Techmeme
January 6, 2025, 8:15 AM

Top News

Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Samsung unveils a suite of AI experiences for its TVs, including Click to Search, Live Translate, and a way to recognize food on the screen and provide recipes  —  For this year's lineup, Samsung said that AI will come to life in more ways than just great picture quality.
Josh Tyrangiel / Bloomberg:
Q&A with Sam Altman on OpenAI's and ChatGPT's first few years, his removal as CEO, OpenAI's structure, AGI, AI safety, nuclear fusion, Trump, Musk, and more  —  On Nov. 30, 2022, traffic to OpenAI's website peaked at a number a little north of zero.  It was a startup so small and sleepy …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Sam Altman says OpenAI is currently losing money on its ChatGPT Pro plan, which costs $200 per month, because “people use it much more than we expected”  —  OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says that the company is currently losing money on its $200-per-month ChatGPT Pro plan because people are using it more than expected
Sam Altman:
Sam Altman says “we are now confident we know how to build AGI as we have traditionally understood it”, and OpenAI is turning its focus to superintelligence  —  The second birthday of ChatGPT was only a little over a month ago, and now we have transitioned into the next paradigm of models that can do complex reasoning.
Wall Street Journal:
A look at Chinese hackers' attacks on US infrastructure and telecoms; sources: Charter, Consolidated Communications, and Windstream networks were also breached  —  Massive ‘Typhoon’ cyberattacks on U.S. infrastructure and telecoms sought to lay groundwork for potential conflict with Beijing …
Bloomberg:
Sources: Italy is in advanced talks for a €1.5B, five-year SpaceX deal to provide the government with secure telecom services, Europe's largest such project  —  - Starlink would provide secure internet for Italian government  — Prime Minister Meloni met with Trump in Florida on Saturday
Bloomberg:
Sources: India plans $2.7B in fresh subsidies and import tariff cuts to boost local manufacturing, especially of smartphones made by companies like Apple  —  - Proposed incentives will help smartphone makers like Apple  — Final decision to be made by cabinet; details likely in budget
More: 9to5Mac
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Avataar releases Velocity, a generative AI tool that creates product videos based on a product link, says HP, Victoria's Secret, and others are using the tool  —  Generative AI models have reached a baseline capability of producing at least a passable video from a single image or short sentence.
Preetika Rana / Wall Street Journal:
Uber and Lyft are embracing autonomous vehicle operators like Waymo, May Mobility, and others, after abandoning their own self-driving car programs  —  After ending their own driverless plans, the ride-sharing companies are embracing autonomous-vehicle operators and offering new app features
Margaux MacColl / TechCrunch:
A profile of headhunter Peterson Conway, who worked with Palantir and other Silicon Valley defense and hard tech firms and is now the talent head at VC firm A*  —  In 2023, defense tech recruiter Peterson Conway VIII pulled up to the offices of nuclear fusion startup Fuse in a black suburban, donning his signature cowboy hat.

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Featured Podcasts

Hard Fork:
OpenAI Calls a 'Code Red' + Which Model Should I Use? + The Hard Fork Review of Slop
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.
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Is Roblox making the internet better or worse? We asked the CEO
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Lenny's Podcast:
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Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
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Code red: our favorite tech rivalries
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How An AI Model Learned To Be Bad — With Evan Hubinger And Monte MacDiarmid
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Jane Lanhee Lee / Bloomberg:

Earlier Picks

Bismah Malik / Inc42:
The Verge: