America is politically polarized. But there is an issue on which both sides agree: We need more privacy and TikTok should not be banned. A record 72 percent of Americans want “more government regulation” of what companies can do with their data, according to an October report from Pew Research Center. And only 31 percent […]
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Musk vs. OpenAI, Europe’s Tech Crackdown and a Month With the Vision Pro
This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email transcripts@nytimes.com with any questions. casey newton Casey, did you hear about the guy who was arrested for trying to steal a driverless car? […]
Read MoreThe Miseducation of Google’s A.I.
Research by Susan Lee. The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle […]
Read MoreBig American Tech Profits From Chinese Ad Spending Spree
The trade relationship between China and the United States has plenty of friction. But at least one area is booming: Chinese start-ups looking to establish a presence in the West are spending billions of dollars for advertisements on services owned by some of Silicon Valley’s biggest technology companies. Temu, the international arm of the Chinese […]
Read MoreChinese National Accused of Stealing AI Secrets From Google
A Chinese citizen who recently quit his job as a software engineer for Google in California has been charged with trying to transfer artificial intelligence technology to a Beijing-based company that paid him secretly, according to a federal indictment unsealed on Wednesday. Prosecutors accused Linwei Ding, who was part of the team that designs and […]
Read MoreAnthropic Challenges OpenAI and Google With New Chatbot
The high-profile A.I. start-up Anthropic released a new version of its Claude chatbot on Monday, saying it outperforms other leading chatbots on a range of standard benchmark tests, including systems from Google and OpenAI. Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s chief executive and co-founder, said the new technology, called Claude 3 Opus, was particularly useful when analyzing scientific […]
Read MoreForced to Change: Tech Giants Bow to Global Onslaught of Rules
By Thursday, Google will have changed how it displays certain search results. Microsoft will no longer force Windows customers to use its Bing internet search tool. And Apple will give iPhone and iPad users access to rival app stores and payment systems for the first time. The tech giants have been preparing ahead of a […]
Read MoreCan a Tech Giant Be Woke?
The December day in 2021 that set off a revolution across the videogame industry appeared to start innocuously enough. Managers at a Wisconsin studio called Raven began meeting one by one with quality assurance testers, who vet video games for bugs, to announce that the company was overhauling their department. Going forward, managers said, the […]
Read MoreShould We Fear the Woke A.I.?
Imagine a short story from the golden age of science fiction, something that would appear in a pulp magazine in 1956. Our title is “The Truth Engine,” and the story envisions a future where computers, those hulking, floor-to-ceiling things, become potent enough to guide human beings to answers to any question they might ask, from […]
Read MoreIn Big Election Year, A.I.’s Architects Move Against Its Misuse
Artificial intelligence companies have been at the vanguard of developing the transformative technology. Now they are also racing to set limits on how A.I. is used in a year stacked with major elections around the world. Last month, OpenAI, the maker of the ChatGPT chatbot, said it was working to prevent abuse of its tools […]
Read MoreThe State of A.I., and Will Perplexity Beat Google or Destroy the Web?
Listen to and follow ‘Hard Fork’Apple | Spotify | Amazon | YouTube A year ago, a chatbot tried to break up Kevin Roose’s marriage. Ever since, chatbots haven’t been the same. We’ll tell you how. Then, we’ll talk through the latest ways the world is adapting to artificial intelligence. And finally, Aravind Srinivas, the chief […]
Read MoreSouth Korea’s Antitrust Enforcers Aimed at Big Tech. Then Came the Backlash.
The South Korean government unleashed a wave of panic across the internet industry: The country’s antitrust regulator said it would enact the toughest competition law outside Europe, curbing the influence of major technology companies. The Korea Fair Trade Commission, with the backing of President Yoon Suk Yeol, said in December that it planned to make […]
Read MoreGoogle Joins Effort to Help Spot Content Made With A.I.
Google, whose work in artificial intelligence helped make A.I.-generated content far easier to create and spread, now wants to ensure that such content is traceable as well. The tech giant said on Thursday that it was joining an effort to develop credentials for digital content, a sort of “nutrition label” that identifies when and how […]
Read MoreGoogle Retires A.I. Chatbot Bard and Releases Gemini, a Powerful New App
First, there were talking digital assistants like Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant. Then there were online chatbots like ChatGPT and Google Bard. Now, the two are merging. On Thursday, Google introduced Gemini, a smartphone app that behaves like a talking digital assistant as well as a conversational chatbot. Responding to voice and text requests, it […]
Read MoreGoogle’s Once Happy Offices Feel the Chill of Layoffs
When Diane Hirsh Theriault’s co-worker returned from lunch to Google’s Cambridge, Mass., office one afternoon in October, his work badge couldn’t open a turnstile. He quickly realized it was a sign that he had been laid off. Ms. Hirsh Theriault soon learned that most of her fellow Google News engineers in Cambridge had also lost […]
Read MoreWhy Is Big Tech Still Cutting Jobs?
After a year of big layoffs, job cuts at the tech industry’s largest companies trickled into the first month of 2024. Google started the year with layoffs of several hundred employees and a promise of more cuts to come. Amazon followed by trimming hundreds of jobs in its Prime Video department. Meta quietly thinned out […]
Read MoreCan This A.I.-Powered Search Engine Replace Google? It Has for Me.
For my entire adult life, whenever I’ve had a question about the world or needed to track down something online, I’ve gone to Google for answers. But recently, I’ve been stepping out on Google with a new, A.I.-powered search engine. (No, not Bing, which is dead to me after it tried to break up my […]
Read MoreFocused Cuts and Fewer Layers: Tech Layoffs Enter a New Phase
Last year, Mark Zuckerberg declared 2023 to be a “year of efficiency.” His company, Meta, soon laid off a third of its employees. Amazon, Google and Microsoft also cut tens of thousands of workers. Their worlds did not stop. Not only that, the companies were rewarded. Their stock prices soared. Some divisions were more productive. […]
Read MoreNvidia’s Big Tech Rivals Put Their Own A.I. Chips on the Table
In September, Amazon said it would invest up to $4 billion in Anthropic, a San Francisco start-up working on artificial intelligence. Soon after, an Amazon executive sent a private message to an executive at another company. He said Anthropic had won the deal because it agreed to build its A.I. using specialized computer chips designed […]
Read MoreMediapocalypse Now, a16z’s Chris Dixon Defends Crypto, and HatGPT
Listen and follow ‘Hard Fork’Apple | Spotify | Amazon | YouTube Layoffs are hitting newsrooms and publishers again, as tech platforms, ad markets and artificial intelligence reshape the internet. Kevin Roose and Casey Newton have ideas for solutions. Then, one of the most influential investors in crypto companies lays out where the industry went wrong, […]
Read MoreMicrosoft, Amazon and Google Face F.T.C. Inquiry Over A.I. Deals
The Federal Trade Commission launched an inquiry on Thursday into the multibillion dollar investments by Microsoft, Amazon and Google in the artificial intelligence start-ups OpenAI and Anthropic, broadening the regulator’s efforts to corral the power the tech giants can have over A.I. These deals have allowed the big companies to form deep ties with their […]
Read MoreHe Died in a Tragic Accident. Why Did the Internet Say He Was Murdered?
It was the kind of tragic accident that reverberates through a community: a first-year college student, out late in New York City on New Year’s Eve, falls onto the subway tracks and is killed by an oncoming train. Word of the 19-year-old’s death spread quickly among the people who knew the young man, Matthew Sachman, […]
Read MoreThe A.I. Election, Bitcoin’s Wall Street Debut and TikTok’s Doodad Era
Listen and follow ‘Hard Fork’Apple | Spotify | Amazon | YouTube OpenAI has released its plan to fight disinformation in elections in 2024, but will its policies be consequential compared to those of other generative A.I. companies? Then, a watershed moment had crypto fans celebrating for the first time in maybe more than a year. […]
Read MoreGoogle Cuts Hundreds of Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions
Google laid off hundreds of workers in several divisions Wednesday night, seeking to lower expenses as it focuses on artificial intelligence and joining a wave of other companies cutting tech jobs this year. The Silicon Valley company laid off employees in its core engineering division, as well as those working on the Google Assistant, a […]
Read MoreGoogle Cuts Hundreds of Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions
Google laid off hundreds of workers in several divisions Wednesday night, seeking to lower expenses as it focuses on artificial intelligence and joining a wave of other companies cutting tech jobs this year. The Silicon Valley company laid off employees in its core engineering division, as well as those working on the Google Assistant, a […]
Read MoreHow 2024 Will Be A.I.’s ‘Leap Forward’
At an event in San Francisco in November, Sam Altman, the chief executive of the artificial intelligence company OpenAI, was asked what surprises the field would bring in 2024. Online chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT will take “a leap forward that no one expected,” Mr. Altman immediately responded. Sitting beside him, James Manyika, a Google executive, […]
Read MoreSwitching to a Flip Phone Helped Me Cut Down on My Smartphone Addiction
This time of year, everyone asks what you like least about your life, but they phrase it as, “What’s your New Year’s resolution?” My biggest regret of 2023 was my relationship to my smartphone, or my “tech appendage” as I’ve named it in my iPhone settings. My Apple Screen Time reports regularly clocked in at […]
Read MoreMichael Cohen Used Fake Cases Cited by A.I. to Seek an End to Court Supervision
Michael D. Cohen, the onetime fixer for former President Donald J. Trump, said in newly unsealed court papers that he had mistakenly given his lawyer bogus legal citations after the artificial intelligence program Google Bard cooked them up for him. The fictitious citations were then used in a motion provided to a Manhattan federal judge. […]
Read More‘Hard Fork’: Our 2024 Predictions + Jenny Slate Answers Your Hard Questions!
Listen and follow ‘Hard Fork’Apple | Spotify | Amazon | YouTube Last year, we predicted what 2023 in tech would look like. This week, we take a look back at those predictions, see what we got right and wrong, and make new ones for 2024. Then, the actor, comedian and writer Jenny Slate joins us […]
Read MoreGoogle Allows More App Payment Options in Antitrust Deal With States
Google said on Monday that it would allow developers on its Play app store to offer direct payment options to users and would pay $700 million to settle an antitrust suit brought by state attorneys general, in the company’s latest move to navigate increased regulatory scrutiny of its power. The suit, brought in July 2021, […]
Read MoreGoogle’s Epic Loss, Silicon Valley’s Curious New Subculture and How 2023 Changed the Internet
Listen and follow ‘Hard Fork’Apple | Spotify | Amazon | YouTube A jury decided the Google Play store unfairly stifles competition and maintains a monopoly. Kevin and Casey discuss how the ruling could reshape the digital economy. Then, a growing movement of developers and enthusiasts of artificial intelligence want the technology developed as quickly as […]
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