Enlarge / FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried arrives at US District Court on March 30, 2023, in New York City after being hit with a criminal charge for allegedly authorizing a bribe of at least $40 million to one or more Chinese government officials. (credit: Getty Images | Michael Santiago )

Convicted FTX fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison today, according to news reports.

The founder and ex-CEO of cryptocurrency exchange FTX was sentenced this morning by Judge Lewis Kaplan in US District Court for the Southern District of New York. Bankman-Fried had requested a sentence of 63 to 78 months (5.25 to 6.5 years), arguing that he deserved leniency because of his "charitable works and demonstrated commitment to others."

Kaplan ordered a forfeiture of $11 billion but did not order restitution "due to the complexity of the case and the number of victims," the court docket said. Kaplan instead authorized the US to compensate victims with "forfeited assets through a remission process, as restitution would be impractical in this case."

Enlarge / The Galaxy S24 line. (credit: Samsung)

Electric design is a field full of varying opinions and trade-offs. Companies agonize over the physical shapes of their devices and the materials used, all trying to create a high-quality, premium-feeling device that fits with the constraints of mass production. Material choices usually center around cost, feeling, and durability, but how often do manufacturers take into account smell? Samsung users are finding that if you pop out the Galaxy S24 Ultra's "S-Pen" stylus and give it a whiff like you're huffing a marker, you'll find that it... smells bad?

9to5Google found the following incredible post from Reddit user "LatifYil" titled, "Why does my s pen smell so bad?" The post has almost 250 comments of users all mostly agreeing with the post's sentiment that "the S-Pen in my Galaxy S24 Ultra absolutely reeks. Either I have a sensitive nose or this thing is being barbequed by the internals while it's unsheathed." The top-rated, very-online comment is, "Op got me to smell my pen. Can confirm it's a stinky boi."

Those describing the smell all seem to agree Samsung's stylus often smells like an electrical fire. One user writes that it's "a very burnt and plastics smell." Another says the S23 Ultra stylus "smells like new tech with a hint of burning." A more descriptive commenter says it smells like "an electric mixer that's turned on, but the beaters are jammed up and can't turn, so the motor is overheating." The S-Pen is mostly plastic but has a soft rubber tip, and a lot of users identify that soft bit as the smelly part.

Enlarge / FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (R) departs Manhattan Federal Court after an arraignment hearing on March 30, 2023, in New York City. (credit: Drew Angerer / Staff | Getty Images News)

The CEO of FTX Trading, John Ray, sent a letter to Judge Lewis Kaplan Wednesday to correct what he called "callously" and "demonstrably false" claims that disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried made in hopes of receiving a lighter sentence for crimes including defrauding FTX customers.

In a sentencing memo, Bankman-Fried asked the court to drastically slash his prison sentence from what he considered a "grotesque" 110-year maximum to five to six years. Prosecutors have suggested the sentence should be between 40 and 50 years, but Bankman-Fried claimed such a sentence painted him as a "depraved supervillain," Bloomberg reported.

The lightest sentence was appropriate, Bankman-Fried claimed, because the "most reasonable estimate of loss" and "harm" to customers, lenders, and investors is "zero."

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When OpenAI launched its GPT-4 AI model a year ago, it created a wave of immense hype and existential panic from its ability to imitate human communication and composition. Since then, the biggest question in AI has remained the same: When is GPT-5 coming out? During interviews and media appearances around the world, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman frequently gets asked this question, and he usually gives a coy or evasive answer, sometimes coupled with promises of amazing things to come.

According to a new report from Business Insider, OpenAI is expected to release GPT-5, an improved version of the AI language model that powers ChatGPT, sometime in mid-2024—and likely during the summer. Two anonymous sources familiar with the company have revealed that some enterprise customers have recently received demos of GPT-5 and related enhancements to ChatGPT.

One CEO who recently saw a version of GPT-5 described it as "really good" and "materially better," with OpenAI demonstrating the new model using use cases and data unique to his company. The CEO also hinted at other unreleased capabilities of the model, such as the ability to launch AI agents being developed by OpenAI to perform tasks automatically.

Enlarge / An AI-generated image released by xAI during the open-weights launch of Grok-1. (credit: xAI)

On Sunday, Elon Musk's AI firm xAI released the base model weights and network architecture of Grok-1, a large language model designed to compete with the models that power OpenAI's ChatGPT. The open-weights release through GitHub and BitTorrent comes as Musk continues to criticize (and sue) rival OpenAI for not releasing its AI models in an open way.

Announced in November, Grok is an AI assistant similar to ChatGPT that is available to X Premium+ subscribers who pay $16 a month to the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. At its heart is a mixture-of-experts LLM called "Grok-1," clocking in at 314 billion parameters. As a reference, GPT-3 included 175 billion parameters. Parameter count is a rough measure of an AI model's complexity, reflecting its potential for generating more useful responses.

xAI is releasing the base model of Grok-1, which is not fine-tuned for a specific task, so it is likely not the same model that X uses to power its Grok AI assistant. "This is the raw base model checkpoint from the Grok-1 pre-training phase, which concluded in October 2023," writes xAI on its release page. "This means that the model is not fine-tuned for any specific application, such as dialogue," meaning it's not necessarily shipping as a chatbot. But it will do next-token prediction, meaning it will complete a sentence (or other text prompt) with its estimation of the most relevant string of text.

Enlarge / OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks during the OpenAI DevDay event on November 6, 2023, in San Francisco. (credit: Getty Images)

On Friday afternoon Pacific Time, OpenAI announced the appointment of three new members to the company's board of directors and released the results of an independent review of the events surrounding CEO Sam Altman's surprise firing last November. The current board expressed its confidence in the leadership of Altman and President Greg Brockman, and Altman is rejoining the board.

The newly appointed board members are Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellmann, former CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Nicole Seligman, former EVP and global general counsel of Sony; and Fidji Simo, CEO and chair of Instacart. These additions notably bring three women to the board after OpenAI met criticism about its restructured board composition last year. In addition, Sam Altman has rejoined the board.

The independent review, conducted by law firm WilmerHale, investigated the circumstances that led to Altman's abrupt removal from the board and his termination as CEO on November 17, 2023. Despite rumors to the contrary, the board did not fire Altman because they got a peek at scary new AI technology and flinched. "WilmerHale... found that the prior Board’s decision did not arise out of concerns regarding product safety or security, the pace of development, OpenAI’s finances, or its statements to investors, customers, or business partners."

Enlarge / Artist's illustration of the OSAM-1 spacecraft (bottom) linking up with the Landsat 7 satellite (top) in orbit. (credit: NASA)

NASA has canceled an over-budget, behind-schedule mission to demonstrate robotic satellite servicing technology in orbit, pulling the plug on a project that has cost $1.5 billion and probably would have cost nearly $1 billion more to get to the launch pad.

The On-orbit Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing 1 mission, known as OSAM-1, would have grappled an aging Landsat satellite in orbit and attempted to refuel it, while also demonstrating how a robotic arm could construct an antenna in space. The spacecraft for the OSAM-1 mission is partially built, but NASA announced Friday that officials decided to cancel the project "following an in-depth, independent project review."

The space agency cited "continued technical, cost, and schedule challenges" for the decision to cancel OSAM-1.

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  OnLeak's render of the Z Fold 6. [credit: https://www.smartprix.com/bytes/exclusive-samsung-galaxy-z-fold-6-say-hello-to-boxy-aesthetics/ ]

Samsung has an event coming up in July, which will see the launch of the Galaxy Ring smart ring and new versions of Samsung's foldable phones, the Galaxy Z Fold and Z Flip. We're up to version six now! Both foldables have had renders posted recently from OnLeaks and Smartprix. These are usually based on CAD files passed around to accessory makers, so they should be spatially accurate down to the millimeter, with some guesses as to the colors, materials, and a few small details.

First up, we have the big foldable, the Galaxy Z Fold 6. This year, the device is getting a boxier design with sharper screen and body corners, making it more in line with the S24 Ultra. The dimensions of what a foldable should be is still something no one can seem to agree on, and the report says the Z Fold 6 is "1.4 mm shorter and 2.6 mm wider" than the Fold 5. The body has the same thickness as last year, 6.1 mm when open, but that doesn't say how much thickness the hinge adds. (The Fold 5 is 13.4 mm when folded.)

The flat sides in the render look great, making the Z Fold look even more book-like than normal. There are three cameras on the back, a hole-punch camera on the front cover screen, and an under-screen camera on the inside. What would help the Z Fold keep pace with the competition is a big battery upgrade: The Z Fold 5 was thicker than the competition yet only packed a 4400 mAh battery. The Pixel Fold and Honor Magic V2 both shipped with a 5000 mAh battery.

Enlarge / Samsung's SD Express-compatible microSD cards. (credit: Samsung)

Big news for people who like (physically) small storage: Samsung says that it is sampling its first microSD cards that support the SD Express standard, which will allow them to hit sustained read speeds of as much as 800MB per second. That's a pretty substantial boost over current SD cards, which tend to top out around 80MB or 90MB per second (for cheap commodity cards) and around 250MB per second for the very fastest UHS-II-compatible professional cards.

As Samsung points out, that 800MB/s figure puts these tiny SD Express cards well above the speeds possible with older SATA SSDs, which could make these cards more useful as primary storage devices for PCs or single-board computers that can support the SD Express standard (more on that later).

Samsung is currently sampling a 256GB version of the SD Express card that "will be available for purchase later this year."

Enlarge / The Galaxy Ring. It's shiny. (credit: Samsung)

Samsung's big item at Mobile World Congress is the odd little "Galaxy Ring," a fitness and health-tracking device shrunk down into a tiny, finger-worn circle. There are fitness rings out there already, like the Oura Ring and a few others, but this is the first one from one of the world's largest tech companies. Samsung already teased this device last month at the Galaxy S24 launch, and what we're getting at MWC are renders, brief glimpses of prototypes, and a few scraps of information.

What can you say about the design of the Galaxy Ring? It's a circle. Samsung's primary color has a shiny metal outside (the colors are not finalized yet) and what looks like a black plastic interior for the ring, which is packed full of sensors. Fitting health-tracking sensors, a battery, CPU, and Bluetooth into a ring form factor is a huge challenge, so it's no surprise that the whole contraption is thicker and wider than a jewelry ring would normally be.

Like all smart rings, the Galaxy Ring is bigger than a normal piece of jewelry. (credit: Samsung)

We don't have a comprehensive list of features, battery size, or other specs right now, but The Verge spoke to Samsung and says the ring can at least track "sleep, activity, resting heart rate, and heart rate variability" and includes period and fertility tracking. All of this data will be built into the Galaxy Health app. The Verge couldn't get a battery-life estimate out of Samsung, but Korean site FNNews was told the ring would last "about 5 to 9 days" before needing to be charged.

Enlarge (credit: Bloomberg / Contributor | Bloomberg)

A judge has dismissed a complaint from a parent and guardian of a girl, now 15, who was sexually assaulted when she was 12 years old after Snapchat recommended that she connect with convicted sex offenders.

According to the court filing, the abuse that the girl, C.O., experienced on Snapchat happened soon after she signed up for the app in 2019. Through its "Quick Add" feature, Snapchat "directed her" to connect with "a registered sex offender using the profile name JASONMORGAN5660." After a little more than a week on the app, C.O. was bombarded with inappropriate images and subjected to sextortion and threats before the adult user pressured her to meet up, then raped her. Cops arrested the adult user the next day, resulting in his incarceration, but his Snapchat account remained active for three years despite reports of harassment, the complaint alleged.

Two years later, at 14, C.O. connected with another convicted sex offender on Snapchat, a former police officer who offered to give C.O. a ride to school and then sexually assaulted her. The second offender is also currently incarcerated, the judge's opinion noted.

Enlarge / Building of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg (France). (credit: SilvanBachmann | iStock / Getty Images Plus)

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that weakening end-to-end encryption disproportionately risks undermining human rights. The international court's decision could potentially disrupt the European Commission's proposed plans to require email and messaging service providers to create backdoors that would allow law enforcement to easily decrypt users' messages.

This ruling came after Russia's intelligence agency, the Federal Security Service (FSS), began requiring Telegram to share users' encrypted messages to deter "terrorism-related activities" in 2017, ECHR's ruling said. A Russian Telegram user alleged that FSS's requirement violated his rights to a private life and private communications, as well as all Telegram users' rights.

The Telegram user was apparently disturbed, moving to block required disclosures after Telegram refused to comply with an FSS order to decrypt messages on six users suspected of terrorism. According to Telegram, "it was technically impossible to provide the authorities with encryption keys associated with specific users," and therefore, "any disclosure of encryption keys" would affect the "privacy of the correspondence of all Telegram users," the ECHR's ruling said.

Enlarge / OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman walks on the House side of the US Capitol on January 11, 2024, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images) (credit: Getty Images)

On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is in talks with investors to raise as much as $5 trillion to $7 trillion for AI chip manufacturing, according to people familiar with the matter. The funding seeks to address the scarcity of graphics processing units (GPUs) crucial for training and running large language models like those that power ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Google Gemini.

The high dollar amount reflects the huge amount of capital necessary to spin up new semiconductor manufacturing capability. "As part of the talks, Altman is pitching a partnership between OpenAI, various investors, chip makers and power providers, which together would put up money to build chip foundries that would then be run by existing chip makers," writes the Wall Street Journal in its report. "OpenAI would agree to be a significant customer of the new factories."

Enlarge (credit: SB Arts Media | iStock / Getty Images Plus)

Law enforcement is continuing to warn that a "flood" of AI-generated fake child sex images is making it harder to investigate real crimes against abused children, The New York Times reported.

Last year, after researchers uncovered thousands of realistic but fake AI child sex images online, every attorney general across the US quickly called on Congress to set up a committee to squash the problem. But so far, Congress has moved slowly, while only a few states have specifically banned AI-generated non-consensual intimate imagery. Meanwhile, law enforcement continues to struggle with figuring out how to confront bad actors found to be creating and sharing images that, for now, largely exist in a legal gray zone.

“Creating sexually explicit images of children through the use of artificial intelligence is a particularly heinous form of online exploitation,” Steve Grocki, the chief of the Justice Department’s child exploitation and obscenity section, told The Times. Experts told The Washington Post in 2023 that risks of realistic but fake images spreading included normalizing child sexual exploitation, luring more children into harm's way and making it harder for law enforcement to find actual children being harmed.

Enlarge / Mark Zuckerberg discussed Meta's approaches to child safety at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing January 31, 2024.

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing weighing child safety solutions on social media, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg stopped to apologize to families of children who committed suicide or experienced mental health issues after using Facebook and Instagram.

"I’m sorry for everything you have all been through," Zuckerberg told families. "No one should go through the things that your families have suffered, and this is why we invest so much, and we are going to continue doing industry-wide efforts to make sure no one has to go through the things your families have had to suffer."

This was seemingly the first time that Zuckerberg had personally apologized to families. It happened after Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) asked Zuckerberg if he had ever apologized and suggested that the Meta CEO personally set up a compensation fund to help the families get counseling.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

On Monday, OpenAI announced a partnership with the nonprofit Common Sense Media to create AI guidelines and educational materials targeted at parents, educators, and teens. It includes the curation of family-friendly GPTs in OpenAI's GPT store. The collaboration aims to address concerns about the impacts of AI on children and teenagers.

Known for its reviews of films and TV shows aimed at parents seeking appropriate media for their kids to watch, Common Sense Media recently branched out into AI and has been reviewing AI assistants on its site.

"AI isn’t going anywhere, so it’s important that we help kids understand how to use it responsibly," Common Sense Media wrote on X. "That’s why we’ve partnered with @OpenAI to help teens and families safely harness the potential of AI."

Enlarge (credit: Charis Morgan; Getty Images)

Wealthy tech entrepreneurs including Elon Musk launched OpenAI in 2015 as a nonprofit research lab that they said would involve society and the public in the development of powerful AI, unlike Google and other giant tech companies working behind closed doors. In line with that spirit, OpenAI’s reports to US tax authorities have from its founding said that any member of the public can review copies of its governing documents, financial statements, and conflict of interest rules.

But when WIRED requested those records last month, OpenAI said its policy had changed, and the company provided only a narrow financial statement that omitted the majority of its operations.

"We provide financial statements when requested,” company spokesperson Niko Felix says. “OpenAI aligns our practices with industry standards, and since 2022 that includes not publicly distributing additional internal documents.”

Enlarge / Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc., during the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, on September 27, 2023. (credit: Getty Images)

On Thursday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that his company is working on building "general intelligence" for AI assistants and "open sourcing it responsibly," and that Meta is bringing together its two major research groups (FAIR and GenAI) to make it happen.

"It's become clearer that the next generation of services requires building full general intelligence," Zuckerberg said in an Instagram Reel. "This technology is so important, and the opportunities are so great that we should open source and make it as widely available as we responsibly can so that everyone can benefit."

Notably, Zuckerberg did not specifically mention the phrase "artificial general intelligence," or AGI, by name in his announcement, but a report from The Verge seems to suggest he is steering in that direction. AGI is a somewhat nebulous term for a hypothetical technology that is equivalent to human intelligence in performing general tasks without the need for specific training. It's the stated goal of Meta competitor OpenAI and one that many have feared might pose an existential threat to humanity or replace humans working intellectual jobs.

Enlarge (credit: Samsung)

Samsung's big Galaxy S24 launch was yesterday, and to hear Samsung tell the story, the big highlight of the event was "Galaxy AI." Another view is that Galaxy AI is the usual bundle of baked-in Samsung features skinned on top of Android, but with generative AI being the hot new thing, Samsung went with AI-centric branding. Whatever value you want to place on Samsung's AI features, it might soon be an actual monetary one: Despite devices like the Galaxy S24 Ultra costing $1,300, Samsung might start charging for some of these AI phone features.

The fine print on Samsung's Galaxy S24 promotional page features 44 asterisks and footnotes, and tucked away in that pile of caveats is the line "Galaxy AI features will be provided for free until the end of 2025 on supported Samsung Galaxy devices." That means Samsung reserves the right to charge for Galaxy AI after 2025.

Enlarge / The back of LG's DukeBox speaker with a transparent OLED screen. (credit: LG Global/YouTube)

CES is a mixed bag featuring real products you might want, announcements about upcoming tech you may not see for years, and vaporware that makes you wonder, "Who would want this?"

But the wacky, wild, and, at times, unrealistic are part of what makes CES, CES. With any hope, some of these developments could lead to innovative new products that consumers could benefit from. While some of the bizarre ideas feel mostly like ways for tech brands to show off, they are also ripe for ridicule.

Either way, let's open our imaginations and check out the most outlandish displays, including concepts and real products, announced at CES 2024.

Enlarge (credit: Naufal MQ via Getty Images)

For those who trade in child sexual exploitation images and videos in the darkest recesses of the Internet, cryptocurrency has been both a powerful tool and a treacherous one. Bitcoin, for instance, has allowed denizens of that criminal underground to buy and sell their wares with no involvement from a bank or payment processor that might reveal their activities to law enforcement. But the public and surprisingly traceable transactions recorded in Bitcoin's blockchain have sometimes led financial investigators directly to pedophiles’ doorsteps.

Now, after years of evolution in that grim cat-and-mouse game, new evidence suggests that online vendors of what was once commonly called “child porn” are learning to use cryptocurrency with significantly more skill and stealth—and that it's helping them survive longer in the Internet's most abusive industry.

Enlarge / The Galaxy S24 render from OnLeaks. This sure does look familiar. (credit: OnLeaks×SmartPrix)

Samsung is gearing up to launch its next big flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S24. The show has officially been announced for January 17, with Samsung's reservation website promising "Zoom with Galaxy AI is coming." Of course, 2023 was the year of generative AI, and Samsung's interest in the technology is a safe bet.

The show will launch the Galaxy S24, which has already leaked quite a bit, with the big news being a new titanium body. The iPhone made titanium the hot new thing recently with the launch of the iPhone 15, and Samsung has taken notice. The best leak so far has been from Windows Report, which scored official press images of the phones. (The report is no longer online due to a DMCA takedown, which is a good sign of its legitimacy.)

The Windows Report photos showed the smaller Galaxy S24 and S24 Plus are getting flat metal sides, reminiscent of the classic iPhone 4/iPhone 15 design. Samsung's usual design of rounded corners and individual camera lenses complete the phone design, and while they look nice, they also look a lot like an iPhone. Older leaks claimed these two cheaper phones were getting titanium bodies, but well-known Samsung leaker Ice Universe says only the bigger model will be titanium, and these cheaper models will be aluminum.

Enlarge (credit: TIMOTHY A. CLARY / Contributor | AFP)

After FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of seven charges related to wire fraud and money laundering in 2023, the US recently decided not to proceed with a second trial over additional charges in 2024.

During the second trial, Bankman-Fried could have been convicted on additional charges of conspiracy to bribe foreign officials, conspiracy to commit bank fraud, conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business, and substantive securities fraud and commodities fraud.

However, in a letter to Judge Lewis Kaplan, US attorney Damian Williams wrote that the "strong public interest" in a prompt resolution of the FTX scandal outweighed the benefits of holding a second trial—especially since "much of the evidence that would be offered in a second trial was already offered in the first trial."

Enlarge / A Huawei Technologies Co. Mate X5 smartphone arranged in Hong Kong, China, on Saturday, Sept. 16, 2023. (credit: Bloomberg via Getty)

Every large smartphone maker except Apple is betting that “foldable” phones will help revive a lacklustre mobile market, despite the devices still largely failing to attract mainstream consumers.

Foldables, which have a screen that opens like a book or compact mirror, barely exceed a 1 per cent market share of all smartphones sold globally almost five years after they were first introduced.

But Samsung has doubled down on the product, investing heavily in marketing this year. In July, the Korean group released its 5G Galaxy Z series.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images (Bloomberg/Antonio Masiello))

Looking back, 2023 will likely be remembered as the year of the fallen crypto bro.

While celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Matt Damon last year faced public backlash after shilling for cryptocurrency, this year's top headlines traced the downfalls of two of the most successful and influential crypto bros of all time: FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried (often referred to as SBF) and Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (commonly known as CZ).

At 28 years old, Bankman-Fried made Forbes' 30 Under 30 list in 2021, but within two short years, his recently updated Forbes profile notes that the man who was once "one of the richest people in crypto" in "a stunning fall from grace" now has a real-time net worth of $0.

Enlarge / The Galaxy Z Fold5 and Flip5, being carefully taken apart. (credit: Samsung)

Samsung says it's doing a big expansion to its self-repair program this month. The repair program launched last year in partnership with iFixit, and now Samsung will be offering parts and repair manuals for more phones in more countries.

First up, the device list is adding some of Samsung's newest and most expensive models. Foldables are landing in the self-repair system for the first time, with the Galaxy Z Flip5, and Z Fold5 getting parts and manuals soon. The parts aren't up for sale yet, but we're dying to know the cost of a Z Fold5 display. (The Pixel Fold, a similarly sized flexible Samsung display, costs $900.) Samsung's current slab-phone flagship is also hitting the repair system for the first time, with all S23 models getting included. The Galaxy A05s, the first mid-range phone, is landing in the system, too. All the Galaxy S9 and A9 tablets are now repairable, as is the Galaxy Book 2 Pro laptop.

The number of countries where you can buy parts is increasing, too. Samsung's repair program is currently active in the US, South Korea, Brazil, Mexico, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the UK. Samsung now says it's expanding the repair program to 30 additional companies, with the full list being: "Albania, Andorra, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Kosovo, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Switzerland." Forty-three countries is a huge progression in just a year, but the flagship S23 is sold in 130 countries if Samsung wants complete coverage.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Benj Edwards)

"Here, There, and Everywhere" isn't just a Beatles song. It's also a phrase that recalls the spread of generative AI into the tech industry during 2023. Whether you think AI is just a fad or the dawn of a new tech revolution, it's been impossible to deny that AI news has dominated the tech space for the past year.

We've seen a large cast of AI-related characters emerge that includes tech CEOs, machine learning researchers, and AI ethicists—as well as charlatans and doomsayers. From public feedback on the subject of AI, we've heard that it's been difficult for non-technical people to know who to believe, what AI products (if any) to use, and whether we should fear for our lives or our jobs.

Meanwhile, in keeping with a much-lamented trend of 2022, machine learning research has not slowed down over the past year. On X, former Biden administration tech advisor Suresh Venkatasubramanian wrote, "How do people manage to keep track of ML papers? This is not a request for support in my current state of bewilderment—I'm genuinely asking what strategies seem to work to read (or "read") what appear to be 100s of papers per day."

Enlarge (credit: zf L via Getty)

The world’s leading semiconductor companies are racing to make so-called “2 nanometer” processor chips that will power the next generation of smartphones, data centers, and artificial intelligence.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company remains the analysts’ favorite to maintain its global supremacy in the sector, but Samsung Electronics and Intel have identified the industry’s next leap forward as a chance to close the gap.

For decades, chipmakers have sought to make ever more compact products. The smaller the transistors on a chip, the lower the energy consumption and the higher their speed. Today, terms such as “2 nanometer” and “3 nanometer” are widely used as shorthand for each new generation of chip, rather than a semiconductor’s actual physical dimensions.

Enlarge / Sam Altman, president of Y Combinator and co-chairman of OpenAI, seen here in July 2016. (credit: Drew Angerer / Getty Images News)

When Sam Altman was suddenly removed as CEO of OpenAI—before being reinstated days later—the company's board publicly justified the move by saying Altman "was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities." In the days since, there has been some reporting on potential reasons for the attempted board coup, but not much in the way of follow-up on what specific information Altman was allegedly less than "candid" about.

Now, in an in-depth piece for The New Yorker, writer Charles Duhigg—who was embedded inside OpenAI for months on a separate story—suggests that some board members found Altman "manipulative and conniving" and took particular issue with the way Altman allegedly tried to manipulate the board into firing fellow board member Helen Toner.

Board “manipulation” or “ham-fisted” maneuvering?

Toner, who serves as director of strategy and foundational research grants at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, allegedly drew Altman's negative attention by co-writing a paper on different ways AI companies can "signal" their commitment to safety through "costly" words and actions. In the paper, Toner contrasts OpenAI's public launch of ChatGPT last year with Anthropic's "deliberate deci[sion] not to productize its technology in order to avoid stoking the flames of AI hype."

Enlarge / An artist's interpretation of what ChatGPT might look like if embodied in the form of a robot toy blowing out a birthday candle. (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

One year ago today, on November 30, 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT. It's uncommon for a single product to create as much impact on the tech industry as ChatGPT has in just one year.

Imagine a computer that can talk to you. Nothing new, right? Those have been around since the 1960s. But ChatGPT, the application that first bought large language models (LLMs) to a wide audience, felt different. It could compose poetry, seemingly understand the context of your questions and your conversation, and help you solve problems. Within a few months, it became the fastest-growing consumer application of all time. And it created a frenzy in the tech world.

During these 365 days, ChatGPT has broadened the public perception of AI, captured imaginations, attracted critics, and stoked existential angst. It emboldened and reoriented Microsoft, made Google dance, spurred fears of AGI taking over the world, captivated world leaders, prompted attempts at government regulation, helped add words to dictionaries, inspired conferences and copycats, led to a crisis for educators, hyper-charged automated defamation, embarrassed lawyers by hallucinating, prompted lawsuits over training data, and much more.

Enlarge (credit: OpenAI / Benj Edwards)

On Wednesday, OpenAI announced that Sam Altman has officially returned to the ChatGPT-maker as CEO—accompanied by Mira Murati as CTO and Greg Brockman as president—resuming their roles from before the shocking firing of Altman that threw the company into turmoil two weeks ago. Altman says the company did not lose a single employee or customer throughout the crisis.

"I have never been more excited about the future. I am extremely grateful for everyone’s hard work in an unclear and unprecedented situation, and I believe our resilience and spirit set us apart in the industry," wrote Altman in an official OpenAI news release. "I feel so, so good about our probability of success for achieving our mission."

In the statement, Altman formalized plans that have been underway since last week: ex-Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor and economist Larry Summers have officially begun their tenure on the "new initial" OpenAI board of directors. Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo is keeping his previous seat on the board. Also on Wednesday, previous board members Tasha McCauley and Helen Toner officially resigned. In addition, a representative from Microsoft (a key OpenAI investor) will have a non-voting observer role on the board of directors.

Enlarge / OpenAI CEO Sam Altman at the APEC CEO Summit at Moscone West on November 16, 2023 in San Francisco. (credit: Getty Images | Justin Sullivan )

After five days of chaos triggered by OpenAI's firing of CEO Sam Altman, the executive is set to return to the company, while the board of directors that fired him is to be almost entirely remade. OpenAI said last night that it "reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return to OpenAI as CEO."

Altman had accepted a job on Sunday from Microsoft, a major investor in OpenAI. Microsoft also offered to hire OpenAI's employees, who threatened to resign en masse if Altman wasn't brought back. According to Altman, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella supported his return to OpenAI.

"with the new board and w satya's support, i'm looking forward to returning to openai, and building on our strong partnership with msft," Altman wrote. Altman also wrote, "i love openai, and everything i've done over the past few days has been in service of keeping this team and its mission together."

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Burn-in is always possible with OLED displays, but for computer monitors, which tend to display static content (like icons and taskbars), the risk is even more concerning than with other OLED devices, like TVs.

Generally, OLED monitors are much better at fighting burn-in than before, thanks to improved OLED materials, compensation algorithms, brightness efficiencies, manually operable features, and heat management techniques.

At the same time, there's still much to learn about OLED monitor burn-in. Because OLED monitor selection only began significantly improving over the last couple of years, long-term usage data is minimal. Further, new types of OLED monitor technologies, like QD-OLED, are still evolving.

Enlarge / Then-OpenAI CEO Sam Altman at APEC CEO Summit at Moscone West on November 16, 2023, in San Francisco. (credit: Getty Images | Justin Sullivan )

Former OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is in talks to return to the company's top job days after he was fired, but nothing has been finalized, according to news reports today.

"Discussions are happening between Altman, CEO Emmett Shear and at least one board member, Adam D'Angelo," Bloomberg wrote, citing anonymous sources. "The talks also involve some of OpenAI's investors, many of whom are pushing for his reinstatement." OpenAI shareholders reportedly lobbying for Altman's reinstatement include Thrive Capital, Khosla Ventures, and Tiger Global Management.

Altman was fired on Friday by the board of directors of OpenAI, Inc., the nonprofit that controls the for-profit subsidiary OpenAI Global. An Altman return could be paired with changes to the board.

Enlarge / Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on Tuesday, July 25, 2023, during a hearing on AI held by the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law. (credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg)

After firing CEO Sam Altman, OpenAI's board of directors reached out to the CEO of its rival, Anthropic, to propose a merger, but the proposal was quickly rejected, according to news reports. The board approached Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei "about a potential merger of the two companies" as "part of an effort by OpenAI to persuade Amodei to replace Altman as CEO," The Information reported yesterday, citing "a person with direct knowledge" of the contact.

"It's not clear whether the merger proposal led to any serious discussion. Amodei quickly turned down the CEO offer due to his position at Anthropic," The Information wrote.

The report was subsequently confirmed by Reuters. "OpenAI's board of directors approached rival Anthropic's CEO about replacing chief Sam Altman and potentially merging the two AI startups, according to two people briefed on the matter," Reuters wrote. "Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei declined on both fronts, the people said."

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The future of OpenAI remained uncertain on Tuesday after extraordinary efforts by employees and investors to oust the board had so far failed to persuade its directors to resign and reinstate co-founder Sam Altman.

People with direct knowledge of the matter said that by the end of Monday, 747 out of 770 OpenAI employees had signed a letter threatening to quit and join Microsoft if the board refused to resign and reverse their decision on Friday to sack Altman.

Venture capitalists backing the generative artificial intelligence start-up were also exploring legal measures to force the board to reverse course, according to multiple people with knowledge of their thinking.

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After two days of roller-coaster negotiations at OpenAI HQ due to the surprise ouster of CEO Sam Altman, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has announced that Microsoft plans to hire Altman and former OpenAI President Greg Brockman to head a "new advanced AI research team." Overnight, the OpenAI board named a new interim CEO, Emmett Shear, who acknowledged the messy process and promised to hire an investigator to generate a full report on Altman's firing.

But the story isn't over yet, because Monday morning, 650 of 770 OpenAI employees sent a letter to the OpenAI board demanding that all current board members resign and Altman and Brockman be reinstated, or they will likely leave to join Altman and Brockman at Microsoft. (Apparently the number of signatories to the letter is still growing; see update below.)

"The process through which you terminated Sam Altman and removed Greg Brockman from the board has jeopardized all of this work and undermined our mission and company," the letter states. "Your conduct has made it clear you did not have the competence to oversee OpenAI."

Enlarge / OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks during the OpenAI DevDay event on November 6, 2023, in San Francisco. (credit: Getty Images | Ars Technica)

Just over a day since the surprise firing of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman that sent shock waves through the tech industry, the OpenAI board is reportedly engaging in discussions with Altman to potentially return as chief executive of the company, according to The Verge, citing people familiar with the matter. The outlet says that Altman is "ambivalent" about returning and would want significant changes to how the company is run.

The New York Times reports that the talks are part of a pressure campaign from OpenAI investors, led by Microsoft, which has invested $13 billion in the for-profit arm of OpenAI.

The move would be a dramatic about-face for the board, which has received intense scrutiny from all corners of the tech world for abruptly and surprisingly firing one of the tech industry's most high-profile CEOs. Altman was popular with both Microsoft leadership and OpenAI staff, and his firing came as a shock to employees, who reportedly pushed back against OpenAI Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever's handling of the move during an all-hands meeting on Friday.

Enlarge / Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI Chief Scientist, speaks at Tel Aviv University on June 5, 2023. (credit: Getty Images)

On Friday, OpenAI fired CEO Sam Altman in a surprise move that led to the resignation of President Greg Brockman and three senior scientists. The move also blindsided key investor and minority owner Microsoft, reportedly making CEO Satya Nadella furious. As Friday night wore on, reports emerged that the ousting was likely orchestrated by Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever over concerns about the safety and speed of OpenAI's tech deployment.

"This was the board doing its duty to the mission of the nonprofit, which is to make sure that OpenAI builds AGI that benefits all of humanity," Sutskever told employees at an emergency all-hands meeting on Friday afternoon, as reported by The Information.

Since its founding, OpenAI has pursued the development of artificial general intelligence (or AGI), which is a hypothetical technology that would be able to perform any intellectual task a human can do, potentially replacing a large number of humans at their jobs.

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On Friday afternoon, not long after news of CEO Sam Altman's abrupt and surprising departure from OpenAI began spreading online, the company held an all-hands meeting at its headquarters in San Francisco, reports The Information. During the meeting, interim CEO Mira Murati attempted to reassure the shocked employees that the search for a new CEO is underway.

Hours later, OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman posted a statement on X, saying that after he learned today's news he sent a message to the OpenAI team: "based on todays news, i quit." Brockman, a key technical figure involved in many of the company's successes, was relieved of his OpenAI board membership on Friday, but the company initially announced he would be staying on.

Earlier on Friday, OpenAI released a blog post titled "OpenAI announces leadership transition" where it announced that Atlman "was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities." In a response post on X, Altman wrote, "I loved my time at openai," and hinted at future plans without revealing any details.

Enlarge / OpenAI CEO Sam Altman testifies about AI rules before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law on May 16, 2023, in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty Images | Win McNamee )

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT and DALL-E, announced Friday that co-founder and CEO Sam Altman will be departing the company and vacating his seat on the board. CTO Mira Murati has been appointed interim CEO effective immediately, according to a blog post from the board of directors.

"Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities," the blog reads, in part. "The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI."

"We are grateful for Sam’s many contributions to the founding and growth of OpenAI," the board writes in a prepared statement. "At the same time, we believe new leadership is necessary as we move forward."

OpenAI plans to secure further financial backing from its biggest investor Microsoft as the ChatGPT maker’s chief executive Sam Altman pushes ahead with his vision to create artificial general intelligence—computer software as intelligent as humans.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Altman said his company’s partnership with Microsoft’s chief executive Satya Nadella was “working really well” and that he expected “to raise a lot more over time” from the tech giant among other investors, to keep up with the punishing costs of building more sophisticated AI models.

Microsoft earlier this year invested $10 billion in OpenAI as part of a “multiyear” agreement that valued the San Francisco-based company at $29 billion, according to people familiar with the talks.

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On Monday at the OpenAI DevDay event, company CEO Sam Altman announced a major update to its GPT-4 language model called GPT-4 Turbo, which can process a much larger amount of text than GPT-4 and features a knowledge cutoff of April 2023. He also introduced APIs for DALL-E 3, GPT-4 Vision, and text-to-speech—and launched an "Assistants API" that makes it easier for developers to build assistive AI apps.

OpenAI hosted its first-ever developer event on November 6 in San Francisco called DevDay. During the opening keynote delivered by Altman in front of a small audience, the CEO showcased the wider impacts of its AI technology in the world, including helping people with tech accessibility. Altman shared some stats, saying that over 2 million developers are building apps using its APIs, over 92 percent of Fortune 500 companies are building on their platform, and that ChatGPT has over 100 million active weekly users.

At one point, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella made a surprise appearance on the stage, talking with Altman about the deepening partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI and sharing some general thoughts about the future of the technology, which he thinks will empower people.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

Until recently, OLED computer monitor selection was limited. Today, there's more than a handful available. LG Display and Samsung Display have made picking an OLED monitor exciting by designing competing models—white OLED (WOLED) and quantum dot OLED (QD-OLED), respectively—and monitor vendors are steadily addressing OLED scarcity and price barriers.

But what about longstanding fears of OLED burn-in?

People tend to display static images on computer monitors more frequently than on TVs—things like icons, taskbars, and browser address bars—making burn-in risk a concern.

Enlarge / Sam Bankman-Fried leaves court in New York on Thursday, Feb. 16, 2023. (credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg)

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of defrauding customers by a federal jury today. He was convicted on all seven counts, Reuters and other news outlets reported. The 12-member jury returned the verdict after several hours of deliberation.

The seven charges are wire fraud on customers of FTX, conspiracy to commit wire fraud on customers of FTX, wire fraud on lenders to Alameda Research, conspiracy to commit wire fraud on lenders to Alameda Research, conspiracy to commit securities fraud on investors in FTX, conspiracy to commit commodities fraud on customers of FTX in connection with purchases and sales of cryptocurrency and swaps, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

The five charges related to wire fraud and money laundering carry maximum sentences of 20 years each, while the two securities and commodities fraud charges have maximum sentences of five years each. US District Judge Lewis Kaplan will determine the actual sentence.

Enlarge / Westfield High School in Westfield, NJ, in 2020. (credit: Icon Sportswire / Contributor | Icon Sportswire)

This October, boys at Westfield High School in New Jersey started acting "weird," the Wall Street Journal reported. It took four days before the school found out that the boys had been using AI image generators to create and share fake nude photos of female classmates. Now, police are investigating the incident, but they're apparently working in the dark, because they currently have no access to the images to help them trace the source.

According to an email that the WSJ reviewed from Westfield High School principal Mary Asfendis, the school "believed" that the images had been deleted and were no longer in circulation among students.

It remains unclear how many students were harmed. A Westfield Public Schools spokesperson cited student confidentiality when declining to tell the WSJ the total number of students involved or how many students, if any, had been disciplined. The school had not confirmed whether faculty had reviewed the images, seemingly only notifying the female students allegedly targeted when they were identified by boys claiming to have seen the images.

Enlarge / Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried arrives for a bail revocation hearing at US District Court on August 11, 2023, in New York City. (credit: Getty Images | Michael Santiago)

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried's monthlong criminal trial neared its end today as the prosecution and defense presented closing arguments.

Bankman-Fried is accused of defrauding customers and investors of cryptocurrency exchange FTX and its affiliate Alameda Research. "This was a pyramid of deceit built by the defendant on a foundation of lies and false promises, all to get money," US prosecutor Nicolas Roos told the jury today, according to Reuters. "Eventually it collapsed, leaving thousands of victims in its wake."

Roos described how FTX customers lost their investments when the exchange collapsed, the Associated Press wrote. "Who was responsible?" Roos said, pointing at the defendant. "This man, Samuel Bankman-Fried. What happened? He spent his customers' money and he lied to them about it."

Enlarge / Sam Bankman-Fried leaves federal court in New York on Thursday, February 16, 2023. (credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg)

Facing cross-examination at his criminal fraud trial yesterday, Sam Bankman-Fried repeatedly testified that he doesn't remember details about what he did and said while running cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Bankman-Fried responded "I'm not sure" or "I can't recall" to many questions from US prosecutor Danielle Sassoon, according to news reports from the trial.

Sassoon "grilled Mr. Bankman-Fried about the inconsistencies between his public statements and how he ran his crypto empire before it collapsed spectacularly in November," a New York Times article said. Bankman-Fried "insisted that he couldn't remember much of what he had said publicly" and "added that he wasn't significantly involved in the hedge fund he founded, Alameda Research."

The New York Post wrote that Bankman-Fried answered with some variation of "I can't recall" over 100 times on Monday. But Sassoon "presented jurors with a mountain of tweets, emails, and podcast clips revealing that the MIT grad did in fact say dozens of things he claimed not to have recalled," the article said.

Enlarge / The square one is the S23 Ultra; the other two are the S23 and S23 Plus. (credit: Samsung)

Samsung is getting Android 14 out the door in record time. SamMobile spotted that the operating system update is rolling out now to European users with the Galaxy S23, S23 Plus, and S23 Ultra. If past timelines are any indication, US users should get the update in the next week or so once Samsung huddles up with your cellular carrier.

Android 14 came out for Pixel phones on October 4, so Samsung is releasing the OS in under a month. That is easily a new record for the company and a huge improvement over the usual multi-month wait. Like previous years, Samsung started a beta program for the new Android release about a month before Google's official release. Is this increased speed the result of Google's constant work to make Android easier to upgrade or just a side effect of Android 14 also being one of the smaller releases in recent years?

In Samsung land, Android 14 is called "One UI 6" and also comes with a range of Samsung UI changes. Apparently, the quick settings have been redesigned, and there are a lot of changes to the camera and photo editing experience. For now, the first release is for users of Samsung's latest flagship, but eventually, the update will hit devices from the last three years. For S23 users on Android 13, expect about a 3GB download.

Enlarge (credit: ANGELA WEISS / Contributor | AFP)

On Friday, Sam Bankman-Fried began his first day testifying before a jury with a loss. The FTX co-founder had intended to explain exactly how much he relied on lawyers to steer his decision-making amid the cryptocurrency exchange's rise and collapse, but US District Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that particular part of his proposed testimony could not be heard by the jury, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Bankman-Fried had testified on Thursday that his in-house legal team oversaw paperwork for "hundreds of millions of dollars in personal loans to himself and other founders of the platform," CNBC reported. He told the court that having his legal team's blessing was something that he "took comfort in."

“That evidence would in my judgment be confusing and prejudicial,” Kaplan said, dealing what many outlets considered a serious blow to Bankman-Fried's defense.