NerdNews

Meta has confirmed it will cut 5% of its workforce, around 3,700 jobs, as part of a mass redundancy process. The move comes as the company plans to spend $60 billion on AI development in 2025 and focuses on smart glasses. CEO Mark Zuckerberg described 2025 as an 'intense year' for Meta, with a need to 'raise the bar on performance management' and 'move out low-performers faster'.

Elon Musk has made a $97.4 billion bid to buy OpenAI, the company he co-founded in 2015. The bid is backed by a coalition of investors, including Musk's own AI company xAI and venture firms like Valor Equity Partners. OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman has responded with a tweet declining the offer, saying the company will instead consider buying Twitter for $9.74 billion.

Elon Musk leads a group of investors offering $97.4 billion to buy OpenAI, the nonprofit behind ChatGPT, to revert it to its original charitable mission. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman rejects the bid, amid a long-running feud over the startup's direction. Musk and Altman have been at odds since Musk resigned from OpenAI's board in 2018, and the dispute has escalated into a court battle over the company's planned transition to a for-profit corporation.

Elon Musk's team has submitted a $97.4 billion bid to purchase OpenAI, with the goal of refocusing the company on open-source AI. The bid is the latest development in Musk's ongoing dispute with OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman.

Google has expanded its AI-based note-taking and research assistant, NotebookLM Plus, to individual users subscribed to the Google One AI Premium plan. The service offers higher usage limits and premium features, including 5 times more usage than the free version, and is available for $20 a month or $9.99 a month for students.

Cloudflare announced plans to rebuild the web for the AI age, positioning itself as a key player. The company claims to have found optimizations that reduce AI infrastructure requirements and is exploring ways to compensate content creators in the AI-driven web. Cloudflare's serverless 'Workers' are seen as a key component in this effort, with potential for faster performance and lower prices.

The article discusses the importance of developing responsible AI frameworks, navigating the evolving regulatory landscape, and implementing MLOps practices to ensure secure, scalable, and efficient management of machine learning models. It also highlights the risks associated with AI systems, such as bias, hallucinations, and security vulnerabilities, and emphasizes the need for comprehensive testing, robust security measures, and explainable AI techniques to build trust and transparency.

Anima Anandkumar, a professor at California Institute of Technology, is using AI to help solve the world’s challenges faster. She has used neural operators, a type of AI framework, to speed up prediction models for extreme weather and work on sustainable nuclear fusion simulations. Her work has led to the development of FourCastNet, an AI-based high-resolution weather model that is tens of thousands of times faster than traditional weather models.

OpenAI is designing its own AI processor to decrease dependence on Nvidia hardware, with plans to send chip designs to TSMC for fabrication. The custom chip aims to improve AI model performance and give OpenAI leverage in negotiations with chip suppliers.

A study by Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University found that relying on AI tools can lead to a decline in critical thinking skills, as workers become less engaged in tasks and less confident in their ability to evaluate AI output. The study suggests that over-reliance on AI can result in a loss of cognitive abilities and diminished independent problem-solving.

A 25-year-old Alabama man, Eric Council Jr., has pleaded guilty to a SIM swapping attack on the US Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) X account. The attack allowed him to post a fake announcement about Bitcoin ETF approval, causing a temporary price surge. Council faces up to 5 years in prison and used the attack to gain $50,000 in Bitcoin.

Rivian's electric commercial van is now available for purchase by any commercial business, ending its exclusive deal with Amazon. The vans come in two sizes, RCV 500 and RCV 700, starting at $79,900 and $83,900 respectively. Rivian will sell anywhere from a single van to thousands to individual buyers, but only for commercial use.

Lyft is partnering with Japanese conglomerate Marubeni to bring Mobileye-powered robotaxis to Dallas roads as soon as 2026, with plans to expand to thousands of vehicles in other cities. The launch will serve as Lyft's pilot program for Mobileye AVs, as the company scrambles to compete with Uber's autonomous vehicle partnerships.

Lyft plans to launch fully autonomous robotaxis powered by Mobileye in Dallas as soon as 2026, with Marubeni owning and financing the vehicles. The company aims to scale to thousands of vehicles across multiple cities, starting with Dallas. This move marks a significant step in Lyft's autonomous ride-hailing plans, following its previous partnerships and investments in the space.

Chinese automaker BYD is adding 'high-level' self-driving technology to its budget-friendly $10,000 electric car, the Seagull. The technology, called 'God's Eye', will be available on multiple BYD models, including the Seagull, Ocean, Han, Song, and Yuan lineups, as well as its hybrid vehicles. This move could potentially rival Tesla's autonomous driving technology and make self-driving cars more accessible to the masses.

The Academy is considering making disclosure of AI use in films mandatory due to controversies surrounding The Brutalist and other films. Currently, the use of AI in film production is optional, but the Academy may change this to provide more transparency.

A federal judge has ruled that the US Treasury is more vulnerable to hacking due to access granted to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk. The judge ordered the destruction of accessed data and restricted future access to sensitive information. This decision comes after concerns were raised about the security risks posed by DOGE's access to Treasury systems and data.

Roblox, Discord, OpenAI, and Google have launched a nonprofit organization called ROOST to provide free, open-source safety tools to public and private organizations, focusing on child safety and detecting child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The organization aims to build scalable and interoperable safety infrastructure suited for the AI era.

Over 60 European companies, including tech giants and startups, have joined the EU AI Champions Initiative to simplify EU rules on AI and data. The initiative aims to establish Europe as a leader in AI and streamline the bloc's regulations to foster innovation. The companies believe that the current rules are overly complicated and are hindering the adoption of AI in the region.

The UK government has secretly ordered Apple to create a backdoor for iCloud, allowing authorities to access encrypted cloud storage data. Critics argue this sets a dangerous global precedent, undermining encryption and putting user data at risk. Apple may stop offering the encryption feature in the UK rather than comply.