Kylie Robison

Users are lighting up X with posts about the Elon / Trump space, and an AI-generated trending topic aggregated user posts about Trump’s “unusual speech pattern,” which some are attributing to ill-fitting dentures (there’s no proof whether Trump has dentures or not).

X’s automated trending topics have a history of getting things disastrously wrong.

Update: X has since taken down this AI-generated trending topic.

The startup has appointed Zico Kolter, a professor and the director of the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University, to its board of directors. Kolter will also join the Board’s Safety and Security Committee alongside a group of other board members and CEO Sam Altman.

Kolter has a background in developing safety methods for large language models and formerly worked as the Chief Data Scientist at C3.ai.

In an all-hands at X, CEO Linda Yaccarino attempted to rally the troops after filing a lawsuit against a coalition of major advertisers, claiming they had coordinated an “illegal boycott” and cost the company billions of dollars.

Yaccarino urged employees to “review the evidence,” a source at X told me. She also hyped up X payments and shopping on the platform, but didn’t announce a launch date, and emphasized X’s “pivot to video.”

Mark Kalman, X’s engineering lead of media, and his second-in-command, Melissa Merencillo, resigned today. They announced their departures in a company Slack channel on the day stocks vest at X; Merencillo told The Verge that the timing had no bearing on their decision.

This is a big loss for X, a source tells me. Kalman is the main source of knowledge for all things X media infrastructure, and more important than that, he’s good at “handling” Elon Musk.

Update: added comment from Merencillo.

I was once told that the only reason people are wowed by AI products like ChatGPT is because it mimics us, and we’re obsessed with ourselves. I think about that a lot, especially as I watched this video of ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode catching its non-existent breath as it counts quickly to 50. So strange.

Sam Altman announced that OpenAI is collaborating with the US AI Safety Institute for early access to their next foundation model (but no release date was specified.)
He also emphasized OpenAI’s commitment to dedicating 20% of computing resources to safety, a promise originally made to the now-defunct Superalignment team.

Plus, he noted that OpenAI has removed non-disparagement clauses for employees and provisions allowing the cancellation of vested equity.