Industry News

I was never afraid to train an AI chatbot on my writing, because OpenAI had already broken the seal. CEO Sam Altman announced the “GPT” feature at OpenAI’s first developer day in November, prior to the company’s five days of leadership chaos. Before the release of custom GPTs, ChatGPT with web browsing was already able to plunder my writing for answers to questions about everything, from using better prompts to understanding niche creepypastas.

Back in April, we ran a series of useful and/or somewhat goofy prompts through Google's (then-new) PaLM-powered Bard chatbot and OpenAI's (slightly older) ChatGPT-4 to see which AI chatbot reigned supreme. At the time, we gave the edge to ChatGPT on five of seven trials, while noting that "it's still early days in the generative AI business."

Steven Johnson has written 13 books, on topics ranging from a London cholera outbreak to the value of video games. He’s been a television presenter and a podcast host. He’s a keynote speaker who doesn’t have to call himself that in his LinkedIn profile. And for over a year now, he’s been a full-time employee of Google, a status that’s clear when he badges me into the search giant’s Chelsea offices in New York to show me what his team has been creating.

Open AI’s new boss is the same as the old boss. But the company—and the artificial intelligence industry—may have been profoundly changed by the past five days of high-stakes soap opera. Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, cofounder, and figurehead, was removed by the board of directors on Friday. By Tuesday night, after a mass protest by the majority of the startup’s staff, Altman was on his way back, and most of the existing board was gone.

Google is facing controversy among AI experts for a deceptive Gemini promotional video released Wednesday that appears to show its new AI model recognizing visual cues and interacting vocally with a person in real time. As reported by Parmy Olson for Bloomberg, Google has admitted that was not the case. Instead, the researchers fed still images to the model and edited together successful responses, partially misrepresenting the model's capabilities.

Most still probably know Nvidia best for its decades-old GeForce graphics cards for gaming PCs, but these days Nvidia's server GPU business makes GeForce look like a hobby project.

That's the takeaway from Nvidia's Q3 earnings report, which shows Nvidia's revenue up 206 percent from the same quarter last year and 34 percent from an already-very-good Q2. Of the company's $18.12 billion in revenue, $14.51 billion was generated by its data center division, which includes AI-accelerating chips like the H200 Tensor Core GPU as well as other cloud and server offerings.

Open AI’s new boss is the same as the old boss. But the company—and the artificial intelligence industry—may have been profoundly changed by the past five days of high-stakes soap opera. Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, cofounder, and figurehead, was removed by the board of directors on Friday. By Tuesday night, after a mass protest by the majority of the startup’s staff, Altman was on his way back, and most of the existing board was gone.

We hop in the car to get groceries or drop kids at school. But while the car is convenient, these short trips add up in terms of emissions, pollution, and petrol cost.

Close to half (44 percent) of all Australian commuter trips are by car—and under 10 km. Of Perth’s 4.2 million daily car trips, 2.8 are for distances of less than 2 km. This is common in wealthier countries. In the United States, a staggering 60 percent of all car trips cover less than 10km.

Just over a day since the surprise firing of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman that sent shock waves through the tech industry, the OpenAI board is reportedly engaging in discussions with Altman to potentially return as chief executive of the company, according to The Verge, citing people familiar with the matter. The outlet says that Altman is "ambivalent" about returning and would want significant changes to how the company is run.

This summer, a Vancouver car mechanic named Max got a perplexing ping on his phone: Betty White was in Ukraine and needed his help. This was surprising because she had died on a Canadian highway back in January.