AI news flash: Google launches Polar Peaks, the third mission in its AI Quests series, built by Google Research and the Stanford Accelerator for Learning to teach 11- to 14-year-olds how AI works and how to use it responsibly. Students play Google researchers tackling big challenges facing humanity. The first two missions focused on flood forecasting and diabetic retinopathy screening, and this one takes students to the frontier of neuroscience…
AI news flash: OpenAI has released ‘OpenAI Signals’ data analyzing how ChatGPT is used at work. The data covers about 100 countries and breaks users’ work usage into 165 work activities, showing how people actually use ChatGPT on the job. Besides the usage distribution across activities, the data also tracks how these patterns change over time, so outsiders can see…
AI news flash: the latest quarterly results from India’s two IT services giants, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys, give the market both hope and worry. Analysts say AI adoption in enterprises’ legacy software systems is accelerating and driving growth in high-margin contracts, but the productivity gains from AI are also squeezing revenue in traditional business segments, putting pressure on overall…
AI news flash: Three months after Musk promised a ‘historically accurate’ feature-length Odyssey, Grok has released only about seven minutes of footage and calls it ’episode one of the Odyssey series.’ It was made with Wonder Studios and director Dev Walker. Musk had previously attacked Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey for casting non-white and transgender actors. Nolan calls himself a…
AI news flash: From Hong Kong: Homegrown AI is a key part of China’s tech self-reliance strategy, but growing doubts about AI profitability are weighing on Chinese stocks. A recent selloff in US AI stocks has raised investor worries about the earnings outlook of Chinese AI companies, and those concerns have spilled over into the Chinese market. The original summary only says that investor concern over Chinese AI companies’ profits is rising, and it points to a contradiction…
AI news flash: website security and blockchain news collided this week, beyond just Cloudflare. A site called ‘Steal My Bitcoin’ deliberately left the PHP2Shell vulnerability unpatched and hid the keys to a roughly $2,000 Bitcoin wallet on its server, where only the PHP user account can read them through an executable called print-flag, to prove the wallet isn’t at risk…
AI news flash: A wave of AI wearables and pocket devices is hitting the market, all aiming to weave AI into everyday life, from pendants and rings to bracelets and portable gadgets. Some pitch themselves as productivity tools, others as companions that listen to your daily thoughts, and even OpenAI is reportedly building a small AI companion device. Bee is a budget $49.99 pendant that clips onto clothing or wears as a wristband, records everything it hears…
AI news flash: In a new research note, Apollo Global Management chief economist Torsten Slok says AI hasn’t delivered any profit growth to large companies outside the tech sector. Apollo is the private equity giant that once owned TechCrunch. Slok’s analysis focuses on what he calls the ‘S&P 493,’ which is the S&P 500 minus Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla. He found that profit margins and revenue per employee look flat, with no evidence that AI has improved productivity.
AI news flash: SoftBank Group is in talks on a $50 billion investment in Malaysia, focused on AI and data centers. It’s another step in SoftBank’s push to expand its AI infrastructure footprint in Asia after the US and Europe. According to the headline, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said he held a video call with SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son and revealed the investment plan. Only limited details can be confirmed from the original summary: the plan is still…
AI news flash: Indonesia’s government plans to make public education free from elementary school all the way through university, but the idea has raised concerns that it will become another source of fiscal strain on top of costly policies like free school lunches. According to Nikkei Asia, delivering this fully free education would cost close to ten percent of total government spending, which is a significant amount. The report says the government wants to ease the education burden on families, but it also has to face tight budgets…