Author: AI News First

It may not have the shine it once did, but Max (previously HBO Max) is still home to some of the best TV shows of the past 25 years, from The Sopranos and The Wire to Game of Thrones and The Leftovers.Max has gotten into the original content game too, with highly acclaimed series like Hacks, Station Eleven, and The Staircase (the owl did it!). So even if you’ve watched all of the HBO classics, there’s more to devour.Whether you’re a longtime fan of the “it’s not TV” cable network or a Max newbie trying to figure out where to start, the shows below should give you plenty…

Before Trump was inaugurated, the USDS administrator was Mina Hsiang. After she left, Ted Carstensen was the highest-ranking legacy USDS leader, but he resigned from the organization on February 6.“After Ted resigned, we received no correspondence as far as who the head of this organization was,” says a current USDS employee, who requested anonymity due to concerns of retaliation.Some people WIRED spoke with at USDS view Amy Gleason, a former USDS official who served in the first Trump administration, as a liaison between legacy USDS, DOGE, and other agencies, but little is known about her official role. Steve Davis, a…

Safe Superintelligence, an AI startup founded by former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, could be close to raising more than $1 billion at a $30 billion valuation — a higher valuation than reported just weeks ago. Bloomberg reports that VC firm Greenoaks Capital Partners is leading the deal and pledging to invest half a billion dollars. Should the terms of the round not change, the fundraising would bring Safe Superintelligence’s total raised to roughly $2 billion. Sutskever is widely respected in the AI — and wider tech — industry. He’s credited with contributing to major AI breakthroughs while at OpenAI,…

The National Science Foundation fired nearly 170 workers in a Zoom call on Tuesday morning as part of the Trump administration’s agenda to reduce the federal workforce. The terminated workers, who were told their employment would end at 5 pm EST today, included those still under probation, but also workers who had already completed the requisite one-year probationary period to become permanent workers and at-will workers who were considered permanent employees.Earlier this month, however, these permanent workers were suddenly told by NSF that their one-year probationary period should have been two years and they were no longer safe from being…

Last September, Mira Murati unexpectedly left her job as chief technology officer of OpenAI, saying, “I want to create the time and space to do my own exploration.” The rumor in Silicon Valley was that she was stepping down to start her own company. Today she announced that indeed she is the CEO of a new public benefit corporation called Thinking Machines Lab. Its mission is to develop top-notch AI with an eye toward making it useful and accessible.Murati believes there’s a serious gap between rapidly advancing AI and the public’s understanding of the technology. Even sophisticated scientists don’t have…

Former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati has announced her new startup. Unsurprisingly, it’s focused on AI. Called Thinking Machines Lab, the startup, which came out of stealth today, intends to build tooling to “make AI work for [people’s] unique needs and goals,” and to create AI systems that are “more widely understood, customizable, and generally capable” than those currently available. Murati is heading up Thinking Machines Lab as CEO. OpenAI co-founder John Schulman is the company’s chief scientist, and Barret Zoph, OpenAI’s ex-chief research officer, is CTO. In a blog post shared with TechCrunch, Thinking Machines Lab wrote that while AI…

Gig marketplace Fiverr wants to let freelancers train AI on their bodies of work and use it to automate future jobs. At an event on Tuesday, Fiverr announced the launch of several new efforts aimed at attracting gig workers to its platform and equipping them with generative AI tools. Perhaps the most ambitious is a program that’ll give freelancers doing voiceover, graphic design, and certain related work the ability to train AI on their content and to charge customers for access. Fiverr CEO Micha Kaufman pitched the move as a way to ensure gig workers “receive proper credit and compensation…

To fend off future hostile takeover attempts, OpenAI is considering giving its non-profit board special voting rights, according to a new report in the Financial Times. The rights would allow the board to overrule major investors in the company, preserving some of its powers after OpenAI completes its transition to a for-profit. OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit before converting to a “capped-profit” structure in 2019. The company is now in the process of restructuring once again, this time to a public benefit corporation. Last week, a group of investors led by billionaire Elon Musk offered to buy OpenAI’s nonprofit…

Natively, no. MagSafe won’t work with most Android phones. However, there are MagSafe cases for certain Android phones, like the Google Pixel series or Samsung Galaxy phones, and these cases have a similar (if not the same) magnetic ring inside, allowing you to use many of the same MagSafe power banks, wireless chargers, and other accessories, though your mileage may vary. Several accessory companies also include or sell the MagSafe magnetic component that you can stick to the back of your smartphone to enable compatibility, though I’ve never used one I really like.The Qi2 wireless charging standard is changing all…

South Korea is preparing to host the world’s largest AI data centre by capacity, setting its sights on global technological leadership. The monumental project, led by Fir Hills – a division of California-based Stock Farm Road, Inc. (SFR) – is expected to commence construction in winter 2025 and aims to generate an initial annual revenue of $3.5 billion.   The facility, located in the Jeollanam-do Province, is the result of a strategic collaboration between seasoned innovators. SFR was co-founded by LG heir Brian Koo and Dr Amin Badr-El-Din, a veteran of successful ventures in technology, energy, and global public-private partnerships. “This…