Slack is under attack … and you don’t want that

Plus: OpenAI is not aligned with its Superalignment team

View this email online in your browser By Christine Hall Friday, May 17, 2024 Good afternoon, and welcome back to TechCrunch PM. We made it to Friday, and your reward is some great stories by my colleagues. I invite you to sit back, relax and take in some of the happenings at Slack, OpenAI, Microsoft and YouTube. There is also a Pitch Deck Teardown and news of a security bug giving students free laundry. TechCrunch Top 3 Image Credits: TechCrunch Slack users at odds with company's AI strategy: What started off with a note on Hacker News about how Slack trains its AI services ended up turning into a lesson in reading the fine print. Read more This OpenAI team found itself "sailing against the wind": Kyle Wiggers got a scoop that OpenAI's "Superalignment team" was promised 20% of the company's compute resources, but often had requests for a fraction of that compute denied, blocking the team from doing their work. Read more Two UC Santa Cruz students walk into a laundry room: And discovered they could remotely tell the machines to run laundry cycles for free. They tried contacting the laundry machine operators about the security bug, but to no avail. The vulnerability seems to continue today. Read more Afternoon must-reads Image Credits: Dave Whitney / Getty Images WebTPA discloses data breach: It happened in December 2023 and affected almost 2.5 million people, some of whom had their Social Security number stolen. Little more is known except that the breach occurred on a network server. Read more Inside IndieBio's latest cohort: Devin Coldewey thought some of the startups in the accelerator program were making some "major, bordering on ludicrous, claims that could pay off in a big way." He spoke with IndieBio's chief science officer, Wes Dang, about it. Read more Microsoft's Mistral AI dodges a U.K. probe: The country's Competition and Markets Authority concluded that the partnership "does not qualify for investigation under the merger provisions of the Enterprise Act 2002." However, Microsoft's Inflection hires and Amazon's Anthropic deal were not so lucky. Read more Pitch Deck Teardown: Haje digs into Goodcarbon's $5.5 million seed deck. Find out what about the carbon credits company has him saying, "abso-frickin-lutely." Read more YouTube expands "multiview" feature: The feature, which first launched in March 2023, is aimed at sports viewers who want to keep up with more than one live game at a time without having to constantly change channels. This new multiview feature for watching four streams at once is now available on Android phones and tablets. Read more AI's busy week, and why the heck are so many VCs leaving their firms?: If there was one thing we heard about this week, it was AI. TechCrunch's Equity podcast is breaking down what you missed from OpenAI's and Google's events, key startup raises from the week, and why some VCs are leaving their firms behind. Listen here Around the web Image Credits: Getty Images/Patra Kongsirimongkolchai / EyeEm Mark Cuban hearts this startup: Forbes reports on Genetesis, a company out of Cincinnati that measures signals from the heart. Read more Boeing shareholders not ready to say goodbye: CNN reports that Boeing shareholders voted to give almost $33 million in pay to outgoing CEO Dave Calhoun and said he can stay on the airplane maker's board. Read more Microsoft has got game: "Call of Duty," to be exact. The Wall Street Journal reports Microsoft will release the next installment of the popular game as part of its subscription service rather than à la carte. Read more TechCrunch Minute Here's why the video portal between NYC and Dublin shut down: Come to find out, the real world is … well, real. That's right, humans did their human thing and took advantage of what was meant to be an artistic connection between two cities. Sadly, due to poor behavior, the Portal didn't last six days when it was supposed to be up for six months. Some people are working to get the Portal up and running again. Hit play and let's chat! Has this been forwarded to you? Click here to subscribe to this newsletter. Got a tip? tips@techcrunch.com Question about our events? events@techcrunch.com Want to advertise on TechCrunch.com? advertise@techcrunch.com Interested in sponsoring live events? sponsors@techcrunch.com Update your preferences here at any time Copyright © 2024 TechCrunch, All rights reserved.Yahoo Inc. 110 5th St,San Francisco,CA Privacy Policy

Hey ChatGPT: Am I the a**hole?

OpenAI can now trawl Reddit's posts and comments to train its LLM.

View this email online in your browser By Rebecca Bellan Friday, May 17, 2024 Welcome to TechCrunch AM! How are we feeling about OpenAI now being able to train its algorithms on Reddit data? Reddit's stock soared after the news, but what do the rest of us get for our efforts? In other news, Zuckerberg's new style is kind of a problem, the EU wants more info from Microsoft on genAI OR ELSE, and CoreWeave raises billions more. Let's dive in! — Rebecca TechCrunch Top 3 Image Credits: TechCrunch 1. OpenAI 🤝Reddit: Get ready for ChatGPT to get even more conversational. OpenAI can now use the millions of pages of comments and posts on Reddit to train its AI models. Reddit will also get some new "AI-powered features." This is a big deal with huge implications for the future of Reddit, OpenAI, and probably all of us. Read More 2. Finding community on X: The social media service formerly known as Twitter has revamped its Communities feature, which gives users a chance to congregate around topics of interest. You get improved discovery tools, recommendations, search and sorting options. The goal, it seems, is to make Communities into something that could rival Reddit in terms of information accessibility – only this will be for people who pay for X. Read More 3. EU threatens to fine Microsoft: The European Union has warned Microsoft that it could be fined billions, or up to 1% of its global annual turnover, for failing to provide information about the risk of its generative AI tools. Specifically, the Commission is seeking more info on Bing's genAI tools. Microsoft has until May 27 to supply the requested data or risk getting fined. Read More Morning Must Reads Image Credits: Seraphim Space  Seraphim Space launches yet another accelerator: U.K.-based VC Seraphim Space is spinning up its 13th accelerator program. Nine companies are participating from across a range of space tech, including propulsion, in-space manufacturing and space situational awareness. The goal is to get these companies "investment ready" over the span of 12 weeks. Hopefully at least some of them reach escape velocity. Read More Synapse can't get a break: Banking-as-a-service startup Synapse is not having a good time. A U.S. Trustee has filed to convert the company's Chapter 11 bankruptcy into a Chapter 7 liquidation procedure, saying the startup has "grossly" mismanaged its estate. Synapse is apparently hemorrhaging money so badly, there's almost no chance a debt reorganization would allow it to come out the other side intact. Read More Kudos for maximizing credit card rewards: Kudos has raised $10 million for its AI-powered smart wallet that recommends the right credit card to use so you can maximize rewards and get cash back on purchases. The startup uses AI to suss out your spending habits and provide more personalized financial advice. The startup's CEO says Kudos is like if Apple Pay, Honey and Credit Karma had a baby, which is quite the apt description. Read More Embedded finance is still hot: British embedded tax startup Ember has partnered with HSBC in the U.K., giving the bank's business customers access to its service. The deal could give Ember hundreds of thousands of customers in a single partnership, and it signals that embedded finance is still very much on trend in fintech. Read More Around the Web Bye bye twitter.com: X has officially adopted X.com for its core systems, The Verge reports. So when you type Twitter.com into your browser, you'll be redirected to X.com. I just tried it, and that didn't happen for me. Like much of Musk's takeover of Twitter, the transition hasn't been very smooth this time around either. Read More Can social media be more fun with no followers? Maven, a new social media platform co-founded by OpenAI alum Kenneth Stanley, aims to provide a healthier alternative to current platforms, reports Wired. Rather than incentivizing people to gather hordes of followers and their likes and attention, Maven wants to create more serendipity in people's lives. The AI concept powering Maven, called "open-endedness," helps users learn more about topics they follow, like computers or consciousness. Read More CoreWeave raises $7.5 billion: New Jersey-based AI and cloud-computing startup CoreWeave has raised a whopping $7.5 billion from bigwig investors like Blackstone, BlackRock and Carlyle Group, The Wall Street Journal reports. This debt financing round follows a $1.1 billion equity round two weeks ago that valued the company at $19 billion. Read More Before You Go Image Credits: Jeff Bottari / Getty Images The danger of Zuckerberg's fashion sense: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has ditched the gray t-shirt and Roman Emperor Augustus haircut in favor of his natural curls and a gold chain, going from a steal-your-data dweeb to a steal-your-girl dude. TC's Amanda Silberling asks, If Zuck is suddenly a fashionable MMA fighter instead of a nerd profiting off our data, could his style shield him from scrutiny? Read More Has this been forwarded to you? Click here to subscribe to this newsletter. Got a tip? tips@techcrunch.com Question about our events? events@techcrunch.com Want to advertise on TechCrunch.com? advertise@techcrunch.com Interested in sponsoring live events? sponsors@techcrunch.com Update your preferences here at any time Copyright © 2024 TechCrunch, All rights reserved.Yahoo Inc. 110 5th St,San Francisco,CA Privacy Policy