Tim Cook says Apple will ‘break new ground’ in GenAI this year
Tim Cook says Apple will ‘break new ground’ in GenAI this year
700 full-time staff replaced by AI at Klarna
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Tim Cook says Apple will ‘break new ground’ in GenAI this year
700 full-time staff replaced by AI at Klarna
OpenAI reinstates CEO Sam Altman to company’s board of directors after investigation
Tim Cook says Apple will ‘break new ground’ in GenAI this year
Cook made the pronouncement during the company’s annual shareholders meeting today, which came in the same week the company reportedly scuttled its multibillion-dollar, decade-long plan to build an EV. Some of the staff on the EV project were reassigned to work on various GenAI initiatives, according to multiple publications.
Apple, unlike many of its Big Tech rivals, has been slow to invest in — and ramp up — GenAI.
During the company’s Q1 earnings call, Cook said Apple was working internally with GenAI but that it was taking a slower, more deliberate approach to customer-facing incarnations of the technology. Indeed, Apple’s only briefly mentioned GenAI in its recent press conferences and announcements, such as when it introduced new autocorrect and text prediction features in iOS last fall.
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has reported that Apple is planning to upgrade Siri and iOS’ built-in search tool, Spotlight, with GenAI models, with the goal of enabling both to answer more complex queries and handle sophisticated multi-turn conversations. Apple is also said to be exploring AI-powered features to allow users to automatically generate presentation slides in Keynote and playlists in Apple Music, as well as GenAI-powered coding suggestions in Xcode, the company’s app development platform.
Some of these — or none — could arrive in the next versions of iOS, macOS and iPadOS, which are expected to be demoed at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference this summer. Conspicuously, Apple’s also published a slew of open source models and tools for developing GenAI-powered software in recent months….
By Kyle Wiggers of Tech Crunch
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700 full-time staff replaced by AI at Klarna
Buy-now, pay-later pioneer Klarna began 2023 facing steep losses. A year later, the Swedish group might have Sam Altman and OpenAI to thank as it approaches profitability and reportedly eyes a blockbuster IPO.
After teaming up with OpenAI last year, Klarna says its chatbot is now doing the equivalent work of 700 full-time workers handling inquiries for its 150 million customers, the group announced in a press release Tuesday.
Klarna’s ChatGPT-inspired bot is now handling two-thirds of Klarna’s customer service chats, and the company thinks it will drive a $40 million improvement in profit this year.
The chatbot apparently makes fewer errors than human equivalents, which has led to a 25% drop in repeat inquiries, while average conversations now last two minutes, compared with 11 minutes previously.
“This AI breakthrough in customer interaction means superior experiences for our customers at better prices, more interesting challenges for our employees, and better returns for our investors,” Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said in a statement.
“We’re seeing across our whole business that things that previously took people a lot of time can be done much faster and much shorter with the help of ChatGPT, and we need fewer people to do the same thing…..
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OpenAI reinstates CEO Sam Altman to company’s board of directors after investigation
OpenAI is reinstating CEO Sam Altman to its board of directors and said it has “full confidence” in his leadership after an outside investigation into the turmoil that led the company to abruptly fire and rehire him in November.
OpenAI said the investigation by the law firm WilmerHale concluded that Altman’s ouster was a “consequence of a breakdown in the relationship and loss of trust” between Altman and the prior board.
The ChatGPT maker also said it has added three women to its board of directors: Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellman, a former CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Nicole Seligman, a former Sony general counsel; and Instacart CEO Fidji Simo.
The actions are a way for the San Francisco-based artificial-intelligence company to show investors and customers that it is trying to move past the internal conflicts that nearly destroyed it last year and made global headlines.
Much of OpenAI’s conflicts are rooted in its unusual governance structure. Founded as a nonprofit with a mission to safely build futuristic AI that helps humanity, it is now a fast-growing, big business still controlled by a nonprofit board bound to its original mission….
Cheers! SBalley Team