Techmeme
December 4, 2023, 8:30 AM

Top News

Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Spotify plans to lay off ~17% of its workforce, or ~1,500 staff, to “rightsize” its costs, citing slow growth and rising capital costs, after cutting 6% in June  —  Spotify is eliminating about 17% jobs, its third round of layoffs, as the music streaming looks to become “both productive and efficient.”
New York Times:
A deep dive into the founding of DeepMind, OpenAI, and Anthropic, as many of their backers feared the risks of advanced AI but wanted the power to shape it  —  The people who were most afraid of the risks of artificial intelligence decided they should be the ones to build it.
Joseph Menn / Washington Post:
Disinformation scholar Joan Donovan claims in a whistleblower filing that her superiors soured on her as Harvard got the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative's $500M gift  —  In a whistleblower complaint, she breaks her silence over events that unsettled other misinformation researchers
Paresh Dave / Wired:
Documents: OpenAI signed a letter of intent in 2019 to spend $51M on brain-inspired chips developed by startup Rain AI, in which Sam Altman had invested $1M+  —  Documents show that OpenAI signed a letter of intent to spend $51 million on brain-inspired chips developed by startup Rain.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Chase Bank could be an ideal Goldman Sachs replacement for Apple Card, as it uses the same Mastercard network and already has a strong relationship with Apple  —  Apple and Goldman Sachs are on the verge of splitting up, and Chase is the ideal partner to step in.
Bloomberg:
Bitcoin trades above $40K for the first time since May 2022, as the digital asset extends its 2023 rebound on expectations of interest-rate cuts and ETF demand  —  - Crypto rally has been driven by ETF hopes, rate-cut bets  — Bitcoin is on track for biggest annual gain since 2020
Anto Antony / Bloomberg:
Sources: Byju's founder Byju Raveendran pledged his and his family's homes as collateral to borrow ~$12M to raise money to pay staff, to fight a cash crunch  —  - Founder has raised $400 million in debt to keep firm afloat  — Company is also seeking to raise funds through asset sales
Matt Levine / Bloomberg:
Researchers show AI misalignment in a GPT-4-based stock trading bot that performed insider trading in a simulated environment without being instructed to do so  —  Also OpenAI's board, kangaroo grazing and bank box-checking.  —  AI MNPI  —  Here you go, insider trading robot:
WABetaInfo:
WhatsApp updates its iOS app to let users send photos and videos in their original quality  —  WhatsApp has just submitted a new stable update for iOS, available on the App Store: the build number is 23.24.73.  —  What's new in this update?  WhatsApp is widely rolling out a feature to send original quality media as a file!

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Christopher Mims / Wall Street Journal:
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