Techmeme
January 28, 2023, 2:15 PM

Top News

Washington Post:
Sources detail the pressure inside Meta and Google to move faster with AI amid the surge of attention around ChatGPT, potentially sweeping safety concerns aside  —  Google, Facebook and Microsoft helped build the scaffolding of AI.  Smaller companies are taking it to the masses, forcing Big Tech to react.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Google researchers detail AI model MusicLM, which can generate high-fidelity music in any genre from text and was trained on a dataset of 280K hours of music  —  An impressive new AI system from Google can generate music in any genre given a text description.  But the company, fearing the risks, has no immediate plans to release it.
New York Times:
Filing: the DOJ accuses Sam Bankman-Fried of messaging online FTX US' general counsel, a potential witness, and asks a judge to ban his private communications  —  The move followed the disgraced cryptocurrency executive's attempt to contact a potential witness in his criminal case, prosecutors said.
Kat Bailey / IGN:
Q&A with Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer, on having no major Xbox releases in 2022, its outlook for 2023, layoffs, Activision deal amid FTC lawsuit, and more  —  Xbox's CEO talks about the recent Developer Direct, 2022 struggles, layoffs, and what 2023 could hold.
Bloomberg:
Sources: the Biden administration has secured an agreement with the Netherlands and Japan to restrict exports of some advanced chipmaking machinery to China  —  President Joe Biden's administration secured an agreement with the Netherlands and Japan to restrict exports of some advanced chipmaking machinery …
Tim Harford / Financial Times:
What poet, playboy, and prophet of investment bubbles Charles Mackay, plagiarizing in 1841 on the Dutch tulip bubble, can tell us about crypto's rise and fall  —  One winter morning in early 1637, a sailor presented himself at the counting-house of a wealthy Dutch merchant and was offered a hearty breakfast of fine red herring.
Ben Jiang / South China Morning Post:
Counterpoint: China's smartphone sales fell 14% YoY in 2022 to reach their lowest level in a decade; iPhone sales fell 3% as it became the country's No. 2 brand  —  Apple topped smartphone sales in China in the fourth quarter of 2022, enabling the US tech giant to rank as the country's …
Moneycontrol:
ShareChat employees and investors shed light on the company's leadership crisis and say revenue has not kept pace with cash burn and the ~$5B 2022 valuation  —  The company's top and middle management are hollowing out, revenue has not kept pace with cash burn and Sharechat's top-tier valuation …
Mitchell Clark / The Verge:
Twitter will take less severe action against rule-breaking accounts, like limiting the reach of tweets; suspensions will be reserved for severe violations  —  Twitter is promising that it'll take “less severe actions” when disciplining accounts that break its rules; it'll only suspend Twitter accounts …

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Featured Podcasts

Hard Fork:
Anthropic's Cybersecurity Shock Wave + Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz on Their Sam Altman Investigation + One Good Thing
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
The Upstarts Podcast:
Decagon's Jesse Zhang: Closing Customer Service Doom Loops With AI Concierges
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
Access:
OpenClaw for normies is here
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
The Nick, Dick and Paul Show:
When AI Kills
Nick Bilton, Dick Costolo, and Paul Kedrosky pull back the curtain on AI, startups, and the future rushing toward us, all with healthy dose of irreverence.
Subscribe to The Nick, Dick and Paul Show.
Big Technology Podcast:
OpenAI vs. Anthropic's Direct Faceoff + Future of Agents — With Aaron Levie
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Ryan Roslansky: Turning AI Anxiety into Skills for the Future of Work
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

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More News

Mark Keierleber / The 74:
Kurt Schlosser / GeekWire:
Maureen Farrell / New York Times:
Semafor:

Earlier Picks

James Vincent / The Verge:
Wayne Ma / The Information:
Wall Street Journal:
Stuart A. Thompson / New York Times: