NerdNews

Elon Musk's $97.4 billion bid for OpenAI could stall the company's plans to convert to a for-profit entity. OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, has dismissed the bid, but the company's board will have to consider it seriously due to its significant value. The bid may raise the potential market value of OpenAI's assets and complicate its corporate restructuring plans.

Apple has reportedly partnered with Alibaba to bring its Apple Intelligence platform to China, after rejecting a potential partnership with DeepSeek. The deal comes ahead of Apple's anticipated fourth-generation iPhone SE launch and aims to fill the vacuum left by domestic phone makers in China.

YouTube introduces new AI tools, including auto-dubbing expansion, age-identifying tech, and more, to aid creators and enhance user experience. These updates aim to improve content creation, translation, and recommendation, while also addressing concerns around AI-generated content.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has publicly rejected an unsolicited offer from Elon Musk to purchase OpenAI for $97.4 billion. Altman stated that OpenAI is not for sale and its mission is not for sale, characterizing Musk's offer as an attempt to throw a wrench in the works at OpenAI. The two have been publicly trading barbs over the past few years, with Musk criticizing Altman's plans to transition portions of OpenAI into a for-profit company.

OpenAI released o3-mini, a reasoning LLM optimized for STEM applications, outperforming the full o1 model on science, math, and coding benchmarks with lower response latency. o3-mini supports web search, function calling, structured outputs, and streaming responses, and is available to users with ChatGPT Plus, Team, and Pro plans.

Microsoft has released two open source extensions for PostgreSQL, pg_documentdb_core and pg_documentdb_api, to support document-style data and MongoDB-compatible commands. The move aims to blur the lines between relational and non-relational databases and provide a schema-light approach for developers. The extensions can be used with FerretDB, an open source MongoDB alternative, and are set to run on the Azure Cosmos DB PostgreSQL database service.

A study by Anthropic found that only 4% of occupations rely heavily on AI, with peak usage in mid-to-high-wage roles such as IT and software engineering. The research also found that AI is augmenting human work in 57% of cases and automating work in 43% of cases. The study's findings suggest that AI's impact is not yet broadly felt, but it has transformed certain jobs, particularly those in tech, media, and education.

A new study by Epoch AI suggests that ChatGPT's energy consumption is approximately 0.3 watt-hours per query, lower than the previously estimated 3 watt-hours. This is due to the use of more efficient AI models like GPT-4o. However, as AI usage expands, energy demands are expected to increase, with AI data centers potentially requiring enormous power capacity in the coming years.

Michael Friedrich discusses how AI can be used to improve DevSecOps workflows, including code creation, testing, and security scanning. He highlights the importance of establishing guardrails for AI and measuring its impact on workflows.

Micronaut Framework 4.7.0 provides integration with LangChain4j, allowing developers to use large language models in Java applications. It also includes the Micronaut Graal Languages module, which integrates Graal-based dynamic languages like GraalPy. The release supports various chat language models and embedding stores, with example projects available on GitHub.

Saudi Arabia's Neom project, a massive urban development effort, has announced a $5 billion AI data center project with DataVolt, aiming to create a sustainable and data-driven economy. The data center will be built in Neom's Oxagon region and will integrate energy-efficient architectures to address global challenges posed by traditional data centers.

Cisco is integrating AMD's Pensando data processing units (DPUs) into its switches to handle security, storage, and other tasks. The new switches, announced at Cisco Live Amsterdam, feature an in-house ASIC from Cisco's Silicon One family and will be available this spring and summer. The DPUs will offload data-intensive workloads from the rest of the appliance, improving performance and security.

Microsoft has added 389 megawatts of renewable power to its portfolio to meet the power demands required for its AI ambitions. The company has contracted nearly 20 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity and is buying a mix of electricity and renewable energy credits to cover demand elsewhere.

QuEra, a Boston-based quantum computing startup, has raised $230 million in a convertible note led by Google. The company plans to use the funding to build a 'useful' fully quantum computer in the next three to five years. QuEra is working on a neutral atom quantum supercomputer, which relies on using lasers to cool atoms in the computing process to reduce errors. The company has already generated revenue through the sale of a quantum computer to Japan and offers cloud services on AWS.

Harrison.ai, an Australian health tech startup, has raised $112 million in Series C funding to scale its international reach. The company offers AI-enabled medical diagnostic software and services to analyze CT scans, X-rays, and pathology slides for radiologists and medical examiners.

The US military is developing and deploying unmanned surface vessels (USVs) for various tasks, including surveillance, reconnaissance, and combat. These drone boats have proven effective in recent conflicts, such as in Ukraine and the Red Sea, and are being used by multiple countries, including the US, China, and Iran. The US Navy is investing heavily in USV technology, with initiatives like Project 33 and the Replicator program, to prepare for potential future wars with near-peer adversaries.

France plans to build one gigawatt of new nuclear power to support its AI ambitions, with private investments totaling $112.5 billion. The project, led by FluidStack, aims to start work in Q3 2024 and have 250 megawatts of power linked to AI-computing chips by 2026.

A previously unknown gang dubbed Triplestrength is targeting organizations with a triple threat of ransomware, cloud hijacking, and crypto-mining. The gang, which has been tracked by Google's threat intelligence group since 2023, uses ransomware-as-a-service models and has been linked to compromised cloud accounts on Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, and Linode. The gang's activities have resulted in significant financial losses for affected organizations, with costs potentially reaching hundreds of thousands of dollars in cloud computing fees.

The Sandworm Russian military cyber-espionage group is targeting Windows users in Ukraine with trojanized Microsoft Key Management Service (KMS) activators and fake Windows updates, deploying DarkCrystal RAT malware to steal sensitive information.

BYD unveiled 'God's Eye', an advanced driver assistance system to be installed on all models, including its $9,600 Seagull hatchback, offering features like remote parking and highway autonomous navigation, rivaling Tesla's technology