The contract between the tech companies is that Intel will make custom chips for computers designed by Microsoft and for Microsoft, The Verge reports.

The partnership between Intel and Microsoft was announced during the Intel Foundry event. Intel estimates the value of the deal at over $15 billion dollar.

There is no information from the two corporations on exactly what the chips will be used for. Microsoft will use them for internal designs in both processors and AI smoke detectors, writes Bloomberg.

“We are in the midst of a very exciting platform shift that will fundamentally transform productivity for every individual organization and the entire industry,” stated Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in the official press release.

The chips will use Intel’s 18A process, which has been an indispensable part of the company since the return of Intel CEO – Pat Gelsinger.

The corporation believes that through the production of chips, they will once again rank among the leaders in the technology industry. In this venture, Microsoft will be their first major customer as well as a partner.

Producing designs for other companies is a strategy that has worked well for Intel’s competitor Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). It has created profitable partnerships with corporations such as: Apple, Qualcomm and AMD.

Pat Gelsinger announced that the foundry model for microelectronics manufacturing is a big part of Intel’s strategy. The new plans to manufacture chips using the foundry business model come at a time when technology companies are trying to make their own chips but are facing many challenges.

Intel Corporation has postponed the opening of a $20 billion chip plant to 2026. The original plans were for it to be opened in 2025. As the reason for the cancellation of the opening of the plant, Intel points to insufficient demand in the chip market and the delay in funding from the state.

“AI has the capability of changing our lives as we know it. The question is how to ensure AI benefits society instead of harming us. As a recovering Computer Science major, I know this will not be an easy or quick or one-time task, but I believe Congress has an essential role to play in the future of AI. I have been heartened to see so many Members of Congress of all political persuasions agree”, said representative Ted Lieu.

A task force in this area shows that Congress is paying attention to a key area that is a priority for tech investment. This comes at a time when the majority view AI and technology are running circles around lawmakers.

The task force consists of twelve members who are representatives of important legal commissions, appointed by Speaker Mike Johnson and Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Also, the members of the group are experts in the field of AI. Political representative Jay Obernolte was elected Chairman of the task force.

“As new innovations in AI continue to emerge, Congress and our partners in federal government must keep up. House Republicans and Democrats will work together to create a comprehensive report detailing the regulatory standards and congressional actions needed to both protect consumers and foster continued investment and innovation in AI,” said representative Jay Obernolte.

He believes that while making plans for the future, an important goal of Congress should be to continue promoting innovation, maintain America’s competitive advantage in this area, and focus on protecting national security. In addition, Congress, will need to establish mechanisms that will guarantee the development of safe technology.

The task force Chair summarized that the US is among the leaders in the area of the development of AI, and that hard work must be done to ensure that AI realizes its enormous potential to improve the lives of people in the US.

In an email sent to employees, CEO Daniel Eck said Spotify is taking “significant action to optimize its costs,” adding that the company hired too many employees in 2020 and 2021, when capital was cheap and tech companies had the ability to invest significant sums in team expansion.

“Over the last two years, we’ve put significant emphasis on building Spotify into a truly great and sustainable business – one designed to achieve our goal of being the world’s leading audio company and one that will consistently drive profitability and growth into the future,” Ek said in an internal memo that was shared on Spotify’s website.

“While we’ve made worthy strides, as I’ve shared many times, we still have work to do. Economic growth has slowed dramatically and capital has become more expensive. Spotify is not an exception to these realities”, he continued.

After reporting a third-quarter profit of 65 million euros ($70.7 million), Spotify attributed its financial success to reduced spending on marketing and personnel. Earlier this year, the company increased subscription plan prices and diversified its offerings by venturing into podcasts and audiobooks.

The recent wave of job cuts marks another step in Spotify’s ongoing efforts to streamline its operations. Like many other tech firms focused on growth, Spotify has been compelled to trim costs over the past year due to higher interest rates and a challenging macroeconomic environment.

The company initially reduced its workforce by 6%, affecting approximately 600 employees at the beginning of the year. Subsequently, in June, Spotify implemented a further round of layoffs, affecting 2% of its staff, or around 200 roles.

In May, the company said it planned to lay off employees to cut costs after suffering losses.

The cuts will take effect at the end of the month. According to sources, Intel will lay off 10 GPU software engineers, 8 system software development engineers, 6 cloud software engineers, 6 product marketing engineers and 6 system-on-chip design engineers, as well as other employees.

Earlier this year, in May, Intel announced its cost-cutting plan in a difficult macroeconomic environment.

In June this year, however, there were rumors that the company was planning to sell its Bengaluru office as it would continue to focus on the Hybrid-first model.

In January 2022, Microsoft announced that it had begun plans to acquire Activision Blizzard in a deal worth $68.7 billion. Since then, however, myriad obstacles have stood in the way of the almost-realized goal. Whether it’s Sony PlayStation boss Jim Ryan, who is trying his best to prevent the deal, or market regulators, who are also against it.

Back in April this year, despite reports stating that Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard was a near-realised goal, UK market regulator the CMA sensationally blocked the deal due to Microsoft’s excessive influence in the market and overshadowing other companies.
A few weeks later, the FTC tried to block the acquisition attempt by Microsoft.

During the lawsuit, Xbox Game Studios boss at Microsoft Matt Booty said he actively encouraged Xbox’s CFO to spend money to strengthen the Xbox Game Pass library so it could compete with Sony’s PlayStation Plus subscription service.

Relatedly, the FTC lawsuit also reveals that Microsoft was willing to purchase studios including SEGA, Bungie and others in order to knock Sony out of the gaming market for good. Additionally, the FTC believes that Xbox exclusivity for Starfield harms Activision’s takeover of Blizzard.

The reason for the duel is a rival Twitter service that Facebook is preparing to launch. Musk didn’t miss the moment to poke fun at the plans Mark and his company have, and the challenge issued took the whole world by surprise.

Musk insisted that the fight between the two take place in the Octagon, a competition mat and fenced area used for Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) fights. The UFC is based in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Dana White, the president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), confirmed that Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are serious about this fight, Business Today reports.

In an interview with TMZ Sports, the UFC president claimed that Mark called him and asked him if Musk was serious. After White asked Musk for confirmation, it became clear that the entrepreneur’s intentions were completely serious.

According to Dana White, this would be the biggest fight in the history of the world. Bigger than anything ever done. He also assured that the fight will break all pay-per-view records. White also confirmed that the proceeds from the fight will go to charity.

When it comes to physical aptitude, both opponents are quite different. Musk is much older at 51 but holds the advantage with his larger stature. Mark Zuckerberg on the other hand, is 5 feet 7 inches but has age on his side. The 39-year-old has also been showcasing his martial arts skills, participating in Jiu-Jitsu tournaments and conquering intense workouts like the “Murph Challenge.

Which of the two will win? Vote in our LinkedIn poll.

“Once open, the Windows Copilot side bar stays consistent across your apps, programs, and windows, always available to act as your personal assistant. It makes every user a power user, helping you take action, customize your settings, and seamlessly connect across your favorite apps.”

explains Panos Panay, Microsoft’s head of Windows and devices.

Windows Copilot can summarize the content you’re viewing in apps, rewrite it, or even explain it. Its purpose overlaps with that of the dialog box found in Bing Chat, so you can ask it common questions and things that are commonly asked of the search engine.

Copilot will not directly replace the search bar in the Windows 11 taskbar. It will be a separate Copilot button. According to Microsoft, Windows Copilot is a “personal assistant,” which sounds very similar to the way Microsoft described Cortana as a “personal productivity assistant.”

Microsoft will allow developers to extend plugins written for OpenAI’s Bing or ChatGPT to this AI-powered assistant. Windows Copilot will offer many new features that developers create for ChatGPT and Bing, and for future enhancements that are automatically ported to Windows Copilot.

Testing of Windows Copilot will begin publicly in June before the company rolls it out more broadly to existing Windows 11 users.

The country’s antitrust regulator said Microsoft’s commitment to offer access to Activision’s multibillion-dollar “Call of Duty” franchise on leading cloud gaming platforms would not effectively address its concerns.

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick told employees that this isn’t the news the companies wanted, but it’s only temporary.

“We will be reviewing our UK growth plans. Global innovators large and small will take note that – for all its rhetoric – the UK is apparently closed for business”,

the company said in a separate statement.

Shares of Activision, which also produces the games “Candy Crush,” “Overwatch” and “World of Warcraft,” fell 12 percent to $76.65, moving away from Microsoft’s offer price of $95 a share. If the losses persist, the video game publisher will have to remove nearly $8 billion from its market valuation.

“We expect that Microsoft will continue to fight this”,

Evercore ISI analyst Kirk Materne said in a note.

If Microsoft opts out it would free up more than $60 billion in cash flow that could be returned to investors or invested in AI-related offerings, he noted.

The Activision deal is the biggest tech-related deal the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has blocked, the latest sign that the British watchdog is ready to crack down on big tech after it blocked Facebook-owner Meta’s acquisition of Giphy in 2021.

Europe is expected to make a decision on the Activision deal by May 22. That’s not the only problem facing the tech giant and the franchise, as the US Federal Trade Commission is also trying to block it.

Does ChatGPT express feelings?
ChatGPT wrote a poem in the style of the famous English poet John Keats. And although his task was well done, the poem was obviously not personalized the way we would want if we were to send it to someone. Of course you could hardly expect otherwise especially when we know that even some people would not do well with writing and expressing feelings. We wouldn’t want to draw attention to a particular gender, as there are representations of both of whom creativity is not their strong suit.

Built on GPT 3.5, LLM can give words to the user’s imagination in a flawless way. But it inevitably fails to evoke emotions.

Source: Analytics India Mag

The perfect gift – a poem, but not from your half
According to a recent report by cybersecurity company McAfee’s “Modern Love Research Report,” this Valentine’s Day, one in four, that’s 26% of people, plan to use artificial intelligence to write notes, letters or songs for their loved ones. Of these, 30% were men, who were found to be more likely to use AI for this purpose, compared to women (22%). Well, as mentioned above, we don’t want to divide the sexes or instill tension between them, but the results wouldn’t surprise us, in the nice and joking sense of course.

Creativity takes time?
After the debut of ChatGPT on OpenAI, several users experimented with it to express their love through poems and letters. If you give ChatGPT a creative prompt, it can generate dozens of page-length poems in less than 30 seconds. You can even edit the result to improve it, as often as you like.

Did you choose a gift for your mate? Or will you leave yourself in the trusted hands of ChatGPT, who will solve the problem in seconds or not?!

“While this is necessary to address the challenges we face today, I do not take this decision lightly.”

Chief Executive Bob Iger said during a conference call with Wall Street analysts.

The cuts are part of Disney’s $5.5 billion cost-cutting effort, Iger said. He outlined a reorganization that aims, among other things, to “put creativity back at the center of the company” and make its streaming business profitable.

In November, Iger stunned the entertainment world when he returned to head Disney, replacing Bob Chapek, whose brief tenure was marked by pandemic struggles and public relations missteps, The Washington Post reports.

Iger’s return was seen as a move to restore the company to the golden era he helped usher in, even as the company faced major hurdles, including a cooling streaming market, a stuttering theater business and some of Disney’s biggest franchises – like Marvel – that were in a state of flux. Iger then promised a return to what he described as the creative “heart and soul” of the company.

Iger described the cuts as a necessary part of a “transformation” that includes restructuring the company into three main segments: ESPN, theme parks and entertainment, including movies and the Disney Plus streaming service.

With such cuts, Disney becomes yet another company that has continued this unpleasant trend. Particularly companies in the technology, financial and housing sectors, which are more sensitive to rising borrowing costs due to higher interest rates and which go to the drastic measures of laying people off. But despite the high-profile layoffs, unemployment remains at its lowest level in decades.