According to Bloomberg, Meta officially launched a layoff plan on Monday, targeting primarily 'underperforming' employees. At the same time, Meta is actively seeking new talent to strengthen its position in the artificial intelligence market. The layoffs will affect approximately 3,600 employees, accounting for 5% of Meta's total workforce. Affected employees were notified via email. U.S. employees will receive severance packages that include 16 weeks of pay and additional compensation based on their years of service.

On January 22, 2025, NetEase Youdao officially released the first inference model in China that supports step-by-step explanations, 'ZiYue - o1'. This model features a design with 14 billion parameters, enabling efficient deployment on standard consumer-grade graphics cards, marking a significant advancement in the application of artificial intelligence technologies in the domestic education sector. 'ZiYue - o1' utilizes Thinking Chain technology and incorporates self-dialogue and error-correction mechanisms, allowing it to output detailed thinking processes when solving problems. This way, students not only receive answers but also understand the logic behind problem-solving.

NVIDIA recently announced that its open-source BioNeMo™ biomolecular AI framework has gained widespread adoption in the pharmaceutical field, attracting significant attention from pharmaceutical companies, biotech innovators, and AI researchers. The introduction of this framework marks the formal entry of AI-assisted drug development into the supercomputing era. As a specialized AI toolkit for biomolecular research, the BioNeMo framework offers revolutionary breakthroughs for the pharmaceutical industry. Researchers can leverage this framework to significantly enhance the computational scale of AI models, analyze massive datasets more efficiently, and achieve remarkable advancements.

Recently, a survey conducted by Dice on the technology industry revealed a complex attitude among professionals, despite numerous challenges faced by the job market in the past year. According to the survey of 910 technology professionals and employers, although short-term economic views have turned pessimistic, there remains an optimistic sentiment about the future. Source of the image: The image is AI-generated and authorized by service provider Midjourney. The survey results indicate that 31% of technology professionals hold a cautiously optimistic view of the economic situation for the coming year.

OpenAI has made its latest AI models o1-preview and o1-mini available to all ChatGPT Enterprise and ChatGPT Edu customers. These models are designed to handle complex reasoning tasks and are expected to transform the way organizations and academic institutions tackle challenges, covering various fields from advanced programming to scientific research. The o1 models were first unveiled earlier this month, representing OpenAI's advancements in creating AI capable of deep multi-step reasoning.

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology, the work practices in the banking and accounting sectors are undergoing significant transformation, raising the risk of layoffs. Multiple unions have issued warnings urging the industry to prepare for the impending wave of layoffs. The application of AI technology is gradually replacing traditional positions, such as financial analysis and data entry, tasks that previously required human effort are now being quickly and efficiently resolved by AI. This not only affects the job stability of existing employees but may also reduce new employment opportunities. Unions emphasize that businesses should pay attention to employee rights while promoting technological innovation.

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI), the increase in electricity demand has attracted a massive influx of investors into utility stocks. In May and June of this year, U.S. utility funds attracted over $1.7 billion in inflows, marking the highest record in nearly two years. An additional $1.1 billion inflow is expected in July, primarily into the Utilities Select Sector SPDR (XLU) exchange-traded fund. Investors are turning their attention to utility stocks in search of AI investment opportunities that can outperform 'Big Tech' stocks in a strong bull market.

SenseTime Technology has collaborated with the Construction Society to launch the 'Regulations and Standards Knowledge Model for the Construction Sector', based on the 'SenseNova5.5' framework. This model integrates industry standards, laws, design, and process specifications, aiming to provide intelligent and professional knowledge support for various stages of construction. The model has been applied in the knowledge service platform for regulations and standards in housing and urban-rural construction, featuring functions such as intelligent Q&A, integration, duplication check, and comparison to enhance knowledge retrieval efficiency. Trained on high-quality construction knowledge data of 600 million tokens, the model covers 8,000 industry-specific books.

At this week's SIGGRAPH conference, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg showcased Segment Anything 2 (SA2) for the first time, an upgraded version of the groundbreaking image segmentation model the company introduced last year. The new model extends AI-driven segmentation technology to the video domain, demonstrating the remarkable progress made over the past year.

Beijing recently held a press conference to interpret the economic situation and policies for the first half of the year, revealing significant achievements in the field of artificial intelligence. It is reported that by the first half of 2024, Beijing will achieve major breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, with a total of 71 large models launched, accounting for over 40% of the national total, demonstrating Beijing's leading position in the development of AI technology.

Son Masayoshi, the founder of SoftBank, plans to invest $10 billion globally in the AI and chip sectors.As reported by The Information, SoftBank is currently in talks with banks to invest $10 billion in AI energy projects and intends to acquire a large number of NVIDIA GPUs. Son Masayoshi positions SoftBank as a leader in the global AI race, focusing on the construction of critical infrastructure.Image Source Note: The image is generated by AI, and the image authorization service provider is Mid

Insiders reveal that Japan's technology investment giant, SoftBank Group, is seeking financing for a massive $10 billion AI-related investment plan. This significant investment is primarily focused on the energy sector and reflects the profound impact of the current AI boom on traditional industries.After a near silence of nearly a year, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son has recently re-emerged in the public eye. He has expressed great enthusiasm for the future development of AI and outlined his ambiti

AWS announced a $50 million initiative aimed at accelerating public sector innovation, providing cloud credits and advanced AI infrastructure to attract governments and public organizations to utilize its generative AI services.Image Source Note: The image was generated by AI, and the image is authorized by service provider Midjourney The new Public Sector Generative AI Impact Program will run for two years and provide access to AWS services, including Bedrock, a fully managed service for develo

J.P. Morgan's Chief Economist Bruce Kasman stated that the technology sector in the Asia-Pacific region is experiencing growth driven by the semiconductor industry's boom. The global tech industry is facing challenges of high inflation and interest rates that weaken consumer spending. The tech sector may see moderate growth recovery in 2024. The semiconductor industry is closely linked to artificial intelligence, and the AI wave will drive overall growth in the tech sector. Companies like Nvidia and TSMC are benefiting from the AI frenzy. Singapore will invest over SGD 1 billion to enhance AI-related capabilities.