European conferences and other in-person events are rushing to use facial recognition without considering data protection risks. beware: Spain’s data protection watchdog fined Mobile World Congress (MWC) organizers €200,000 ($224k) for violating privacy rules at the 2021 show in Barcelona. The Agencia Espaola de Protección de Datos (AEPD) found MWC …
Read More »LinkedIn cuts 716 jobs to phase out its China app
LinkedIn will end its China local jobs app and cut 716 jobs. LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky wrote today that “fierce competition and a challenging macroeconomic climate” forced the closure of InCareer, a standalone China app. LinkedIn, owned by Microsoft and with 20,000 employees, plans to add 250 jobs in some …
Read More »OpenAI’s new tool explains language model behaviors
It’s true that large language models (LLMs) like OpenAI’s ChatGPT are black boxes. Data scientists struggle to understand why a model always responds the way it does, like they are inventing facts. OpenAI is developing a tool to automatically identify which LLM parts cause which behaviors. As of this morning, …
Read More »IBM launches generative model services and more
IBM, like most tech giants, is betting big on AI. IBM Watsonx, a new platform for building AI models and accessing pretrained models for generating code, text, and more, was announced at its annual Think conference. It’s a slap in the face to IBM’s back-office managers, who were recently told …
Read More »Walmarts with fruit stands are Google and OpenAI
OpenAI may be synonymous with machine learning, and Google is trying to pick itself up, but rapidly multiplying open source projects that push the state of the art and leave deep-pocketed but unwieldy corporations in their dust may soon threaten both. Although not existential, this Zerg-like threat will keep the …
Read More »Volkswagen reorganizes software Cariad again
Three years after launching Cariad, VW Group has changed its leadership again. On Monday, Cariad’s board replaced CEO Dirk Hilgenberg with VW’s Bentley manufacturing chief Peter Bosch. Hilgenberg joined Cariad 2020. Bosch will lead June 1. Restructuring eliminated CFO Thomas Sedran and CTO Lynn Longo. VW has struggled to launch …
Read More »Musk says Twitter is purging old accounts, freeing up desired usernames
According to recent tweets by owner Elon Musk, Twitter is purging inactive accounts, which may free up some long-coveted usernames. Twitter has promised to put more usernames back into rotation for years, but despite having an inactive account policy that requires users to log in at least every 30 days …
Read More »Elizabeth Holmes alone
The New York Times’ 5,500-word profile of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes was criticized this morning for being too sympathetic. However, Amy Chozick is complicit. Her story may reveal how Holmes captivated investors, business partners, and the U.S. media before The Wall Street Journal exposed her company in late 2015. Nice …
Read More »Western Digital claims hackers stole customer data
Western Digital informed customers that their data was stolen on Friday, a month after it disclosed a data breach. On March 26, the company detected “a network security incident” where hackers “gained access to a number of the Company’s systems,” according to a press release. “The Company proactively disconnected our …
Read More »Spawning proposes letting creators skip generative AI training
Artists and AI companies continue to fight in court. In recent months, several lawsuits have been filed against OpenAI and Stability AI over their generative AI tech, alleging that copyrighted data, mostly art, was used to train the models without permission. Generative AI models “train” on random web images and …
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