Artificial intelligence

Business Highlights: Advertisers flee X as Musk endorses antisemitic conspiracy; Open AI ditches CEO

Business Highlights: A summary of the day’s top stories in the business world.

ChatGPT-maker OpenAI fires CEO Sam Altman, the face of the AI boom, for lack of candor with company

The board of ChatGPT-maker Open AI says it has pushed out its co-founder and CEO Sam Altman and replaced him with an interim CEO.

Amazon lays off hundreds in its Alexa division as it plows resources into AI

Amazon is cutting hundreds of jobs in the unit that handles its popular voice assistant Alexa as it plows more resources into artificial intelligence.

YouTube creators will soon have to disclose use of generative AI in videos or risk suspension

YouTube is rolling out new rules for AI content, including requiring creators to reveal whether they’ve used generative artificial intelligence to make realistic looking videos.

China’s Xi urges countries unite in tackling AI challenges but makes no mention of internet controls

Chinese President Xi Jinping says potential risks associated with artificial intelligence are challenges that countries should deal with together.

Humanoid robots are here, but they’re a little awkward. Do we really need them?

Building a robot that’s both human-like and useful is a decades-old engineering dream inspired by popular science fiction.

Sunak says agreements at UK summit tip the balance in favor of humanity in fight against AI threats

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says achievements at the first international AI Safety Summit will “tip the balance in favor of humanity” in the race to contain the risks from rapid advances in cutting-edge artificial intelligence.

Countries at a UK summit pledge to tackle AI’s potentially ‘catastrophic’ risks

Delegates from 28 nations, including the U.S. and China, have agreed to work together to contain the potential “catastrophic” risks posed by galloping advances in artificial intelligence.

Cutting-edge AI raises fears about risks to humanity. Are tech and political leaders doing enough?

Chatbots like ChatGPT wowed with their ability to do tasks as good as or better than humans, thanks to cutting-edge artificial intelligence systems.

Biden wants to move fast on AI safeguards and signs an executive order to address his concerns

President Joe Biden has signed a sweeping executive order to guide the development of artificial intelligence.

Gannett denies that its marketing partner used artificial intelligence for its shopping website

The media company Gannett denied that it published material created by artificial intelligence on a shopping website that it owns.

UK PM Sunak warns against rush to regulate AI before understanding its risks

As authorities around the world scramble to draw up guardrails for artificial intelligence, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak warns against moving too fast on regulating the rapidly developing technology before it’s fully understood.

Harris will attend an AI summit at a UK estate that was a base for World War II codebreakers

The U.K. prime minister is defending China’s invitation to a summit on artificial intelligence that Vice President Kamala Harris will attend next week.

Google’s ad sales growth accelerated in 3Q, but investors are unimpressed with the performance

Google’s digital advertising sales growth accelerated during the summer, advancing a recent revival that helped its corporate parent Alphabet Inc. to deliver a quarterly profit that exceeded analysts’ projections.

Microsoft reports higher profits and revenue powered by cloud computing and AI investments

Microsoft has reported a 27% increase in profit for the July-September quarter compared to the same time last year.

Chatbots might disrupt math and computer science classes. Some teachers see upsides

As schools across the country debate banning AI chatbots, some math and computer science teachers are embracing them as just another tool.

Can New York’s mayor speak Mandarin? No, but with AI he’s making robocalls in different languages

New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been using artificial intelligence to make robocalls that contort his own voice into several languages he doesn’t actually speak.

Google packs more artificial intelligence into new Pixel phones, raises prices for devices by $100

Google has unveiled a next-generation Pixel smartphones lineup that will be infused with more artificial intelligence tools capable of writing captions about photos that also can be altered by the technology.

SoftBank’s Son says AI will surpass human intelligence in a decade, urges Japanese firms to adopt it

Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son says he believes artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence within a decade, urging Japanese companies to adopt it or be left behind.

Microsoft CEO says unfair practices by Google led to its dominance as a search engine

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says unfair tactics used by Google led to its dominance as a search engine, tactics that in turn have thwarted his company’s rival program, Bing.

National Security Agency is starting an artificial intelligence security center

The National Security Agency is starting an artificial intelligence security center — a crucial mission as AI capabilities are increasingly acquired, developed and integrated into U.S. defense and intelligence systems.

In Hollywood writers’ battle against AI, humans win (for now)

After a 148-day strike, Hollywood screenwriters secured significant guardrails against the use of artificial intelligence in one of the first major labor battles over generative AI in the workplace.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg kicks off developer conference with focus on AI, virtual reality

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg kicked off the tech giant’s Connect developer conference on Wednesday with a focus on virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence.

Amazon is investing up to $4 billion in AI startup Anthropic in growing tech battle

Amazon is investing up to $4 billion in artificial intelligence startup Anthropic and taking a minority stake in the company.

AI is on the world’s mind. Is the UN the place to figure out what to do about it?

Just a few years ago, artificial intelligence got barely a mention at the U.N. General Assembly’s convocation of world leaders.

The threat of wildfires is rising. So are new artificial intelligence solutions to fight them

Wildfires fueled by climate change have ravaged communities from Maui to the Mediterranean this summer, killing many people, exhausting firefighters and fueling demand for new solutions.

Britain uses UN speech to show that it wants to be a leader on how the world handles AI

Britain is pitching itself to the world as a ready leader in shaping an international response to the rise of artificial intelligence.

Tech companies try to take AI image generators mainstream with better protections against misuse

Artificial intelligence tools that can conjure whimsical artwork or realistic-looking images from written commands started wowing crowds last year.

Pennsylvania state government will prepare to start using AI in its operations

Pennsylvania state government will prepare to use artificial intelligence in its operations, as states are increasingly trying to gauge the impact of AI and how to regulate it.

‘Game of Thrones’ creator and other authors sue ChatGPT-maker OpenAI for copyright infringement

John Grisham, Jodi Picoult and George R.R. Martin are among 17 authors suing OpenAI for “systematic theft on a mass scale.”