OpenAI President @gdb on the company's plan to merge chatbots and agents. (Full Big Technology AI Summit interview.)

Imagine having a system designed for this very purpose

I love that a beekeeper saved a baseball game last night, threw out a first pitch, amped up the crowd, and did postgame interviews. Make him the MLB commissioner.

RIP translators. But also, damn, this technology is going to make language barriers obsolete.

ChatGPT is getting training updates and lying about them

More proof NYC is the best city in the world. Blackout hits, @hadestown takes the show to the sidewalk. (Via @misskimizzo)

This is incredible. Firefighters for the win (via @maz_jovanovich)

This website lolll

The meme that Elon cut 75% of Twitter and the service works just fine is a bit off. Many of those cuts were in the sales org and revenue is down 40%. That's not working fine.

Breitbart editor declares war following Bannon's exit, then Twitter does its thing:

Elon switched his paperwork last week from passive to activist investor. He’s no longer bound by the agreement that caps the amount of Twitter he can own. He seems mad. Only getting more interesting from here.

Holy, this is nuts. Wingsuit landing into a moving plane.

Mr. Beast paid for 1,000 people to have blindness curing surgery, raised awareness for it, and this is the reaction. buzzfeednews.com/article/kel…

BREAKING: Facebook blocks Trump from accessing his accounts indefinitely, per Zuckerberg. "We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great." facebook.com/zuck/posts/1011…

Fantastic twitter own right here

From Italy: “Many of us were too selfish to follow suggestions to change our behavior. Now we’re in lockdown and people are needlessly dying.” bostonglobe.com/2020/03/13/o…

Finally, some good news: Cleveland Clinic develops COVID-19 test that gives results in hours, not days. cleveland19.com/2020/03/12/c…

I think we’re all under appreciating “EH!POCALYPSE NOW” which is Pulitzer-worthy in my opinion

First tweet on Thursday. Resignation Friday.

Inflation going over well in New York

Choose your fighter

This is good TV

Texas Judge: "I can’t understand this. If someone at the jail takes your wallet, they give you a receipt. They take your kids, and you get nothing? Not even a slip of paper?" washingtonpost.com/outlook/f…

The SNL ⚠️BeReal⚠️ sketch just absolutely nails it 😂😂

Hi, I'm Tim Cook. And today I'm so very excited to introduce the Apple Lawnmower.

Meta fired employees making $400,000+ per year for using $25 meal credits on toothpaste ft.com/content/7d1a2738-2518…

Zuck's longevity remains remarkable

This is the most important line of @RonanFarrow's Musk piece. His power comes from the state's total failure to build basic infrastructure. newyorker.com/magazine/2023/…

New: @elonmusk emailed me about his plan for AI news on X. The idea is to use AI to blend breaking news and commentary, building real-time summaries of events. Then you can go deeper via chat on Grok. Here's the full story! I'll be talking more about this on Big Technology Podcast later today. Elon Musk’s Plan For AI News Elon Musk emailed me this week with some surprising details about his plan to distill and present news on X using AI. I’d written him after trying Grok — X’s AI chatbot — and noticing it didn’t link to a Time story it summarized. I wanted to click into the article and read more, so I reached out. Musk said better citations are coming, but shared a deeper vision for the product, which he wants to build into a real-time synthesizer of news and social media reaction. Effectively, his plan is to use AI to combine breaking news and social commentary around big stories, present the compilation live, and allow you to go deeper via chat. “As more information becomes available, the news summary will update to include that information,” Musk told me. “The goal is simple: to provide maximally accurate and timely information, citing the most significant sources.” That goal won’t be easy to achieve, but the bot might become a novel news product given its access to the X firehose. “Grok is analyzing sometimes tens of thousands of X posts to render a news summary,” Musk said. Already, Grok is displaying a running list of headlines and incorporating social reaction into its summaries, including the chatter around the Time story I sought about Trump’s potential second term. Grok has plenty of room to improve — and will have to figure out issues like citation and hallucination — but it could be valuable if X gets the execution is right. “That's actually what I used to come to Twitter for — news and commentary,” @semaforben, editor-in-chief of Semafor and author of Traffic, told me. Conversation on X will make up the core of Grok’s summaries — or, really almost all of it. Musk said Grok will not look directly at article text, and will instead rely solely on social posts. “It’s summarizing what people say on X,” he said. “Definitely needs to do a better job of displaying relevant posts, including, for example, the TIME post that links to the article.” Musk’s approach will make Grok distinct from all AI news summarizers, and likely more controversial, but there is an opportunity to satisfy users, publishers, and the platform together. It starts with solid citation, giving users a way to go deeper into the source material once their curiosity is piqued. Josh Miller (@joshm), CEO of The Browser Company, whose Arc browser is doing AI summarization, told me that platforms, users, and publishers could all win with aggressive citation. “People want trust in the data,” he said. “They want to understand where it's coming from. And more importantly, if we do a good job giving them what they want, they want more of it. They get more curious. They want to read deeper.” Grok could similarly be an entry point to news stories that people might otherwise not see, giving them more reason to come back and engage. “I definitely don't go to Time.com,” Miller said. “So if that was pushed to me, I would probably go read that Time article. And I wouldn't have seen it otherwise.” Igor Babuschkin, a technical staff member working at Musk’s xAI, said his team is focused on “making Grok understand the news purely from what is posted on X.” Regarding citation, he said that “since news is often discussed on X, this can sometimes lead to Grok making references to existing news outlets. We are working on improving the citations so that we reliably capture who the information in the article comes from.” For publishers, the value exchange on social media has long been fraught, and this time’s no different. News companies’ work — like the Time article — drives news cycles. Summarizing that work without a prominent link back could cut them off from the economic reward, harming their ability to produce more. That said, publishers are moving away from subsisting on social media traffic, which has always been tenuous, even as the fallout’s been brutal for the industry. “As an editor in this basically post-Twitter news environment, I would much rather the platform was taking my content than taking my journalists’ time,” Semafor’s Smith said. Building summaries just from the posts on X — and not the articles themselves — could give X some distance from the publisher lawsuits hitting AI companies. Eight newspapers sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement this week, for instance. And the New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft as well. Courts tend to include commentary under the provision for fair use, as opposed to original work, said Danielle Coffey, president and CEO of the News/Media Alliance, which represents thousands of news publishers. But using just commentary to summarize the original source, she said, “is a bit too cute by half though.” Under Musk, X seemed to initially deprioritize news — with the temporary removal of headlines from articles, verification revocations, and some initial algorithm changes — but Musk’s emails demonstrate that he still views news as a core X capacity. It’s a potential competitive advantage as competitors like Meta’s Threads distance themselves from news. In a perfect world, original sources and commentary could blend in Grok, drawing details from insiders, analysis from outsiders, and commentary from the herd. Leaders at Twitter had long dreamed of such a scenario. And perhaps the latest breakthroughs in generative AI have made it worth trying once more. Full story: bigtechnology.com/p/elon-mus…

Zuckerberg, Trump, Melania, and Thiel had a secret dinner at the White House last month. Facebook has been preaching political transparency. Yet it didn't disclose this. nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/t…

These Signal ads are amazing. Facebook banned them for being a little bit too relevant. signal.org/blog/the-instagra…

Did anyone at Google give this layoff a minute of thought? Or maybe this was intentional. Damn.

Meet the new voice of the Google Assistant: @johnlegend Coming soon, Google announces at #io2018

Don Lemon on CNN right now: "Open your eyes, America. We are teetering on a dictatorship."

Ever since I saw the shape of Dan Crenshaw's district I haven't stopped thinking about it. WTF is this.

Trump's digital director Gary Coby just tried this out. Twitter blocked his account out within five minutes.

A New Jersey woman got charged with violating the state's stay at home order after she went outside to throw a molotov cocktail at her boyfriend's house. courierpostonline.com/story/…

In case you were wondering how much Sam Altman mattered to Microsoft. I'm gonna go with A LOT.

So how does Trump respond to this

Crazy: Perplexity CEO @AravSrinivas told me he'd agreed to hire someone from Google. Then Google didn't just match that person's salary, but 4X'd it. Nuts.

Can we all agree this is the world’s dumbest invention

News: Twitter will allow its employees to work from home forever. @jack just emailed the company about it. Details here: buzzfeednews.com/article/ale…

An Amazon worker died of a heart attack, laying on floor for 20 mins before someone spotted him “A couple of days before, he put the wrong product in the wrong bin and within two minutes management saw it on camera and came down to talk to him about it” theguardian.com/technology/2…

Man, if we find out there were people typing behind ChatGPT this entire time...

Man wearing nothing but a mask just passed me in San Francisco. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

This whole Bitcoin laundering case is just so insane nytimes.com/2022/02/13/nyreg…

LOL. Elon Musk to Facebook AI VP. That's one way to end an argument.

Two well-liked Twitter employees accessed thousands of users’ private information and illegally passed it to the Saudi Royal Family, per the FBI. It is a crazy story. With many twists and turns, including a fake invoice, an escape from SF, and more. buzzfeednews.com/article/ale…

Translation: We lied to you. Willfully. Repeatedly. Now we're coming clean. But only because a defamation suit would nuke us out of existence if we don't. americanthinker.com/blog/202…

This remains funny

Robinhood is now hated by retail investors, Wall Street hedge funds, Ted Cruz, and AOC. Good luck with this one folks.

I think you know how silly this entire plan has been

Fairly remarkable note from @mtaibbi. “I didn’t bother to take this possibility seriously enough. To readers who trust me not to make those misjudgments, I’m sorry.” taibbi.substack.com/p/note-t…

Wow. This is absolutely insane. macrumors.com/2022/10/24/app…

Well @jack just periscoped to everyone, seemed to start giving some internal updates, and then says "I just realized this is live" and signed off.

Holy crap, this is incredible: nytimes.com/2016/10/17/techn…

This is some 🔥🔥🔥🔥 from the head of Facebook's AI research:

Put this man in the debates

Strong favorite for a Quarantine Award 😂😂😂 nitter.app/TheRealPRLady/status/1…

All the CEOs who are like, "Man, I wish I could do that" are you willing to cut revenue in half too?

You might have missed it, but Snapchat's product is absolutely booming. It's now used by 115 million more people each day than Twitter. Yes, you read that right.

Finally, a task too big for @elonmusk

Here’s a TikTok posted this weekend about work in an Amazon Fullfillment Center...

Conservatives call for a protest in front of an empty Twitter HQ. The only person who shows up is someone with an anti-Trump sign. Gotta love San Francisco.

Crazy story, but one of my stories was plagiarized by a new Substack using AI last week. I found the writer used AI tools to lift the work, remix it, and pass it off as their own. Here’s what happened 👉 bigtechnology.com/p/a-writer…

How does anyone take this guy seriously?

PayPal paid $4 billion for Honey, a browser extension that helps you shop smart online. Now, this is showing up at the top of Amazon:

When the odds look long. When the challenges seem insurmountable. Don't give up. There's still a chance. As this guy who dropped his AirPod in the tracks today found out: buzzfeed.com/alexkantrowitz/…

Looking forward to reading this tweet again in 18 hours

A VC-backed grocery delivery service just gave me two chocolate bars, a coffee, and $60 in credit to download their app. Capitalism is good.

Narrator: It was bad

Congressman: What about YouTube? Zuck: You're asking me about YouTube?? Congressman: Yes

How many journalists have been attacked this weekend? Vice reporter gets pepper sprayed in the face while on the ground shouting “press” and holding up his ID card.

I’m fairly certain 90% of the people saying “Web3” have no idea what they’re talking about

Jfc @Wendys

One thing we’re now seeing is that Twitter’s old team did a better job than they were credited for

One Twitter advertiser in my DMs: "We have seen major lags in programmatic revenue reporting and complete disorganization on who to communicate with there for normal partner management questions/ issues"

The state of journalism captured in one tweet

Public: Zuck, you running for President? Zuck: Well, here's me meeting with teachers, eating local food and calling people "folks"

Wednesday 1/6: Insurrection Wednesday 1/13: Impeachment Wednesday 1/20: Inauguration Wednesday 1/27*: Gamestop

Tik Tok ban creates another news cycle that’s not coronavirus or economy. Which is the intent.

I don't think you read my tweet

Zuck straight up delivering stump speeches on his Facebook page now

News: Twitter is going to let you add images/GIFs to quote tweets. Starting today. Have fun everyone.

News: Twitter offered Russian television network RT 15% of its US elections ad space. buzzfeed.com/alexkantrowitz/…

News: In Elon Musk's first year, Twitter lost approximately 13% of its daily active users. The rebrand really hurt, with 5% month-over-month daily user drops in August and September. Comprehensive data via Apptopia. Check it out on @BigTechnology --> bigtechnology.com/p/exclusiv…

Australian TV man...

Ad Age has the best 404 error page. Nothing even close.

It's better to be lucky than good

Literally took six days

The whole internet feels like a pirate ship right now

Scott Atlas has resigned. he leaves behind this curve.

Trust but verify

Alex Trebek is a savage

Twitter is simultaneously getting more important and more unbearable

The most Twitter thing to happen next is for Elon to back out of the deal, leaving the company with declining morale, a cratering stock, and cleared out upper ranks

Rule No. 1 about leaving Twitter: If you feel compelled to tweet about leaving, you're probably not leaving

‘Read before you Retweet’ resulted in 40% more article opens. A) Shows how thoughtless and reactive this platform is in its natural state B) Kudos to Twitter for trying. Don’t stop here. pcmag.com/news/twitter-our-r…

Two scary paragraphs

NYC subways are so bad, riders needed to put on a graduation ceremony for stranded straphanger late for the real one

The 2020 general election between Zuck and The Rock is gonna be wild