by Brandon Vigliarolo – theregister — A mere 700 IT jobs were added in the US last year compared to 267,000 the year prior, it’s claimed. It’d be easy to blame layoffs, but that’s not all there is to it, says tech consultancy Janco Associates. Based on analysis of US Bureau of Labor Statistics data by Janco, news that the IT industry added just 700 jobs following an estimated 262,242 jobs lost amid mass layoffs is shocking, but not surprising. Yet while layoffs have generally kept IT job growth flat for the past year (2023’s net 700 comes despite more than 21,000 IT jobs being created in Q4), there’s still a surplus of vacant roles, with Janco finding some 88,000 remain open. “Based on our analysis, the IT job market and opportunities for IT professionals are poor at best,” said Janco CEO M Victor Janulaitis. “Currently, there are almost 100K unfilled jobs with over 101K unemployed IT Pros – a skills mismatch.”

In other words, while we’re definitely dealing with correction from pandemic overhiring, we’re also wading into a new paradigm where a lot of tech talent is going to have to retrain because AI is being crammed wherever C-level employees can stick it. A one-two punch to the IT jobs market Much of the layoff debt to hit IT jobs have come to entry-level positions, especially those in the customer service telecommunications and hosting automation areas. In turn, some of the responsibilities of those jobs are being reassigned to the latest and greatest AIs, says Janco.

Xerox prints pink slips for 15% of workforce Intel trims a few hundred workers in Cali just in time for Christmas 17% of Spotify employees face the music in latest cost-cutting shuffle Game over for ByteDance’s big video game studio dream? According to thge tech consultancy, entry-level IT demand is shrinking, though demand for those with AI, security, development, and blockchain skills remain desired. “Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning IT Professionals remain in high demand,” said Janulaitis. Still, plans to further replace humans with AI workers at the entry level are hardly far-fetched, with multiple reports finding much the same.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS – Departure and arrival information was replaced by a message accusing the group of putting Lebanon at risk of an all-out war with Israel. The information display screens at Beirut’s international airport were hacked by domestic anti-Hezbollah groups Sunday, as clashes between the Lebanese militant group and the Israeli military continue to intensify along the border. Departure and arrival information was replaced by a message accusing the Hezbollah group of putting Lebanon at risk of an all-out war with Israel. The screens displayed a message with logos from a hardline Christian group dubbed Soldiers of God, which has garnered attention over the past year for its campaigns against the LGBTQ+ community in Lebanon, and a little-known group that calls itself The One Who Spoke. In a video statement, the Christian group denied its involvement, while the other group shared photos of the screens on its social media channels. “Hassan Nasrallah, you will no longer have supporters if you curse Lebanon with a war for which you will bear responsibility and consequences,” the message read, echoing similar sentiments to critics over the years who have accused Hezbollah of smuggling weapons and munitions through the tiny Mediterranean country’s only civilian airport. Hezbollah has been striking Israeli military bases and positions near the country’s northern border with Lebanon since Oct. 8, the day after the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza began. Israel has been striking Hezbollah positions in return.

The near-daily clashes have intensified sharply over the past week, after an apparent Israeli strike in a southern Beirut suburb killed top Hamas official and commander Saleh Arouri. In a speech on Saturday, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in a speech vowed that the group would retaliate. He dismissed criticisms that the group is looking for a full-scale war with Israel, but said if Israel launches one, Hezbollah is ready for a war “without limits.” Hezbollah announced an “initial response” to Arouri’s killing on Saturday, launching a volley of 62 rockets toward an Israeli air surveillance base on Mount Meron. The Lebanese government and international community have been scrambling to prevent a war in Lebanon, which they fear would spark a regional spillover. Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said the hack briefly disrupted baggage inspection. Passengers gathered around the screens, taking pictures and sharing them on social media.

by Sharon Goldman — @sharongoldman – venturebeat — Disinformation concerns may be growing over the use of AI in the 2024 U.S. elections, but that isn’t stopping AI voice cloning startups from getting into the political game. For example, the Boca Raton, Florida-based Instreamatic, an AI audio/video ad platform that raised a $6.1 million Series […]

By Douglas Heaven — MIT review — This time last year we did something reckless. In an industry where nothing stands still, we had a go at predicting the future. How did we do? Our four big bets for 2023 were that the next big thing in chatbots would be multimodal (check: the most powerful large language models out there, OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Google DeepMind’s Gemini, work with text, images and audio); that policymakers would draw up tough new regulations (check: Biden’s executive order came out in October and the European Union’s AI Act was finally agreed in December); Big Tech would feel pressure from open-source startups (half right: the open-source boom continues, but AI companies like OpenAI and Google DeepMind still stole the limelight); and that AI would change big pharma for good (too soon to tell: the AI revolution in drug discovery is still in full swing, but the first drugs developed using AI are still some years from market).

Now we’re doing it again.

We decided to ignore the obvious. We know that large language models will continue to dominate. Regulators will grow bolder. AI’s problems—from bias to copyright to doomerism—will shape the agenda for researchers, regulators, and the public, not just in 2024 but for years to come. (Read more about our six big questions for generative AI here.) Instead, we’ve picked a few more specific trends. Here’s what to watch out for in 2024. (Come back next year and check how we did.)

Customized chatbots

By Brian Heater@bheate — techcrunch — r — MIT likens a new vibrating capsule to drinking a glass full of water prior to eating. Dieticians recommend the latter as a method for sending signals to your brain to simulate the sensation of being full. The researchers behind the new project further suggest it as a […]

By REBECCA ANNE PROCTOR — arabnews.com — DUBAI: As Saudi Arabia enters another busy event season, including grand city-based celebrations in Riyadh and Diriyah, a host of new entertainment ventures powered by new technology are opening up in the Kingdom. The latest move came in October when the Kingdom announced it was investing $55 million in HyperSpace, a three-year-old Saudi startup that designs digital theme parks within shopping centers. The funding came from Riyadh Season, a government-backed entertainment initiative under the Public Investment Fund, which provided most of the debt and equity raised by HyperSpace.

The other participants in the financing round included US-based Galaxy Interactive, Georgia SEGA Ventures and UK-headquartered Apis Venture Partners. “It’s really the world’s most innovative entertainment attraction,” Alexander Heller, the CEO of HyperSpace, told Arab News, adding: “It offers a completely new approach to location-based entertainment, as an attraction that is extremely innovative, built on technologies that already exist in the digital world and are being pulled into a physical front end for the first time.” Heller describes the attraction as like “TikTok and Fornite had a big physical baby.” He added: “It is part content creation arena and part physical video game. A park truly built on larger themes of content consumption, internet culture, and hype culture moving into a physical front-end entertainment space.”

HyperSpace features a mix of digital and physical entertainment, including gaming attractions, immersive theater experiences and interactive areas for content creation. The company opened its latest venue, House of Hype, in the capital city as part of the fourth edition of Riyadh Season, dubbed the world’s largest winter entertainment event. Bight and colorful phosphorescent lights greet guests, who enter several futuristically designed rooms in the new Riyadh House of Hype.

by Open AI :  — Aries: A year of growth and expansion. Aries natives can expect to experience positive changes in their career and personal life. They will have the opportunity to learn new skills and take on new challenges, which will help them grow both personally and professionally.

Taurus: A year of transformation and change. Taurus natives can expect to experience both positive and negative changes in their life. They may face some challenges, but these challenges will ultimately help them grow and transform into a better version of themselves.

Gemini: A year of self-discovery and personal growth. Gemini natives can expect to learn more about themselves and what they want out of life. They will have the opportunity to explore new interests and hobbies, which will help them grow and develop as individuals.

Cancer: A year of emotional healing and growth. Cancer natives can expect to work through some emotional issues and come out stronger on the other side. They will have the opportunity to heal old wounds and develop deeper connections with loved ones.

Leo: A year of creativity and self-expression. Leo natives can expect to tap into their creative side and express themselves in new and exciting ways. They will have the opportunity to explore new forms of self-expression, which will help them grow and develop as individuals.

by Emmy Lucas — Forbes Staff –– Job seekers are applying to more roles than years prior. Some say generative AI tools are to thank. Six months ago, Anshita Verma was sending out a handful of job applications a day. Now, the 26-year-old data scientist is sending out 10 to 15 daily, and she says it’s all thanks to artificial intelligence tools. “Instead of taking 30 minutes to fill out an application, it might take me 10,” says Verma. Plug-in AI browser tools that autofill the fields in job postings have greatly sped up the time she spends on applications, she says, letting her apply to more jobs more quickly.

Others are using generative AI programs like ChatGPT to create resumes and cover letters on demand that match the skills and qualifications of the job. Some are using job search automation tools such as LazyApply and SimplifyJobs to apply to jobs en masse. And AI tools such as Pyjama Jobs and Talentprise, which help candidates identify jobs their skill sets match, could also be boosting application rates. Experts say the tools are one reason, coupled with a cooler labor market and inflation, that employers are getting inundated with more applications. Workers in the U.S. and the U.K. are applying to about 15% more roles compared to a year ago, according to recent data from LinkedIn. “Job seekers are being more aggressive” compared to years past, says LinkedIn’s chief economist Karin Kimbrough, with AI helping people submit applications to more postings.

“There’s a whole energy around AI right now, and if you have these tools that are going to help you craft that perfect message with personalized suggestions, it really gives you a little bit more confidence in applying.” It can also prompt job seekers to apply more broadly. “Not only are they applying to more jobs, they’re actually applying to jobs they normally wouldn’t apply to,” says Michelle Volberg, founder and CEO of recruiting firm Giledan 360. “AI is like LinkedIn’s ‘Easy Apply’ tool on steroids. It’s letting tech candidates apply to finance or healthcare roles if there’s some sort of overlap, or make their resume appear relevant when in reality it’s not.”

 by Shubham Sharma — venturebeat — 2023 was the year of generative AI. However, as every company moved to strengthen their AI strategy, they also realized the value of clean and high-quality data — circling back to the need for robust infrastructure into the mix. From Snowflake to Microsoft, data ecosystem vendors cashed on this opportunity and moved, sometimes even acquired notable players, to give their customers the ability to tap their data for various AI applications as well as implement various AI capabilities into their products.

These are VentureBeat’s top 5 data stories of 2023

1. Microsoft’s move to beat Amazon and Google in the cloud war

In May, Microsoft announced Fabric – an end-to-end, analytics platform that combines all the data and analytics tools organizations need, including Azure Synapse Analytics and Power BI, into a single unified product. We spoke with analysts to understand what makes this offering, which aims to unlock the potential of data and lay the foundation for AI, unique and might help Microsoft “leapfrog” Amazon and other cloud providers, such as Google. At least when it comes to serving large enterprise companies. “With all these capabilities coming together, Microsoft definitely has a slight advantage over the other hyperscalers at the moment,” Noel Yuhanna, an analyst at Forrester, told VentureBeat.

2. The rise of vector database, a new kind of database for AI era

With generative AI being the talking point for every business, Charles Xie, the CEO and founder of Zilliz, discussed the rise of vector databases, a new category of database management, and a paradigm shift for making use of the exponential volumes of unstructured data sitting untapped in object stores. Vector databases offer a mind-numbing new level of capability to search unstructured data in particular, but can tackle semi-structured and even structured data as well. Xie also talked about how companies should approach vector databases to target their respective use cases.

3. Databricks’ $1.3 billion acquisition of MosaicML

By Andrew Murfett, Editor at LinkedIn News — 2024 is shaping up as a make-or-break year for the driverless car industry. Companies that were hurtling toward expansion are watching the fallout from Cruise, GM’s driverless car arm, after several accidents prompted it to pause all driving operations. The public’s patience and the company’s margins for […]