The Trump administration has ordered US consulates to consider rejecting H1-B visa applicants involved in content moderation or “censorship,” according to a report from Reuters. A State Department cable viewed by the outlet says officials should check an applicant’s resume or LinkedIn profile for a job history involving moderation, fact-checking, online safety, compliance, and misinformation. … Read more
In September—just after OpenAI brought back the more sycophantic ChatGPT model after users revolted about losing access to their favorite friendly bots—the head of Rutgers Medical School’s psychiatry department, Petros Levounis, told an ABC news affiliate that chatbots creating “psychological echo chambers is a key concern,” not just for people struggling with mental health issues. … Read more
Microsoft has been publishing data about the gender, race, and ethnic breakdown of its employees for more than a decade. Since 2019 it’s been publishing a full diversity and inclusion report annually, and at the same time made reporting on diversity a requirement for employee performance reviews. Now it’s scrapping its diversity report and dropping … Read more
On season one of Build Mode: Product, Meet Market, we explore what it really takes to get your product into the hands of customers. We’ve talked a lot about product-market fit, but this week we take a step back to something just as essential and far less discussed: founder-market fit. Investors love to ask, “What’s your competitive advantage?” Usually they’re talking about moats, … Read more
I’m starting to understand where Google’s visual AI model gets its name, because after playing around with it for a couple of days, that’s how I’d sum it up: bananas. The images it generates are so realistic it’s bananas. I feel like I’m going bananas after staring at them for too long. And if I … Read more
Harvey on Thursday confirmed it closed a round of funding, led by Andreessen Horowitz, that values the legal AI startup at $8 billion after reports of the funding leaked in October. The startup raised $160 million in the round. This latest capital infusion came just months after it raised a $300 million in a Series … Read more
It sounds weird to say it’s a good thing if you missed the Ray-Ban Meta deal on Black Friday, but… it’s kind of true. The original Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses just fell to an even better all-time low of $224.25 ($75) at Amazon and Best Buy, which beats the Black Friday price by $15. That’s … Read more
Spyware maker Intellexa had remote access to some of its government customers’ surveillance systems, giving company staffers the ability to see the personal data of people whose phones had been hacked with its Predator spyware, according to new evidence published by Amnesty International. On Thursday, Amnesty and a coalition of media partners, including Israeli newspaper … Read more
In the Ars review of the OnePlus 15, we were floored by the phone’s incredible battery life and super-fast charging. The device’s other performance characteristics are similarly speedy, as is the OnePlus way. However, the phone is also less interesting visually compared to its predecessor, and the camera is a step down compared to the … Read more
Thirty years ago today, Netscape Communications and Sun Microsystems issued a joint press release announcing JavaScript, an object scripting language designed for creating interactive web applications. The language emerged from a frantic 10-day sprint at pioneering browser company Netscape, where engineer Brendan Eich hacked together a working internal prototype during May of 1995. While the … Read more