In May 2024, Microsoft announced a new initiative called Copilot+ PC for Windows laptops. If you aren’t immersed in the world of Windows, you probably met the announcement with a confused shrug—a confusion that persists thanks to what has been, in my estimation, some iffy messaging around the term. Today, …
Read More »Sam Altman steps down as head of OpenAI's safety group
OpenAI ‘s internal safety committee is becoming an independent oversight body, as CEO Sam Altman leaves the group’s top leadership role. The announcement came as part of the results of a 90-day evaluation by the existing Altman-chaired Safety and Security Committee into the company’s AI safeguards and governance. The committee’s …
Read More »OpenAI Messed With the Wrong Mega-Popular Parenting Forum
Think of any topic vaguely related to raising kids imaginable, and there’s probably a post about it on Mumsnet, the long-running, enormously popular, controversy-spurring UK-based parenting forum for mothers. Over its more than two decade-long history, Mumsnet has amassed an archive of more than six billion words written by its …
Read More »Big Tech is emitting way, way more greenhouse gas emissions than reported
Big Tech’s data hunger is even worse for the environment than its main players let on, according to a new investigation by the Guardian. The all-out push for AI (and the necessary processing energy it demands) is only exacerbating the demand. SEE ALSO: How much is AI hurting the planet? …
Read More »Microsoft Copilot can now help with Excel formulas, make PowerPoints, and more
After a year and a half of Copilot, the generative AI tool is getting to a genuinely useful place. That literal and figurative place is in Microsoft Excel. At the Microsoft 365 Copilot livestream on Monday, CEO Satya Nadella announced Copilot features for the OG spreadsheet program and other 365 …
Read More »Amazon’s Audiobook Narrators Can Now Make Their Own AI Voice Clones
Synthetic voices have been proliferating for years, and the generative AI boom of the new ’20s has sped that process right along. AI voices are everywhere—in podcasts, in political campaigns, and in chatbots where they maybe-not-so-subtly replicate celebrity voices. Soon, they’ll be all up in your audiobooks too. Audible, the …
Read More »OpenAI is reportedly going all-in as a for-profit company
OpenAI may be overhauling its complex nonprofit structure in favor of a traditional for-profit push in 2025, the key to a potential $150 billion valuation as the AI leader veers down a similar profit-seeking path to that of its Silicon Valley peers. The news was first reported by Fortune, based …
Read More »AI Has Helped Shein Become Fast Fashion’s Biggest Polluter
This story originally appeared in Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In 2023, the fast-fashion giant Shein was everywhere. Crisscrossing the globe, airplanes ferried small packages of its ultra-cheap clothing from thousands of suppliers to tens of millions of customer mailboxes in 150 countries. Influencers’ “#sheinhaul” videos …
Read More »The Godmother of AI Wants Everyone to Be a World Builder
According to market-fixated tech pundits and professional skeptics, the artificial intelligence bubble has popped, and winter’s back. Fei-Fei Li isn’t buying that. In fact, Li—who earned the sobriquet the “godmother of AI”—is betting on the contrary. She’s on a part-time leave from Stanford University to cofound a company called World …
Read More »Can AI lift up struggling nonprofits — or cause them more pain?
AI is changing the way we create, work, and learn. Many fear it could even change the way we think. And while much has been made of how AI could affect education, the arts, and business, the impact of artificial intelligence on philanthropy is more of a second thought. AI’s …
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