Former President Trump and Elon Musk have begun speaking on the phone several times a month, including about a potential advisory role for the Tesla CEO in a second Trump administration, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Why it matters: Musk has become one of President Biden's most prominent online critics, leveraging his massive X platform to attack Democrats and promote Trump's messaging on the 2024 election's top issues.
The Atlantic, one of the oldest magazines in the U.S., and Vox Media, one of the nation's largest digital media holding companies, have both inked separate licensing and product deals with ChatGPT parent OpenAI.
Why it matters: The deals give OpenAI added momentum in its quest for credible content to train its algorithms and inform its chatbots — and could also protect the Microsoft-backed company further from future copyright liability.
Why it matters: Restaurants have largely recovered from their pandemic-era swoon, but they're still working overtime to keep customers interested and coming back in the age of price inflation and fast-changing TikTok food trends.
OpenAI is establishing a new safety committee as it begins training its next big AI model.
Why it matters: The buzzy AI startup has seen a number of key departures in recent weeks, with several employees complaining that it has not been devoting promised safety resources.
Data: Bureau of Labor Statistics; Chart: Axios Visuals
The inflation rate for "food at home" — basically the stuff you buy at the supermarket — is really low these days, with prices rising just 1.1% over the last year.
But since January 2021, when President Biden took office, prices are up nearly 21%.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman — pursuing a "move fast and break things" strategy while dodging PR disasters and spewing apologies — is looking more and more like Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg.
Why it matters: AI's potential dangers loom extra large, but Silicon Valley continues to reward leaders who embrace an "ask forgiveness, not permission" stance.
Jan Leike, the "superalignment" leader who left OpenAI earlier in May and then fired off a volley of criticism, announced Tuesday that he will join OpenAI rival Anthropic.
Why it matters: OpenAI's commitment to safe deployment of AI has been a source of conflict at the company since its board's failed effort to oust CEO Sam Altman last November.
Microsoft has been actively briefing federal government IT and security leaders on its new plan to revamp its internal cybersecurity practices.
Why it matters: Microsoft is facing pushback in Washington among lawmakers and federal offices following a China hack last summer that exposed top officials' internal emails.
Economists are debating how AI might reshape the U.S. job market and boost productivity growth in the decades ahead. But a new paper finds that such benefits will be harder to match across the Atlantic.
Why it matters: The result might be a widening divide in innovation and economic outcomes between the U.S. and continental Europe.
Microsoft has been actively briefing federal government IT and security leaders on its new plan to revamp its internal cybersecurity practices.
Why it matters: Microsoft is facing pushback in Washington among lawmakers and federal offices following a China hack last summer that exposed top officials' internal emails.
Zoom in: Steve Faehl, chief technology officer for Microsoft's federal security business, told a small group of reporters last week that he's been meeting with federal agencies' security teams to brief them on the company's new cybersecurity strategy.
The strategy, known as the Secure Future Initiative, incentivizes company executives and employees to prioritize cybersecurity when designing products.
Data compliance platform Transcend has raised a $40 million Series B round led by StepStone Group, the startup exclusively shared with Axios.
Why it matters: The new funding round will help the startup compete against legacy data privacy tools from OneTrust and others.
Data privacy and identity management has proven to be one of the most stable outlets for cyber investors, despite an unpredictable macro environment.
Zoom in: Transcend has expanded in recent years from a platform that solely helps consumers navigate their own data privacy to a product suite that now helps companies respond to data deletion requests, opt-outs of third-party sales, and other regulatory requirements.
The RansomHub ransomware gang has taken credit for a cyberattack against renowned art auction house Christie's.
Why it matters: Christie's has yet to call the cyber "incident" a ransomware attack.
The auction house returned its website and app to full functionality this month after battling a cyberattack.
Zoom in: RansomHub claimed in a dark web listing seen by Axios on Monday that it stole 2 gigabytes' worth of information from Christie's, including at least 500,000 private clients' sensitive information.
A screenshot of the stolen data that RansomHub posted on its site suggests that some of the information includes passport numbers, birthdays and full names.
📈 The number of fake X accounts posting about the U.S. presidential election grew tenfold in March and April, researchers found. (Reuters)
🤷🏻♂️ A European Union data protection task force hasn't come to any conclusive rulings on whether ChatGPT's data collection processes violate the bloc's privacy law, according to a new preliminary report. (TechCrunch)
🇨🇳 China hawk lawmakers have growing concerns about the potential implications of Microsoft's $1.5 billion investment deal with Emirati AI company G42. (Politico)
@ Industry
🤖 OpenAI has created a new safety and security committee that will evaluate the company's safeguards and consult with several well-known security experts, including former National Security Agency official Rob Joyce and former Department of Justice official John Carlin. (Axios)
The annual SLEUTHCON conference in Arlington, Virginia, on Friday suffered a power outage part way through programming. They persevered and kept the show going anyway, as they always do. 💪🏼
Celebrities, journalists and public figures are warning fans not to trust seemingly authentic videos and posts of them endorsing wellness products on social media, since so many of these images have been manipulated using AI.
Why it matters: The wellness business has always been a breeding ground for online scams, and AI is supercharging the problem.
OpenAI announced Tuesday that it's establishing a new safety committee, and also confirmed that it has begun training its next big model.
Why it matters: The company has seen a number of key departures in recent weeks, with several employees complaining that it has not been devoting promised resources to ensuring the long-term safety of its AI work.
Top AI executives tell us they're racing to overcome old-fashioned shortages — electricity, computing power, chips, data and engineering talent — to keep improving and deploying their world-changing technology.
Why it matters: This scarcity crisis is among the top threats to America building out AI at scale, and maintaining its edge over China on the large-language models that power AI tools.
The Arc Sport is the first electric boat aimed at the mass market, according to its manufacturer, a startup called Arc.
Why it matters: There's a drive to electrify boats with low-cost, high-energy batteries, the same way the auto industry is trying to rid vehicles of climate-damaging fossil fuels.
Elon Musk and his investors are betting $6 billion that bigger AI will continue to be better AI.
The big picture: Musk long ago parted ways with the other co-founders of OpenAI — but his AI startup, xAI, is borrowing OpenAI's "if you build it larger, it will get smarter" strategy.
