Good morning! This is your daily ☕️ Techpresso.
In today's Techpresso:
👋 Sam Altman departs OpenAI’s safety committee
💥 Amazon kills remote working
🖼 Google outlines plans to help you sort real images from fake
🚫 Meta bans Russian state media outlets over ‘foreign interference activity’
🤖 Chipotle unveils team of robots that will make your food
💻 Intel's major restructuring plan for chipmaking
🎁 + 9 other news you might like
🔮 + 4 handpicked research papers and tools
👋 Sam Altman departs OpenAI’s safety committeeLINK
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is leaving the internal commission OpenAI created in May to oversee “critical” safety decisions related to the company’s projects and operations. The new committee, chaired by Zico Kolter and includes members like Adam D’Angelo and Paul Nakasone, will oversee significant model launches and have authority over safety evaluations. Despite being labeled as independent, all committee members are also part of OpenAI’s broader board of directors, bringing into question the actual independence of the committee.
💥 Amazon kills remote workingLINK
Amazon will require employees to return to the office five days a week starting from the beginning of next year, ending remote work practices that became common during the pandemic.
CEO Andy Jassy stated that in-person collaboration and cultural strengthening are more effective, leading to this strict mandate on office attendance, with few exceptions for special circumstances.
Amazon will also reintroduce assigned floor plans in its US offices, ending hot-desking, and continues to be an outlier among tech companies by enforcing such rigid office attendance policies.
🖼 Google outlines plans to help you sort real images from fakeLINK
Google will introduce a feature in search results to identify whether a photo was taken with a camera, edited by software, or generated by AI models, using technology from the C2PA.
Google is working with the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) to create digital trails for images, marking the first significant test for C2PA’s technical standards.
Google aims to broaden the use of C2PA’s metadata in its ad systems and YouTube, while addressing challenges in adoption and interoperability across different hardware and software platforms.
🚫 Meta bans Russian state media outlets over ‘foreign interference activity’LINK
Meta announced a global ban on Russian state media outlets, including RT and Rossiya Segodnya, due to their engagement in deceptive influence operations on its platforms.
The ban will be enforced over the next few days and extends to Meta's other apps like Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads.
This action represents a significant increase in Meta's efforts against Russian media, following years of limited measures such as ad blocks and reduced post reach.
🤖 Chipotle unveils team of robots that will make your foodLINK
Chipotle is introducing collaborative robots, known as “cobots,” to prepare burrito bowls and salads in two California locations, with plans to expand based on customer feedback.
The Augmented Makeline robot, developed with Hyphen, will ensure consistent portion sizes, while the Autocado bot can efficiently prepare avocados for guacamole by cutting, coring, peeling, and scooping in 26 seconds.
Despite concerns about automation replacing workers, Chipotle asserts that the new bots will enhance productivity and job satisfaction without reducing the number of employees.
💻 Intel's major restructuring plan for chipmakingLINK
Intel announced it will spin off its chipmaking unit, the Intel Foundry, into an independent subsidiary to help reverse significant financial losses and declining stock prices.
The Intel Foundry will have its own operating board and separate financial reporting, while Intel halts construction on factories in Poland and Germany for two years based on market demand predictions.
Intel also plans to sell part of its stake in Altera, cut two-thirds of its global real estate, and has been awarded up to $3 billion from the Biden administration to produce military chips.
Other news you might like
Apple has finally dropped iOS 18. Here's what's changed.LINK
This brain implant allows users to control Alexa without speaking.LINK
Instagram is putting every teen into a more private and restrictive new account.LINK
Intel to build custom AI chip for Amazon in major partnership.LINK
Meta and Ray Ban's owner extend smart glasses partnership.LINK
Google's DataGemma is the first large-scale Gen AI with RAG - why it matters.LINK
Microsoft is using AI-powered robots to help dismantle and destroy hard drives used in its data centers.LINK
Runway and Luma AI release APIs for AI video generation.LINK
Slack is turning into an AI agent hub. Should it?.LINK
Latest research and tools
Chain of Thought empowers transformers to solve inherently serial problems: transformers can tackle problems requiring sequential reasoning better with a chain of thought approach.LINK
Nyxpsi: a next-generation network protocol designed to ensure reliable data transfer in environments with extreme packet loss, outperforming traditional protocols like TCP and UDP.LINK
Rainfrog: a terminal user interface (TUI) for managing Postgres databases, offering a lightweight alternative to tools like pgAdmin or DBeaver, designed for users comfortable with terminal environments but not recommended for production databases due to possible breaking changes.LINK
Rio-labs/rio: enables the creation of web applications entirely in Python, eliminating the need for HTML, CSS, or JavaScript by offering React-style components and over 50 built-in UI elements, capable of running both locally and on the web.LINK
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