Kyle Vogt, the CEO of self-driving car developer Cruise who founded the company before its acquisition by General Motors in 2016, resigned this evening. His announcement comes amid upheaval at the company, which last month had its permit to operate its groundbreaking robotaxi service in San Francisco suspended by state …
Read More »Bumble, Grindr, and Hinge Moderators Struggle to Keep Users—and Themselves—Safe
“I wasn’t able to go outside anywhere alone,” Ana says. “I had so much anxiety that when I went outside to do errands, I lost consciousness twice. That’s when I realized I was very sick.” Ana began working for LGBTQ+ dating app Grindr when she was in her early twenties, …
Read More »Meet Emmett Shear, OpenAI’s ‘Highly Intelligent, Socially Awkward’ Interim CEO
After a weekend of chaos at OpenAI, the company’s board of directors appointed former Twitch boss Emmett Shear interim CEO late Sunday. It was just the latest in a string of tumultuous changes at the AI company following Friday’s ouster of CEO Sam Altman, and it left many wondering what …
Read More »TikTok Shop’s Black Friday Sale Is Full of Very Weird Stuff
Snail facial serum with gold flakes for $3.20, a litter box for $2.34, and candles shaped and scented like Starbucks Frappuccinos for $5.63. You might not have it on your holiday wish list, but you can find it on TikTok Shop, which is already discounting hard ahead of Black Friday. …
Read More »Twitter’s Former Head of Trust and Safety Finally Breaks Her Silence
It’s 8 pm on a recent night this fall, I’m finally unwinding, and Del Harvey is texting me. Again. This time she’s sending a screenshot of tense tweets exchanged between the supreme leader of a nation-state and the official Twitter account of a rival nation-state. I respond with a prompt: …
Read More »95 Percent of OpenAI Employees Threaten to Follow Sam Altman Out the Door
Almost the entire staff of OpenAI has now signed a letter threatening to leave and join a new venture led by ousted CEO, Sam Altman. Some 738 out of its around 770 employees, about 95 percent of the company, are now listed on the letter released early this morning. The …
Read More »Sam Altman’s Attempt to Return as OpenAI CEO Fails as Board Turns to Ex-Twitch Boss
It took Steve Jobs 12 years to return as CEO after leaving the company he cofounded, and it looked like ousted OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, was perhaps going to do it in three days. But late Sunday, Emmett Shear, who formerly led Amazon’s streaming platform Twitch, was appointed interim CEO …
Read More »Climate Activists Tell the EV Industry to Fix Its Filthy Supply Chain
As gearheads and auto industry suits streamed into the Los Angeles Convention Center Saturday for the LA Auto Show, they found themselves in the middle of a scene out of Squid Games. Demonstrators clad in the Netflix show’s red jumpsuits and black guard masks splayed across the showroom floor like …
Read More »Microsoft Emerges as the Winner in OpenAI Chaos
Just after 2 am Pacific time on Monday morning, several OpenAI staffers—including its chief technology officer, Mira Murati—posted in unison on X: “OpenAI is nothing without its people.” Sam Altman, who was dramatically removed as the company’s chief executive on Friday, reposted many of them. By then, Altman already had …
Read More »How OpenAI’s Bizarre Structure Gave 4 People the Power to Fire Sam Altman
When Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and other investors formed the startup behind ChatGPT as a US not-for-profit organization in 2015, Altman told Vanity Fair he had very little experience with nonprofits. “So I’m just not sure how it’s going to go,” he said. He couldn’t have imagined the drama of …
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