MRC (Multipath Reliable Connection) is a new open networking protocol developed by OpenAI in partnership with AMD, Broadcom, Intel, Microsoft, and NVIDIA that improves GPU networking performance and resilience in large-scale AI training clusters by spreading packets across hundreds of paths simultaneously, recovering from network failures in microseconds, and enabling supercomputers with over 100,000 GPUs to be built using only two tiers of Ethernet switches.
The post OpenAI Introduces MRC (Multipath Reliable Connection): A New Open Networking Protocol for Large-Scale AI Supercomputer Training Clusters appeared first on MarkTechPost.
The Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI), a division of the US Department of Commerce, has signed agreements with Google DeepMind, Microsoft, and xAI that would give the agency the ability to vet AI models from these organizations and others prior to their being made publicly available.
According to a release from CAISI, which is part of the department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), it will “conduct pre-deployment evaluations and targeted research to better assess frontier AI capabilities and advance the state of AI security.”
The three join Anthropic and OpenAI, which signed similar agreements almost two years ago during the Biden administration, when CAISI was known as the US Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute.
An August 2024 release about those agreements indicated that the institute planned to provide feedback to both companies on “potential safety improvements to their models, in close collaboration with its partners at the UK AI Safety In
The US administration has added four more AI companies to its roster of favoured suppliers, with the Pentagon signing agreements with Microsoft, Reflection AI (which has yet to release a publicly-available model), Amazon, and Nvidia that mean their products can be used on classified operations. The companies join OpenAI, xAI, and Google as companies that […]
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Microsoft's LinkedIn CEO, Ryan Roslansky, took on an expanded role at the company as head of Office last year, and he's now getting more responsibilities as part of the latest leadership reshuffle inside Microsoft. Sources tell me that the Microsoft Teams organization is moving to report to Roslansky, who will now lead a new Work Experiences Group at Microsoft.
The changes are part of a broader reshuffle triggered by Rajesh Jha, executive vice president of Microsoft's experiences and devices group, retiring from Microsoft after more than 35 years. Jha was responsible for the teams behind Windows, Office, Copilot, and Microsoft 365, and Micr …
Read the full story at The Verge.
Bargains are disappearing and the cost of gadgets such as MacBooks and PS5s is rising as AI competes for memory chips
The end of the cheap laptop, the bargain phone and affordable games consoles may be on the horizon. Not because new models are more hi-tech, but because the cost of computer components has shot up.
Recently, the biggest manufacturers of laptops and phones, including Microsoft, Samsung and Dell, started putting up prices and pulling cheaper models – which is going to make finding budget phones and laptops under £400 much harder.
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Microsoft, Google DeepMind and Elon Musk’s xAI have offered to let the U.S. government access new AI models ahead of their general release, which sets up a new phase in Silicon Valley’s often fractious relationship with the US government’s fear of AI threats, based on the latest report of AI companies offering models to U.S. officials in the name of security review, in the hopes that government analysts can vet frontier AI systems for security threats like cyberattacks and military use before it is exposed for public consumption by developers and users, and, inevitably, those who should have no business […]
Xbox is "winding down Copilot on mobile" and "will stop development of Copilot on console," new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma announced on Tuesday. The move follows Sharma's reorganization of the Xbox platform team earlier on Tuesday, which added executives from Microsoft's CoreAI team - where Sharma worked before taking over Xbox - to the Xbox side of the company.
Sharma, on X:
Xbox needs to move faster, deepen our connection with the community, and address friction for both players and developers.
Today, we promoted leaders who helped build Xbox, while also bringing in new voices to help push us forward. This balance is important as we get th …
Read the full story at The Verge.
Agreements with Microsoft, Google DeepMind and xAI focus largely on recognizing cybersecurity, biosecurity and chemical weapons risks
The US government has struck deals with Google DeepMind, Microsoft and xAI to review early versions of their new AI models before they are released to the public.
The Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI), part of the US Department of Commerce, announced the agreements on Tuesday, saying the review process would be key to understanding the capabilities of new and powerful AI models as well as to protecting US national security. These collaborations will help the federal government “scale (its) work in the public interest at a critical moment”, the agency said in a press release.
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Oracle plans to issue security patches for its ERP, database, and other software on a monthly cycle, rather than quarterly, to respond to the increased pace of AI-enabled software vulnerability discovery.
Other software vendors, notably Microsoft, SAP, and Adobe, already release patches on a monthly beat, always on the second Tuesday of each month.
Oracle, though, is taking an off-beat approach: It will release the first of its monthly Critical Security Patch Updates (CSPUs) on May 28, the fourth Thursday, and after that, it will release its patches on the third Tuesday of each month — a week after the other vendors — with the next batches arriving on June 16, July 21, and August 18, it said earlier this week.
The new CSPUs “provide targeted fixes for critical vulnerabilities in a smaller, more focused format, allowing customers to address high-priority issues without waiting for the next quarterly release,” Oracle said.
It will issue a cumulative Critical Patch Update each quarter, so
Google DeepMind, Microsoft, and Elon Musk's xAI have agreed to allow the US government to review new AI models before they're released to the public. In an announcement on Tuesday, the Commerce Department's Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) says it will work with the AI companies to perform "pre-deployment evaluations and targeted research to better assess frontier AI capabilities."
CAISI, which started evaluating models from OpenAI and Anthropic in 2024, says it has performed 40 reviews so far. Both companies "have renegotiated their existing partnerships with the center to better align with priorities in President Donald Trum …
Read the full story at The Verge.
Microsoft and Google are adding new controls for AI agents, as enterprise IT teams try to keep up with tools that can access corporate data and act across business applications.
Microsoft’s Agent 365, made generally available for commercial customers on May 1, is designed to help organizations discover, govern, and secure AI agents, including those operating across Microsoft, third-party SaaS, cloud, and local environments.
Google’s new AI control center for Workspace, announced this week, focuses more specifically on giving administrators a centralized view of AI usage, security settings, data protection controls, and privacy safeguards within Workspace.
The timing reflects a shift in enterprise AI use. Many companies are no longer just testing chatbots, but are beginning to use agents that can reach corporate systems and carry out tasks on behalf of users.
Analysts said the shift changes how CIOs and CISOs should think about AI agents inside the enterprise.
“By placing agent controls
The U.S. Department of Defense has signed agreements with Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, and Reflection AI, granting access to their AI technologies on classified networks for lawful operational use. The deals follow earlier agreements with Google, OpenAI, and SpaceX, and reflect the Pentagon’s push to build a broad, vendor-diverse AI architecture for military operations. […]
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella last week announced that the company now has more than 20 million enterprise users paying for Microsoft Copilot, according to TechCrunch. That’s up 33% from the 15 million paying customers Microsoft claimed in January.
The AI assistant is now directly integrated in programs such as Word, Excel, and Outlook and Microsoft is rolling out new agent features that allow Copilot to perform multiple steps automatically directly within documents and presentations.
According to Nadella, the number of questions asked of Copilot per user rose by nearly 20% compared to the previous quarter. Weekly usage is now reportedly on par with the Outlook email service.
Microsoft says one advantage for Copilot is that it is no longer locked to a single provider of AI models. In addition to OpenAI’s GPT models, it now also supports models such as Anthropic’s Claude.
The Pentagon says it has reached agreements with eight AI companies to use their technology in classified defence settings. The military will have access to resources provided by Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia, Oracle, OpenAI, SpaceX, and the startup Reflection. Absent from the list is Anthropic, following its public dispute and legal battle with the Trump administration over AI ethics. Peter O’Brien looks at how these developments came about.
Microsoft and the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have sounded the alarm about a Windows shell spoofing vulnerability that is already being exploited by attackers. It is not clear by whom as yet, but the main suspects are hackers in Russia.
CISA has mandated that all federal agencies patch this vulnerability, designated CVE-2026-32202, by May 12. According to a Microsoft advisory, exploitation of the flaw could lead to access to sensitive data, but attackers would not be able to gain control of the system.
However, one security expert has warned that the considerable gap between the time Microsoft identified the bug and the date by which the systems must be patched leads to increased risk.
The patch gap
Lionel Litty, CISO for security company Menlo, said that an incomplete patch for CVE-2026-21510 that resulted in the issue tracked as CVE-2026-32202 adds to the problem. “This has been a theme for many years. A vulnerability exists and the vendor has not been
The deals come as the DoD has doubled down on diversifying its exposure to AI vendors in the wake of its controversial dispute with Anthropic over usage terms of its AI models.
