Techmeme
August 5, 2024, 10:20 PM

Top News

John Schulman / @johnschulman2:
OpenAI co-founder John Schulman departs to join Anthropic and focus on AI alignment, and says “I'm not leaving due to lack of support for alignment research”  —  I shared the following note with my OpenAI colleagues today: I've made the difficult decision to leave OpenAI. This choice stems from my desire to deepen my focus on AI alignment, and to start a new chapter of my career where I can return to hands-on technical work. I've decided
The Information:
Source: OpenAI President and co-founder Greg Brockman is taking an extended leave of absence, and product leader Peter Deng, who joined last year, has left  —  Greg Brockman, OpenAI's president and one of 11 cofounders of the artificial intelligence firm, is taking an extended leave of absence.
Leah Nylen / Bloomberg:
US v. Google: a federal judge rules that Google illegally monopolized the search market, including through deals to be the default option on phones and browsers  —  Google's payments to make its search engine the default on smartphone web browsers violates US antitrust law, a federal judge ruled Monday …
More: CNN, New York Times, BBC, Ars Technica, Business Today, Business Insider, Reuters, CNBC, 9to5Mac, The Information, Wired, Washington Post, TechCrunch, SiliconANGLE, Investor's Business Daily, Bloomberg Law, The Register, Android Authority, United States District Court for the District of Columbia, PCMag, Computerworld, WAtoday, News/Media Alliance, Search Engine Roundtable, Constellation Research, Light Reading, Benzinga, Adweek, Neowin, The Irish Times, Sky News, GeekWire, Patently Apple, Entrepreneur, The Daily Signal, Quartz, Cult of Mac, Channel NewsAsia, W Media Research, Fortune, Philip Elmer‑DeWitt, NBC News, 9to5Google, RNZ, Courthouse News Service, Fast Company, MarTech, Mashable, and Variety
Lauren Feiner / The Verge:
US v. Google: a judge says Google has a monopoly in “general search text advertising” and it used exclusive agreements to raise prices without any competition  —  A federal judge ruled that Google violated US antitrust law by maintaining a monopoly in the search and advertising markets.
Aditya Soni / Reuters:
Apple, Alphabet, and Amazon shares fell 4%+, Nvidia fell 6%, and Microsoft and Meta fell ~3% amid worries about a potential US recession and massive AI spending  —  Apple (AAPL.O) and other heavyweight companies sold off on Monday as U.S. recession fears and Berkshire Hathaway's (BRKa.N) …
Tanaya Macheel / CNBC:
Bitcoin dropped below $50,000, its lowest level since February 2024 and down 17% since August 3, and ether dropped 15% to ~$2,300, as global markets plummet  —  Cryptocurrencies tumbled amid a global market sell-off spurred by recession fears.  —  The price of bitcoin was last lower by 7% …
Samantha Cole / 404 Media:
Sources: Nvidia scraped sources like Netflix and YouTube to train an unreleased foundational model; concerned staff were told they had full clearance to do so  —  Nvidia scraped videos from Youtube and several other sources to compile training data for its AI products, internal Slack chats …
New York Times:
In an email to staff, Linda Yaccarino says X will close its San Francisco office and move workers to San Jose offices and a new Palo Alto office shared with xAI  —  Elon Musk, X's owner, has clashed with California's leaders and has said the social media platform would move its headquarters to Texas.
Washington Post:
In a letter, the secretaries of state from PA, WA, MI, NM, and MN ask Elon Musk to change X's AI assistant Grok to stop it from spreading false election info  —  Grok, the AI search assistant on Musk's X platform, suggested that Kamala Harris had missed the ballot deadline in nine states.  She hasn't.
Cade Metz / New York Times:
Elon Musk revives his OpenAI lawsuit, filing a complaint in California to allege that OpenAI, Sam Altman, and Greg Brockman breached OpenAI's founding contract  —  The Tesla chief executive has renewed claims that the A.I. start-up put profits and commercial interests ahead of the public good.
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Memo from Microsoft's chief people officer: “everyone at Microsoft” now has “security” as a “Core Priority”, used in performance reviews  —  Microsoft will elevate security to the status of “core priority” for all employees as part of the process of focusing …
More: The Verge, OSnews, and Thurrott
Mastodon: @mweagle@hachyderm.ioX: @hackinglz and @chirag_mehtaForums: r/technology
Cherlynn Low / Engadget:
In a fifth dev beta for iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS 15, Safari gets Distraction Control, which lets users block distracting elements on the page like pop-ups  —  You'll get to choose which page element to block on a site, as long as it doesn't change.  —  Ahead of the full release of iOS 18 …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
OpenAI says it's changing the format of its DevDay conference this fall to a series of on-the-road developer sessions and GPT-5 will not be announced during it  —  Last year, OpenAI held a splashy press event in San Francisco during which the company announced a bevy of new products and tools …
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
Q&A with Booking CEO Glenn Fogel on the company's Booking.com, OpenTable, Kayak, Priceline, and Agoda brands, using AI to book trips, hotels, and more  —  The head of online hotel and flight giant Booking on how competition, regulation, and AI are changing travel.
More: Skift
Reuters:
Software consultancy Thoughtworks to be taken private by PE firm Apax Partners for ~$1.75B; TWKS jumps 26%+ but is still far below its 2021 IPO price  —  Thoughtworks (TWKS.O) on Monday agreed to be taken private by Apax Partners in a deal worth about $1.75 billion, the technology consultancy firm said …
More: SiliconANGLE
Bloomberg:
Sources: Black Sesame, which designs chips for self-driving systems, priced its Hong Kong IPO at the low end of its marketed range, raising $133M  —  - AI chipmaker raises $133 million at low end of price band  — Listing marks second debut under city's specialist tech regime
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Source: Placer.ai, which provides AI-powered market research based on location data, raised $75M at a $1.45B valuation, up from $1B at its Series C  —  Location data, for better or worse, continues to be a part of the bedrock of how apps are built.  Now a startup developing AI market research based …
More: SiliconANGLE
Bloomberg:
CrowdStrike says Delta CEO Ed Bastian failed to respond to an assistance offer from CEO George Kurtz; CrowdStrike hopes Delta will “agree to work cooperatively”  —  The allegation, in a letter Sunday from attorneys for the technology firm, builds upon CrowdStrike's claim last week …

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Earlier Picks

Michael Moritz / Financial Times:
Berber Jin / Wall Street Journal:
Anne VanderMey / Bloomberg:
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Rachael Levy / Reuters: