millions of dollars on tens of thousands of Nvidia A100 chips to help build ChatGPT. Nvidia controls the vast majority of the market for AI chips.

☆ Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says he's confident he can get costs under control in shareholder letter
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Annie Palmer | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +38 min

Further, as machine learning adoption has continued to accelerate, customers have yearned for lower-cost GPUs (the chips most commonly used for machine learning). While some areas of the economy have struggled over the past few years, Amazon Business has thrived. Some people have never heard of Amazon Business, but, our business customers love it. For years, Amazon customers had asked us when we'd offer them an online pharmacy as their frustrations mounted with current providers. More recently, a newer form of machine learning, called Generative AI, has burst onto the scene and promises to significantly accelerate machine learning adoption.

☆ Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says his letter to shareholders follows one of the toughest economic years in recent memory. Read it in full.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Sam Tabahriti | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +38 min

☆ Amazon announces 'Bedrock,' its ChatGPT and DALL-E rival
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Aaron Mok | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Amazon announced on Thursday its generative AI toolkit called "Bedrock," a ChatGPT and DALL-E rival. Amazon Web Services customers can use Bedrock to build chatbots, generate text, and create images. AmazonThe announcement comes after Amazon CEO Andy Jassy wrote in his annual shareholder letter that his company is betting big on generative AI. As generative AI tools have become more widely available to the public, people have flocked to tools like ChatGPT to start their own businesses. Amazon is the latest big tech giant to release generative AI tools along companies like Microsoft and Google, which launched their own versions of AI chatbots earlier this year.

☆ Amazon is ‘investing heavily’ in the technology behind ChatGPT
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Catherine Thorbecke | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

CNN —Amazon wants investors to know it won’t be left behind in the latest Big Tech arms race over artificial intelligence. In a letter to shareholders Thursday, Amazon (AMZN) CEO Andy Jassy said the company is “investing heavily” in large language models (LLMs) and generative AI, the same technology that underpins ChatGPT and other similar AI chatbots. Since ChatGPT was released to the public in late November, Google (GOOG), Facebook (FB) and Microsoft (MSFT) have all talked up their growing focus on generative AI technology, which can create compelling essays, stories and visuals in response to user prompts. With that in mind, Amazon on Thursday unveiled a new service called Bedrock. It essentially makes foundation models (large models that are pre-trained on vast amounts of data) from AI21 Labs, Anthropic, Stability AI and Amazon accessible to clients via an API, Amazon said in a blog post.

☆ Exclusive: AI startup LangChain taps Sequoia to lead funding round at a valuation of at least $200 million
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

AI startup LangChain is raising between $20 and $25 million from Sequoia, Insider has learned. The latest round scored the hot upstart a valuation of at least $200 million, according to sources. Just a week after announcing a $10 million seed investment from Benchmark, AI darling LangChain has scored even more capital from yet another top-tier VC. As an open-source project, LangChain is especially known for its strong community — one that Chase is personally involved in. Chase's dedication to openness and collaboration is a major differentiator for the founder's community, and therefore, his startup, Turow said.

☆ Alphabet's A.I. frenzy hits startup scene as CapitalG unit leads $100 million investment in AlphaSense
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-11 | by ( Jonathan Vanian | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Google's hefty investment in artificial intelligence and the latest boom in generative AI doesn't end with its homegrown products. Alphabet's late-stage venture capital arm, CapitalG, told CNBC that it just led a $100 million investment in corporate data firm AlphaSense, valuing the company at $1.8 billion. Generative AI wasn't a talking point in the prior two rounds because the term hadn't yet jumped into the popular lexicon. Generative AI has been the one bright spot this year, turning rather frothy in some corners. He said the money will also help AlphaSense improve its technology, taking advantage of advances in generative AI.

☆ Microsoft's $13 billion bet on OpenAI carries huge potential along with plenty of uncertainty
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-08 | by ( Jordan Novet | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +10 min

Microsoft's cumulative investment in OpenAI has reportedly swelled to $13 billion and the startup's valuation has hit roughly $29 billion. What does that mean for Microsoft's investment and broader arrangement? The structure changed in 2019, when two top executives published a blog post announcing the formation of a "capped-profit" entity called OpenAI LP. Microsoft has an exclusive license on GPT-4 and all other OpenAI models, the OpenAI spokesperson said. When considering potential exits for OpenAI, Microsoft — which does not hold an OpenAI board seat — would be the natural acquirer given its close entanglement.

☆ Vector database Chroma scored $18 million in seed funding at a $75 million valuation. Here's why its technology is key to helping generative AI startups.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-06 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Chroma helps manage vector embeddings, or numerical representations of data AI models can process. The startup raised $18 million in seed funding at a $75 million valuation led by Quiet Capital. The company recently closed a $18 million seed round led by Quiet Capital at a $75 million valuation. Originally, Chroma's tech aimed to serve machine learning engineers who were training and deploying AI models. Because this limits the model's context window, this approach tends to prevent hallucinations, or confident but incorrect responses from AI, Troynikov told Insider.

With large language models like OpenAI's GPT-4 and Google's Bard quickly increasing their power and reach, vLex and Fastcase are betting their combined document library will be a rich training data set for legal AI products. "It will always make sense to train legal LLMs on legal data instead of the World Wide Web," Walters said. The merger creates a law library that is "the biggest legal data corpus ever assembled," the companies said. Other large law firms are using new products from companies like Casetext, a legal research company that last month released a new generative AI legal assistant product. Casey Flaherty of legal innovation collective LexFusion predicted the new vLex would be a "serious player" among legal information companies as AI progresses.

☆ Top analysts are bullish on these five long-term picks
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-02 | by ( Tipranks.Com Staff | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

Here are five stocks chosen by Wall Street's top analysts, according to TipRanks, a platform that ranks analysts based on their past performance. Rakesh holds the 94th position among more than 8,000 analysts followed on TipRanks. The analyst ranks 439th among more than 8,000 analysts followed on TipRanks. The analyst remains bullish on the stock and raised his price target to $134 from $128, as he continues to see a "meaningful upside." Santarelli holds the 27th position among more than 8,000 analysts on TipRanks.

☆ AI 'prompt engineer' jobs can pay up to $335,000 a year and don't always require a background in tech
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-29 | by ( Britney Nguyen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

The rise in generative AI tools like ChatGPT has created a hot market for "prompt engineers." Sam Altman, the CEO of ChatGPT developer OpenAI, has spoken about the need for prompt engineers. Anna Bernstein, a prompt engineer at Copy.ai, was a freelance writer and historical research assistant before she started working with AI tools. Prompt marketplace PromptBase, which launched last June, allows people to hire prompt engineers or sell their prompts. Don't dwell too much on the current state of prompt engineering.

☆ 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.

☆ Goldman Sachs is exploring use cases for large language models, the same AI fueling ChatGPT. Here's 3 areas where the bank is experimenting with the tech.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-27 | by ( Bianca Chan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Large language models, the form of AI behind ChatGPT, could transform how Wall Street does business. With advances in generative AI and large language models, the realm of possibilities have been blown way open. Argenti and Tsementzis outlined three ways Goldman is experimenting with large language models. Summarizing and extracting data from documentsGoldman's document-management process stands to improve from the use of generative AI, Argenti said. Helping engineers parse through code documentationA big time suck for software engineers is figuring out other peoples' code, Argenti said.

☆ Europol sounds alarm about criminal use of ChatGPT, sees grim outlook
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-27 | by ( Foo Yun Chee | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

[1/2] A smartphone with a displayed ChatGPT logo is placed on a computer motherboard in this illustration taken February 23, 2023. It singled out the harmful use of ChatGPT in three areas of crime. "ChatGPT's ability to draft highly realistic text makes it a useful tool for phishing purposes," Europol said. It said ChatGPT's ability to churn out authentic sounding text at speed and scale also also makes it an ideal tool for propaganda and disinformation. Criminals with little technical knowledge could turn to ChatGPT to produce malicious code, Europol said.

Search resuls for: "LLMs"

25 mentions found