Techmeme
November 7, 2023, 11:45 AM

Top News

Sam Biddle / The Intercept:
Internal documents: Cruise knew its cars struggled to detect large holes and sometimes had problems recognizing kids, prior to its California permitting crisis  —  In Phoenix, Austin, Houston, Dallas, Miami, and San Francisco, hundreds of so-called autonomous vehicles, or AVs …
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
A recap of the first day of the Epic v. Google antitrust trial, where both sides made their opening statements and Epic Games Store head Steve Allison testified  —  The first day of the Epic Games vs. Google antitrust trial ended after both sides gave opening statements and two witnesses testified.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
OpenAI debuts GPT-4 Turbo with a 128K-token context window, an April 2023 knowledge cutoff, a JSON mode, new modalities in the API, and 2x to 3x cheaper tokens  —  Today at its first-ever developer conference, OpenAI unveiled GPT-4 Turbo, an improved version of its flagship text-generating AI model …
Casey Newton / Platformer:
A look at OpenAI's custom GPT builder, which Sam Altman says the company wants to keep simple for now, and the risks in allowing anyone to create GPT agents  —  Building a GPT-based copy editor showcases their promise — but the risks ahead are real  —  Today, let's talk about the implications …
Alex Heath / The Verge:
Katie Paul / Reuters:
Meta plans to bar political advertisers from using its new generative AI advertising products, after US lawmakers warn against the spread of misinformation  —  Facebook owner Meta (META.O) is barring political advertisers from using its new generative AI advertising products …
Jay Peters / The Verge:
An interview with Blizzard President Mike Ybarra about the studio's future under Microsoft, the idea of releasing a game without live components, and more  —  Mike Ybarra is confident about the studio's future. … The dust is finally starting to settle from Microsoft's huge acquisition …
Min Jeong Lee / Bloomberg:
WeWork's bankruptcy caps a years-long saga for Masayoshi Son, who overrode lieutenants' objections to hand Adam Neumann billions, losing SoftBank over $11.5B  —  - Co-working space's bankruptcy highlights billionaire's hubris  — Few checks on SoftBank CEO as he prepares to go on offensive
Rohan Goswami / CNBC:
Ashlee Vance / Bloomberg:
A look at Neuralink after FDA trial approval: huge media coverage compared to rivals and worries over hype, but its tech is exciting and potentially miraculous  —  Neuralink has FDA clearance to start messing with people's heads—and not just figuratively.  —  Elon Musk is preparing for the most consequential launch of his career.
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Sony plans to terminate X integration on the PS5 and the PS4 as of November 13, meaning that users will not be able to post and view X content from the consoles  —  Sony is terminating its X (formerly Twitter) integrations for PS5 and PS4, meaning you soon won't be able to post screenshots and clips to X from those consoles.
Sheila Dang / Reuters:
A survey of 167 researchers shows that 104 studies about X were canceled, suspended, or changed after X ended free academic access to its API and sued the CCDH  —  Social media researchers have canceled, suspended or changed more than 100 studies about X, formerly Twitter …
Cade Metz / New York Times:
AI startup Vectara's Hallucination Evaluation Model: OpenAI's LLMs had the lowest hallucination rates, followed by Meta's; Google's PaLM-Chat had the highest  —  When summarizing facts, ChatGPT technology makes things up about 3 percent of the time, according to research from a new start-up.
Reuters:
Sources: Baidu ordered AI chips from Huawei in 2023 to shift away from Nvidia; a source says Baidu ordered 1,600 Ascend 910B chips, worth ~$62M, for 200 servers  —  Baidu (9888.HK) ordered artificial intelligence chips from Huawei (HWT.UL) this year, two people familiar with the matter said …
Vittoria Elliott / Wired:
After Big Tech cut thousands of trust and safety staff, Sero AI and other outsourcing startups sell the services, which experts warn bring problems of their own  —  The burgeoning trust and safety industry promises to help tech companies navigate scrutiny and regulation.  But these services bring problems of their own.
Paayal Zaveri / Bloomberg:
Austin-based Black Ore, which builds AI tools for the financial services industry, emerges from stealth with a $60M combined Seed and Series A led by a16z  —  Financial technology startup Black Ore is coming out of stealth with a major investment. … Austin-based Black Ore is the latest AI startup …
Arjun Kharpal / CNBC:
Nintendo reports Q2 revenue down 4% YoY to ~$2.2B and profit down 19% YoY to ~$603M, both above est.; Switch sales from April to September grew 2% YoY to 6.84M  —  - Nintendo reported better-than-expected sales and profit for its fiscal second quarter on Tuesday as it continues to get a bump from the …

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