Techmeme
April 14, 2024, 10:50 AM

Top News

TechCrunch:
Meta says it is testing its Meta AI chatbot with WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger users in India and parts of Africa  —  Meta has confirmed to TechCrunch that it is testing Meta AI, its large language model-powered chatbot, with WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger users in India and parts of Africa.
Ken Yeung / VentureBeat:
Elon Musk's xAI previews Grok-1.5 Vision, its first multimodal model, and says the AI model will be available soon to “early testers and existing Grok users”  —  Elon Musk's OpenAI rival has introduced its first multimodal model.  Not only can it understand text …
Wes Davis / The Verge:
Bluesky says it is now allowing heads of state to sign up, and adds features including hashtags in profile bios and the ability to long press a link to share  —  Bluesky is apparently ready for a bigger challenge.  It says it's allowing heads of state to sign up now, a little over two months after it opened for general signups.
Anuj Ahooja / augment:
An experiment to see how a Threads feed would work on Mastodon, using lists and testing third-party clients, which shows the bright future of the fediverse  —  This is my journey that started as an experiment to see how my Threads feed would look like on Mastodon and ended with me finding experiences …
Reshmi Basu / Bloomberg:
Analysis: software and services companies have almost $30B of debt that's classed as distressed, the most in any industry apart from real estate  —  - Software and services nears $30 billion of distressed debt  — Percentage of companies defaulting more than once is rising
Cristiano Lima-Strong / Washington Post:
Sources detail how Senate Commerce Committee chair Maria Cantwell, who recently proposed a privacy bill, has undermined privacy negotiations for years  —  Many aides say Maria Cantwell, a powerful Democratic leader, has repeatedly upended privacy negotiations.
Tsubasa Suruga / Nikkei Asia:
A look at chip design companies like Oppstar that aim to push Malaysia, the world's sixth-largest semiconductor exporter, to the higher end of the value chain  —  Former Intel engineers attempt to push Penang to higher end of value chain  —  PENANG, Malaysia — When chip design company Oppstar listed …
Zoë Schiffer / Platformer:
A look at the book The Anxious Generation, as some say author Jonathan Haidt falls short in showing that social media is causing a teen mental health crisis  —  Jonathan Haidt wrote a best-selling book about teens and social media.  Not everyone buys its thesis  —  I.
More: NPR, Vox, and Washington Post
Threads: @crumbler.  X: @derekeb, @mausellmoli, and @binarybits.  LinkedIn: Bob Gower
Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:
Airchat, Naval Ravikant's social media app built around audio recordings, which the app transcribes, relaunches on iOS and Android; it is currently invite-only  —  Airchat is a new social media app that encourages users to “just talk.”  —  A previous version of Airchat was released last year …
Pilita Clark / Financial Times:
An analysis of 200M+ student papers submitted over the past year: ~11% of papers showed signs of AI help and ~3% of papers contained at least 80% AI writing  —  Students who outsource their thinking to AI tools pose a risk to future employers and more  —  The other day I met a British academic …

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Earlier Picks

Steven Levy / Wired:
More: CNBC.  Mastodon: @ppatel@mstdn.social.  X: @levie, @kevinbankston, and @stevenlevy.  LinkedIn: Kevin Werbach