The top technology stories of 2023 highlight fundamental changes in culture and geopolitics as well as tech itself: It’s clear that generative AI will affect all aspects of technology and society, while geopolitical tensions are sparking cybersecurity attacks globally. General unease about the dominance of big tech, meanwhile, is pushing regulators to get tougher on mopolistic business practices and multibillion-dollar mergers.
Fired! Rehired! Sam Altman’s ouster and return to OpenAI
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The ouster of Sam Altman as CEO of OpenAI, which sparked the modern era of generative AI when it launched ChatGPT a year earlier, was the tech industry shocker of the year. After the board issued a mysterious statement on November 17 saying that it had fired Altman for not being “consistently candid,” Microsoft announced that it would hire Altman and any other OpenAI employees who wanted to follow him out the door — which turned out to be almost all of them. OpenAI backed down and rehired Altman.
When the dust settled, the story came into focus: the OpenAI board believed that Altman, under pressure by investors and the need to pay for vast amounts of computing power, was pushing too fast to release products, jeopardizing the company’s original mission of creating safe AI systems. Altman is now back to running OpenAI with an almost completely new board, highlighting an age-old story: commercial concerns and the race to be on the leading edge override attempts to throttle development of any technology.
DOJ v. Google: Biggest tech antitrust trial in 20 years
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The US Department of Justice (DOJ) opened its antitrust trial against Google in September, accusing the internet giant of illegally maintaining a monopoly on search through deals that make it the default search technology on a variety of devices — primarily from Apple. It’s the biggest tech antitrust case since the 1990s, when the DOJ charged Microsoft with illegally bundling Internet Explorer with Windows. Ironically, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was a major witness for the prosecution this time around, warning that Google’s monopoly profits could lock in publishers as AI-enabled search arrives.
Against a backdrop of growing public unease about the dominance of big tech companies, it’s just one of a number of ongoing cases — including the US Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust lawsuit on Amazon’s e-commerce business, launched in September, and a separate US antitrust case again Google, focusing on advertising, which will go to trial in 2024 — that may reshape the tech market as regulators show renewed vigor in pushing back against anticompetitive practices.
Amazon cuts 18,000 workers as layoffs hit tech
Just days after the new year started, Amazon confirmed reports that it would be cutting 18,000 staff. It was the first major layoff announcement in what would be a huge retrenchment for tech companies in 2023, with sweeping layoffs enacted by tech…
2023-12-23 21:00:03
Original from www.computerworld.com rnrn