An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: For much of the 21st century, software engineering has been seen as one of the safest havens in the tenuous and ever-changing American job market. But there are a growing number of signs that the field is starting to become a little less secure and comfortable, due to an industry-wide downturn and the looming threat of artificial intelligence that is spurring growing competition for software jobs. "The amount of competition is insane," said Joe Forzano, an unemployed software engineer who has worked at the mental health startup Alma and private equity giant Blackstone. Since he lost his job in March, Forzano has applied to over 250 jobs. In six cases, he went through the "full interview gauntlet," which included between six and eight interviews each, before learning he had been passed over. "It has been very, very rough," he told Motherboard. Forzano is not alone in his pessimism, according to a December survey of 9,338 software engineers performed on behalf of Motherboard by Blind, an online anonymous platform for verified employees. In the poll, nearly nine in 10 surveyed software engineers said it is more difficult to get a job now than it was before the pandemic, with 66 percent saying it was "much harder." Nearly 80 percent of respondents said the job market has even become more competitive over the last year. Only 6 percent of the software engineers were "extremely confident" they could find another job with the same total compensation if they lost their job today while 32 percent said they were "not at all confident." Over 2022 and 2023, the tech sector incurred more than 400,000 layoffs, according to the tracking site Layoffs.fyi. But up until recently, it seemed software engineers were more often spared compared to their co-workers in non-technical fields. One analysis found tech companies cut their recruiting teams by 50 percent, compared to only 10 percent of their engineering departments. At Salesforce, engineers were four times less likely to lose their jobs than those in marketing and sales, which Bloomberg has said is a trend replicated at other tech companies such as Dell and Zoom. But signs of dread among software engineers have started to become more common online. In December, one Amazon employee wrote a long post on the anonymous employee platform Blind saying that the "job market is terrible" and that he was struggling to get interviews of any sort. "In the age of AI, computer science is no longer the safe major," Kelli Maria Korducki wrote in The Atlantic in September. AI programs like ChatGPT and Google Bard allow users to write code using natural language, greatly reducing the time it takes workers to complete coding tasks. It could lead to less job security and lower compensation for all but the very best in the software trade, warns Matt Welsh, a former computer science professor at Harvard. "More than 60 percent of those surveyed said they believed their company would hire fewer people because of AI moving forward," reports Motherboard.

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A startup called Rabbit sold out of its first batch of pocket AI companions a day after it was debuted at CES 2024. The company announced on X that it sold 10,000 units in just a day. "When we started building r1, we said internally that we'd be happy if we sold 500 devices on launch day," Rabbit writes. "In 24 hours, we already beat that by 20x!" The Verge reports: Rabbit introduced the R1 during CES on Tuesday, which comes with a small 2.88-inch touchscreen that runs on the company's own Rabbit OS. It uses a "Large Action Model" that works as a "sort of universal controller for apps," according to my colleague David Pierce, who got to try out the device during the showcase. This allows it to do things like play music, buy groceries, and send messages through a single interface without having to use your phone. It also lets you train the device how to interact with a certain app. A second batch is available for preorder from Rabbit's website with an expected delivery date between April and May 2024. The first batch of products are expected to start shipping in March.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: When Microsoft opened an advanced research lab in Beijing in 1998, it was a time of optimism about technology and China. The company hired hundreds of researchers for the lab, which pioneered Microsoft's work in speech, image and facial recognition and the kind of artificial intelligence that later gave rise to online chatbots likeChatGPT. The Beijing operation eventually became one of the most important A.I. labs in the world. Bill Gates, Microsoft's co-founder, called it an opportunity to tap China's "deep pool of intellectual talent." But as tensions between the United States and China have mounted over which nation will lead the world's technological future, Microsoft's top leaders -- including Satya Nadella, its chief executive, and Brad Smith, its president -- have debated what to do with the prized lab for at least the past year, four current and former Microsoft employees said. The company has faced questions from U.S. officials over whether maintaining a 200-person advanced technologies lab in China is tenable, the people said. Microsoft said it had instituted guardrails at the lab, restricting researchers from politically sensitive work. The company, which is based in Redmond, Wash., said it had also opened an outpost of the lab in Vancouver, British Columbia, and would move some researchers from China to the location. The outpost is a backup if more researchers need to relocate, two people said. The idea of shutting down or moving the lab has come up, but Microsoft's leaders support continuing it in China, four people said. "We are as committed as ever to the lab and the world-class research of this team," Peter Lee, who leads Microsoft Research, a network of eight labs across the world, said in a statement. Using the lab's formal name, he added, "There has been no discussion or advocacy to close Microsoft Research Asia, and we look forward to continuing our research agenda."

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