~techmeme | Bookmarks (1055)

Rohan Goswami / CNBC: Palantir reports Q1 revenue of $634M, up 21% YoY, vs. $625M est., net income of $106M, up from $16.8M YoY; Palantir stock drops 9% after hours on weak guidance  —  Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir, arrives for the “AI Insight Forum” at the Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on September 13, 2023 in Washington, DC.

Ben Dickson / VentureBeat: Study from Meta researchers suggests that training LLMs to predict multiple tokens at once, instead of just the next token, results in better and faster models  —  In a recent study, researchers at Meta, Ecole des Ponts ParisTech and Université Paris-Saclay suggest improving the accuracy …

Barkha Dutt / Rest of World: During India's general election, some Indian politicians and parties are using deepfakes of popular, deceased politicians in their campaigns  —  Digital rights activists have questioned the ethics of using “soft fakes” to resurrect the past and manage the future.

Charlie Warzel / The Atlantic: A profile of ElevenLabs, whose founders seem unprepared for how its impressive AI voice cloning tech can change the internet and unleash political chaos  —  My voice was ready.  I'd been waiting, compulsively checking my inbox.  I opened the email and scrolled until I saw a button that said, plainly, “Use voice.”

Coco Feng / South China Morning Post: Tens of thousands of overworked employees have left their jobs at China's largest tech companies in recent years, as the industry lost its growth momentum  —  - As of the end of 2023, China's BAT - Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent - had a combined total of 364,477 employees, a drop of nearly 25,000 from a year before

Muyao Shen / Bloomberg: DEX Screener: the value of decentralized social platform Friend.tech's native token, the Friend, fell ~98% to below $2 after making its trading debut on May 3  —  - “No one can figure out the tokenomics,” Delphi's Rinko says  — Friend.tech's growth has been driven in part by trading bots

Oliver Whang / New York Times: Some researchers are training AI models on headcam footage from infants and toddlers, to better understand language acquisition by both AI and children  —  Could a better understanding of how infants acquire language help us build smarter A.I. models?  —  We ask a lot of ourselves as babies.

Rina Diane Caballar / IEEE Spectrum: As CS students experiment with AI coding tools, professors say courses need to focus less on syntax and more on problem solving, design, testing, and debugging  —  Professors are shifting away from syntax and emphasizing higher-level skills  —  Generative AI is transforming the software development industry.

Jessica Lucas / The Verge: Some teen users of Character.AI's chatbots say they find the AI companions helpful, entertaining, and supportive but worry they may be addicted to the chatbots  —  Teens are opening up to AI chatbots as a way to explore friendship.  But sometimes, the AI's advice can go too far.

Ryan Weeks / Bloomberg: Crypto startups embrace open-ended, rolling funding rounds that quickly lift valuations, as crypto funds seek to deploy unspent cash raised in 2021 and 2022  —  - Startups are embracing so-called open-ended funding rounds  — Venture funds are seeking to deploy previously static cash

Tara Copp / Associated Press: US Air Force plans a fleet of 1,000+ AI-controlled jets, the first of them operating by 2028; some AI versions already beat human pilots in air-to-air combat  —  With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of U.S. airpower.

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch: Meta launches quote post controls for all Threads users, who can allow quotes from everyone on Threads, only the people they follow, or disable quote posts  —  Threads users can now exert more control over who can quote their posts.  —  This builds on a feature that already allows Threads users …

Julie Tsirkin / NBC News: Biden is expected to sign the REPORT Act next week; the bipartisan bill targets child sextortion online through new CSAM reporting requirements and more  —  Jordan DeMay, a 17-year-old who died by suicide in 2022, is one of a growing number of teens targeted by financial sextortion.

Rachel Metz / Bloomberg: A look at Runway's second International AI Film Festival, which it says grew from 300 short-video submissions in 2023 to 3,000 in 2024 with 10 finalists chosen  —  Artificial intelligence has changed filmmaking a lot over the past year, even though the technology is just getting started.  But first...

Cheng Ting-Fang / Nikkei Asia: As chipmakers move into or expand in the region around Germany's Dresden, skeptics say more government subsidies, skilled workers, and end customers are needed  —  Skeptics say more government subsidies, skilled workers and end customers are needed  —  DRESDEN, Germany/TAIPEI …

Will Knight / Wired: Q&A with Nick Bostrom on his book Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World, which considers a future in which AI solves all of humanity's problems  —  Philosopher Nick Bostrom popularized the idea superintelligent AI could erase humanity.  His new book imagines a world in which algorithms have solved every problem.

Isabelle Bousquette / Wall Street Journal: A look at AI companies gathering data from real people to create “digital twins”, to use as fashion models, focus group members, or clinical trial participants  —  AI that can predict how specific humans will look, act and feel could do the jobs of fashion models, focus group members and clinical trial participants

Tim Stelloh / NBC News: Defense lawyers question the accuracy and reliability of Cybercheck, an AI tool used in thousands of US cases to identify suspects' locations and other details  —  Cybercheck's founder has said the software tops 90% accuracy.  Defense lawyers have said he lied under oath about his expertise …

Sara Fischer / Axios: A look at news publishers' conflicting approaches toward AI companies, and how the lack of a data marketplace makes it hard for buyers and sellers to set rates  —  - The new suits add heft to the Times' claims. … Several other large news publishers, including the Financial Times …

Ron Miller / TechCrunch: Synergy Research: cloud revenue grew 21% YoY in Q1 2024 to $76B; Altimeter: AWS now has 31% market share followed by Azure with 25% and Google with 11%  —  Last year's doldrums are in the rearview thanks to AI  —  If you were concerned about slowing cloud infrastructure growth for a time in 2023 …

Agence France-Presse: Ukraine unveils an AI-generated foreign ministry spokesperson called Victoria Shi, who will make official statements “written and verified by real people”  —  Victoria Shi is modelled on Rosalie Nombre, a singer and former contestant on Ukraine's version of the reality show The Bachelor

Joanna Stern / Wall Street Journal: Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses are a simple, reliable, and smartly priced AI gadget, whereas Humane's AI Pin and the Rabbit R1 are more akin to science projects  —  There's a new WANTED poster in town... PUBLIC ENEMY NO. 1: The smartphone ACCUSED OF: Stealing your attention, sanity and well-being REWARD …

Paul Sawers / TechCrunch: Sources: Swedish PE firm EQT acquires a “significant majority” stake in WSO2, valuing the enterprise API and identity management company at “more than” $600M  —  WSO2, a company that provides API management and identity and access management (IAM) services for enterprises …

Vikas SN / Moneycontrol: Ola founder Bhavish Aggarwal's Krutrim launches an Android app for its eponymous AI chatbot as the startup prepares to launch its developer offerings on May 4  —  Krutrim's mobile app launch comes as the country's first AI unicorn gears up to launch its developer offerings, which includes cloud infrastructure and mapping solutions.