Commerce: Trump says he has chosen Howard Lutnick, Cantor Fitzgerald's chief executive, as his Commerce secretary nominee.
Bloomberg: Trump picks Cantor Fitzgerald’s Lutnick as commerce chief
+ Executive will help lead tariff and trade agenda under Trump
+ President-elect still weighing choices for Treasury secretary
Why the crypto community loves Howard Lutnick, Trump’s pick for Commerce secretary: If confirmed, Lutnick will be in regular talks with CEOs in the business community—and could be an influential evangelist of crypto acceptance. FC
The US Patent and Trademark Office banned staff from using generative AI: Wired reports the agency dedicated to protecting new innovations prohibited almost all internal use of GenAI tools, though employees can still participate in controlled experiments.
US government commission pushes Manhattan Project-style AI initiative: Reuters reports a congressional commission on Tuesday proposed a Manhattan Project-style initiative to fund the development of AI systems that will be as smart or smarter than humans, amid intensifying competition with China over advanced technologies. The bipartisan US-China Economic and Security Review Commission stressed that public-private partnerships are key in advancing artificial general intelligence, but did not give any specific investment strategies as it released its annual report.
Meta opens its AI models for the (US) military but will the second Trump administration see AI as a friend or foe? IEEE
San Francisco’s mayor-elect picks Sam Altman to co-chair transition team: FC reports Daniel Lurie wants to rebuild the city’s relationships with tech and business leaders. Altman can certainly help on that front.
Reuters: OpenAI's Sam Altman becomes latest tech executive involved in San Francisco government
How Mark Zuckerberg has fully rebuilt Meta around Llama Fortune
+ Zuckerberg has pushed Meta to build Llama into all its products and services, including its Orion augmented reality glasses.
Rox, a startup developing artificial intelligence-powered agents for salespeople, has raised $50 million from investors, including Sequoia Capital and General Catalyst.
Artificial intelligence models are getting better at predicting the paths of hurricanes: Earlier this year, a model called GraphCast from Google’s DeepMind AI lab was able to accurately predict the path of Hurricane Beryl, forecasting that it’d take a turn away from Mexico and hit Texas. That prediction was correct — and came a week earlier than conventional meteorological models.
AI can learn to think before it speaks: Advances in reasoning will lead to substantially improved capabilities in mathematics and science. Yoshua Bengio
50: Foxconn said that AI-specific servers will comprise 50% of its total server revenue next year, citing “very crazy” demand for access to Nvidia’s AI chips.
Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.
-Marc
