Hasan Chowdhury

Can America hold onto the power it accrued in the 20th century?Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz would like to think startups can play a key role in that process.Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz have been fretting about 21st-century America.Less than 24 hours after commemorating American independence on July 4, the investor duo in charge of venture capital firm A16z published a very Silicon Valley spiel on how the US can retain the power it accrued in the 20th century.They call it the Little Tech…

Google has been on a mission to organize the world’s information since day one.Concern that its AI could disrupt that mission is mounting.Since its inception, Google has had a mission statement that is now practically enshrined as lore: To organize the world’s information and make it accessible and useful.Google says it is as firm in that mission statement today as it was in 1998 when cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were working out of a garage in Menlo Park.But as Google hurtles into a ne…

Hey ChatGPT, is everything OK?Users started to wonder whether OpenAI’s chatbot was malfunctioning after it spouted Spanglish.ChatGPT has been looking a little unhinged.Some users wondered what the heck was going on with OpenAI’s chatbot after it started responding to their queries Tuesday with a whole lot of gibberish.Sean McGuire, a senior associate at the global architecture firm Gensler, shared screenshots on X of ChatGPT responding to him in nonsensical “Spanglish.”“Sometimes, in the creativ…

Elon Musk is cosplaying statesmanship.Musk is visiting Israel after being criticized for endorsing an antisemitic post on X.Elon Musk is back in his statesman costume.The world’s richest man and X owner arrived in Israel on Monday to visit the scenes of Hamas’ October 7 terrorist attacks during a temporary ceasefire between the two sides.He spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on a live X Spaces call; he has met the families of hostages; visited destroyed kibbutzim; and reportedl…

OpenAI updated ChatGPT so it can ‘read’ PDFs for you.That threatens a bunch of startups that sprang up to do exactly this.It’s a rule most tech founders and developers know: Building on another company’s tech can make your life easier. It’s also super risky.Little-guy developers building complementary services to OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot have just found this out the hard way.As of this week, OpenAI allows paying ChatGPT users to upload PDFs to the chatbot and get it to do the hard work of uneart…

Andrew Ng, formerly of Google Brain, said Big Tech is exaggerating the risk of AI wiping out humans.That seems to attack AI leaders such as DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis and OpenAI’s Sam Altman.Some of the biggest figures in artificial intelligence are publicly arguing whether AI is really an extinction risk, after AI scientist Andrew Ng said such claims were a cynical play by Big Tech.Andew Ng, a cofounder of Google Brain, suggested to The Australian Financial Review that Big Tech was seeking to in…

Tim Cook is back in China.The Apple CEO made his second known trip to China this year as iPhone sales struggle.When Tim Cook visited China in March this year, he was there to heap praise on the country for its history of innovation. Several months on, the Apple CEO is back on the charm offensive.Cook landed in China this week for his second known trip to the country this year — this time unannounced — traveling to various locations to meet the people who help keep the cogs turning in the iPhone…

Microsoft and Activision Blizzard may finally be at the finish line.The CMA provisionally greenlit Microsoft’s acquisition of the Call of Duty developer.Microsoft’s blockbuster acquisition of Activision Blizzard has provisionally been given the green light by the UK’s antitrust body, clearing the path for the $68.7 billion deal, following strong opposition from regulators.The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority CMA said on Friday that remedies put forward by Microsoft for its proposed deal to…

Sen. Chuck Schumer is hosting sessions to help lawmakers understand and shape future rules on AI.Axios reported that the first will take place in September.Lawmakers in Washington are deciding who they should defer to on all things AI as they race against the clock to create rules to govern the consequential technology — and the list so far is mostly rich men. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is hosting a series of closed-door sessions, which he’s calling AI insights forums, to learn more ab…

It’s never fun for a CEO to hear their product might get thrashed by a competitor.That might explain OpenAI boss Sam Altman’s defensive response to a post published over the weekend titled: “Google Gemini Eats The World – Gemini Smashes GPT-4 By 5X, The GPU-Poors.“incredible google got that semianalysis guy to publish their internal marketing/recruiting chart lolThe post, by Dylan Patel and Daniel Nishball of research firm SemiAnalysis, argues that Google’s anticipated Gemini AI model looks read…

It’s no more Mr. Nice CEO.Bosses who allowed fully remote work during the pandemic want workers back in the office, pronto.It was nice while it lasted. Bosses increasingly want workers to get back into the office. Or else.Blue-chip companies including Goldman Sachs, Meta, and Zoom are pushing, with varying degrees of severity, for employees to be physically present at work, ending years of workers being able to work from wherever they liked.Goldman has told workers they need to be in the office…

A Chinese firm responsible for assembling Apple’s Vision Pro had a vote of confidence from the tech giant thanks to its willingness to test “crazy” ideas, a new report says.Luxshare, a contract manufacturer, has built close ties with Apple as the latter prepares to launch its mixed-reality headset. The Shenzhen-based firm has won “favor and increasing business” from the iPhone maker as it assembles the new hardware, the Financial Times reported.The report doesn’t detail what crazy ideas Luxshare…

The metaverse is expensive, vague, and there’s no evidence anyone wants it. It’ll be the first thing to go during layoffs.

The billionaire has faced questions from Tesla shareholders over where his priorities lie as the company’s stock has sunk since he took over Twitter.