Just noting this here as a timestamp more than anything – AI writing startup Writer raises $100M at a $500M valuation. So many stories like this.
We’re heading into crazy times again. Buckle up.
You may have seen the TechCrunch article about Microsoft researchers accidentally exposing terabytes of sensitive internal data when providing access to some AI training data. In summary: This data included 38 terabytes of sensitive information, including the personal backups of two Microsoft employees’ personal computers. The data also contained other sensitive personal data, including passwords...
I don’t use Unity and don’t really understand what it does, but boy do I know all about the outrage their new pricing model has generated.
A classic example of poor communication causing havoc. The reputation hit is significant.
Another case of perception being more important than reality.
Didn’t realise that FOBO (Fear Of Becoming Obsolete) , but thanks to this Gallop News poll I do now. The article confidently highlights the fears of U.S. workers of becoming obsolete due to AI are increasing (up from 15% to 22%). The ‘findings’ go on to break down the fears amongst age groups (younger people are more worried) and household income (lower salary earners are more...
Good article covering the water usage in data centres, with a focus on those used for training AI. [Aside: Interestingly, the Techmeme summary title is a little click-baity (which is unusual because techmeme usually takes the hype out of articles).] The summary seems to be that data centres can take up to 1 litre of water for every 100 ChatGPT prompts from users. The calculation comes from a...
From The New York Times: The Internal Revenue Service has started using artificial intelligence to investigate tax evasion at multibillion-dollar partnerships as it looks for ways to better police hedge funds, private equity groups, real estate investors and large law firms. NYT Assuming this does focus on the bigger players (often the smallest tax payers) and has safeguards in place , I’d...
SimilarWeb reckons ChatGPT usage is dropping (according to this Reuters article). See also this report from back in July 2023 reporting on a 10% drop in web traffic to the ChatGPT site. Note: this is only looking at web traffic trends, ie it excludes apps and API traffic (which one would assume is growing). Difficult to say what this means for ChatGPT (versus AI interest in general), but given...
Amazon has updated it’s Content Guidelines for Kindle books to require indication of AI generated content – here’s the full section that’s relevant: Start quote: “Artificial intelligence (AI) content (text, images, or translations) We require you to inform us of AI-generated content (text, images, or translations) when you publish a new book or make edits to and...
The LastPass security issue continues.
Summary:
A bunch of seasoned, security minded crypto investors are finding their wallets drained
So far, $35M has been confirmed
A common trait is they had their seed phrases stored in LastPass prior to the security incidents last year
If this ends up being confirmed as a LastPass hack outcome, then it’s only the start of a bunch of knock-on effects.
Apple is discontinuing customer support via Twitter (X), YouTube and it’s own Apple Support Community forums, according to a MacRumours post. Timeframe for this to be completed is before end of year (likely by November). This means that if customers requests support (eg via the @AppleSupport account on X) they’ll receive automated replies at best, and likely no replies on other...