Science and Technology

Ilya Sutskever, the OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist who in November joined three other board members to force out Sam Altman, the company’s high-profile chief executive, before saying he regretted the move, is leaving the San Francisco A.I. company.Dr. Sutskever’s departure, which the company announced in a blog post on Tuesday, closes another chapter in a story that stunned Silicon Valley and that raised questions about whether Mr. Altman and his company were prepared to lead the tech industry into the age of artificial intelligence.After returning to OpenAI just five days after he was ousted, Mr. Altman reasserted his control…

When a children’s jewelry maker began advertising on Instagram, she promoted photos of a 5-year-old girl wearing a sparkly charm to users interested in parenting, children, ballet and other topics identified by Meta as appealing mostly to women.But when the merchant got the automated results of her ad campaign from Instagram, the opposite had happened: The ads had gone almost entirely to adult men.Perplexed and concerned, the merchant contacted The New York Times, which in recent years has published multiple articles about the abuse of children on social media platforms. In February, The Times investigated Instagram accounts run by parents…

Apple’s top software executives decided early last year that Siri, the company’s virtual assistant, needed a brain transplant.The decision came after the executives Craig Federighi and John Giannandrea spent weeks testing OpenAI’s new chatbot, ChatGPT. The product’s use of generative artificial intelligence, which can write poetry, create computer code and answer complex questions, made Siri look antiquated, said two people familiar with the company’s work, who didn’t have permission to speak publicly.Introduced in 2011 as the original virtual assistant in every iPhone, Siri had been limited for years to individual requests and had never been able to follow a conversation.…

Apple doesn’t make mistakes often and seldom apologizes, but on Thursday, its head of advertising said the company had erred in making a new iPad commercial that showed an industrial compressor flattening tools for art, music and creativity.“Creativity is in our DNA at Apple, and it’s incredibly important to us to design products that empower creatives all over the world,” said Tor Myhren, the company’s vice president of marketing communications, in a statement provided to the publication AdAge. “Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad of ways users express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad. We…

President Biden will travel to Wisconsin on Wednesday to announce the creation of an artificial intelligence data center, highlighting one of his administration’s biggest economic accomplishments in a crucial battleground state — and pointing up a significant failure by his immediate predecessor and 2024 challenger.At a technical college in Racine, Mr. Biden will announce that Microsoft will invest $3.3 billion to build the center, which the tech giant estimates will create 2,300 union construction jobs and 2,000 permanent jobs, according to the White House. The project is part of Mr. Biden’s “Investing in America” agenda, which has focused on bringing…

Law firms are increasingly relying on generative artificial intelligence to produce research and draft documents.We’d like to hear from lawyers working with generative A.I., including contract lawyers who have been brought on for assignments related to A.I. If you fit this profile, please consider responding to the questions below. Your answers may help us better understand the use of A.I. in law and other professions and inform our reporting.We won’t publish your name or any part of your submission without contacting you first. If you prefer to share tips or thoughts confidentially, you can do so here. More information

Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, blindsided competitors, suppliers and his own employees this week by reversing course on his aggressive push to build electric vehicle chargers in the United States, a major priority of the Biden administration.Mr. Musk’s decision to lay off the 500-member team responsible for installing charging stations, and to sharply slow investment in new stations, baffled the industry and raised doubts about whether the number of public chargers would grow fast enough to keep pace with sales of battery-powered cars. It put the onus on other charging companies, raising questions about whether they can build…

Listen to and follow ‘Hard Fork’Apple | Spotify | Amazon | YouTubeWe asked listeners to tell us about the wildest ways they have been using artificial intelligence at work. This week, we bring you their stories. Then, Hank Green, a legendary YouTuber, stops by to talk about how creators are reacting to the prospect of a ban on TikTok, and about how he’s navigating an increasingly fragmented online environment. And finally, deep fakes are coming to Main Street: We’ll tell you the story of how they caused turmoil in a Maryland high school and what, if anything, can be done…

A pair of glasses from Meta shoots a picture when you say, “Hey, Meta, take a photo.” A miniature computer that clips to your shirt, the Ai Pin, translates foreign languages into your native tongue. An artificially intelligent screen features a virtual assistant that you talk to through a microphone.Last year, OpenAI updated its ChatGPT chatbot to respond with spoken words, and recently, Google introduced Gemini, a replacement for its voice assistant on Android phones.Tech companies are betting on a renaissance for voice assistants, many years after most people decided that talking to computers was uncool.Will it work this time?…

Mustafa Suleyman grew up in subsidized housing in one of London’s roughest areas. His father, a Syrian immigrant, drove a taxi. His mother was a nurse with the National Health Service. When the prestigious Queen Elizabeth’s School accepted him at the age of 11, the family moved into a safer, leafier neighborhood a few miles north.There, he met 20-year-old Demis Hassabis, after becoming friends with his younger brother. Demis was a chess prodigy and video game designer whose parents — one a Greek Cypriot, the other a Singaporean — ran a London toy store.Today, they are two of the most…