Google’s App Store Ruled an Illegal Monopoly, as a Jury Sides With Epic Games

Google’s App Store Ruled an Illegal Monopoly, as a Jury Sides With Epic Games

More bad news for Google could come in mid-2024 when US district judge Amit Mehta in Washington, DC, is expected to issue his ruling on whether Google has unlawfully maintained its monopoly over web search. Testimony in that case, which was brought by the US Department of Justice and attorneys general for nearly every US…

The EU Just Passed Sweeping New Rules to Regulate AI

The EU Just Passed Sweeping New Rules to Regulate AI

Over the two years lawmakers have been negotiating the rules agreed today, AI technology and the leading concerns about it have dramatically changed. When the AI Act was conceived in April 2021, policymakers were worried about opaque algorithms deciding who would get a job, be granted refugee status or receive social benefits. By 2022, there…

Google’s Gemini Is the Real Start of the Generative AI Boom

Google’s Gemini Is the Real Start of the Generative AI Boom

The history of artificial intelligence has been punctuated by periods of so-called “AI winter,” when the technology seemed to meet a dead end and funding dried up. Each one has been accompanied by proclamations that making machines truly intelligent is just too darned hard for humans to figure out. Google’s release of Gemini, claimed to…

End-to-End Encrypted Instagram and Messenger Chats: Why It Took Meta 7 Years

End-to-End Encrypted Instagram and Messenger Chats: Why It Took Meta 7 Years

Since 2016, the social behemoth now known as Meta has been working to deploy end-to-end encryption in its communication apps. CEO Mark Zuckerberg even promised in 2019 that the data privacy protection would roll out by default across all of the company’s chat apps. In practice, though, it was a wildly ambitious goal fraught with…

OpenAI Cofounder Reid Hoffman Gives Sam Altman a Vote of Confidence

OpenAI Cofounder Reid Hoffman Gives Sam Altman a Vote of Confidence

Hoffman and others said that there’s no need to pause development of AI. He called that drastic measure, for which some AI researchers have petitioned, foolish and destructive. Hoffman identified himself as a rational “accelerationist”—someone who knows to slow down when driving around a corner but that, presumably, is happy to speed up when the…

How to Stop Another OpenAI Meltdown

How to Stop Another OpenAI Meltdown

Unlike OpenAI, Mozilla’s nonprofit cannot fire executives in charge of for-profit work. Each for-profit unit has its own board, with members annually selected by the nonprofit foundation’s board. “It’s different jobs, it’s a different mix of skills,” Surman says. “If you have different functions, it makes sense to have a separation of powers.” The different…

The Rise of AI in Alternative Browsers—and What’s Next

The Rise of AI in Alternative Browsers—and What’s Next

Josh Miller laughs a few minutes into our conversation and admits that he almost declined today’s interview about The Browser Company. The young CEO is jetlagged from a flight to Paris but appears comfortable over Zoom and eager to talk about Arc, his company’s new AI-fortified web browser. So, what’s the reason for his hesitancy?…

Spotify Is Screwed | WIRED

Spotify Is Screwed | WIRED

Just days after people gleefully posted their Spotify Wrapped, bad news came for the music streaming giant. Spotify announced today that it would cut 17 percent of its workforce, a chunk that equates to an estimated 1,500 people. It’s the third time the world’s largest music streamer has cut jobs this year. The news came…

OpenAI Agreed to Buy $51 Million of AI Chips From a Startup Backed by CEO Sam Altman

OpenAI Agreed to Buy $51 Million of AI Chips From a Startup Backed by CEO Sam Altman

Rain at one point has claimed to investors that it has held advanced talks to sell systems to Google, Oracle, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon. Microsoft declined to comment, and the other companies did not respond to requests for comment. Security Fears The funding round led by Prosperity7 announced last year brought Rain’s total funding to…

The Year of ChatGPT and Living Generatively

The Year of ChatGPT and Living Generatively

No human celebrating a first birthday is as verbose, knowledgeable, or prone to fabrication as ChatGPT, which is blowing out its first candle as I type these words. Of course, OpenAI’s game-changing large language model was precocious at birth, tumbling into civilization’s ongoing conversation like an uninvited guest busting into a dinner party and instantly…