OpenAI increases lobbying spending to shape AI policy

OpenAI significantly expanded its lobbying efforts in 2024, spending $1.76 million compared to $260,000 in 2023. According to a disclosure filed on January 22, as reported by James O’Donnell, the company spent $510,000 in the last quarter alone. The AI company hired several key personnel, including former Senate staffers, to strengthen its government relations team. …

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US: Major tech companies plan $500 billion AI infrastructure venture

OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle are planning a joint venture called Stargate to build artificial intelligence infrastructure in Texas, with investments of up to $500 billion over four years. According to Reuters reporter Steve Holland, President Donald Trump will announce this private sector initiative at the White House. The companies have committed an initial $100 billion …

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OpenAI funded math benchmark before achieving record results

OpenAI has been revealed as the financial backer of FrontierMath, a significant AI mathematics benchmark, only after announcing their own record-breaking performance on it. According to Matthias Bastian’s report in Decoder, OpenAI’s new o3 model achieved a 25.2 percent success rate on complex mathematical problems, far surpassing previous models’ 2 percent capability. Epoch AI, the …

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AI search company Perplexity buys professional network Read.cv

AI-powered search engine Perplexity has acquired Read.cv, a professional social media platform that competed with LinkedIn. According to TechCrunch reporter Kyle Wiggers, Read.cv will cease operations, with users having until May 16 to export their data. The Berkeley-based platform, founded in 2021, offered tools for sharing resumes, professional networking, and job listings. Read.cv’s team will …

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Google and Mistral AI sign content deals with major news agencies

Major technology companies Google and Mistral AI have announced separate partnerships with leading news agencies to enhance their AI chatbot services. Google has entered an agreement with The Associated Press (AP) to incorporate real-time news feeds into its Gemini app, while Paris-based Mistral AI has partnered with Agence France-Presse (AFP) to improve its Le Chat …

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Apple temporarily disables AI summaries for news apps in iOS 18.3

Apple has introduced changes to its Intelligence notification summaries feature in iOS 18.3 beta 3. According to reporting by Chance Miller, the update temporarily disables AI-generated summaries for news and entertainment applications. The modification follows complaints from media outlets including the BBC about the feature’s accuracy. Apple has implemented several changes to make the beta …

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François Chollet launches Ndea to develop artificial general intelligence

Former Google AI researcher François Chollet has founded a new AIcompany called Ndea, focusing on developing artificial general intelligence (AGI). As reported by Kyle Wiggers for TechCrunch, Chollet is partnering with Zapier co-founder Mike Knoop in this venture. The company aims to create AI systems capable of human-like learning and continuous improvement. Ndea’s approach centers …

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OpenAI bot crashes small company’s website during mass data scraping

A Ukrainian-American company, Triplegangers, experienced severe website disruption when OpenAI’s web crawler attempted to scrape its entire database of 65,000 3D human model products. According to Julie Bort’s report in TechCrunch, the incident occurred when OpenAI’s bot sent tens of thousands of server requests using 600 different IP addresses. CEO Oleksandr Tomchuk described the bot’s …

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Zuckerberg approved use of pirated books for Meta’s AI training

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg authorized the use of LibGen, a dataset of pirated e-books and articles, to train the company’s Llama AI models, according to new court documents. The revelation comes from a copyright lawsuit filing reported by Kyle Wiggers in TechCrunch. The lawsuit, Kadrey v. Meta, includes plaintiffs Sarah Silverman and Ta-Nehisi Coates. Court …

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Anthropic seeks $2 billion funding at $60 billion valuation

AI startup Anthropic is negotiating a $2 billion funding round that would value the company at $60 billion. According to Wall Street Journal reporter Berber Jin, Lightspeed Venture Partners is leading the investment. The deal would make Anthropic the fifth most valuable U.S. startup, following its previous $18 billion valuation in 2023. The company’s chatbot …

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