Amazon, once an online bookseller, is destroying rare books to train AI models

Rare books are incredibly valuable for training LLMs, since these models have already trained on whatever’s available online.

Amazon is trying to crush class action suits before they get started
Amazon is trying to crush class action suits before they get started

On Friday, Amazon customers received an email alerting them to an update to the site’s terms and conditions. Most notably, it stated that disputes would now be resolved through arbitration and said users agree to a class action waiver. Amazon framed this as a “fast and efficient” way to resolve issues, but it notably would […]

Zoox has shown its safety workings, three weeks after recalling every robotaxi it owns
Zoox has shown its safety workings, three weeks after recalling every robotaxi it owns

Zoox has published the reasoning behind its claim to be safer than human drivers. Everything reduces to one number, the predicted rate of collision, injury and fatality events, expressed as miles per event. Risk from driving software, from the vehicle …

Joshua Kushner’s Thrive Capital Discloses $215 Million Amazon Stake
Joshua Kushner’s Thrive Capital Discloses $215 Million Amazon Stake

Joshua Kushner’s Thrive Capital has bought roughly $215mn of Amazon shares, disclosed in a regulatory filing on Friday. It lands in the same week the firm told investors it is selling part of its OpenAI stake, in a company Amazon now owns close to 5% o…

Does Mark Zuckerberg really believe AI is ‘for everyone’?

Meta released Glimmer this week, an open-weight AI model anyone can download and run on their own hardware — a contrast to Muse Spark, the company’s more powerful model that stays locked behind its own APIs. The release landed …

Hyperscalers might regret embracing natural gas if new forecast proves correct

Natural gas prices could triple in some parts of the U.S., which could saddle hyperscalers with massive bills to power their AI data centers.

Twitch will train Amazon’s AI on your streams unless you find the setting
Twitch will train Amazon’s AI on your streams unless you find the setting

Twitch has added a setting letting streamers stop Amazon using their streams, clips and chat to train generative AI, buried in security settings and off by default. Chief product officer Mike Minton explained the default plainly, saying that if it were…

Amazon will train on Twitch streamers’ content by default, unless they opt out

“If this was opt-in, nobody would opt in,” Twitch CPO Mike Minton said on a livestream responding to user feedback. “That’s honestly the answer.”

Amazon gets out of the MMO game
Amazon gets out of the MMO game

Amazon is fully stepping back from MMOs. After saying last year that it would be halting “a significant amount” of its work on first-party AAA games, “specifically around MMOs,” Amazon will be handing over live operations of Throne and Liberty and Lost Ark in the West to other companies, according to announcements on Wednesday. Throne […]

Why your Amazon order confirmation emails have become so unhelpful
Why your Amazon order confirmation emails have become so unhelpful

Earlier this summer, Amazon customers began noticing that emails related to their online orders looked sparse: Order confirmation emails didn’t name specific items anymore, and instead listed only item categories. “Your Beauty item is confirmed!” an email about my retainer cleaning tablets read. Shoppers have posted other iterations of the redacted emails as well: “Ordered: […]