Hi there, this is your daily ☕️ Techpresso.
In today's Techpresso:
📉 Amazon announces largest layoffs in company history
📑 Elon Musk launches Grokipedia
🤝 OpenAI completes its for-profit recapitalization
💸 PayPal becomes the first payment wallet in ChatGPT
⚛️ Google revives nuclear plant to power its AI
🎁 + 14 other news you might like
🔮 + 6 handpicked research papers and tools
📉 Amazon announces largest layoffs in company history LINK
Amazon is cutting 30,000 corporate jobs starting this week, the largest layoff in its history and a reduction affecting nine percent of its 350,000 global office-based employees.
The layoffs coincide with the company’s aggressive revamp of its business using artificial intelligence, which CEO Andy Jassy believes will bring efficiency gains and reduce the corporate workforce.
The reductions could reach multiple departments including the People Experience and Technology group, services, and operations, with some managers already trained on how to brief employees.
📑 Elon Musk launches Grokipedia LINK
Elon Musk launched Grokipedia, where some entries like the one for the PlayStation 5 are almost identical, word-for-word copies of Wikipedia articles that cite its Creative Commons license.
The new site presents a different perspective on topics like climate change by questioning the scientific consensus and suggesting media contributes to heightened public alarm about the subject.
Grokipedia's current design is simple with just a search bar and text entries, but unlike Wikipedia, it does not currently appear to let regular users edit pages or suggest changes.
🤝 OpenAI completes its for-profit recapitalization LINK
OpenAI completed its recapitalization by creating a for-profit corporation named OpenAI Group, which is legally controlled by the non-profit OpenAI Foundation that will appoint the company's new board.
The new ownership structure gives the OpenAI Foundation a 26% stake, Microsoft will hold a 27% share, and the remaining 47% is reserved for investors and employees.
This deal also extends Microsoft’s IP rights to OpenAI models through 2032 and requires expert verification if the lab ever claims to have achieved artificial general intelligence.
💸 PayPal becomes the first payment wallet in ChatGPT LINK
PayPal signed a deal with OpenAI to embed its digital wallet into ChatGPT, which will allow people to purchase items found through the artificial intelligence tool next year.
This agreement adds a 'Buy with PayPal button' for a secure checkout experience, letting shoppers pay with linked bank accounts, credit cards, or stored balances and get package tracking.
For sellers, the fintech firm will manage payment validation and merchant routing, meaning individual businesses can have their inventory listed without signing up directly on the AI platform.
⚛️ Google revives nuclear plant to power its AI LINK
Google and NextEra Energy are reviving Iowa's Duane Arnold Energy Center, a closed nuclear plant that will supply carbon-free electricity for the tech giant's expanding cloud and AI infrastructure.
The 615-MW site, shut down in 2020, could begin operating by early 2029 and is intended to provide a 24/7 power source while also strengthening local grid reliability.
This project reflects an industry trend where companies like Microsoft and Oracle are exploring nuclear options to address the surging energy consumption demanded by power-hungry data centers.
Other news you might like
- Nvidia takes $1 billion stake in NokiaLINK
- OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weeklyLINK
- Society will accept a death caused by a robotaxi, Waymo co-CEO saysLINK
- AMD, Department of Energy announce $1 billion AI supercomputer partnershipLINK
- Anthropic rolls out Claude AI for finance, integrates with Excel to rival Microsoft CopilotLINK
- Chegg slashes 45% of workforce, blames 'new realities of AI'LINK
- AI-powered search engines rely on “less popular” sources, researchers findLINK
- ‘There isn’t really another choice:’ Signal chief explains why the encrypted messenger relies on AWSLINK
- AT&T ad congratulating itself for its ethics violated an ad-industry ruleLINK
- OpenAI says U.S. needs more power to stay ahead of China in AI: 'Electrons are the new oil'LINK
- CEO of Alphabet’s X, Astro Teller, on what makes a moonshotLINK
- Sam Altman Funding Biomedical Startup to Read Human Brain Using Sound WavesLINK
- Chinese start-up MiniMax launches record-breaking AI modelLINK
- Adobe launches AI assistants for Express and PhotoshopLINK
Latest research and tools
Bash Screensavers: a collection of screensavers that displays animated ASCII art in the command line terminal.LINK
Sick: a storage approach for JSON-like data that allows accessing specific information from large files without having to read or parse the entire structure, improving efficiency and reducing memory usage.LINK
Microsoft AI Call Center Stack: an AI system that automates business communications by handling inbound and outbound phone calls, integrating SMS messages, and remembering past conversations to provide personalized support.LINK
Reduced AI Acceptance After the Generative AI Boom: Evidence of Two-Wave Survey: a two-part survey shows that public acceptance of AI decreased after the recent boom in generative AI technologies.LINK
Stop DDoS Attacking the Research Community with AI-Generated Survey Papers: the paper argues that the large number of AI-generated survey papers is overwhelming the research community in a way similar to a DDoS attack.LINK
Extreme-temperature single-particle heat engine: this paper details a heat engine made from a single particle that can function at extreme temperatures.LINK
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