Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella argues that AI's success should be measured by its impact on economic growth rather than achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI), emphasizing that true progress will come when AI finds a transformative application akin to email or Excel. The Register reports: "Us self-claiming some AGI milestone, that's just nonsensical benchmark hacking," the chief executive said during an appearance on podcaster Dwarkesh Patel's YouTube show this month. Nadella thinks a better benchmark for AI's success should be its ability to boost a country's gross domestic product. "When we say: 'Oh, this is like the industrial revolution,' let's have that industrial revolution type of growth. That means to me, 10 percent, seven percent for the developed world. Inflation adjusted, growing at five percent, that's the real marker."

Nadella suggested that growth hasn't eventuated because it's going to take time before folks understand how to use AI effectively, assuming they find a use for it -- just as it took some years for the personal computer to find its feet. "Just imagine how a multinational corporation like us did forecasts pre-PC, and email, and spreadsheets. Faxes went around, somebody then got those faxes and then did an inter-office memo that then went around, and people entered numbers, and then ultimately a forecast came out maybe just in time for the next quarter," Nadella explained. "Then somebody said: 'Hey, I'm just going to take an Excel spreadsheet, put it in an email, send it around, people will go edit it, and I'll have a forecast.' The entire forecasting business process changed because the work artifact and the workflow changed. That is what needs to happen with AI being introduced into knowledge work," the CEO said. [...]

"Don't conflate knowledge worker with knowledge work," he said. "The knowledge work of today could probably be automated, [but] who said my life's goal is to triage my email?" Instead, he argues AI agents will allow workers to focus on higher-value tasks. Whether this is actually how it'll play out, or whether enterprises will take this as an opportunity to reduce costs by cutting staff remains to be seen. ... "Today, you cannot deploy these intelligences unless and until there's someone indemnifying it as a human," he said.

An anonymous reader shares a report: People now watch so many programs at so many different times in so many different ways -- with an antenna, on cable, in an app or from a website, as well as live, recorded or on demand -- that it is increasingly challenging for the industry to agree on the best way to measure viewership. In some cases, media executives and advertisers are even uncertain whether a competitor's show is a hit or something well short of that.

The scramble to sort out a suitable solution began nearly a decade ago, as Netflix rose to prominence. It has only intensified since. "It is more chaotic than it's ever been," said George Ivie, the chief executive of the Media Rating Council, a leading industry measurement watchdog. For decades, there was no dispute -- Nielsen's measurement was the only game in town.

But things started to go sideways after the emergence of streaming services like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime Video. Nielsen had no ability -- at least at first -- to measure how many people clicked play on those apps. The streamers, of course, knew exactly how many people were watching on their own service but they either selectively disclosed some data or did not bother releasing it at all.

Over the past two years, as nearly all the major streaming services have introduced advertising, they have released more data. But the data they release makes apples-to-apples comparisons difficult. Netflix discloses what it calls "hours viewed" and "views" for its shows. Prime Video and Max prefer to describe how many million "viewers" watched a hit of their choosing. The disclosures can be helpful to compare one show with another on the same streaming service. Yet those figures, too, can lead to disagreements.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Meta Platforms is in discussions to construct a new data center campus for its artificial intelligence projects, with potential costs exceeding $200 billion, The Information reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter. Meta executives have informed data center developers that the company is considering building the campus in states including Louisiana, Wyoming or Texas, with senior leaders having visited potential sites this month, the report said.

According to Bloomberg (paywalled), Warner Bros. Discovery announced today that it is shutting down three gaming studios and canceling development of its planned Wonder Woman project. Engadget reports: Monolith Productions, Player First Games and WB Games San Diego will be shuttered due to a "disappointing 2024" for WB's gaming business, according to an internal memo from JB Perrette, the company's CEO and president of global streaming and games. [...]

According to the internal email from Perrette, WB's gaming efforts will be focused on four of its properties: Harry Potter (including Hogwarts Legacy), Mortal Kombat, the DC universe and Game of Thrones. "We need to make some substantial changes to our portfolio/team structure if we are to commit the necessary resources to get back to a "fewer but bigger franchises' strategy," Perette said.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) has sent a letter to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chair Andrew Ferguson urging the FTC to require that companies admit when you're not really buying an ebook or video game. From a report: Wyden's letter, shared with The Verge, requests guidance to "ensure that consumers who purchase or license digital goods can make informed decisions and understand what ownership rights they are obtaining."

Wyden wants the guidance to include how long a license lasts, what circumstances might expire or revoke the license, and if a consumer can transfer or resell the license. The letter also calls for the information "before and at the point of sale" in a way that's easily understandable. "To put it simply, prior to agreeing to any transaction, consumers should understand what they are paying for and what is guaranteed after the sale," Wyden says.

Online-education company Chegg said it is conducting a business review and exploring alternatives such as selling the company or taking it private as it continues to lose subscribers to artificial-intelligence-enabled rivals. From a report: Chegg and other virtual-learning companies have ceded ground to generative-AI companies such as ChatGPT, which provides free alternatives to the homework help that Chegg charges $19.95 for to its subscribers. Although Chegg built its own AI products, the company has faced scores of canceled subscriptions. The business review comes as the company swung to a loss in the fourth quarter, with revenue falling 24%, and guided for lower-than-expected revenue for the first quarter. In November, Chegg said it would cut its workforce by an additional 21%. Chegg's shares have fallen 99% since its peak in 2021.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Cloud communications software firm Bird, one of the Netherlands' most prominent tech startups, plans to move most of its operations out of Europe, its CEO said, citing restrictive regulations and difficulties hiring skilled technology workers. "We are mostly leaving Europe as it lacks the environment we need to innovate in an AI-first era of technology," CEO Robert Vis told Reuters on Monday. "We foresee that regulations in Europe will block true innovation in a global economy moving extremely fast to AI," he said in a text message response to Reuters queries.

Bird's operations in future will be mostly split between New York, Singapore and Dubai, he said. Vis first announced the move abroad in a LinkedIn post over the weekend. Bird, formerly known as Message Bird, was founded in Amsterdam in 2011. It is a competitor of U.S.-based Twilio in the market for helping companies manage their communications with consumers across digital mediums such as messaging, email and video apps. It says it has developed an AI-powered platform that automates and streamlines business operations across entire organizations including tech leaders.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Anthropic, an artificial intelligence company founded by exiles from OpenAI, has introduced the first AI model that can produce either conventional output or a controllable amount of "reasoning" needed to solve more grueling problems. Anthropic says the new hybrid model, called Claude 3.7, will make it easier for users and developers to tackle problems that require a mix of instinctive output and step-by-step cogitation. "The [user] has a lot of control over the behavior -- how long it thinks, and can trade reasoning and intelligence with time and budget," says Michael Gerstenhaber, product lead, AI platform at Anthropic.

Claude 3.7 also features a new "scratchpad" that reveals the model's reasoning process. A similar feature proved popular with theChinese AI model DeepSeek. It can help a user understand how a model is working over a problem in order to modify or refine prompts. Dianne Penn, product lead of research at Anthropic, says the scratchpad is even more helpful when combined with the ability to ratchet a model's "reasoning" up and down. If, for example, the model struggles to break down a problem correctly, a user can ask it to spend more time working on it. [...]

Penn says that Claude's reasoning mode received additional data on business applications including writing and fixing code, using computers, and answering complex legal questions. "The things that we made improvements on are ... technical subjects or subjects which require long reasoning," Penn says. "What we have from our customers is a lot of interest in deploying our models into their actual workloads." Anthropic says that Claude 3.7 is especially good at solving coding problems that require step-by-step reasoning, outscoring OpenAI's o1 on some benchmarks like SWE-bench. The company is today releasing a new tool, called Claude Code, specifically designed for this kind of AI-assisted coding. "The model is already good at coding," Penn says. But "additional thinking would be good for cases that might require very complex planning -- say you're looking at an extremely large code base for a company."

Major corporations are reshaping their workforces around AI with Salesforce announcing it will not hire software engineers in 2025 and other companies laying off thousands while shifting focus to AI-specific roles. Duolingo has laid off thousands after implementing ChatGPT-4, UPS cut 4,000 jobs in its largest layoff in 116 years, and IBM paused hiring for back-office and HR positions that AI can now handle.

Amazon is redirecting staff from Alexa to AI areas, while Intuit is laying off 10% of its non-AI workforce. Cisco plans to cut 7% of employees in its second round of job cuts this year as it prioritizes AI and cybersecurity. Salesforce reports its AI platform is boosting software engineering productivity by 30%. SAP is restructuring 8,000 positions to focus on AI-driven business areas. The trend extends globally, with Microsoft relocating thousands during an "exodus" from China, while entry-level jobs on Wall Street are becoming obsolete.

A study found that 3 out of 10 companies replaced workers with AI last year, with over one-third of firms using AI likely to automate more roles in 2025. Job listings at large privately-held AI companies have dropped 14.2% over six months, JP Morgan wrote in a note seen by Slashdot. The transformation is creating new opportunities, with rising demand for AI skills in job postings. A survey of more than 1,200 users found nearly two-thirds of young professionals use AI tools at work, with 93% not worried about job threats, as business leaders view Generation Z's digital skills as beneficial for leveraging AI.

Cloud communications software firm Bird, one of the Netherlands' most prominent tech startups, plans to move most of its operations out of Europe, its CEO said, citing restrictive regulations and difficulties hiring skilled technology workers. From a report: "We are mostly leaving Europe as it lacks the environment we need to innovate in an AI-first era of technology," CEO Robert Vis told Reuters on Monday. "We foresee that regulations in Europe will block true innovation in a global economy moving extremely fast to AI," he said in a text message response to Reuters queries. Bird's operations in future will be mostly split between New York, Singapore and Dubai, he said.

Apple said it planned to hire an additional 20,000 staff in the US over the next four years as part of a $500 billion American investment plan. Financial Times: The $500 billion figure [non-paywalled source], spread over Trump's second term in office, includes regular spending on thousands of US suppliers, data centres and corporate facilities, as well as new initiatives such as an academy in Michigan "to train the next generation of US manufacturers." Apple will also open a manufacturing facility in Houston to build servers that can support its artificial intelligence ambitions.
President Trump "implied that the iPhone maker is investing locally because it does not want to pay tariffs," reports Bloomberg. They add pointedly that Apple "didn't say whether the new investments were already underway before Trump's win."

The Los Angeles Times publishes a weekly "Boiling Point" newsletter about climate change and energy issues. And this week they examined whether the scientific fact of a change climate is reflected in the mass media: For the second year running, nonprofit consulting firm Good Energy applied its Climate Reality Check to the actual Oscar-nominated films [which] tests whether a movie and its characters acknowledge global warming... Of last year's 13 Oscar-nominated films that met Good Energy's criteria (feature-length movies set in present-day or near-future Earth) three passed the test. This year, there were 10 eligible films. Only "The Wild Robot" passed...

Maybe a few years from now, studios will release a torrent of movies and shows reflecting the realities of a scary-but-still-salvageable world, helmed by producers and writers jolted into renewed awareness by the infernos. But for now, the picture is bleak. A peer-reviewed study slated for publication this month, led by Rice University English and environmental studies professor Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, analyzes climate change mentions in 250 of the most popular movies of the last decade. The authors found that just 12.8% of the films allude to global warming. Just 3.6% depict or mention the climate crisis in two or more scenes. "A lot of times, it's really being mentioned in passing," Schneider-Mayerson said...

[Good Energy Chief Executive Anna Jane Joyner] pointed to another analysis led by Schneider-Mayerson, which found that movies passing the Climate Reality Check and released in theaters earned 10% more at the box office, on average, than films failing the test. Netflix, meanwhile, says on its website that 80% of its customers "choose to watch at least one story on Netflix that helps them better understand climate issues or highlight hopeful solutions around sustainability...." [Netflix's "Sustainability Stories" collection includes Dr. Seuss' The Lorax, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, and Waterworld]

Sponsors are interested in selling audiences on climate-friendly products, too. I was sitting in a movie theater last weekend enjoying "Captain America: Brave New World" — the latest entry in Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe — when, to my surprise, Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) got out of his SUV and pulled his iconic red-white-and-blue shield out of the front trunk. Yes, a front trunk, where an internal combustion engine would normally be. That meant Captain America was driving an electric vehicle, right? Indeed, he was. I did some research after I got home and learned that Wilson was driving a GMC Hummer EV, the result of a paid partnership between Marvel Studios and GMC parent company General Motors.
Ironically, the movie does not at any point acknowledge global warming, the article points out (adding "Also, SUVs kill more pedestrians and cyclists than smaller cars.")

"But the more movies and TV shows spotlight climate solutions — electric vehicles, solar panels, induction stoves — the more likely people are to support those solutions. For Hollywood, that's a step in the right direction."

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Telegraph: Workers with an axe to grind against their employer are using AI to bombard businesses with costly and inaccurate lawsuits, experts have warned.

Frustration is growing among employment lawyers who say they are seeing a trend of litigants using AI to help them run their claims, which they say is generating "inconsistent, lengthy, and often incorrect arguments" and causing a spike in legal fees... Ailie Murray, an employment partner at law firm Travers Smith, said AI submissions are produced so rapidly that they are "often excessively lengthy and full of inconsistencies", but employers must then spend vast amounts of money responding to them. She added: "In many cases, the AI-generated output is inaccurate, leading to claimants pleading invalid claims or arguments.

"It is not an option for an employer to simply ignore such submissions. This leads to a cycle of continuous and costly correspondence. Such dynamics could overburden already stretched tribunals with unfounded and poorly pleaded claims."
There's definitely been a "significant increase" in the number of clients using AI, James Hockin, an employment partner at Withers, told the Telegraph. The danger? "There is a risk that we see unrepresented individuals pursuing the wrong claims in the UK employment tribunal off the back of a duff result from an AI tool."

On Wednesday Mozilla president Mark Surman "announced plans to tackle what he says are 'major headwinds' facing the company's ability to grow, make money, and remain relevant," reports the blog OMG Ubuntu: "Mozilla's impact and survival depend on us simultaneously strengthening Firefox AND finding new sources of revenue AND manifesting our mission in fresh ways," says Surman... It will continue to invest in privacy-respecting advertising; fund, develop and push open-source AI features in order to retain 'product relevance'; and will go all-out on novel new fundraising initiatives to er, get us all to chip in and pay for it!

Mozilla is all-in on AI; Surman describes it as Mozilla's North Star for the work it will do over the next few years. I wrote about its new 'Orbit' AI add-on for Firefox recently...

Helping to co-ordinate, collaborate and come up with ways to keep the company fixed and focused on these fledgling effort is a brand new Mozilla Leadership Council.
The article argues that without Mozilla the web would be "a far poorer, much ickier, and notably less FOSS-ier place..." Or, as Mozilla's blog post put it Wednesday, "Mozilla is entering a new chapter — one where we need to both defend what is good about the web and steer the technology and business models of the AI era in a better direction.

"I believe that we have the people — indeed, we ARE the people — to do this, and that there are millions around the world ready to help us. I am driven and excited by what lies ahead."

"Amazon has long allowed you to download its ebooks to your computer," notes PCMag.com, "where they can serve as a backup or be transferred to other devices.

"However, that feature will end on February 26, 2025, along with the ability to transfer books from your computer to your Kindle via USB." If you attempt to download your ebooks right now, a message says: "Starting February 26, 2025, the 'Download & Transfer via USB' option will no longer be available. You can still send Kindle books to your Wi-Fi-enabled devices by selecting the 'Deliver or Remove from Device' option." After February 26, you will still be able to download Kindle books [onto your Kindle] from the Kindle Store via Wi-Fi, and you can also use the Send to Kindle page on Amazon to send a variety of files to your Kindle.

Should you want to transfer your titles from your Kindle to your computer while you still can, go to Amazon.com, sign in, and click Accounts & Lists > Content Library > Books. Navigate to the book you want to download and click More actions > Download & transfer via USB.
Tom's Guide shares their reaction: Most people probably won't notice this latest example of an Amazon service getting worse, but the feature has existed for over a decade and is useful for backing up your purchases or converting them to formats compatible with other non-Kindle e-Readers or devices. It's also useful for those times when you don't have access to Wi-Fi, and of course, there's peace of mind knowing you have copies of your books... All in all it is a reminder that you don't actually own many or most of your digital purchases, as what you are typically actually "buying" are licenses to use content that can be revoked at any time.

If you find this decision annoying and want to find alternatives, here are a few. To start, might we recommend the Libby app which lets you borrow ebooks from your local library. You can also borrow audiobooks... You can also try purchasing books from places like Google Books and Apple Books, both of which offer a number of ebooks. eBooks.com offers DRM free books and EPUB formats. For those looking for free ebooks there is always Project Gutenberg which has over 75,000 free books largely those in the public domain though there are some more recent titles as well.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post's "Tech Brief": Last fall, reports that Kroger was considering bringing facial recognition technology into its stores sparked outcry from lawmakers and customers. They worried personalized data could be used to charge different prices for different customers based on their shopping habits, financial circumstances or appearance. Kroger, the country's largest supermarket chain, had already been using digital price tags in its stores.

Kroger told lawmakers that it doesn't use facial recognition to help it set prices, a stance the company reiterated to the Tech Brief on Thursday. Still, the uproar helped to spark a push by consumer advocates who warn that the threat of invasive, personalized pricing schemes is real. Now, Democratic lawmakers in several states are working to ban so-called "surveillance pricing" — when businesses charge customers more or less for the same item based on their personal information.
Besides a bill in California, three more bill were introduced this month in Colorado, Georgia, and Illinois that also ban "surveillance wages," which the article defines as employers adjusting wages based on how much data an employee collects. "Both surveillance pricing and surveillance wages really disrupt fundamental ideals of fairness," University of California, Irvine law professor Veena Dubal tells the Washington Post.

Dubal is one of the consumer advocates behind a new report which notes information released last month by America's consumer-protecting FTC that "suggests that surveillance pricing tools are being actively developed and marketed across a range of industries, including consumer-facing businesses like 'grocery stores, apparel retailers, health and beauty retailers, home goods and furnishing stores, convenience stores, building and hardware stores, and general merchandise retailers such as department or discount stores." The consumer advocates (which include the Electronic Privacy Information Center) put it this way.

"Imagine walking into a grocery store and seeing a price for milk that's higher than what the next shopper pays because an algorithm calculated that you're willing to spend more..."

California sued to fine a data-harvesting company, reports the Washington Post, calling it "a rare step to put muscle behind one of the strongest online privacy laws in the United States." Even when states have tried to restrict data brokers, it has been tough to make those laws stick. That has generally been a problem for the 19 states that have passed broad laws to protect personal information, said Matt Schwartz, a policy analyst for Consumer Reports. He said there has been only 15 or so public enforcement actions by regulators overseeing all those laws. Partly because companies aren't held accountable, they're empowered to ignore the privacy standards. "Noncompliance is fairly widespread," Schwartz said. "It's a major problem."

That's why California is unusual with a data broker law that seems to have teeth. To make sure state residents can order all data brokers operating in the state to delete their personal records [with a single request], California is now requiring brokers to register with the state or face a fine of $200 a day. The state's privacy watchdog said Thursday that it filed litigation to force one data broker, National Public Data, to pay $46,000 for failing to comply with that initial phase of the data broker law. NPD declined to comment through an attorney... This first lawsuit for noncompliance, Schwartz said, shows that California is serious about making companies live up to their privacy obligations... "If they can successfully build it and show it works, it will create a blueprint for other states interested in this idea," he said.
Last summer NPD "spilled hundreds of millions of Americans' Social Security Numbers, addresses, and phone numbers online," according to the blog Krebs on Security, adding that another NPD data broker sharing access to the same consumer records "inadvertently published the passwords to its back-end database in a file that was freely available from its homepage..."

California's attempt to regulate the industry inspired the nonprofit Consumer Reports to create an app called Permission Slip that reveals what data companies collect and, for people in U.S. states, will "work with you to file a request, telling companies to stop selling your personal information."

Other data-protecting options suggested by The Washington Post:

• Use Firefox, Brave or DuckDuckGo, "which can automatically tell websites not to sell or share your data. Those demands from the web browsers are legally binding or will be soon in at least nine states."

• Use Privacy Badger, an EFF browser extension which the EFF says "automatically tells websites not to sell or share your data including where it's required by state law."

The Register's Lindsay Clark reports: Fifteen years of big data hype, and guess what? Less than one in four of those in charge of analytics projects actually measure the value of the activity to the organization they work for. The result from Gartner -- a staggering one considering the attention heaped on big data and its various hype-oriented successors -- found that in a survey of chief data and analytics (D&A) officers, only 22 percent had defined, tracked, and communicated business impact metrics for the bulk of their data and analytics use cases.

It wasn't for lack of interest though. For more than 90 percent of the 504 respondents, value-focused and outcome-focused areas of the D&A leader's role have gained dominance over the past 12 to 18 months, and will continue to be a concern in the future. It is difficult, though: 30 percent of respondents say their top challenge is the inability to measure data, analytics and AI impact on business outcomes.

"There is a massive value vibe around data, where many organizations talk about the value of data, desire to be data-driven, but there are few who can substantiate it," said Michael Gabbard, senior director analyst at Gartner. He added that while most chief data and analytics officers were responsible for data strategy, a third do not see putting in place an operating model as a primary responsibility. "There is a perennial gap between planning and execution for D&A leaders," he said.

OpenAI has banned a group of Chinese accounts using ChatGPT to develop an AI-powered social media surveillance tool. Engadget reports: The campaign, which OpenAI calls Peer Review, saw the group prompt ChatGPT to generate sales pitches for a program those documents suggest was designed to monitor anti-Chinese sentiment on X, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and other platforms. The operation appears to have been particularly interested in spotting calls for protests against human rights violations in China, with the intent of sharing those insights with the country's authorities.

"This network consisted of ChatGPT accounts that operated in a time pattern consistent with mainland Chinese business hours, prompted our models in Chinese, and used our tools with a volume and variety consistent with manual prompting, rather than automation," said OpenAI. "The operators used our models to proofread claims that their insights had been sent to Chinese embassies abroad, and to intelligence agents monitoring protests in countries including the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom."

According to Ben Nimmo, a principal investigator with OpenAI, this was the first time the company had uncovered an AI tool of this kind. "Threat actors sometimes give us a glimpse of what they are doing in other parts of the internet because of the way they use our AI models," Nimmo told The New York Times. Much of the code for the surveillance tool appears to have been based on an open-source version of one of Meta's Llama models. The group also appears to have used ChatGPT to generate an end-of-year performance review where it claims to have written phishing emails on behalf of clients in China.

According to The Information (paywalled), OpenAI plans to shift most of its computing power from Microsoft to SoftBank-backed Stargate by 2030. TechCrunch reports: That represents a major shift away from Microsoft, OpenAI's biggest shareholder, who fulfills most of the startup's power needs today. The change won't happen overnight. OpenAI still plans to increase its spending on Microsoft-owned data centers in the next few years.

During that time, OpenAI's overall costs are set to grow dramatically. The Information reports that OpenAI projects to burn $20 billion in cash during 2027, far more than the $5 billion it reportedly burned through in 2024. By 2030, OpenAI reportedly forecasts that its costs around running AI models, also known as inference, will outpace what the startup spends on training AI models.