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☆ Microsoft's landmark deal with OpenAI shows that ChatGPT is going to be the defining technology of 2023
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-02 | by ( Paayal Zaveri | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

It remains to be seen how generative AI will transform our lives, but the tech is here to stay. In 2022, investors put at least $1.37 billion into generative AI startups, usually at the seed stage. Why this iteration of ChatGPT made generative AI so popular right nowIt's important to note that nothing about ChatGPT or generative AI is especially new or novel. In other words, OpenAI's real innovation was taking AI technology that was already out there and making it something that was easy and accessible to anybody. That's one reason why there will be a lot more business uses for generative AI technology than consumer use cases in the near term, said Mark Shmulik, a Bernstein analyst.

☆ Google just developed an AI model that creates music from text prompts — but the company won't be releasing it anytime soon
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-29 | by ( Bethany Biron | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Google announced it developed an AI bot that generates music based on text descriptions. The tech giant is ramping up its AI efforts after issuing a "code red" following the explosion of ChatGPT. In a research paper published Thursday, Google researchers described MusicLM as "a model generating high-fidelity music from text descriptions such as 'a calming violin melody backed by a distorted guitar riff.'" Per the study, identifiable existing songs were found in approximately 1% of examples, pointing to potential copyright infringement. The study also notes the technology's existing limitations, including the use of negations and temporal ordering used in text prompts, as well as vocal quality.

☆ Supernormal, a generative AI startup that automates meeting notes, just raised $10 million. Check out the 17-slide pitch deck it used to bag the seed round.
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-26 | by ( Callum Burroughs | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Supernormal, a startup in the red-hot generative AI sector, just raised $10 million. The startup uses AI to take notes from meetings in real time and sends them instantly afterward. We got an exclusive look at the 17-slide pitch deck Supernormal used to raise the cash. Supernormal, a startup in the red-hot generative AI sector, has raised $10 million in a seed round led by Revolut and Citymapper investor Balderton. The company, which uses AI to automate meeting notes, was founded in 2020 by former Meta and Klarna product manager Colin Treseler and ex-Github design lead Fabian Perez.

☆ 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.

☆ Lawsuits over Stability AI's Stable Diffusion could threaten the future of AI-generated art
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-25 | by ( Asia Martin | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Stability AI, the startup that makes the popular AI art tool Stable Diffusion, faces two lawsuits. The company's most well-known product is the controversial Stable Diffusion (also known as DreamStudio to users). Enter text into a search bar, and Stable Diffusion will, for a lack of a better word, draw an image to match, right on the spot. What's old is new againStability Diffusion released Stability AI in August, a time when the generative-AI market was starting to heat up. Mostaque's tweet added that Stability AI would offer "opt outs" and use alternate datasets and models with content licensed under the more-permissive creative-commons copyright process.

☆ They Poured Their Savings Into Homes That Were Never Built
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-24 | by ( Isabelle Qian | Agnes Chang | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +13 min

We talked to four people who emptied their life savings and took out huge loans for homes that have not been completed. “It was a simple dream — to have a home, a family,” Mr. Tang said. Mr. Tang, who works in a restaurant, sold a small place he had out in the countryside. “When I think about the unfinished apartment, it’s as if I’m falling from heaven to hell, ” Mr. Tang said. Homeowners atop one of the unfinished apartment towers call for construction to fully resume.

Amazon, Microsoft, and Google announced layoffs of a total of 40,000 employees this week. Tech companies embarked on a massive hiring spree as the Covid-era made their products the backbone of the world's remote-working offices. The era of tech companies spending like rock stars is overOver the last decade Big Tech companies spent money "like 1980's rock stars," wrote Dan Ives, managing director at the investment firm Wedbush . On the other end, tech companies may look much different this decade as they did in the last. As companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft cut costs, they'll find ways to operate leaner, and their stock prices will stabilize.

☆ Meta, Twitter, Microsoft and others urge Supreme Court not to allow lawsuits against tech algorithms
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-20 | by ( Brian Fung | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

The diverse group weighing in at the Court ranged from major tech companies such as Meta, Twitter and Microsoft to some of Big Tech’s most vocal critics, including Yelp and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Section 230 has been used to shield all websites, not just social media platforms, from lawsuits over third-party content. “If Yelp could not analyze and recommend reviews without facing liability, those costs of submitting fraudulent reviews would disappear,” Yelp wrote. “The feed uses algorithms to recommend software to users based on projects they have worked on or showed interest in previously,” Microsoft wrote. “Without a liability shield for recommendations, platforms will remove large categories of third-party content, remove all third-party content, or abandon their efforts to make the vast amount of user content on their platforms accessible.

☆ One of Google's big plans to replace third-party cookies just hit a huge setback that it might not recover from
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-13 | by ( Lara O'Reilly | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Google's plan to replace third-party tracking cookies with new tech has hit another snag. A W3C group has rejected Google's Topics API proposal, saying it won't adequately preserve user privacy. The W3C rebuke marks the latest in a series of snags in Google's effort to kill off third-party cookies. However, other browsers like Apple's Safari and Mozilla's Firefox already block third-party cookies as privacy features. The company has its own commercial priorities and the commitment to the CMA that it can't remove third-party cookies until new features provide an adequate replacement.

☆ 9 tech predictions for 2023 from seed investor in Uber, Pinterest, and other top companies
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-03 | by ( Scott Belsky | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +16 min

2022 was a pivotal year for:Collaborative web apps disrupting every function of the enterprise. Internet browsers will shift from generalized to specializedAs web apps, communal browsing, and decentralized technology continue to grow, browsers have become too generalized and antiquated for the future of web apps. Web apps offer virality and infinite possibilities for product-led growth, and are finally powerful enough for sophisticated apps like Photoshop. Browsers will be reimagined for collaboration and higher performance web apps — like Arc from The Browser Company. Content creators will own their audience and some will become "platform-less"Content creators with mass audiences are seeking novel ways to own the relationship.

☆ FTX execs hid $8 billion in liabilities in a customer account that Bankman-Fried referred to as 'our Korean friend's account,' CFTC prosecutors allege
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-25 | by ( Laila Maidan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Alameda Research borrowed billions of dollars of customer funds from FTX exchange. The firm's liabilities were then masked under a pseudonym account on FTX. Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang have pleaded guilty to numerous counts of fraud. The lawsuit also claimed that Bankman-Fried would later refer to that account as "our Korean friend's account" and/or "the weird Korean account." Wang pleaded guilty to four counts of similar charges.

☆ 2 coders made a teleprompter AI that suggests smart things to say during your work meetings
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-22 | by ( Aaron Mok | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Two coders shared a demo of Tele-Prompt, an AI that generates things to say during work meetings. Tele-Prompt uses natural language processing to suggest sales advice and slogans meant to inspire. The company behind ChatGPT, OpenAI, announced the AI had attracted 1 million users five days after its launch. Coder Georgi Gerganov, for instance, revamped the Tele-Prompt so that the bot can run on an iPhone, according to a demo he tweeted. As technology continues to advance, Gross tweeted that AI language models are "a really interesting area of exploration."

☆ Why tech insiders are so excited about ChatGPT, a chatbot that answers questions and writes essays
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-13 | by ( Jonathan Vanian | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

Lately, Zwingmann has been generating lecture notes using ChatGPT, a new chatbot that's quickly become the latest fad in tech. ChatGPT automatically generates text based on written prompts in a fashion that's much more advanced and creative than the chatbots of Silicon Valley's past. Five days after OpenAI released ChatGPT, Altman said that the chat research tool "crossed 1 million users!" ChatGPT is essentially a variant of OpenAI's popular GPT-3.5 language-generation software that's been designed to carry conversations with people. While ChatGPT is free, OpenAI sells access to its underlying language and related AI models for businesses to use.

☆ Lensa, the AI portrait app, has soared in popularity. But many artists question the ethics of AI art.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-06 | by ( Morgan Sung | Morgan Sung Is A Trends Reporter For Nbc News Digital. | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +12 min

Social media has been flooded with Lensa AI portraits, from photorealistic paintings to more abstract illustrations. In a lengthy Twitter thread posted Tuesday morning, Prisma addressed concerns of AI art replacing art by actual artists. For some artists, AI models are a creative tool. While the value of art is subjective, the crux of the AI art controversy is the right to privacy. Without decades of examples to learn from, he said, the AI images that looked just like his illustrations would never exist.

☆ Google has a secret new project that is teaching artificial intelligence to write and fix code. It could reduce the need for human engineers in the future.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-23 | by ( Hugh Langley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Google is working on a tool that teaches code to write and rewrite itself. The project was spun up at the company's moonshot unit X, and moved into Google Labs this year. Google is working on a secretive project that uses machine learning to train code to write, fix, and update itself. It could have profound implications for the company's future and developers who write code. Google Labs pursues long-term bets, including projects in virtual and augmented reality.

☆ One of the data field's most prominent technologists is stepping aside as CEO of his startup, which many thought could unseat industry leader Astronomer
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-18 | by ( Matthew Lynley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Nick Schrock, creator of orchestration tool Dagster and CEO of Elementl, is moving into a new role. Elementl runs the Dagster tool, an emerging product that competes with Airflow and Prefect. A hot open source project many thought was primed to unseat a data juggernaut is now shifting its leadership as it reckons with increased competition in the race to own a critical piece of data infrastructure. And while there likely remains room for an independent orchestration tool, insiders say it's unclear whether one will be able to substantially challenge Airflow. And there's consistent buzz among insiders over whether Dbt Labs will launch its own proper orchestration product.

☆ Tech workers who just lost their jobs are prime targets for recruiters right now. Here's how to stand out and get the job you really want.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-17 | by ( Shana Lebowitz | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Layoffs are sweeping tech, leaving thousands of people at the likes of Twitter and Meta out of work. If you've lost a job, here's how to attract recruiters who can place you in roles you want. If you've recently been let go — and even if you haven't — you might already be fielding messages from recruiters. But it helps to know how to attract the attention of recruiters who can place you in the positions you really want. The more time you spend thinking about what kind of role you'd want next, the easier it will be to direct any recruiters who get in touch.

☆ Andreessen Horowitz bets millions on emerging startup MotherDuck to build data analytics tech for companies that don't need all the oomph pushed by cloud giants
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-15 | by ( Matthew Lynley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

CEO Jordan Tigani says it won't replace Snowflake but can carve its own niche in the data market. DuckDB, an open source database and analytics technology, was launched by the DuckDB foundation in 2019 to tackle this problem. It's designed for work with smaller chunks of data, which is the size most companies are actually typically analyzing, Tigani said. The round comes at a $175 million valuation with combined a $35 million series A funding round led by Andreessen-Horowitz and a $12.5 million seed funding round led by Redpoint. It could also be compared to the emerging Snowflake-endorsed data technology Iceberg (3,600 stars).

☆ A software engineer from India says he was fired by Meta 2 days after he moved to Canada for his job
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-14 | by ( Marielle Descalsota | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

A Meta employee said he was laid off two days after moving from India to Canada for work. Meta laid off 11,000 employees, or 13% of its workforce. Himanshu V., a software engineer from India, wrote in a LinkedIn post on November 10 that he was one of the thousands of employees affected by Meta's mass layoffs. Himanshu is not the only employee suddenly laid off by Meta days after relocating from India. Neelima Agarwal, a software engineer who moved from India to Canada in November, said she was laid off two days after joining the company.

☆ If you want to land a job or get a raise in the tech industry, you have to past a test — and pretty much everyone is cheating on the exams
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-14 | by ( Rob Price | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +18 min

It was one in a long line of tech certifications that Bill freely acknowledges he earned, at least in part, by cheating. And he's far from alone: In the tech industry, it's an open secret that there are thousands, if not millions, of cheaters just like Bill. The rise of exam dumps for tech certifications could have devastating consequences. But the cheating is clearly having a corrosive effect on the tech industry, particularly the hiring process. But the perception that workers from poorer countries are more likely to be cheaters can also fuel racism against foreign-born tech workers.

☆ 15 companies that will let you work from home and are hiring now—some roles pay over $100K
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-08 | by ( Morgan Smith | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Remote jobs fell to 14% of all active listings on LinkedIn in September, down from a peak of 20% in February, according to a new report from the platform. To help people find the best remote opportunities, FlexJobs, a membership service for jobseekers, identified the 15 companies with the most remote job openings, including full-time and part-time opportunities, this fall. In spite of fewer remote job openings, Jennifer Shapely, LinkedIn's vice president of global talent acquisition, expects flexibility to remain a top priority for workers. Frana also stresses the importance of networking, which can also help you stand out in a tight job market. As in the traditional job market, "referrals tend to get much more traction than a cold application" for remote jobs, Frana adds.

☆ Twitter staffers are sleeping in the office—ex-Apple engineer who worked on the iPhone says it's totally unnecessary
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-07 | by ( Tom Huddleston Jr. | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

For some Twitter employees under Elon Musk, sleeping in the office appears to be an absolute must — the physical embodiment of the tech industry's "hustle culture." It's also totally unnecessary, says Ken Kocienda, a former Apple software engineer and designer who helped build the first iPhone and iPad. "I was on these [Apple] teams from the earliest stages and I never once came close to sleeping at the office. It's not an essential part of doing great work," he wrote in a Twitter post on Sunday. The "hustle porn" trend of tech founders and executives bragging about working around the clock and sleeping in their offices is nothing new.

☆ Elon Musk says Twitter's Birdwatch feature will be renamed 'Community Notes' and is aimed at 'improving information accuracy' amid growing content-moderation concerns
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-05 | by ( Bethany Biron | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Elon Musk said Twitter's Birdwatch feature will now be called "Community Notes." It also will be renamed "Community Notes," and Musk tweeted that the tool has "incredible potential for improving information accuracy" on the platform. Birdwatch notes first became public to users in early October, after the feature was launched in a pilot program in the US in January 2021. Among tweets where Birdwatch notes have appeared in the past week is a post from Musk himself. According to the company, "Birdwatch is made up of independent contributors, and individual notes are never written by Twitter."

☆ Leaked Microsoft organizational chart shows the 19 people running its all-important cloud business
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-20 | by ( Ashley Stewart | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

An internal org chart shows the 19 people running Microsoft's Cloud + AI org under CEO Satya Nadella. An internal Microsoft organizational chart viewed by Insider shows the people in charge of the company's cloud and artificial intelligence business — a business so tremendous, it employs at least one-third of Microsoft's massive workforce. The Cloud + AI org is responsible for Microsoft's Azure cloud business, plus its data platform, developer services, and software like its Dynamics 365 customer relationship management tool. The org is run by Scott Guthrie, one of CEO Satya Nadella's top lieutenants and the exec who has led Microsoft's cloud business since at least 2011. Nat Friedman, the former CEO of Microsoft subsidiary GitHub who stepped down in November 2021, also remained on the org chart viewed by Insider.

☆ Goldman says these resilient software stocks are buys even in an economic ‘hard landing’
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-17 | by ( Fred Imbert | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Software stocks have taken a beating this year, but Goldman Sachs thinks there are some names in the space that can withstand a sharp economic downturn. As of Monday, it traded more than 40% below its 52-week high. Despite all of this, Goldman's Kash Rangan was able to identify some software stocks that can be resilient despite an economic "hard landing," or if the U.S. economy tumbles into a recession. The tech giant is down about 30% year to date and has fallen 32% since reaching a 52-week high last November. Goldman rates intuit as a buy and sees upside of roughly 51% from Friday's close.

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