Following Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, numerous advertisers have halted their spending, primarily due to uncertainties about content moderation under Musk’s leadership. Musk’s controversial tweets and an observed increase in hate speech on the platform have exacerbated these concerns. In response, Musk has communicated his commitment to maintaining a level of content moderation and is actively engaging with advertisers to address their concerns. The situation underscores the complex relationship between social media platforms, free speech, and advertising, with Twitter’s future and its appeal to advertisers hanging in the balance.
Author: Bobby Pulse
OpenAI rolled out the voice chat feature on ChatGPT for all mobile users after initially limiting it to Plus and Enterprise subscribers. This feature offers realistic conversational capabilities with multiple voice options and has started gradually reaching free users. While the feature’s deployment is ongoing, OpenAI has seen internal turmoil, with co-founder Greg Brockman announcing its release post his resignation as President, amid company upheaval over CEO Sam Altman’s firing and subsequent reinstatement along with Brockman.
OpenAI has announced a new board of directors, including Bret Taylor, Larry Summers, and Adam D’Angelo. This follows the recent firing of Sam Altman as CEO. Altman is set to return as CEO, with Taylor as board chair and D’Angelo as a holdover from the previous board. The new board is considered to be transitional. Microsoft is also expected to have a representative on the final board. The appointment of Summers, an economist and political veteran, is seen as strategic, as OpenAI faces increased scrutiny.
Anthropic has released version 2.1 of its AI model, Claude, which features a context window of 200,000 tokens—enabling users to upload long documents for analysis. The update also significantly reduces the rate of hallucinations and errors, while offering additional perks for developers. Claude 2.1 marks a notable advancement in AI capabilities, although processing longer inputs may take a few minutes. Anthropic expects latency to improve over time as the technology progresses.
Sam Altman, the ousted CEO of OpenAI, is returning to the company following a power struggle that led to his firing last week. OpenAI announced that Altman will resume his role as CEO with a new initial board. Former president Greg Brockman, who resigned in protest of Altman’s firing, will also return. The new board will be led by Bret Taylor and include Larry Summers and Adam D’Angelo. Altman’s return comes after the employees threatened to defect to Microsoft if the board didn’t resign.
A new study suggests that the ozone layer may not be recovering as previously believed, and the hole over Antarctica may even be expanding. The study contradicts widely accepted assessments that showed the ozone layer returning to 1980s levels by 2040. The researchers found that ozone levels have reduced by 26% since 2004 in the core of the Antarctic hole, with changes in atmospheric dynamics being a major factor. Critics argue that the study relies on a short period of observation and does not consider other factors like smoke and volcanic eruptions.
NASA has successfully demonstrated optical, or laser, communications by receiving data from nearly 10 million miles away, which is farther than the distance between the Earth and the Moon. This achievement is a crucial step towards increasing the amount of data that can be transmitted across the solar system and will pave the way for higher-data-rate communications, including sending scientific information, high-definition imagery, and streaming video to support future human missions to Mars. NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment utilizes a transceiver on the Psyche spacecraft to transmit data to the Hale Telescope at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in California.
Apple has announced that its iPhones will soon support the RCS texting standard, which will likely improve the texting experience between iPhone and Android devices. However, Apple will continue to differentiate between texts sent between its devices and texts sent to non-Apple devices. While Apple’s adoption of RCS is a positive development for the texting standard, it is unlikely to displace iMessage anytime soon, with Apple and Google likely to retain exclusive features in their respective messaging apps. Additionally, other chat apps like WhatsApp and Signal may still be more convenient for many users due to their built-in features like encryption.
Some Microsoft employees are unhappy that OpenAI employees are being offered jobs while Microsoft conducted layoffs, imposed a salary freeze, and cut bonuses. They feel like there are “different classes of employees.” However, others see potential benefits for themselves, such as an increase in Microsoft’s stock price. The new AI unit may not happen if OpenAI takes back its fired CEO.
YouTube has confirmed that users who continue to use ad blockers may experience delays in loading videos, regardless of the browser they are using. YouTube’s parent company, Google, stated that the delay is intentional and a response to users using ad blockers. The move is seen as an effort to encourage users to either accept ads or subscribe to YouTube Premium. While users have reported the delay going away when using Chrome, Google denies that it is related to browsers. There is speculation that the change is being tested on accounts with ad blockers and may eventually be applied to all browsers.