Deceptive AIs, busy trustbusters and Apple’s pricey big bet

To their credit, artificial intelligence firms and researchers are looking more deeply on the unintended consequences of generative AI.

This week, Anthropic showed how AI could be taught to deceive, though it didn’t offer an answer to that alarming possibility. OpenAI did announce tools to scale back the potential for AI to supply election-influencing misinformation, though it’s not clear why they will likely be any more successful than Meta Platforms efforts to rein in the issues with social media.

At the identical time, investors proceed to pour extra money into the market and corporations keep pushing ahead — including toward the Holy Grail of artificial general intelligence — as OpenAI and Meta and others aim to get to human-level AI, for higher or worse.

Meantime, the tech industry as an entire appears to be in a holding pattern, as some firms comparable to Google proceed to put off employees within the face of what they view as macroeconomic uncertainty. But by most accounts, the economy is surprisingly regular and even improving on metrics comparable to inflation and, in fact, the stock market, and latest consumer confidence numbers back up the higher vibes. Gartner even anticipates surprisingly strong growth this 12 months, though as theCUBE Research analyst Dave Vellante will note in his weekly Breaking Evaluation this weekend, a cautious outlook stays before sentiment improves for the second half of the 12 months.

Antitrust continues to be a trend into the brand new 12 months, as Apple bumped into a buzzsaw over its Watch and Amazon’s acquisition of iRobot looks all but dead.

But Apple is moving on, and today you’ll be able to finally pre-order its Vision Pro “spatial computing” headset if you will have a couple of thousand bucks to spare.

This and other news will likely be discussed in John Furrier’s and Vellante’s weekly podcast theCUBE Pod, out this afternoon on YouTube. And don’t miss Vellante’s weekly deep dive Breaking Evaluation, this week on the outlook for tech spending this 12 months.

Here’s a sampling of this week’s news:

The ups and downs of AI

There’s more work and research on the unintended (or worse, intended) consequences of AI:

Anthropic researchers show AI systems could be taught to have interaction in deceptive behavior

OpenAI pronounces steps to forestall its generative AI tools from getting used to control elections

IMF: AI will affect 40% of jobs and will worsen inequality

Latest nonprofit to certify AI models that only use copyrighted training data with permission

As generative AI takes over the cloud, 2024 will likely be a pivotal 12 months

But that’s scarcely stopping any investment. Wow, that’s a variety of AI horsepower: Meta plans to purchase 350K Nvidia GPUs to construct artificial general intelligence

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reportedly looking for to lift billions for chip fab enterprise

Report: OpenAI rival Cohere could raise as much as $1B in fresh funding

Pecan AI taps generative AI to assist anyone create predictive models

Sakana AI raises $30M to develop small, collaborative AI models

Databricks targets telcos with its newest industry analytics platform

Pinecone’s vector database goes serverless

DigitalOcean debuts Nvidia H100 GPU instances to expand access to advanced computing for AI workloads

JFrog-Amazon SageMaker integration goals to streamline machine learning workflows

Samsung debuts AI-equipped Galaxy S24 smartphones and Galaxy Ring

Samsung S24 Galaxy phone to integrate Google’s Gemini AI models

Google’s DeepMind builds hybrid AI system to unravel complex geometry problems

Hmmm… Arizona State University to make use of OpenAI’s ChatGPT Enterprise to boost learning

Within the cloud and enterprise

An awfully big deal to get so little attention: Synopsys to purchase Ansys for $35B in engineering software megadeal

Seems a bit optimistic? Gartner sees healthy 6.8% growth in 2024 IT spending

Intel and Nvidia shine in Gartner’s latest global semiconductor revenue rankings

Samsung, SK hynix to construct $471B chip hub in South Korea

TSMC’s $40B fab construction project in Arizona expected to face additional delays

AWS will invest $15B+ in Japan to expand its local data center footprint

A cloud case study by Paul Gillin: Dow’s customer experience overhaul yields tripling of online sales

SoftwareOne rebuffs $3.5B takeover offer from Bain Capital

Quantum appears to be getting more interest recently: Quantum computer developer Quantinuum raises $300M at $5B pre-money valuation

Digital assets firm HashKey raises $100M at over $1.2B valuation

Leantime overhauls project management platform with neurodiversity in mind

Seagate introduces nanophotonic hard disk drive architecture for data centers

Hardware-as-a-service startup Xyte raises $30M in early-stage funding round

Low-code software integration startup Prismatic raises $17M in Series B funding

What an awful disaster of an IT project: Japanese IT firm says it has a ‘moral duty’ to compensate those hurt in Britain’s Post Office scandal

Cyber beat

TheCUBE Research’s latest analyst Shelly Kramer offers her predictions for what’s coming or must are available network and application security: Five network security predictions for 2024

Snyk expands security portfolio with acquisition of runtime data application startup Helios

Security access solutions startup Oleria raises $32.9M

Vicarius nabs $30M for its AI-powered vulnerability remediation platform

Kusari’s mission to secure software supply chains bolstered by $8M investment

Google disrupts malware campaign run by Russia-linked hacking group

Researchers disclose vulnerability in GPUs from AMD, Apple and Qualcomm

Major security flaws present in popular UEFI firmware impact top tech firms

Protect AI finds vulnerabilities in open-source AI and machine learning tools

Latest solution from Venafi reduces the attack surface and hardens enterprise security

Have I Been Pwned adds 71M compromised credentials from the ‘Naz.API’ data set

Elsewhere around tech

Still looks as if a variety of friction here: price, configuration decisions, should have an iPhone or iPad even to order, heavy… and what’s the killer app? If that is the following iPhone, there’s a variety of iteration to return: Apple opens pre-orders for the Vision Pro mixed reality headset

Signs of life — a bit — in startupland: Enterprise capitalists show renewed interest in startups, marking positive shift in late 2023

I wouldn’t point to this as an indication of IPOs returning just yet: Two years after filing IPO paperwork, Reddit reportedly preparing to go public in March

And you’ll be able to be certain Google isn’t alone here. If nothing else, big tech is using the doldrums as an convenient reason to do away with people they didn’t really need: Google pronounces yet more layoffs, this time affecting its promoting business units And there’s more to return: Google CEO Sundar Pichai warns more job cuts will likely be obligatory to realize ‘ambitious goals’ this 12 months

Size matters, and never in an excellent way, in antitrust:

Big antitrust messes for Apple: Apple proposes Apple Watch redesign to avoid import ban

A loss for Epic, costly for Apple: Supreme Court refuses to review antitrust case

Apple revises App Store terms to let apps link to external payment methods, but for a hefty fee

Apple told once more to stop selling patent-infringing smartwatches after appeals court ruling

Shares of iRobot plunge as report claims EC set to dam $1.7B Amazon takeover Though as The Information’s Martin Peers noted, a cost-cutting Amazon may very well be advantageous with losing an organization whose business has plummeted anyway.

Though in other ways, size doesn’t hurt: IDC: Apple sold more smartphones than Samsung for the primary time in 2023

Alphabet’s Wing unveils latest drone that may carry heavier payloads

Former Meta Platforms/Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg is now stepping off Meta’s board to turn into a casual adviser (from the Wall Street Journal).

Nineteen-year Amazon veteran John Felton is Amazon Web Services’ latest chief financial officer, reporting to Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky.

Ashish Dhawan, formerly AWS’ managing director and worldwide head of enterprise workload sales, is latest senior vp of NetApp’s global cloud sales (from CRN).

DigitalOcean appoints Paddy Srinivasan its latest CEO, replacing Yancey Spruill.

Intel hires a former McAfee and Trellix executive Brett Hannath as its latest chief marketing officer (from CRN).

What’s coming next

Coming next week: After Netflix kicks off tech earnings season Tuesday, IBM follows Wednesday and Intel comes Thursday. 

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