Author: GT

Attendees walk through an exposition hall at AWS re:Invent, a conference hosted by Amazon Web Services, in Las Vegas on Dec. 3, 2024.Noah Berger | Getty ImagesAmazon is laying off some staffers in its cloud computing division, the company confirmed on Thursday.”After a thorough review of our organization, our priorities, and what we need to focus on going forward, we’ve made the difficult business decision to eliminate some roles across particular teams in AWS,” Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser said in a statement. “We didn’t make these decisions lightly, and we’re committed to supporting the employees throughout their transition.”The company declined…

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — A settlement was announced Thursday in court in a class action investors’ lawsuit against Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and current and former company leaders over claims stemming from the privacy scandal involving the Cambridge Analytica political consulting firm.The suit had sought billions of dollars in reimbursement for fines and legal costs. No details on the settlement were shared when it was announced in Delaware’s Court of Chancery at the start of what would have been the second day of trial, at which point nothing related to the settlement had been filed with the court.The attorneys involved…

The Pentagon has opened the military AI floodgates and handed out contracts worth up to $800 million to four of the biggest names: Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Elon Musk’s xAI. Each company gets a shot at $200 million worth of work.Dr Doug Matty, Chief Digital and AI Officer, said: “The adoption of AI is transforming the Department’s ability to support our warfighters and maintain strategic advantage over our adversaries.“Leveraging commercially available solutions into an integrated capabilities approach will accelerate the use of advanced AI as part of our joint mission essential tasks in our warfighting domain as well as intelligence,…

Elon Musk is a man who named a government agency after a memecoin, designed a robotaxi test network in the shape of a phallus, and once went to court for tweeting weed jokes in relation to Tesla stock. So it’s not surprising that his company xAI’s first AI companions on the Grok app are a lustful anime girl and a homicidal panda. You can see why I had no choice but to ask my boss to buy me a $30 “Super Grok” subscription so that I could spend my Tuesday afternoon talking to these characters. It’s curious timing for xAI…

Mark Zuckerberg has a history of making audacious bets that reshape entire industries – and losing spectacularly when they don’t pan out. After burning through US$46 billion on the metaverse with little to show for it, the Meta CEO is now doubling down with an even more ambitious wager: superintelligence AI.This time, however, the stakes are higher, the competition more fierce, and the potential rewards more transformative than anything Meta has attempted before.With nine-figure compensation packages and infrastructure investments that dwarf even the metaverse spending spree, Zuckerberg’s superintelligence AI gamble represents Silicon Valley’s most expensive talent war – one that…

Plant Vogtle Nuclear Power Plant in Waynesboro, GA, August 15, 2024.Van Applegate | CNBCPresident Donald Trump’s push to approve nuclear plants as quickly as possible threatens to weaken the independent regulator tasked with protecting public health and safety, former federal officials warn. Trump issued four sweeping executive orders in May that aim to quadruple nuclear power by 2050 in the U.S. The White House and the technology industry view nuclear as powerful source of reliable electricity that can help meet the growing energy needs of artificial intelligence.The most consequential of Trump’s orders aims to slash regulations and speed up power plant…

Elon Musk listens as US President-elect Donald Trump speaks during a House Republicans Conference meeting at the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill on November 13, 2024 in Washington, DC.Allison Robbert | Getty ImagesThe Securities and Exchange Commission has agreed to give Elon Musk more time to respond to its lawsuit over his alleged failure to properly disclose purchases of Twitter stock before bidding to buy the company.In a motion filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Washington, the SEC said it had reached a joint agreement with Musk to push back the deadline for his response to Aug. 29. The…

Security researchers say Chinese authorities are using a new type of malware to extract data from seized phones, allowing them to obtain text messages — including from chat apps such as Signal — images, location histories, audio recordings, contacts, and more. In a report shared exclusively with TechCrunch, mobile cybersecurity company Lookout detailed the hacking tool called Massistant, which the company said was developed by Chinese tech giant Xiamen Meiya Pico. Massistant, according to Lookout, is Android software used for the forensic extraction of data from mobile phones, meaning the authorities using it need to have physical access to those…

Signage for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) at it’s fabrication plant in Phoenix, Arizona, US, on Monday, March 3, 2025. Rebecca Noble | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesTaiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company CEO C.C. Wei on Thursday said the company is seeing “strong interest” from its leading U.S. customers and is working to speed up its volume production schedule by several quarters.TSMC is the world’s largest contract chip manufacturer, and the company has pledged to invest a total of $165 billion in advanced semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S. The company shared updates to its global manufacturing plans during its second-quarter earnings call on Thursday.”TSMC…

OpenAI researcher Jason Wei will join Meta’s new Superintelligence Lab, reports Wired, citing two sources familiar with the matter. Another team member, Hyung Won Chung, may also join Meta.  Sources told Wired that both the researchers’ internal OpenAI Slack profiles are currently deactivated.  Wei and Chung would be Meta’s latest grab as CEO Mark Zuckerberg works to catch up in the race to AGI, or superintelligence, by luring top tech talent with astounding compensation packages. Wei’s main focus at OpenAI was o3 and deep research models. He came to the ChatGPT-maker after working on chain-of-thought research at Google. Chung, who…