THE BIG STORY

GPT-4 and What Might Come Next

Last week's release of GPT-4, the latest version of the language software from artificial intelligence research lab OpenAI, has caused a seismic reaction. In its coverage of the release, the Washington Post described the advanced tool for analyzing images and mimicking human speech as "pushing the technical and ethical boundaries of a rapidly proliferating wave of AI."

The OpenAI developers wrote Tuesday in a blog post that the technology would be a "valuable tool in improving people’s lives." But others see peril as well as promise.New York Times columnist Ezra Klein asks: Will the "disasters ahead in AI (be) small enough to learn from or truly catastrophic" and should we attempt to slow down AI progress?

That seems unlikely. On Tuesday, Google released Bard, its entry into the chatbot race.

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SOCIAL MEDIA

Why Banning TikTok Is Complicated

One reason the U.S. government's threat to ban TikTok is a thorny issue: the app's popularity. Axios reports that measured by downloads or in-app payments, TikTok the most popular smartphone app in the country. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew plans to highlight the app's growth—it now has more than 150 million monthly active users in the U.S.—in remarks prepared for his first-ever congressional testimony.

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BUSINESS

Record Tech Layoffs in Only Three Months

Just three months into 2023, the number of tech layoffs is already close to surpassing 2022′s total figure, Grid reports. So far this year, about 148,000 workers have been laid off, compared with slightly more than 161,000 workers who were let go in all of 2022, according to data collected by Layoffs.fyi. And more people were laid off last year than in 2020 and 2021 combined.

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COMPUTING

Ethernet Creator Wins Top Computing Prize

Bob Metcalfe has won the 2022 Turing Award, the computing industry's top prize, for creating the Ethernet standard that today connects billions of devices to wired and wireless networks, CNet report. The idea behind Ethernet emerged in a May 22, 1973, memo Metcalfe wrote to his bosses at Xerox PARC, the Palo Alto Research Center where a series of seminal computing inventions occurred.

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QUICK HITS

• For years, security experts have recommended the use of password managers, but a string of security breaches suffered by LastPass in 2022 has sparked concern among cyber professionals.
• GitHub this week announced its Copilot X initiative, which includes a code-centric chat mode that helps developers write and debug their code, as well as Copilot for pull requests, AI-generated answers about documentation and more—new features powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4.
• After more than two years of drawn-out legal conflict, it may be only days before a federal judge decides whether XRP, the crypto token on which Ripple’s cross-border payments services are based, should be classified as a security subject to the SEC’s supervision.

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"The development of AI is as fundamental as the creation of the microprocessor, the personal computer, the Internet, and the mobile phone."

—Bill Gates
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