Khazen

Do graduate degrees pay off?

By Cate Chapman, Editor at LinkedIn News — The income of Americans with advanced degrees hasn’t kept pace with the price of …

By AFP -- The French-Lebanese writer, 74, becomes only the 33rd person to occupy the post of "perpetual secretary" since the body's founding under King Louis XIII in 1635. He takes over from Helene Carrere d'Encausse, who died last month having held the post since 1999. She did not designate a clear successor but Maalouf, who won France's most prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt, in 1993 for "The Rock of Tanios", was considered the obvious choice due to his highly active engagement in the institution since being elected in 2011. There was one other candidate, his close friend Jean-Christophe Rufin, though he only threw his hat in the ring at the last minute, fearing there was not enough of a democratic process, joking to one magazine this weekend that it was "like North Korea".

The academy is charged with setting the rules of the language to ensure it remains "pure, eloquent and capable of dealing with the arts and sciences". Lately, it most often gains notice as the bulwark against the entry of English words into French usage. Last year it railed against the common practice of using English-sounding terms in French ads and branding -- such as train operator SNCF's low-cost "Ouigo" (pronounced "we go") service -- or simple imports from English like "big data" and "drive-in". It became more assertive under Carrere d'Encausse, even threatening legal action against the government for including English translations on national identity cards. There are currently 35 members of the Academy -- known as "Immortals" in reference to their motto "A l'immortalite" ("To immortality"). Past members include such luminaries as Montesquieu, Voltaire and Victor Hugo.

Fortune.com -- OpenAI continues to plan for the AI future it ushered in when it released its wildly popular ChatGPT chatbot last November, according to a blockbuster report in The Information. The company’s founder, emerging AI mogul Sam Altman, met with Jony Ive, the renowned designer of Apple products, to discuss building an AI hardware device, according to two people familiar with the conversations. The implications are massive: A next-generation consumer electronic that would ostensibly integrate AI into daily life? Even talks between the two point to a tech future dominated by artificial intelligence. The new technology has for now mostly been limited to software programs and machine learning algorithms. A successful collaboration, should it come to pass, would be one of the first mass market consumer devices featuring AI. Details on what this product might look like are limited. However, Ive’s presence alone instills confidence. “Jony Ive is one of the genius minds of this generation,” Dan Ives, managing partner of Wedbush Securities, told Fortune.

Ives (no relation to Ive) is an influential voice on Wall Street and has been forecasting a bright future for AI for months. In June, he wrote that the investing climate around AI is akin to a “1995 internet moment,” not, as some skeptics would argue, like 1999 just before the dotcom crash. The second, third, and fourth derivatives of this AI gold rush are just starting to evolve for the tech landscape,” Ives wrote at the time. “As we have covered the tech sector for decades and saw the dotcom bubble and burst firsthand, [we believe] this is the start of a fourth industrial revolution playing out across tech over the coming years that is still being underestimated by the Street in our opinion.”

by Mary Ann Azevedo — techcrunch — OpenAI is in discussions to possibly sell shares in a move that would boost the …

Khazen History

Historical Feature:
Churches and Monasteries of the Khazen family