Microsoft on Tuesday plans to announce a $1.5 billion investment in G42, an artificial intelligence giant in the United Arab Emirates, in a deal largely orchestrated by the Biden administration to box out China as Washington and Beijing battle over who will exercise technological influence in the Gulf region and beyond. Under the partnership, Microsoft … Read more
Signs of turmoil at Tesla multiplied on Monday after the electric car company told employees it would lay off more than 10 percent of the work force to cut costs and two senior executives resigned. The job cuts, amounting to about 14,000 people, come as the company faces increasing competition and declining sales. The management … Read more
The Maryland Legislature this weekend passed two sweeping privacy bills that aim to restrict how powerful tech platforms can harvest and use the personal data of consumers and young people — despite strong objections from industry trade groups representing giants like Amazon, Google and Meta. One bill, the Maryland Online Data Privacy Act, would impose … Read more
Insurance companies have long blamed private-equity-owned hospitals and physician groups for exorbitant billing that drives up health care costs. But a tool backed by private equity is helping insurers make billions of dollars and shift costs to patients. The tool, Data iSight, is the premier offering of a cost-containment firm called MultiPlan that has attracted … Read more
Online data has long been a valuable commodity. For years, Meta and Google have used data to target their online advertising. Netflix and Spotify have used it to recommend more movies and music. Political candidates have turned to data to learn which groups of voters to train their sights on. Over the last 18 months, … Read more
The race to lead A.I. has become a desperate hunt for the digital data needed to advance the technology. To obtain that data, tech companies including OpenAI, Google and Meta have cut corners, ignored corporate policies and debated bending the law, according to an examination by The New York Times. At Meta, which owns Facebook … Read more
Online data has long been a valuable commodity. For years, Meta and Google have used data to target their online advertising. Netflix and Spotify have used it to recommend more movies and music. Political candidates have turned to data to learn which groups of voters to train their sights on. Over the last 18 months, … Read more
OpenAI, Google and other tech companies train their chatbots with huge amounts of data culled from books, Wikipedia articles, news stories and other sources across the internet. But in the future, they hope to use something called synthetic data. That’s because tech companies may exhaust the high-quality text the internet has to offer for the … Read more
On Feb. 26, 1998, hundreds of people gathered to watch a total solar eclipse. The crowd gasped as the moon gobbled up the sun. They oohed and aahed as the feathery streams of the top of the solar atmosphere burst into view. Applause erupted moments later, when the sun peeked back out from behind the … Read more
Stripe, a payments start-up, is one of the most successful companies to emerge from Silicon Valley in a generation. Last year, it hit a valuation of $65 billion. But in the 15 years since it was founded, there has not been a way for most individuals to invest in it. It is a problem that … Read more