Jon Victor
@jon_victor_
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Reporter @theinformation. Contact me on Signal: @ jon.597
San Francisco
Joined November 2014
New: Three senior researchers - Jakub Pachocki, Szymon Sidor and Aleksander Madry - have resigned from OpenAI following Sam Altman's ouster .
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I’m happy to share that I’m taking on an exciting new beat here @theinformation. I’ll be writing about the world of enterprise AI, including the businesses and people looking to transform the way we work. I’m looking to dive deep into how companies like Oracle, Salesforce,.
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New: Igor Babuschkin, whom Elon Musk hired to lead his new AI lab, was arrested last month in Palo Alto for domestic battery, public records show
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New: Google quietly scrapped a set of Gemini launch events planned for next week, delaying the model’s release to early next year. w/ @amir.
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More on Q*: it was enabled by a research breakthrough by Ilya Sutskever earlier this year. Within months, Sutskever began working on “Superalignment,” but other researchers including Jakub Pachocki and Szymon Sidor used the advance to build Q* .
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New: OpenAI's $86 billion tender offer is in doubt now that Sam Altman and other key employees are gone. The round was expected to close as soon as next month. @KateClarkTweets @aaronpholmes.
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NEW: OpenAI dropped work earlier this year on a major new AI model called Arrakis after it failed to perform as expected during training.
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Exclusive: Elon Musk has approached artificial intelligence researchers in recent weeks about forming a new research lab to develop an alternative to ChatGPT, the high-profile chatbot made by the startup OpenAI.
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BREAKING: Yale Econ 115 professor makes midterm exam optional after students write in expressing shock about presidential election:
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Exclusive: OpenAI is looking to beat Google in rolling out multimodal LLM features widely before Gemini's release. They're also working on a new multimodal LLM called Gobi.
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New: OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever made a key research advance in the months before forming a team focused on alignment. The breakthrough raised concerns among some staff that the company didn’t have proper safeguards in place to commercialize such advanced AI models.
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SCOOP: The endowments of Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Dartmouth and UNC have all made investments into at least one cryptocurrency fund.
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1/ I’m thrilled to share that I’ll be rejoining @theinformation in early October as a reporter covering Alphabet, based in San Francisco. I’m excited to get started and look forward to being part of the team again.
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New: Google reps have told customers and business partners they wouldn't have access to Gemini until early next year, after previously saying the company would roll out its new AI model as early as November.
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NEW: Google is testing its Gemini large language model with outside companies, a sign it is getting closer to a full release of the highly anticipated model.
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New: In a rare collaboration between DeepMind and Google Brain, software engineers at both Alphabet AI units are working together on a GPT-4 rival that would have up to 1 trillion parameters—a project known internally as Gemini.
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Ilya Sutskever faced questions from OpenAI employees Friday about whether Sam Altman's firing was a “coup” or “hostile takeover,” according to a transcript of the meeting.
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@marcogutierrez, a Trump supporter born in Jalisco, defends the candidate's plan for a border wall #RNCinCLE
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New: OpenAI wants to take on Google by developing its own web search product.
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New: Head of nonprofit & strategic initiatives Chris Clark and VP of people Diane Yoon left OpenAI this week.
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Scoop: Ioannis Antonoglou, one of the longest-tenured researchers at DeepMind, has left the company to launch a startup focused on AI agents. w/ @amir .
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In case you missed it: ConsenSys is expanding into coworking and media. -The company plans to open 150 to 200 coworking spaces for startups building on Ethereum. -It's also launching a crypto news & research organization called Decrypt Media.
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BREAKING: Yale admitted 1,972 students to its class of 2020 for an overall acceptance rate of 6.27 percent. #Yale2020 @yaledailynews.
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For this week's @theinformation Startup of the Week, I profiled @foamspace, a company trying to create a blockchain-based alternative to GPS.
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Some personal news: I’m excited to be joining @The_Logic next month as a reporter covering fintech! A big thank-you to everyone @CdnPressNews who has made my experience there so valuable.
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Today is my first day reporting full-time for @theinformation! I'll be covering blockchain technology and cryptocurrency from NYC. Say hi/email me tips at jon@theinformation.com.
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Scoop: Google's AI products incubator is building a competitor that would feature custom chatbots modeled on celebs or made by users. w/ @julia_hornstein.
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Three new departures today at OpenAI:. - President Greg Brockman is taking an extended leave of absence.- Senior researcher John Schulman is joining rival Anthropic .- Product leader Peter Deng has left the company.
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My 1st story since returning to @theinformation: Google is doubling down on its own hardware, including moving product development and software engineering staff working on features for non-Google hardware to work on Google-branded devices (w/ @amir).
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Google told laid-off employees it miscalculated the number of the stock grants many of them would receive—meaning some will get tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars less than they were initially told.
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Tim Wagner, Coinbase's VP of engineering, is the latest exec to leave the company, according to @Coindesk. @theinformation's piece on tensions inside Coinbase's executive ranks is here:
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this was a fun way to mark my 1-year anniversary at @theinformation!.
.@TheInformation has released their Eight Takeaways From Facebook’s Libra Cryptocurrency . We are offering our premium subscribers access to @theinformation conference call on Libra at 1pm EST/ 10pm PST TODAY with journalists @alexeheath and @jon_victor_ .
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Google re-orgs AI teams, moving responsible AI staff from Google Research to DeepMind, and merges its hardware unit with groups focused on software ecosystems like Android.
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New: It’s been a year of big changes for Google DeepMind—and for its leader, Demis Hassabis. My look at how he’s been dealing with the AI unit’s new dynamic, which has at times left him deeply frustrated: .
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New: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and iPhone designer Jony Ive have been discussing building a new AI hardware device, with SoftBank's Masayoshi Son also taking part in the talks, @Jessicalessin and @steph_palazzolo report.
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No one can #FireJonVictor because I don't have a summer job yet
So this is what you get from Yale? Grow the f*** up. Find something beneficial to do. Quit wasting your parents' money. #FireJonVictor
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Breaking: OpenAI is working to bring back Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and other key employees who have left since Altman's firing, OpenAI's chief strategy officer told staff in a memo Saturday night.
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SCOOP w/ @alexeheath : Facebook plans to cede control of its forthcoming cryptocurrency to outside backers, a move meant to encourage trust in the digital payment system and reassure financial regulators.
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Can people stop trading bitcoin for a few hours so I don't have to keep updating this week's newsletter with a new (higher) price.
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OpenAI is courting key Google researchers with multimillion-dollar comp packages and promises of abundant compute .
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OpenAI president Greg Brockman addresses Musk criticism in an interview with @theinformation: "Our goal is not to have an AI that is biased in any particular direction. We want the default personality of OpenAI to be one that treats all sides equally.".
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Scoop: @HubSpot is buying AI billing startup Cacheflow for around $100M . w/ @anissagardizy8.
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New: Jacob Devlin, a prominent AI researcher who quit Google in January after complaining internally about how the company trained its Bard chatbot software, has rejoined from rival OpenAI. @amir.
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Remember Gemini?.
Google, which recently delayed the release of its Gemini models, will likely take advantage of the recent situation to narrow OpenAI’s lead. By @jon_victor_.
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Disturbing report from NHPD of a New Haven high school graffitied with swastikas and references to Donald Trump:
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Meanwhile, BIO 114 will have a midterm tomorrow, despite pleas from students to cancel it in light of the election's "emotional toll:"
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New: Google execs have extensively discussed dropping Broadcom as a supplier of AI chips as early as 2027, bringing design fully in-house and reducing costs . w/ @waynema @anissagardizy8.
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Exclusive: Waymo quietly cut staff on Monday, including engineers working on an autonomous trucking project.
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New: Google has fired 28 workers involved in yesterday's protest over its cloud contract with the Israeli government, the company said.
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Thrilled to have won a @SABEW award alongside a great crew from @theinformation for our breaking news coverage of OpenAI! .
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New: Google tells staff it is cutting hundreds of jobs in ad sales, after the company announced layoffs across multiple units last week.
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Very happy to share that starting Monday (Nov. 16) I’ll be a Montreal-based business reporter for the Canadian Press! I’m looking forward to covering Canada’s corporate sector during this important time, and excited to work with such a great team of journalists @CdnPressNews.
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Service outage reports for major Canadian banks seem to have fallen after a spike late this afternoon (especially for RBC)
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Breaking: Sam Altman won't return as CEO of OpenAI, despite negotiations for him to come back, co-founder and board director Ilya Sutskever told staff Sunday night. by @amir.
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Voatz, a company that develops software for blockchain-based voting, is in talks with at least 10 states about expanding the company’s pilot in West Virginia to other jurisdictions for elections in 2019 and 2020.
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New: OpenAI's rivals are circling to recruit its talent amid the chaos. @KateClarkTweets @nmasc_ @steph_palazzolo.
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My first story for @the_logic: Toronto-based fintech startup Clearbanc (now Clearco) raises a new round of funding at a nearly $2 billion valuation, making it one of Canada's unicorns.
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Google Cloud laid off an unspecified number of sales staff this week as it reorganizes to prioritize AI.
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At Google Cloud Next, the company outlined an ambitious vision for its enterprise AI — now it needs customers to get on board . w/ @anissagardizy8.
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NEW: Justin Trudeau says Canada supports removing Russia from the SWIFT network.
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Facebook’s acquisition of Chainspace for an undisclosed sum came amid a broad search for crypto engineers that began in early 2018 and involved speaking with at least a dozen startups so far.
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Due to regulatory concerns we have been forced to geofence certain assets
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The Information's crypto newsletter has launched! This week's edition has info on Coinbase's D.C. plans, three big questions facing Bitmain, regulatory scrutiny, and more. Link below, and subscribe to @theinformation to receive future newsletters!.
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New: Highly valued enterprise software startups are feeling the effects of a sales slowdown, with growth for some dropping to 20% or less. w/ @coryweinberg @nmasc_.
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Sam Altman is officially back as OpenAI's CEO, and Ilya Sutskever's role is still TBD.
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New: Threats from AI competitors and lower ad revenue have exposed problems that have festered at Google under Sundar Pichai's leadership, including his penchant for incremental product moves and tolerance for a bureaucratic culture. w/ @amir.
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Clearco staff have questioned whether the company is being clear about its plans after waves of firings for months put employees on edge: “If I hadn’t left the company when I did, I know that would have been me the following week.”.
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@Yale accepted 51 students through the @QuestBridge match program, the highest number since partnering with the organization in 2007.
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I am watching Trump speak on CNN. He just said CNN was fake news. I don't know what to believe anymore.
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How did OpenAI beat Google to the punch in launching its chatbot? It helped to have a hidden weapon: the search giant's former AI researchers.
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Google DeepMind is increasingly using a special compensation program to pay top AI researchers and compete with multimillion-dollar offers from rival OpenAI.
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Difficulty of swiping a MetroCard directly proportional to number of people standing behind you.
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A front page worth saving.
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Here’s Turing Award winner @silviomicali presenting at Consensus about his company, @Algorand
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Not his first media interview since becoming CEO. McKenzie was interviewed in June for @the_logic's story on retail trading:
New TMX CEO John McKenzie strives to keep pace with global exchanges
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Think you're a student journalist? Lemme see your Harvard president shortlist.
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New: Google has released details of its three Gemini models - Nano, Pro and Ultra - and says the Ultra version outperforms OpenAI’s GPT-4 on major benchmarks. Ultra will be available early next year .
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#Yale2020 early action results: 17% were accepted, 53% were deferred, 29% were rejected and 1% withdrew or submitted incomplete apps.
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Exclusive: @neutral_project has raised $4 million from @sequoia China, @FBGCapital and @BixinIM to develop its new stablecoin backed by. other stablecoins. The Neutral Dollar launches next week:.
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Canada’s government is 4+ years late to delivering an upgrade to its national payment technology, but the org overseeing the project, @PaymentsCanada, won’t even explain what’s taking so long 🤷♂️
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Scoop: a16z has discussed leading a new financing round for @ideogram_ai, an AI image generation startup that has sought a $500M pre-money valuation (despite not yet generating revenue). Andreessen Horowitz Discussed Backing a Midjourney Rival Seeking $500 Million Valuation w/.
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Scoop: Salesforce is leading a funding round in Hugging Face, valuing the company at more than $4b. w/ @amir.
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BREAKING: Yale admits 795 early action applicants for an overall early acceptance rate of 17 percent. #Yale2020 @yaledailynews.
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Scoop: Wealthsimple is pausing hiring indefinitely, except for "certain mission critical roles," as one of Canada's most highly valued startups navigates economic headwinds.
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2/ I’ve been lucky to work with so many amazing colleagues at @the_logic over the last year and a half. A special thank-you to @aprilfong, @jordantimm and @dskok, who have built an incredible newsroom that’s been a game changer in Canadian journalism.
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The latest edition of @theinformation's Startups to Watch includes two blockchain startups: Oasis Labs and Dfinity. Read more about why these projects are worth following:.
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With the release of Gemini, Google defied critics who said it had become too indecisive and bureaucratic. Here's how it came together: .
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New: Clearco is laying off 125 employees, roughly a quarter of its workforce, CEO @MicheleRomanow told staff in an email this morning.
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