Microsoft has initiated layoffs affecting 10,000 employees, or about 4.5% of its total workforce of 220,000, CEO Satya Nadella confirmed today. The software maker is notifying some employees immediately, and all of the layoffs will take place by the end of its fiscal Q3 on March 31. More: - In a statement released today, CEO Satya Nadella said customers upped their digital spending during the pandemic but are now optimizing their expenses "to do more with less."
- Microsoft said it will continue to hire this year for certain strategic roles, though Nadella didn't specify what those might be.
- He said the world is experiencing the "next major wave of computing" through AI advancements. Microsoft, in particular, has focused heavily on AI through its investment and support of OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT and other similar technologies.
- Earlier this week, Nadella said the company plans to incorporate AI capabilities into "every product."
- Microsoft last laid off fewer than 1,000 employees in October.
THE NEW YORK TIMES 
| |
OpenAI hired outsourced workers in Kenya to label graphic text from the internet in order to filter out toxic content from ChatGPT, according to a new Time investigation. The workers were employed by Sama, which has been a data labeling partner to OpenAI and other companies. Their take-home wages amounted to $1.32 and $2 per hour, according to Time. More: - Outsourcing partner Sama bills itself as an "ethical AI" company that employs workers in Kenya, as well as Uganda and India. It has labeled data for other Big Tech firms, including Google, Meta, and Microsoft.
- For OpenAI, the employees were tasked with labeling NSFW data from ChatGPT's training dataset.
- Once the examples of hate speech, violence, and other toxicity were labeled, they could be used to effectively filter them out before reaching ChatGPT end users.
- However, the process involved reading text from the internet that involved "child sexual abuse, bestiality, murder, suicide, torture, self-harm, and incest," according to Time.
- The work for OpenAI began in November 2021 but was canceled in February 2022, eight months before the contract expired.
- This was partially attributed to the "traumatic nature" of the work, as well as another Time report that detailed Sama content moderators who worked for Facebook and were severely traumatized with PTSD and other mental health conditions as a result. Sama has since discontinued its work with Meta.
TIME
| |
 A message from LINEARB Most startups suck at security.
When your startup struggles to find its product-market fit, security is the last thing on your mind - and that’s ok, for a while…
But there comes a day in the life of every startup when poor security practices can make or break your company. When that day comes, many startups don’t know where to begin. That’s why we interviewed security expert and Vanta’s Head of Engineering, Matt Spitz. In this episode of Dev Interrupted, Matt debunks the real security risks we face (think S3 buckets, not nation-states), how to create a company culture that embraces security and when your startup needs to start caring about all this stuff.
Listen in 👇 Listen Now
| |
A George Mason University professor says Anthropic's AI conversational chatbot has successfully passed a law and economics exam. In a blog post, professor Alex Tabarrok wrote that the Claude AI system scored a "marginal pass" on the exam, which was graded blind. More: - Tabarrok then provided Claude's best answer on the exam, which was a response to a question on potential changes to the law and economics of intellectual property:
- The AI system recommended shortening "the duration of copyrights, patents, and other IP protections."
- It also suggested limiting or eliminating software patents, expanding fair use, and making it more flexible, among other answers.
- Anthropic, a startup founded by two former OpenAI researchers, has been offering Claude in a closed beta that's available via a Slack integration.
- The San Francisco startup has been compared to OpenAI's ChatGPT. However, Stanford AI Lab A Ph.D. student Yann Dubois found that Claude is "less concise" but appears to follow the question more closely. He also claimed Claude is worse at math and programming.
FINANCIAL TIMES
| |
Forbes is now accepting nominations for its annual AI 50 list of the most promising private companies in the AI space. For the first time, the media outlet is opening up submissions from AI businesses globally, not just in North America. More: - Forbes is accepting nominations at no cost through Feb. 10.
- The company says it will work with Sequoia Capital and Meritech Capital to evaluate the submissions based on criteria such as revenue, talent, growth, and valuation.
- Once the list is narrowed down, an independent panel of judges from the AI field will select the winners, which are unranked.
- Last year's list included newcomers Hugging Face, dental AI firm Overjet, autonomous vehicle startup Waabi, and solar software provider Aurora Solar. The winners displayed a "booming VC Interest" and growing variability in AI startups.
FORBES
| |
 A message from VANTA To close and grow major customers, you have to demonstrate trust. But proving your security and compliance can be time-consuming, tedious, and expensive. Unless you use Vanta. Vanta automates up to 90% of the work for the most sought-after compliance standards like SOC 2 and ISO 27001 and gets you audit-ready in weeks instead of months. With Vanta, you get up to 400 hours of your time back and an 85% cost savings. Want to learn how? Check out Vanta’s demo on demand! Watch on your own time, then talk to our team to learn more. Watch Now
| |
An Adobe executive says the company is not using customer content to train generative AI technologies. Adobe's chief product officer, Scott Belsky, told Bloomberg that it has "never, ever used anything in our storage to train a generative AI model." The statement comes after a new section in Adobe's settings gave it permission to analyze a customer's cloud content for machine learning training. More: - However, that policy does not apply to image generators, according to Belsky.
- "If we ever allow people to opt-in for generative AI specifically, we need to call it out and explain how we're using it," he said.
- It's unclear how the company may apply customer data, such as images stored on Creative Cloud accounts, to its other AI-equipped products, such as Adobe Sensei.
- Previously, Adobe said it only analyzes content that's processed and/or stored on its servers and not content that is processed or stored locally on the user's device.
- Notably, that permission is on by default, meaning users have to manually opt out of that content analysis.
BLOOMBERG
| |
New job postings in AI: - Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning Engineer
- Lockheed Martin | Moorestown, New Jersey
- Sr. AI Sensor Fusion Software Developer
- Career Transitions, LLC | Palo Alto, California
- Postdoctoral Researcher, Embodied AI (Ph.D.)
- Meta | Menlo Park, California
- Staff iOS Engineer
- Senior Data Scientist, Computer Vision
- AstraZeneca | Gaithersburg, Maryland
- Entry Level Data AI Back End Developer 2023
- IBM | Lowell, Massachusetts
- Manager, AI Experiences
- McClatchy | Sacramento, California
| |
QUICK HITS - Enjoy 50% off your first month when you join the Athletic Club. Get award-winning brews delivered monthly and perks like early access + free shipping!*
- Pharmaceutics company Bayer has acquired AI-focused health-tech firm Blackford Analysis for an undisclosed amount.
- DeepL debuted Write, a free Grammarly-style writing app. It uses neural networks to suggest alternative word choices and rephrasings based on the context and nuances of the original text.
- Carhartt is now selling a smart heated vest that uses Clim8 AI tech to auto-adjust its heat based on outside temperature, layers, and the surrounding environment.
- As your business grows, so does the number of employees and the information they have access to. In this short video, security experts at Vanta demystify access reviews.*
*This is a sponsored post.
| |
Upcoming Events: - January 12 - AMA with Gun.io - Building and managing software development teams w/ Deividi Silva (Watch On Demand)
- January 13 - AMA with LinearB - Improving workflow for developers w/ Ori Keren (Watch On Demand)
- January 18 - Inside Interview with Lacework - 4 Common Attack Paths in Cloud Security (Register Here)
- January 25 - Amanda Natividad speaks on zero-click content, how to measure it, and other trends to keep tabs on in 2023. (Register Here) *
- January 26 - Growth Experimentation Workshop: From Strategy to Process by GrowthHackers.com (Register Here)
- February 09 - Growth Marketing Jam Session w/ Pedro Clivati (Growth Hackers) (Register Here)
- February 16 - Growth Marketing Jam Session w/ Kate Chernis (Lately) (Register Here)
- April 18 - Human Resources Summit'23 (Register Here)
*This is a sponsored listing.
| |
 |  | Beth is a writer and editor at Inside.com covering artificial intelligence and daily technology news. You can reach her at Beth.Duckett@inside.com. |   | | Editor | Aaron Crutchfield is based in the high desert of California. Over the last two decades, he has spent time writing and editing at various local newspapers and defense contractors in California. When he's not working, he can often be found looking at the latest memes with his kids or working on his 1962 and 1972 Fords. | |
| |
| |
Comments
Post a Comment