Welcome, folks, to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular newsletter summarizing the week of tech. This issue is a bit bittersweet for me – it will be my last (at least for a while). Soon I’ll be turning my attention to a new AI-focused newsletter that I’m very excited about. Stay tuned!
Now for the news: This week, Google laid off employees from its Flutter, Dart, and Python teams just weeks before its annual I/O developer conference. In total, 200 people were laid off from Google’s “core” teams, which included those who worked on app platforms and other technical functions.
Elsewhere, Tesla CEO Elon Musk fired the company’s team responsible for overseeing its Supercharger network in a new round of layoffs – despite recently winning over major automakers such as Ford and General Motors. The cuts are so sweeping that Musk suggested in an email that Tesla would be forced to slow the expansion of its Supercharger network.
And UnitedHealthcare CEO Andrew Witty told a House subcommittee that the ransomware gang that hacked U.S. healthtech giant Change Healthcare – UnitedHealthcare’s subsidiary – used a set of stolen credentials to access Change Healthcare. Access systems that are not protected by multifactor authentication. Last week, UnitedHealthcare said the hackers had stolen health data from a “significant portion of the people of America.”
A lot of other things happened. In this edition of WiR, we’ll recap it all – but first, we’d like to remind you to sign up to receive the WiR newsletter in your inbox every Saturday.
News
Hallucinations, hallucinations: OpenAI is facing another data protection complaint in the EU. This request – filed by the non-profit privacy rights organization noyb on behalf of an individual complainant – takes aim at the inability of its AI chatbot ChatGPT to correct misinformation that it generates about individuals.
Just walk out… from Sam’s Club: Sam’s Club customers who pay either at checkout or through the Scan & Go mobile app can now leave the store without having to re-inspect their purchases. The technology, unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, has now been deployed in 20% of Sam’s Club locations.
TikTok circumvents Apple rules: TikTok presents some users with a link to a website to purchase the coins used to tip digital creators on the platform. Typically, these coins must be purchased via in-app purchase – which requires paying a 30% commission to Apple – suggesting that TikTok may be trying to circumvent Apple’s App Store rules.
NIST’s GenAI platform: The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the U.S. Department of Commerce agency that develops and tests technologies for the U.S. government, businesses, and the general public, has launched NIST GenAI, a new program to assess generative AI technologies. Technologies including text and image generating AI.
Getir draws out: Getir, the fast trading giant, has pulled out of the US, UK and Europe to focus on its home country of Turkey. The company — once valued at nearly $12 billion — said the move would impact thousands of job and full-time employees.
analysis
In the “Cold War” of the tech stars: Dom’s brilliant reporting reveals a year of financial losses and staff cuts at startup accelerator Techstars, whose CEO Maëlle Gavet has been a controversial force for change.
AI-powered coding: Sincerely, we’re taking a look at Copilot Workspace, a sort of evolution of GitHub’s AI-powered coding assistant Copilot into a more general-purpose tool – building on recently introduced features like Copilot Chat, which lets developers ask questions about code in natural language.