Max Zeff
@ZeffMax
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Senior AI Reporter @TechCrunch | Formerly @Gizmodo, @markets, @nbc | DM me off the record on Signal @ mzeff.88
San Francisco, CA
Joined November 2020
Personal news: today is my last day at TechCrunch. Two years ago I moved to SF to be closer to the people building AI. I'm so happy I did — it's been a wild, fascinating, and exciting ride. Excited to keep reporting on AI and the industry's leaders in my next role. More soon!
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Seeing my interview with Roy — which was coincidentally the last interview I did for TC — and the following coverage has sparked a lot of discussion. Some thoughts: 1) This is not a hit piece. I didn’t have a part in writing this story since I left TC last week. But if you read
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NEW: Amazon sent a cease and desist to Perplexity demanding it stop letting allowing its AI browser agent, Comet, to make purchases online for users. Perplexity is pushing back, accusing Amazon of bullying a smaller competitor and limiting user choice. https://t.co/9eWKGycKib
bloomberg.com
Amazon.com Inc. is suing Perplexity AI Inc. to try and stop the startup from helping users buy items on the world’s largest online marketplace, setting up a showdown that may have implications for...
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NEW: I spoke with Mercor CEO Brendan Foody at TechCrunch Disrupt yesterday. We discussed the new favorite way for AI labs to get data. Foody's $10B startup pays former investment bankers and lawyers to make training data for OpenAI and Meta. He calls it the "future of work."
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The company also says 0.15% of users show “heightened levels of emotional attachment to ChatGPT." This seems to be the first time OAI has shared how many users are struggling with these issues. They're a small slice of the pie, but it's still a lot of people.
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NEW: OpenAI released data on how widespread mental health problems are for ChatGPT's 800 million WAUs: 0.15% of users (over 1M/wk) have chats including "explicit indicators of potential suicidal planning or intent." 0.07% of users (>500K/wk) show signs of psychosis or mania
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chatting with brendan at TechCrunch Disrupt tomorrow to discuss mercor's meteoric rise
We’ve raised our $350M Series C at a $10B valuation from @felicis, @benchmark, and @generalcatalyst. Just 2 years after starting, Mercor is paying $1.5 million per day to experts in our marketplace. We’re creating a new category of work in the AI economy, where software
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also VC’s like Sequoia’s Roelof Botha and Vinod Khosla, and execs from Netflix and Google Cloud. ill be conducting a lot of these interviews, make sure to tune in!
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pumped for techcrunch disrupt, which kicks off today in sf. here’s some of the guests speaking this week! Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana Hugging Face co-founder Thomas Wolf Mercor CEO Brendan Foody ElevenLabs CEO Mati Staniszewski Slate Auto CEO Chris Barman Cluely CEO Roy Lee
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@ZeffMax is excellent at putting into words why myself and @sudip_r0y felt the need to bet against scaling. While the last decade was about compute, the next will be shaped by the efficiency of adaptation. It is the most important problem. If you enjoyed the article, join us.
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OpenAI has sent a legal request to the family of Adam Raine, the 16yo who died by suicide following lengthy chats with ChatGPT, asking for a full attendee list to his memorial, as well as photos taken or eulogies given. His lawyers told the FT this was "intentional harassment"
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ChatGPT reportedly had 50 million users on WhatsApp May take a bit longer for OAI to reach that 1B WAU milestone
Zuck: Get me talking about closed platforms and I get angry Also Zuck: No other AI chatbots on @WhatsApp
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is the woke AI in the room with us
I read your post. It claims that the controversy surrounding Anthropic is about AI safety research. This is not true; in fact, it’s misdirection. The real issue is not research but rather Anthropic’s agenda to backdoor Woke AI and other AI regulations through Blue states like
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i think the AI progress debate would be a lot cleaner if openai had just called o1 GPT-5
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“If you’re going to work on export controls, make sure your boss is prepared to have your back,” one staffer told me. For months, I’ve heard about widespread fear among think tank researchers who publish work against NVIDIA’s interests. Here’s what I’ve learned:🧵
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you can tell it's serious when sam is capitalizing the first letters in his tweets
Ok this tweet about upcoming changes to ChatGPT blew up on the erotica point much more than I thought it was going to! It was meant to be just one example of us allowing more user freedom for adults. Here is an effort to better communicate it: As we have said earlier, we are
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