Our rampant use of AI has pulled data centers back into the spotlight. The tech industry is seeking better ways to power the servers for ChatGPT, Midjourney, Gemini, and other AI tools. A few companies attempted to address it this week:
Why it matters: As Fortune points out, 5 gigawatts is a lot of power—roughly equivalent to the amount needed to power Miami. If companies are to fulfill their carbon-neutral pledges, we may need to move faster on cold fusion. This also begs the question: Should we be using all of this power just to fabricate case law or to generate ridiculous images of historical figures?
We can’t go a week—sometimes even a day—without hearing about another cyberattack. This week, there were some big ones: A hacker going by “grep” claims to have targeted Dell three times this month, first releasing data on employees and then two separate releases of internal documents. MoneyGram confirmed an incident on Monday after a multiple-day outage but has not released any details other than a post on X Thursday that it was back online. In addition, data broker MC2 Data, a provider of background checks, left a database containing more than 2.2 TB of data exposed to the internet, as it was not password protected.
Why it matters: Individual have hardly any control over what happens to their data once they entrust it to a company. Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is supposed to be handled with the utmost care. Yet, companies we don’t know have access to it and make careless mistakes that put everyone at risk. The Dell incident shows that data leaks can affect non-customers too, as employee information was exposed. The EU’s GDPR has become the de facto standard for corporate data protection. Still, the legal implications only come into play when EU citizens are involved. Companies do not have sufficient controls in place, and consumers are paying the price.
OpenAI is suffering from growing pains as it transitions from a non-profit organization into a Tech Giant. Three more executives left the company this week, including the chief technology officer Mira Murati. Two high-level research team members are also leaving: Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew and Vice President of Research Barret Zoph. These departures come on the heels of the August announcement that two co-founder were leaving. Greg Brockman announced an extended leave of absence while co-founder John Schulman left for a position at competitor Anthropic.
Why it matters: OpenAI hopes to close a $6.5 billion funding round soon, which could see the company’s valuation jump to $150 billion. Investors may be skeptical that the company can continue its current trajectory, given that so many original employees are leaving. The company was founded in December 2015 but didn’t fall into the public eye until the release of ChatGPT 3.5 in November 2022. Since then, the company has struggled to maintain its non-profit roots, and on Thursday, Reuters reported that the company may restructure as a for-profit organization.
Other things to be aware of:
And, in case you missed it, the September 25 Google Doodle, “Celebrating Popcorn,” was a weird multiplayer game in which you played as a popcorn kernel, and the goal was not to pop.
