Tech leaders seek pause in AI development / Google faces sanctions over chat messages / Lucid to cut 1,300 jobs

Plus: This week's tech startup to watch.

Inside.com Part of   Network March 29, 2023

Presented by

Hello Insiders! Welcome to the Inside Tech newsletter. In today's recap, we're featuring a new content format, as seen in story No. 1, to see what our readers prefer. We are taking feedback, so please feel free to let us know your thoughts by clicking reply to this email. Cheers, Beth

Tech Startup to Watch: Type One Energy Why to watch this week: The company announced it raised a $29M round of financing to build out its fusion reactor designs, which it hopes to see adopted to serve new energy capacity needs in Asia. Mission: Commercializing its stellarator fusion technology for energy production. Headquarters: Madison, Wisconsin (spun out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison) Co-founders: John Canik, chief science officer Paul Harris, VP, HTS Magnet Program Randall Volberg, VP, business development David Anderson, VP and chief engineer Chris Hegna, VP and principal scientist Competitors: Fossil fuel companies such as Exxon Mobile and Chevron, as well as fusion startups including Commonwealth Fusion Systems and Helion Energy We're testing new content formats in Inside.com newsletters. Do you want to see more coverage like this? Reply to this email and let us know. TechCrunch

More than 1,000 people, including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Elon Musk, have signed an open letter asking artificial intelligence labs to pause their work on AI systems for six months. The letter is seeking an immediate six-month break or longer on any advanced AI systems that are more powerful than GPT-4, OpenAI's latest large language model that generates text. More: The letter says that the progress seen in AI tools presents “profound risks to society and humanity.” Published by the nonprofit Future of Life Institute, the document argues that AI developers are “locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one — not even their creators — can understand, predict, or reliably control." Pausing the development of AI tools more advanced than GPT-4, which has passed AP exams and the bar exam, will give time for experts to deploy “shared safety protocols” for AI, the letter says. Other high-profile signatories included entrepreneur and former U.S. presidential candidate Andrew Yang, AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio, Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque, and MIT physicist and Future of Life Institute president Max Tegmark. Zoom Out: Meanwhile, GPT-4 has also already been powering Microsoft's Bing search engine. OpenAI, an AI research company, released the large language model earlier this month, noting that it accepts both text and images as input. Users can upload a photo and GPT-4 will respond with a text description or caption for what it "sees." GPT-4 is "still flawed, still limited, and it still seems more impressive on first use than it does after you spend more time with it," according to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

A message from WIND RIVER Access over 200 hours of in-depth embedded software courses at your own pace On-demand training anytime, anywhere. Access our entire on-demand catalog of in-depth courses from any device to get up to speed quickly and maximize your investment in Wind River® products. Students can learn at their own pace and on their own schedule.  Learning at your own pace with 24/7 access from anywhere  Great for dispersed teams  Online videos, hands-on labs, and quizzes  “Ask-the-Expert” feature  Annual subscription  Access dozens of courses covering a wide range of topics, including VxWorks basics, kernel development, and debugging, as well as more advanced topics such as network and security programming. Browse the complete course catalog.   Browse the catalog

Google should face sanctions for failing to save records of chat messages between employees as part of an antitrust case brought by Epic Games, a federal judge has ruled. In Tuesday's verdict, U.S. District Judge James Donato said Google employed a "don’t ask, don’t tell policy" for retaining messages, which came "at the expense of its preservation duties." More: Donato said Google gave more than 300 employees "carte blanche" to decide whether to save their chat history and messages, which are typically auto-deleted after 24 hours. The chats are considered possible evidence in Epic's lawsuit targeting Google's app store policies, Donato said. The judge did not issue the sanctions yet, saying it will require more proceedings to determine an appropriate non-monetary penalty. Epic has argued that Google should have made sure the chats were saved by default. In response, a Google spokesperson said the company's teams have worked for years to respond to discovery requests in the litigation, producing thousands of chats and more than 3 million documents. Zoom out: Similarly, the U.S. Justice Department has asked a court to sanction Google for allegedly auto-deleting employee chats that were required for an antitrust lawsuit. Google has denied the DOJ's allegations, which stem from the department lawsuit filed in 2020 over Google's monopoly in search and search advertising. BLOOMBERG

Luxury electric-vehicle maker Lucid Group said it plans to cut 18% of its workforce, or about 1,300 employees, as part of a restructuring in the second quarter. The U.S. startup makes the Air luxury EV sedan that competes with Tesla's Model S. More: In an email to employees, Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson said the cuts will impact U.S. employees and contractors at most levels and organizations of the company, including executives. The automaker is also taking more steps to review its non-critical expenditures as it seeks to manage costs, he wrote. The restructuring is expected to be completed by June 30. The company expected to incur charges of $24M to $30M from the job cuts. Lucid still plans to launch its all-electric Gravity SUV in 2024, Rawlinson added. Zoom Out: The reorganization comes after Lucid missed analysts' expectations in its Q4 and full-year 2022 financial results. Lucid slashed its production target for 2023 to between 10,000 and 14,000 vehicle deliveries, down from the 20,000 to 22,000 expected by analysts. CNN

Google said it's bringing "extreme heat alerts" to its search engine that will provide information about heat waves and other related climate events. The notifications will display data, such as when a heat wave is expected to begin and end, as well as tips for staying safe during extreme heat. More: Google said heat wave-related queries in its Search reached an all-time high in July 2022. The extreme heat alerts, due out later this year, will join Google's existing extreme weather alerts on the Search page, which already include tornado warnings, flood advisories, and more. To help make sure the heat data is up-to-date and reliable, Google announced a partnership with the Global Heat Health Information Network. Zoom Out: In addition to the alerts, Google said it's expanding its Tree Canopy feature in its Environmental Insights Explorer app. The tool, which provides digital maps of tree coverage in urban areas to help address "heat islands," is launching in 350 more cities, including Paris and Sydney. THE VERGE

Apple has publicly released the latest updates to its software platforms. The updates include iOS 16.4 and iPadOS 16.4, which add 21 new emoji such as a plain pink heart, a shaking face, and a goose to the operating systems for iPhones and iPads. More: Along with the emoji, iOS 16.4 introduces security updates, new Shortcuts actions, easier beta testing, a 5G Standalone toggle feature, and access to push notifications for Safari web apps. The full list of new features is available here. To run iOS 16, users need to have at least an iPhone 8 or later. In addition, Apple released tvOS 16.4, watchOS 9.4, and macOS Ventura 13.3, which also has the new emoji. ENGADGET

QUICK HITS Wander launches the first Vacation Rental REIT Enjoy targeted 8% annual dividend and 14% total return by owning a part of this incredible portfolio.* Arkansas has filed three lawsuits against Meta, TikTok, and the latter's parent company ByteDance, alleging violations of the state’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act. Two of the suits make claims against the platforms' impacts on minors and other issues. Another accuses TikTok and ByteDance of falsely claiming that China's government cannot access their U.S. user data. Germany's competition regulator announced a review of Microsoft's market power. The probe aims to determine when Microsoft should be deemed a company of "paramount significance for competition across markets."  Microsoft unveiled Security Copilot, a GPT-4-based AI assistant that's aimed at cybersecurity professionals. The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has filed a lawsuit against crypto exchange Binance and its CEO Changpeng Zhao with allegations of regulatory violations in seven counts. Sign up for Lemonade and have your claim paid faster than it took you to read this ad. No joke.* *This is a sponsored post.

Upcoming Events: March 30 - A panel on how CTOs balance and prioritize NFRs into their roadmaps (Register Here) * March 30 - Paid Media Framework: A Proven System for Successful Ad Campaigns w/ Devin Littlefield (Market Vantage) (Register Here) March 30 - Inside.com Book Club - The Creative Act by Rick Rubin (Register Here) April 13 - Inside Interview with Lacework - The Evolution of Cloud Security w/ Ulfar Erlingsson (Watch On Demand) 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. She has written the Inside AI newsletter since 2019. You can reach her at Beth.Duckett@inside.com.   Editor Eduardo Garcia is a writer and editor based in New York. He is the author of "Things You Can Do," an illustrated book about climate action. Bylines in The New York Times, The Guardian, Slate, Scientific American, and others. In one of his previous lives, Eduardo worked as a Reuters correspondent in Latin America for nearly a decade.

Access Wind River's catalog of on-demand embedded software courses at your own pace.

767 Bryant St. #203, San Francisco, CA 94107 Copyright © 2023 Inside.com

Did someone forward this email to you? Head over to inside.com to get your very own free subscription! You received this email because you subscribed to Inside Tech. Click here to unsubscribe from Inside Tech list or manage your subscriptions.