Techmeme
March 5, 2025, 9:00 AM

Top News

Cade Metz / New York Times:
Reinforcement learning pioneers Andrew Barto and Richard Sutton win the 2024 Turing Award; their work contributed to the rise of AI, like AlphaGo and ChatGPT  —  Andrew Barto and Richard Sutton developed reinforcement learning, a technique vital to chatbots like ChatGPT.
Benj Edwards / Ars Technica:
Sesame's AI speech model demo has many users expressing astonishment at its realism, with some testers reporting emotional connections to the voice assistant  —  In late 2013, the Spike Jonze film Her imagined a future where people would form emotional connections with AI voice assistants.
Hayden Field / CNBC:
A US judge denies Elon Musk's effort to halt OpenAI's for-profit shift, saying he failed to meet the burden of proof, but lets other aspects of the suit proceed  —  A federal judge in California denied Elon Musk's effort to halt OpenAI's transformation into a for-profit entity, according to a filing on Tuesday.
Mackenzie Hawkins / Bloomberg:
While addressing Congress, President Trump calls to “get rid” of the $52B CHIPS and Science Act and use the leftover amount to “reduce debt or any other reason”  —  President Donald Trump called for an end to a landmark $52 billion semiconductor subsidy program that's spurred …
Laura Hazard Owen / Nieman Lab:
A look at the LA Times' AI “Insights”: much of the sourcing cited for counterpoints wouldn't pass scrutiny in a newsroom, and political labels can be confusing  —  The hope: The L.A. Times will appear more “objective” if it presents both sides of an issue, even if one side's written …
Corbin Bolies / The Daily Beast:
Mike Isaac / New York Times:
Digg founder Kevin Rose and Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian buy Digg for an undisclosed sum from Money Group, aiming to focus on “connection and humanity” online  —  Two decades after creating Digg, a community-focused social message board, Kevin Rose is reviving the site and teaming up with a founder of Reddit.
Hugh Son / CNBC:
The US CFPB drops its lawsuit against Zelle operator EWS, JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo, after suing them in December 2024 over fraud allegations  —  The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Tuesday dismissed its lawsuit against the operator of the Zelle payments network …
Sebastian Sinclair / Decrypt:
Yuga Labs, creator of BAYC NFTs, says the US SEC closed its investigation into the company without taking enforcement action, adding “NFTs are not securities”  —  The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has closed its investigation into Yuga Labs, the creator of the Bored Ape Yacht Club …
Financial Times:
Sources: Apple filed a complaint to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal over the UK's demand for a backdoor to access users' encrypted data, even of non-UK users  —  iPhone maker has filed a complaint to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal over demand to access encrypted data
Bloomberg:
Sources: Google representatives asked DOJ officials in a meeting last week to back away from a push to break up the company, citing national security concerns  —  Google is urging officials at President Donald Trump's Justice Department to back away from a push to break up the search engine company …
Ezra Klein / New York Times:
Q&A with ex-White House AI adviser Ben Buchanan on the Biden administration, AGI, OpenAI's Deep Research, the US labor market, China, hacks, AI labs, and more  —  This is an edited transcript of an episode of “The Ezra Klein Show.”  You can listen to the conversation by following …
Kamila Wojciechowska / Android Authority:
Source: Google plans to launch its rumored “Pixie” AI assistant on the Pixel 10 as “Pixel Sense”, using data from Google apps to provide contextual suggestions  —  Google might finally be realizing its vision of truly smart contextual assistant.  —  •  —  •
Greg Bensinger / Reuters:
Internal email: Amazon forms a new group focused on agentic AI, led by AWS executive Swami Sivasubramanian, who will report directly to AWS CEO Matt Garman  —  Amazon.com (AMZN.O) has formed a new group focused on agentic artificial intelligence, according to an internal email viewed by Reuters on Tuesday.
Anisah Shukry / Bloomberg:
Arm agrees to provide chip designs and tech to Malaysia for $250M over the next ten years, as the government targets semiconductor exports of $270B by 2030  —  - Firm to provide chip technology to Malaysia over a decade  — Malaysia aims to make its own chips within five to seven years
Financial Times:
Taiwan's government says it will assist with TSMC's $100B investment in the US, but will also do “gatekeeping” to keep the most advanced tech in Taiwan  —  Trump-Zelenskyy clash crystallises fears about whether a more volatile White House will back Taipei
The Information:
CoreWeave acquires Weights & Biases, whose tools help developers build AI apps, sources say for ~$1.7B; Weights & Biases was valued at $1.25B in 2023  —  CoreWeave, which provides cloud servers to large companies developing artificial intelligence, is in talks to acquire Weights & Biases …
Nikkei Asia:
The demand for software engineers in Japan's car industry, facing a shortage of 33,000 software engineers in 2025, intensifies amid the EV and self-driving push  —  TOKYO — Japanese legacy carmakers, which have long been vaunted as kings of manufacturing that have no trouble recruiting mechanical engineers …

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Samantha Subin / CNBC:
Patience Haggin / Wall Street Journal:
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: