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☆ AI Spending Will Cloud Chip Slowdown
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-15 | by ( Dan Gallagher | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Nvidia’s H100 data-center processor got a shout-out at a Google conference last week. Photo: GoogleGoogle’s ambitious plans for generative artificial intelligence announced last week were great news for one chip maker. During a two-hour long presentation at its I/O developers conference on Wednesday, Google took pains to point out its use of Nvidia ’s H100, a high-end data center processor that the chip maker began shipping only earlier this year. No other chip makers or data-center component suppliers got such a shout-out. Again, no other chip maker was mentioned.

☆ Leaked Microsoft email instructs managers to give fewer 'exceptional rewards' as it halts raises and cuts the budget for stock awards and bonuses
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-10 | by ( Ashley Stewart | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Microsoft plans to halt raises and cut its bonus and stock awards budget, according to an internal email. A separate internal email instructs managers to give fewer employees "exceptional rewards." Microsoft sent managers an email about the company's plan to halt raises and cut its bonus and stock awards budget instructing them to give fewer employees exceptional rewards. Microsoft's spokesperson declined to comment on the email to managers but confirmed the news about halting raises and cutting the bonus and stock award budget. Thank you for navigating a more conservative rewards budget coupled with recent workforce reductions and a challenging and dynamic environment this year.

☆ Microsoft economist warns of A.I. election interference from 'bad actors'
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( Rohan Goswami | In Rohangoswamicnbc | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

being used by bad actors" than they should about AI productivity outpacing human productivity, Microsoft chief economist Michael Schwarz said at a World Economic Forum event Wednesday. Microsoft first invested $1 billion in OpenAI in 2019, years before the two companies would integrate OpenAI's GPT large language model into Microsoft's Bing search product. Politicians and regulators have expressed growing concern about the potential impact of AI technology as well. Vice President Kamala Harris will meet Thursday with top executives from Anthropic, another AI firm, and Google, Microsoft and OpenAI to discuss responsible AI development, the White House told CNBC Tuesday. "Please remember, breaking is much easier than building," Schwarz noted.

☆ CEOs are getting closer to finally saying it — AI will wipe out more jobs than they can count
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( Hasan Chowdhury | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Tech workers are finding out what it's like to be replaced by AI. It's the boldest statement yet from tech firms turning to AI to help them get efficient. Tech workers are about to find out. Here are five tech firms that have acted first with a big bet on AI. AmazonAmazon has been among the most bruised tech firms since the downturn of 2022 was kickstarted.

☆ Microsoft stock rallies on earnings and bullish A.I. outlook
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-26 | by ( Rohan Goswami | In Rohangoswamicnbc | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

A sign for Microsoft Corp. at the company's office in the central business district of Lisbon, Portugal, on Tuesday, Dec. 27, 2022. Microsoft shares sustained a nearly 8% jump in pre-market trading Wednesday, a day after reporting third-quarter results that beat analyst expectations on the top and bottom lines. Shares held their gains after a British regulator blocked Microsoft's planned acquisition of video game company Activision Blizzard on Wednesday morning. Analysts responded positively to Microsoft's AI prospects. Morgan Stanley reiterated its overweight rating on the stock and increased its price target to $335.

LONDON, April 4 (Reuters) - The problems around artisanal cobalt mining in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) will take "a coalition to solve", according to Microsoft (MSFT.O). Yet the West still needs Congo's cobalt and everyone agrees that formalisation is the solution to the high human and economic costs of artisanal mining. ETHICAL DILEMMAThe ethical dilemma facing Western cobalt users, which is just about everyone with a mobile phone, is headline news again after the publication of "Cobalt Red" by Siddarth Kara. Mutoshi's artisanal miners have lost their collective pricing power and their cobalt is once again flowing down opaque channels into the industrial supply chain, the report claims. Most of the country's estimated 150,000-200,000 cobalt miners have never even had the chance of formalisation.

☆ Microsoft tries to justify AI's tendency to give wrong answers by saying they're 'usefully wrong'
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-16 | by ( Jonathan Vanian | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

On Tuesday, Google announced it was bringing AI-powered chat technology to Gmail and Google Docs, letting it help composing emails or documents. On Thursday, Microsoft said that its popular business apps like Word and Excel would soon come bundled with ChatGPT-like technology dubbed Copilot. But this time, Microsoft is pitching the technology as being "usefully wrong." Microsoft chief scientist and technical fellow Jaime Teevan said that when Copilot "gets things wrong or has biases or is misused," Microsoft has "mitigations in place." "I studied AI for decades and I feel this huge sense of responsibility with this powerful new tool," Teevan said.

☆ Microsoft's chief technology officer says he uses the new AI-powered Bing to decode his teenage daughter's use of Gen Z slang like 'rizz' and 'bussin'
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-14 | by ( Samantha Delouya | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Microsoft's CTO said he uses the new AI-powered Bing search engine to understand his teenage daughter's slang. In a recent interview, he praised the search engine, saying he misses it whenever he doesn't have access. Microsoft unveiled its new AI-powered Bing in collaboration with OpenAI last week. The overhauled search engine will feature similar technology that backs OpenAI's viral chatbot, ChatGPT, though OpenAI has promised Bing will be "more powerful." There's currently a waitlist to gain admittance to the new search engine, so Insider looked up the definitions the old-fashioned way: on Google.

☆ Microsoft packs Bing search engine, Edge browser with AI in big challenge to Google
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-07 | by ( Jeffrey Dastin | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

Microsoft is staking its future on AI through billions of dollars of investment as it directly challenges Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Google. “This technology is going to reshape pretty much every software category," Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella told reporters in a briefing at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington. On Monday it unveiled a chatbot of its own called Bard, while it is planning to release AI for its search engine that can synthesize material when no simple answer exists online. PRACTICAL USESAt the event, Mehdi demonstrated how the AI-enhanced search engine will make shopping and creating emails much easier. For the quarter ending Dec. 31, Alphabet reported $42.6 billion in Google Search and other revenue, while Microsoft posted $3.2 billion from search and news advertising.

☆ Microsoft to infuse software with more AI as Google rivalry heats up
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-07 | by ( Jeffrey Dastin | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Microsoft is staking its future on AI through billions of dollars of investment. Working with the startup OpenAI, the company is aiming to rival Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Google and potentially claim vast returns from tools that speed up all manner of content creation, automating tasks if not jobs themselves. “This technology is going to reshape pretty much every software category," said Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella, in a briefing for reporters at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington. "Microsoft is looking to win this AI battle," he said in a research note on Monday. Last week Microsoft announced the startup's AI will generate meeting notes in Teams, its collaboration software, as well as suggest email replies to vendors using its Viva Sales subscription.

☆ Microsoft attracting users to its code-writing, generative AI software
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-25 | by ( Jeffrey Dastin | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Early evidence is in usage of a little-discussed tool that can write computer code for programmers, called GitHub Copilot. Opened up to the public in June of last year, the tool drew 400,000 subscribers within a month. On Tuesday, Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella said that more than 1 million people had used Copilot to date. Copilot itself relies on OpenAI's tech, as does a chatbot sensation that Open AI released last year known as ChatGPT. Microsoft has said it will make ChatGPT, which can draft code as well as essays or poetry, available via its cloud.

[1/2] Attendees walk through an expo hall at AWS re:Invent 2022, a conference hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS), in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., November 30, 2022. After years of blistering growth, most recently fuelled by remote working and studying during the pandemic, cloud demand has cooled in the past nine months and sales growth may slow further, analysts said. AWS, Amazon's lucrative cloud business from which it gets more than a quarter of its revenue, is expected to post a 24% increase in sales in the quarter. THE FUNDAMENTALS* Microsoft Q2 revenue is expected to rise 2.5% to $53 billion, the slowest increase in six years. * Amazon Q4 revenue is expected to rise 5.8% to $145.40 billion.

☆ In closed-door meeting, Elon Musk tells 100 top ad execs that he will improve brand safety on Twitter and that he will personally oversee its new video product
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-03 | by ( Lara O'Reilly | Lindsay Rittenhouse | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Elon Musk spoke on Thursday with more than 100 advertisers and ad agency executives in a virtual meeting to reassure them that Twitter will remain safe to advertise on, following his takeover. The Washington Post reported earlier this week that Musk's Twitter is working on a paid-for video feature, in which creators could charge viewers for access. One advertising executive who met with Musk earlier this week said Musk "said all the right things" on the topic of brand safety. Musk had also said that Twitter could be using its data in a more efficient way to improve results for advertisers. General Mills, Mondelez, Pfizer, and Audi all paused ads on Twitter, according to The Wall Street Journal.

☆ How Google's former CEO Eric Schmidt helped write AI laws in Washington without publicly disclosing investments in AI start-ups
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-24 | by ( Eamon Javers | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +18 min

'Conflict of interest'Schmidt's investment was just the first of a handful of direct investments he would make in AI start-up companies during his tenure as chairman of the AI commission. Altogether, Schmidt and entities connected to him made more than 50 investments in AI companies while he was chairman of the federal commission on AI. To Poulson, Schmidt was simply given too much power over federal AI policy. The new entity would continue the work of the congressionally created federal commission, with many of the same goals and much of the same staff. More than a dozen staffers from the federal commission followed Schmidt to the new private sector project.

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