Techmeme
June 14, 2023, 6:05 PM

Top News

Jon Porter / The Verge:
The European Commission issues a preliminary view in its antitrust investigation of Google and suggests the company divest its ad business; Google can now reply  —  The European Commission has made a formal antitrust complaint against Google and its ad business, saying that its preliminary view is that …
Adam Satariano / New York Times:
The European Parliament passes a draft AI Act to curtail facial recognition, force data disclosures, and more; a final version is expected to pass later in 2023  —  A draft law in the European Parliament has become the world's most far-reaching attempt to address the potentially harmful effects of artificial intelligence.
BBC:
Margrethe Vestager says discrimination in AI training data is a more pressing concern than human extinction and that “guardrails” are needed to counter its bias  —  Discrimination is a more pressing concern from advancing artificial intelligence than human extinction, says the EU's competition chief.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Google Shopping gets a virtual try-on clothing feature that uses a diffusion-based generative AI model, letting US users see how items look on many human models  —  Google, ever eager to lean into generative AI, is launching a new shopping feature that shows clothes on a lineup of real-life fashion models.
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google Lens gets a feature that searches skin conditions “visually similar to what you see on your skin”, while warning the results are “not a diagnosis”  —  Along with Maps Live View, Lens is Google's most promising AR service, and it now has the ability to recognize skin conditions.
Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg:
The US National Music Publishers' Association sues Twitter, alleging the company violates the copyright of songwriters by using ~1,700 songs without permission  —  The National Music Publishers' Association sued Twitter Inc. Wednesday, alleging it violates the copyright of songwriters by using …
Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch:
In a case study, researchers estimate that between 33% and 46% of Mechanical Turk workers used LLMs when completing a text summarization task  —  File this one under inevitable, but hilarious.  Mechanical Turk is a service that from its earliest days seemed to invite shenanigans …
Stephen Nellis / Reuters:
Amazon VP of EC2 Dave Brown says AWS is considering using AMD's new MI300 chips and declined to use Nvidia's DGX Cloud, for which Oracle is the first partner  —  Amazon Web Services (AMZN.O), the world's largest cloud computing provider, is considering using new artificial intelligence chips …
Kenneth Chang / New York Times:
IBM details using its 127-qubit quantum processor to simulate the behavior of 127 atom-scale bar magnets, known as the Ising model, in less than a millisecond  —  A quantum computer came up with better answers to a physics problem than a conventional supercomputer.
Forbes:
A profile of Guangying “Heina” Chen, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao's mysterious associate who appears repeatedly in the SEC's lawsuit against the crypto exchange  —  CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao's mysterious associate Guangying Chen emerges as a key player in his company's operations …
New York Times:
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
Samsung says a Galaxy Watch update coming this summer will add an Irregular Heart Rhythm Notifications feature in 13 markets, including the US and South Korea  —  In a new announcement this week, Samsung has officially confirmed that it has a new smartwatch coming later this year …
Jay Peters / The Verge:
As 8,000+ subreddits go dark, Google's search results, which are often improved with human-sounding information by appending “reddit” to a query, have suffered  —  Over 8,000 subreddits have gone dark to protest Reddit's upcoming API changes, and it's shown me just how much I rely …
Nic Newman / Reuters Institute:
Reuters' 2023 Digital News Report: despite fragmentation, users' dependence on social media platforms for news keeps growing; Facebook declines and TikTok gains  —  This year's report comes against the backdrop of a global cost-of-living crisis, a continuing war in the heart of Europe, and further climate instability across the world.
Gavin Bonshor / AnandTech:
Razer updates its Blade 14 laptop with AMD's Ryzen 9 7940HS, Nvidia's RTX 4060 or RTX 4070, up to 32GB of RAM, and a 14" QHD+ 240Hz display, starting at $2,400  —  Despite running late and experiencing shipping delays, AMD's latest Zen 4 mobile chips with RDNA 3 graphics and Ryzen AI …
Axios:
Senators Josh Hawley and Richard Blumenthal introduce a bill denying Section 230 protections for generative AI; experts are split on whether Section 230 applies  —  Sens. Josh Hawley and Richard Blumenthal want to clarify that the internet's bedrock liability law does not apply to generative AI …
River Davis / Wall Street Journal:
Ellen Huet / Bloomberg:
Comprehensive.io: average salaries for senior engineers who specialize in AI and ML are 12% higher than for those who do not; AI-related salaries are up 4% YoY  —  There have been many innovations in Silicon Valley over the past decade, but for people who aspire to work in the tech industry …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
OpenAI releases new GPT-3.5-turbo and GPT-4 versions with a new “function calling” feature for coding, and cuts the price of the original GPT-3.5-turbo by 25%  —  As the competition in the generative AI space grows fiercer, OpenAI is upgrading its text-generating models while reducing pricing.

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning  —  SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds.  Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Cape:
Most carriers track everything.  Cape doesn't.  —  Unlimited talk, text & data, 24-hr metadata deletion, network ID rotation, SIM-attack defense, and more.  Switch today and get 29% off for life.
Zoho:
Meet Zoho Social MCP: Your AI assistant can now help run social media  —  Social media management has come a long way from simply publishing posts.Today, marketers are expected to create content …
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Invest Like the Best:
Eric Vishria - A Decade of Lessons Investing in Software & Hardware
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
The Talk Show With John Gruber:
'Getting the Snack Right', With Chance Miller
The director's commentary track for Daring Fireball. Long digressions on Apple, technology, design, movies, and more.
Subscribe to The Talk Show With John Gruber.
Grit:
Booking.com CEO on AI and the Future of Travel
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
Acquired:
Disney: The Renaissance and the Empire
Learn the playbooks that built the world's greatest companies - and how you can apply them as a founder, operator, or investor.
Subscribe to Acquired.
Lenny's Podcast:
The playbook for building high talent density teams | Adam Ward, Head of Talent at Cursor
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin
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.
 

More News

Jessie Pang / Reuters:
Thomas Seal / Bloomberg:
Gina Kolata / New York Times:
Financial Times:

Earlier Picks

Jay Peters / The Verge:
James Cirrone / Blockworks: