Members phkrause Posted June 27, 2025 Author Members Posted June 27, 2025 ? AI power cheat code Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios One of the easiest ways to minimize AI's environmental impact may be to move where the processing is done, Axios' Ben Berkowitz writes from new academic research conducted with Qualcomm. Why it matters: Running AI on devices instead of in the cloud could slash the power consumption of queries by about 90%, the study finds. The big picture: The AI boom is creating huge demands for power. One oft-cited rule of thumb says querying an AI model consumes about 10 times the power of a Google search. ? How it works: Researchers at U.C. Riverside ran a series of experiments comparing the performance of various generative AI models. Running any of six different models on the phones consumed anywhere from 75% to 95% less power, with associated sharp decreases in water consumption and overall carbon footprint. Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted June 30, 2025 Author Members Posted June 30, 2025 "The List" Mark Zuckerberg has spent months putting together, "The List," a handpicked roster of the most talented engineers and researchers in AI — and Silicon Valley is buzzing over it, The Wall Street Journal reports (gift link). The big picture: Tech CEOs and venture capitalists are locked in an arms race to recruit this tiny group of researchers whose once-obscure specialties have suddenly become some of the most sought-after skills in the Valley. ? Nobody is as committed as Zuckerberg, "who has tried to raid Silicon Valley's top research labs, dangling $100 million pay packages to a select few superstars with the hopes of poaching them," according to The Journal. "The billionaire CEO of Meta wants them to join his company's new lab focused on superintelligence, or AI that is smarter than humans." Zoom in: The people on "The List" are mostly in their 20s and 30s, hold Ph.D.s from top schools like Carnegie Mellon and Berkeley and have worked at places like OpenAI and Google DeepMind. They include: Lucas Beyer, a multimodal vision-language researcher Yu Zhang, an automatic speech recognition specialist Misha Bilenko, an expert in large-scale machine learning ? Between the lines: Everyone on "The List" knows each other, and they're loyal to each other. As they weigh joining Meta's AI lab, they're talking to each other and trying to suss out who else is on the list. Some are pitching themselves as package deals, and others are using their spots on "The List" as the ultimate leverage to get lavish counteroffers from their current employers, The Journal reports. Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted June 30, 2025 Author Members Posted June 30, 2025 AI could free Fridays Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios If you can get more done in less time using AI, why not work fewer hours? Why it matters: The idea is gaining traction among proponents of the four-day workweek, and at least one software startup CEO tells Axios that he's moved his company to a 32-hour week — with no change in pay — because of AI, Axios' Emily Peck reports. ? "You're a worker, your productivity is increasing because we give you AI, right?" Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said on the Joe Rogan podcast recently. "Instead of throwing you out on the street, I'm going to reduce your workweek to 32 hours." Reality check: For now, this is a fringe idea. While smaller companies might be able to move to a four-day week, larger companies will have a much harder time implementing such a huge change. Sanders introduced a 32-hour workweek bill in the Senate last year that faced strong opposition. Such a proposal is unlikely to get far in Congress. Zoom out: The four-day workweek community, which took off in the post-pandemic pro-worker era, is buzzing about AI right now, says economist Juliet Schor, who has a new book out this month called "Four Days a Week." "The ability of large language models like ChatGPT to wipe out millions of good-paying positions means we need to be intentional about how we adjust to that technology," she writes in the book. "Reducing hours per job is a powerful way to keep more people employed." ? Case in point: Earlier this month, Roger Kirkness, the CEO of a small software startup called Convictional moved the company to a four-day workweek. "Look at Fridays like weekends," he wrote in an email announcing the change, to the delight of his 12 employees. (One must be on-call each week, on a rotating schedule.) "(Nearly) all that matters in work moving forward is the maximization of creativity, human judgment, emotional intelligence, prompting skills and deeply understanding a customer domain," Kirkness wrote in his all-staff email. "None of those things correlate with hours." Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted July 2, 2025 Author Members Posted July 2, 2025 ? AI is becoming the new HR Illustration: Shoshana Gordon/Axios Managers are trusting AI to help make high-stakes decisions about firing, promoting, and giving their direct reports a raise, Axios' Megan Morrone writes from a new study by Resume Builder. Why it matters: AI-based decision-making in HR could open companies up to discrimination and other types of lawsuits. The big picture: Employers are increasingly pushing workers to incorporate generative AI into their workflows, and gaining AI skills has been linked to better pay and increased job choices. But AI training and policies at work are still rare, and the tools are changing so fast that it's hard to keep up. Using AI to assess people's careers is risky, especially when the tools are prone to hallucinations and poorly understood. What they found: 65% of managers say they use AI at work, and 94% of those managers say they look to the tools "to make decisions about the people who report to them," according to the report. Over half of those managers said they used AI tools to assess whether a direct report should be promoted, given a raise, laid off or fired. Keep reading. Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted July 4, 2025 Author Members Posted July 4, 2025 AI devours venture capital dollars Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios AI startups received 64% of all venture capital dollars invested in the U.S. during the first half of this year, Axios' Dan Primack writes from new PitchBook data. Globally, AI ate up 53% of all venture investment. ? The big picture: Venture capitalists have always skated to where the puck is going, particularly when it comes to a technology with the potential to become ubiquitous. What's different, however, is the concentration in a small number of companies. In Q2, more than one-third of all U.S. venture dollars went to just five companies. ? Dan's thought bubble: Diversification is dying. Long live dominance. Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted July 8, 2025 Author Members Posted July 8, 2025 One Tech Tip: Get the most out of ChatGPT and other AI chatbots with better prompts LONDON (AP) — If you’re using ChatGPT but getting mediocre results, don’t blame the chatbot. Instead, try sharpening up your prompts. https://apnews.com/article/chatgpt-openai-ai-chatbot-gemini-9decab8abe739f44bbc932f32e13ea9b? Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted July 10, 2025 Author Members Posted July 10, 2025 AI Training for Teachers The nation's second-largest teachers' union announced yesterday that it's creating an AI training hub for K-12 educators with $23M from three leading AI developers: Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic. The American Federation of Teachers will open its National Academy for AI Instruction this fall in downtown Manhattan. The academy aims to offer hands-on workshops to 400,000 teachers—about 10% of the US teaching workforce—by 2030. All 1.8 million union members will also have access to free online training. A portion of Microsoft's five-year, $12.5M commitment and OpenAI's five-year, $10M pledge will fund the creation of additional hubs nationwide. Anthropic is contributing $500K to support the academy's first year. The initiative follows an executive order issued by the White House in April encouraging private sector investment in K-12 AI education. And while many teachers worry about students using AI, a recent survey found that 60% of teachers polled use it themselves. Those who reported using AI weekly estimated saving as much as six weeks' worth of time each year. Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted July 10, 2025 Author Members Posted July 10, 2025 AI's sneaky speed Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios The people building AI are saying — subtly and unsubtly — that the technology is advancing more rapidly than most people realize, Axios' Erica Pandey writes. Why it matters: It's likely we won't know how, and how much, AI will change the way we live, work and play ... until it already has. "The internet was a minor breeze compared to the huge storms that will hit us," says Anton Korinek, an economist at the University of Virginia. "If this technology develops at the pace the lab leaders are predicting, we are utterly unprepared." ? Zoom in: Pay attention to what the people closest to the technology are saying. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in a blog post last month that the "2030s are likely going to be wildly different from any time that has come before. We do not know how far beyond human-level intelligence we can go, but we are about to find out." Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, told Axios that AI could wipe out half of entry-level white-collar jobs in the next one to five years. Geoffrey Hinton, one of the "godfathers of AI," told BBC Radio 4 the technology is moving "very, very fast, much faster than I expected." Case in point: Take ChatGPT. It took five days after launch for the chatbot to hit 1 million users. It took Facebook 10 months to get to 1 million users, and it took Twitter two years to hit the same milestone. There are already signs that change is coming fast. CEOs are starting to say "the quiet part out loud" when it comes to how AI will hit employment. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told employees he expects the tech giant's workforce to shrink. Ford CEO Jim Farley said at this year's Aspen Ideas Festival, "Artificial intelligence is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the U.S." Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke told employees that before requesting to open a new role for hiring, they must first prove that the job cannot be done using AI. ? Reality check: The prediction that AI will upend society is still just a prediction. Yann LeCun, Meta's chief AI scientist and another "godfather of AI," posted on X: "A house cat has way more common sense and understanding of the world than any LLM." Still, even if AI froze in place right now — impossible — its capabilities are already advanced enough to shake up our jobs and lives. Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted July 14, 2025 Author Members Posted July 14, 2025 ? Pic du jour: AI factory town The new Amazon Web Services facility in New Carlisle, Ind., where the tech giant plans to build around 30 data centers. Photo: AJ Mast for The New York Times "A year ago, a 1,200-acre stretch of farmland outside New Carlisle, Ind., was an empty cornfield. Now, seven Amazon data centers rise up from the rich soil, each larger than a football stadium," the N.Y. Times' Karen Weise and Cade Metz report. Amazon also plans AI factory towns in Mississippi, and possibly North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Read on (gift link). Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted July 14, 2025 Author Members Posted July 14, 2025 ? 1 for the road: Your chatbot knows Illustration: Lindsey Bailey/Axios OpenAI continues to build and improve ChatGPT's memory, making it more robust and available to more users, even on its free tier — adding new value and opening new pitfalls, Axios' Megan Morrone writes. Why it matters: Not everyone is ready for a chatbot that doesn't forget. The big picture: The first version of ChatGPT memory worked like a personalized notebook that let you jot things down to remember later, OpenAI personalization lead Christina Wadsworth Kaplan told Axios. This year, OpenAI expanded memory to make it more automatic and "natural," Wadsworth Kaplan says. ? Pro tip: OpenAI says users have full control over their memories. There's an option to delete any memory in the Settings page, or to delete an associated chat, or to tell ChatGPT what you want. Try telling it: "Remember this." Or: "Don't remember this." ? Zoom in: OpenAI's Wadsworth Kaplan tells us that if you were recently talking to ChatGPT about training for a marathon, the model "should remember that and should be able to help you with that in other conversations." Another example from Wadsworth Kaplan: using ChatGPT to recommend vaccinations for an upcoming trip based on the bot's memory of her health history. A nurse suggested four vaccinations. ChatGPT recommended five — flagging an addition based on prior lab results that Wadsworth Kaplan had uploaded. The nurse agreed it was a good idea. Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted July 16, 2025 Author Members Posted July 16, 2025 ? AI's elusive coding speedup Illustration: Allie Carl/Axios A surprising new study finding that AI tools can reduce programmers' productivity is upending assumptions about the technology's world-changing potential, Axios' Scott Rosenberg writes. Why it matters: Software runs our civilization, and AI is already transforming the business of making it. But no one really knows whether AI will decimate programming jobs, or turn every coder into a miracle worker, or both. The study by METR, a nonprofit independent research outfit, looked at experienced programmers working on large, established open-source projects. It found that these developers believed that using AI tools helped them perform 20% faster — but they actually worked 19% slower. A key factor was that human developers found AI-generated code unreliable and ended up devoting extra time to reviewing, testing and fixing it. Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted July 22, 2025 Author Members Posted July 22, 2025 ? AI's anything-goes moment Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios The AI industry is getting nothing but green lights in all directions. Now it needs to deliver on its promises, Axios' Scott Rosenberg writes. Why it matters: AI's formative era is right now — and the technology is developing with almost total freedom. Zoom in: AI makers are getting everything they have ever asked for or could possibly want: 1. No limits: More money, energy and resources are flowing into the technology's development than any other industry has ever received in such a concentrated time span. Four companies — Alphabet/Google, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon — expect to spend more than $300 billion this year on AI, while private investors and governments pour hundreds of billions more into AI infrastructure. 2. No rules: In the second Trump era, the U.S. has dropped any pretense of trying to erect regulatory guardrails around AI. The White House AI Action Plan, expected tomorrow, will promote speedy deployment to counter China. The "doomer" camp's fear that runaway superintelligence might destroy humanity is no longer even a part of the policy conversation. 3. No arguments: CEOs and businesses are pushing AI use on sometimes resistant workforces and a skeptical public, telling hesitaters to get on the AI train or get left behind. The phenomenal popularity of ChatGPT and its competitors suggests there's huge demand for these tools. But surveys also show the U.S. public favors a more careful approach to its adoption. 4. No doubts: Business leaders and policy makers have successfully sidelined critical questions about harms from AI bias and misuse, privacy violations and appropriation of intellectual property. Keep reading ... Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted July 23, 2025 Author Members Posted July 23, 2025 ? Grok under fresh scrutiny Grok and its founder, Elon Musk. Image: Lionel Bonaventure/AFP via Getty Images As we scooped earlier today, Elon Musk is drawing bipartisan blowback after his AI platform, Grok, repeatedly used antisemitic language on X. Why it matters: While Musk is out of government and has fallen out of favor with Trump, the billionaire entrepreneur is still at the center of several types of evolving technologies — and bound to be a player in conversations about how to regulate them. More than a dozen lawmakers sent a letter, first obtained by Axios, to Musk today in which they criticized xAI for failing to take "reasonable measures" to prevent its AI model from engaging in hate speech. The lawmakers, led by Sens. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) and James Lankford (R-Okla.), called xAI's approach "reckless, unacceptable, and antisemitic." The big picture: Musk's Grok chatbot has come under fire for its use of antisemitic tropes, including praising Adolf Hitler, Holocaust denialism and repeated use of the phrase "every damn time," a popular antisemitic meme. Musk this month said Grok was "too eager to please and be manipulated" in response to online backlash against the antisemitic language. In a post also this month, Grok said that "since being made aware of the content, xAI has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X." An xAI representative did not respond to a request for comment. — Stephen Neukam Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted July 23, 2025 Author Members Posted July 23, 2025 ? OpenAI's data center speed bump OpenAI is finding that financing and building the massive data centers it needs to meet its ambitions is easier said than done, Axios AI+ author Ina Fried writes. Why it matters: There's no limit on AI builders' hunger for computing capacity. ? Zoom in: The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that OpenAI has run into conflicts and stumbles in its relationship with SoftBank, a key partner in its effort to dramatically scale up its access to computing capacity. The companies pledged in January to immediately invest $100 billion. But no specific deals have been inked yet and near-term ambitions have been scaled back, the Journal reports. In a memo to employees seen by Axios, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledged that the company's thirst for computing is "starting to strain the supply chain" and will "require some real creativity." Altman reassured employees that additional capacity is coming sooner rather than later. OpenAI announced an expansion of its work with Oracle yesterday that includes additional capacity at a data center project already under development in Abilene, Texas. Keep reading. Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted July 24, 2025 Author Members Posted July 24, 2025 Teens say they are turning to AI for friendship Artificial intelligence is playing a much larger role in teenagers' lives. AI, teens say, has become a go-to source for personal advice, emotional support, everyday decision-making and problem-solving. Read More. Trump's AI plan is all about China Illustration: Maura Losch/Axios The White House's AI vision, out today, focuses on beating China and accelerating the industry's domestic growth, Axios tech policy reporters Ashley Gold and Maria Curi write. ? "Winning the Race: America's AI Action Plan" gives the AI industry a green light to move as rapidly as it wants in the name of global competition. ? The industry has been eager to get a sense of the Trump administration's AI goals and how they will differ from the Biden era's safety focus. 4️⃣ President Trump's plan outlines several specific AI goals for his second term, highlighting four key policies: exporting American AI, building data centers, enabling AI innovation and adoption, and free speech. ?♂️ It discourages federal agencies from sending AI funding to states "with burdensome AI regulations," while guiding them not to interfere "with states' rights to pass prudent laws that are not unduly restrictive to innovation." The plan also calls to change procurement standards for AI deemed too liberal or "woke," and to delete references to DEI, misinformation and climate change from a federal AI risk management framework. Trump is expected to sign several related AI executive orders at an AI summit in D.C. later this afternoon. Go deeper ... Read the 28-page plan ... Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted July 27, 2025 Author Members Posted July 27, 2025 ? America's AI exceptionalism Illustration: Shoshana Gordon/Axios Investors who flocked to Europe for outsized market returns earlier this year are now coming back — not because of America itself, but because of America's AI dominance, Axios Markets author Madison Mills writes. Why it matters: Without an AI boom of its own, Europe will struggle to keep up and attract global investors. "People want to be in the U.S. markets in the AI trade," Stuart Kaiser, head of U.S. equity strategy at Citi, tells Axios. "It's a market you have to be involved in." Zoom in: Nvidia alone is worth an amount equal to 14% of the total U.S. GDP, notes Brave Eagle Wealth Management chief investment officer Robert Ruggirello. "Not owning it is ... painful," he wrote. ? Between the lines: Europe's slower AI momentum reflects regulatory pressure, higher corporate taxes, and fragmented markets. Even European AI successes often funnel into U.S. markets: DeepMind, the British AI firm behind Gemini, sold to Alphabet in 2014. Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted July 27, 2025 Author Members Posted July 27, 2025 AI The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has started using artificial intelligence, and behind the scenes, the practice has caused some alarm. An AI project known as Elsa is supposed to help speed up drug and medical device approvals at the FDA, a division of HHS. Six current and former FDA officials told CNN that Elsa can be useful for generating meeting notes and summaries, or email and communique templates, but it also invented studies and misrepresented research. In at least one instance — when an employee asked Elsa to generate something for a project — it insisted that the research area was not in the FDA’s purview, even though it was. Elsa also cannot help with the lengthy assessment process that agency scientists undertake to determine whether drugs and devices are safe and effective because it can't access many of the files needed to answer basic questions. Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted July 28, 2025 Author Members Posted July 28, 2025 ⚖️ Courts brace for AI-generated evidence Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios Photos, videos and audio — once the gold standard for courtroom evidence — are becoming less reliable as deepfakes grow more realistic and pervasive, Axios' Sam Sabin writes. Why it matters: As with financial fraud cases that rely on expert testimony to unpack accounting records, courts will depend on digital forensics analysts to spot the telltale signs of tampered media. ? Right now, there aren't nearly enough experts. And as AI tools improve, proving that a photo, video or audio snippet was manipulated will get more challenging, if not impossible. Keep reading ... Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted July 29, 2025 Author Members Posted July 29, 2025 ? Axios interview: Marc Benioff on humans and AI Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff told Axios' Ina Fried in an interview that companies and workers aren't set up for the current pace of technological shift. Why it matters: "Change management is extremely difficult ... because the level of transformation that is happening is unlike anything we've ever seen," he said. Benioff sees the glass as more than half full, recently outlining an optimistic vision of our shared AI future in an op-ed in the Financial Times. Benioff told Ina the company plans to add thousands of sales staff even as it relies more on AI. Full interview ... Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted July 31, 2025 Author Members Posted July 31, 2025 ? Most and least AI-proof jobs Microsoft released a study assessing jobs' vulnerability to being replaced by AI based on whether AI is currently being used for that work, how successfully it does so and how much of that occupation's work is accounted for by AI. Most vulnerable: Interpreters and translators (Score: 0.49, Number employed: 51,560) Historians (0.48, 3,040) Passenger attendants (0.46, 20,190) Sales representatives of services (0.46, 1,142,020) Writers and authors (0.45, 49,450) Customer service representatives (0.44, 2,858,710) CNC (computer numerical control) tool programmers: (0.44, 28,030) Telephone operators (0.42, 4,600) Ticket agents and travel clerks (0.41, 119,270) Broadcast announcers and radio DJs (0.41, 25,070) Least vulnerable: Dredge operators (0.00, 940) Bridge and lock tenders (0.00, 3,460) Water treatment plant and system operators (0.00, 120,710) Foundry mold and coremakers (0.00, 11,780) Rail-track laying and maintenance equipment operators (0.00, 18,770) Pile driver operators (0.00, 3,010) Floor sanders and finishers (0.00, 5,070) Orderlies (0.00, 48,710) Motorboat operators (0.00, 2,710) Logging equipment operators (0.01, 23,720) See the full list. Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted July 31, 2025 Author Members Posted July 31, 2025 ? OpenAI and Microsoft's divorce wishlist Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios OpenAI and Microsoft are scrambling to rework the terms of their massive partnership that radically transformed both companies, Axios' Ina Fried writes. Why it matters: The rising tensions are a reflection of how much the world has changed in the six years since the two companies placed their fate in each other's hands, sources tell Axios. ? Zoom in: Despite recent efforts to diversify, each company still relies heavily on the other. Microsoft and OpenAI are renegotiating partly because Microsoft must sign off on OpenAI's plan to revamp its business into a fully for-profit entity. What Microsoft wants: Continued access to OpenAI's technology. Microsoft currently has rights to all of OpenAI's models and technology. But that gets significantly curtailed once OpenAI reaches so-called artificial general intelligence. What OpenAI wants: Changes to the business structure and choice when it comes to cloud providers. First and foremost, OpenAI needs to convert Microsoft's stake in the business into a more typical ownership percentage to move forward with the restructuring. OpenAI initially had to acquire all its computing horsepower to train and operate ChatGPT and OpenAI's other services from Microsoft. OpenAI has since brokered some flexibility, but it's looking to build compute capacity at a scale that could dwarf Microsoft's other computing needs. Keep reading ... Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted August 1, 2025 Author Members Posted August 1, 2025 ? AI starts to deliver real revenue Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios Tech companies are finally generating real revenue from their AI investments. But they're pouring that money — and more — back into data centers in a bet that the AI boom is just getting started, Axios AI+ author Ina Fried writes. Why it matters: Investors are looking for those massive investments to deliver more than revenue — they want profits. ? Zoom in: Microsoft and Google credited the AI boom with helping them deliver better-than-expected results for the most recent quarter. Shares of Meta surged after CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled his thesis underlying the massive investments he's making in computing horsepower and talent. OpenAI — still a private company and not subject to quarterly disclosures — is also seeing continued, rapid growth. The Information reported this week that the ChatGPT maker now generates about $1 billion per month in revenue, up from $500 million at the start of 2025. Keep reading. Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted August 3, 2025 Author Members Posted August 3, 2025 ? AI slop is ruining the internet Illustration: Lindsey Bailey/Axios ? An AI-generated video of rabbits jumping on a trampoline that went viral this week was widely believed to be real — a reminder that even cute animal clips aren't safe from the rise of AI "slop," Axios' Megan Morrone reports. Why it matters: All the fake AI-generated content online is sapping the joy of casual scrolling. It's not just animal videos. AI-generated images are popping up in gardening forums, knitting communities and the entire DIY aesthetic on Pinterest. These images lack the charm and imperfection of real people and hobbies or interests. Fake influencers have been slipping into our feeds for years, but they're getting harder to spot now that image generators have mastered fingers — though they still struggle with knees. With the bunnies, young TikTokers quickly expressed their fear that falling for the AI made them feel old. ?? Zoom out: AI-generated oddities are showing up in our feeds more often because they're lucrative for creators. The weirder it is, the more time we spend looking at it, signaling the algorithm that we want to see more like it. What to watch: Platforms themselves must stop incentivizing the slop. If you open up Instagram and all you see is AI slop, you might stop opening up Instagram. Go deeper ... Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted August 5, 2025 Author Members Posted August 5, 2025 AI talent lottery Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios The bidding war for top AI talent masks a deepening crisis in the broader market for tech skills, Axios managing editor for tech Scott Rosenberg writes. Why it matters: Big Tech's bottomless checkbook is open for a select few because AI's leaders see themselves in a race to superintelligence. Whoever wins will dominate the world, they believe. So when it comes to hiring winning players, they just keep adding more zeros for the tiny handful of researchers who've built the massive models at AI's frontier edge. Anywhere below this stratosphere, however, the tech job market looks very different. Software veterans are wondering how long their experience will be valuable in an AI-dominated industry. Recent graduates fear entry-level jobs are disappearing. ? Zoom in: Mark Zuckerberg's epic efforts to lure talent from AI startups and rivals like Apple have involved eye-popping compensation packages. The Meta CEO offered one prospect, Andrew Tulloch, a billion-dollar package "worth as much as $1.5 billion over at least six years," The Wall Street Journal reported. Tulloch's offer was part of a larger raid to hire key players from Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab, which is full of exiles from OpenAI. None has taken the bait. Zuckerberg has had more success poaching leading researchers directly from OpenAI and from Apple's foundation models team, which has faltered in efforts to catch up with rivals. ?️ The big picture: Many top researchers are driven less by dollars than by a sense of mission and a yearning to be the first to solve a hard problem. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman alluded to this dynamic in an internal memo, vowing that "missionaries will beat mercenaries." The best researchers are also attracted by the opportunity to pursue their interests and hunches without distraction from an employer's more humdrum needs around products and profits. OpenAI cofounder Ilya Sutskever launched his Safe Superintelligence startup last year with a promise that researchers would be "insulated from short-term commercial pressures." Sutskever reportedly turned down a Zuckerberg offer. Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted August 6, 2025 Author Members Posted August 6, 2025 ChatGPT gives teens dangerous advice on drugs, alcohol and suicide, study finds ChatGPT will tell 13-year-olds how to get drunk and high, instruct them on how to conceal eating disorders and even compose a heartbreaking suicide letter to their parents if asked, according to new research from a watchdog group. Read More. Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
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