Mary Yap has spent the last year and a half trying to get farmers to fall in love with basalt. The volcanic rock is chock full of nutrients, captured as its crystal structure forms from cooling magma, and can make soil less acidic. In that way it’s like limestone, which …
Read More »How to Stop Another OpenAI Meltdown
OpenAI needs open-heart surgery. The ChatGPT developer’s new board of directors and its briefly fired but now-restored CEO, Sam Altman, said last week that they’re trying to fix the unusual corporate structure that allowed four board members to trigger a near-death experience for the company. The startup was founded in …
Read More »New Orleans Tried to Control Vacation Rentals With a Lottery. It Was a Mess
In the fight to regulate short-term rentals, New Orleans had a novel idea—it would hold a lottery. The plan was simple: Carve up the city into blocks and use a hand-cranked lottery machine to draw numbers, allowing one rental property per residential block. For the winners, the prize was a …
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 »OpenAI Staff Threaten to Quit Unless Board Resigns
OpenAI was in open revolt on Monday with more than 730 employees signing an open letter threatening to leave unless the board resigns and reinstates Sam Altman as CEO, along with cofounder and former president Greg Brockman. Altman was controversially fired by the board on Friday. “The process through which …
Read More »Sam Altman’s Sudden Exit Sends Shockwaves Through OpenAI and Beyond
More details of Sam Altman’s sudden ousting as CEO of OpenAI have emerged, with several senior researchers quitting the company, and executives and investors from across the industry expressing shock and confusion at what is increasingly being perceived as a board coup. Hours after Sam Altman was booted from the …
Read More »What Sam Altman’s Firing Means for the Future of OpenAI
Sam Altman always insisted that he wasn’t the most important person at OpenAI despite being its CEO. As he traveled the world this year meeting world leaders—the world’s unofficial ambassador of AI—Altman would soft-pedal his role, even as he stole glances at his phone to keep up with what was …
Read More »Who Is Mira Murati, OpenAI’s New Interim CEO?
Until the dramatic departure of OpenAI’s cofounder and CEO Sam Altman on Friday, Mira Murati was its chief technology officer—but you could also call her its minister of truth. In addition to heading the teams that develop tools such as ChatGPT and Dall-E, it’s been her job to make sure …
Read More »Insiders Say Eat Just Is in Big Financial Trouble
Popular vegan egg and lab-grown-meat company Eat Just is in deep financial trouble. A WIRED investigation bringing together court records, documents, and interviews from former employees suggests that the company frequently struggled with paying its suppliers on time. Now it is being sued by a former partner for roughly $100 …
Read More »The Government Is Now the Hottest Tech Employer in Town
After a year of massive cuts, the tech job market is so unstable that the US government has come to be seen as an appealing, innovative employer. Tech companies have laid off some 400,000 people worldwide in 2022 and 2023, according to Layoffs.fyi, a site that tracks tech industry job …
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