As the video games industry continues to face massive layoffs, narrative jobs are taking the biggest hit. The industry's job cuts over the past couple of years--more than 30,000 roles were eliminated in 2023 and 2024--disproportionately affected narrative designers, the creative professionals who craft the story elements of the game and give a title its emotional punch. Even the director of the game Avowed, Carrie Patel--a successful author and narrative developer with over a decade of experience at the game studio Obsidian Entertainment--feels lucky she was able to start her career years ago. She can't imagine trying to break into the industry under today's conditions. "It just seems to be harder and harder to find a path in," Patel says. "I've heard colleagues hired within the last three or five years say essentially the same thing."

The director of the main hospital in besieged northern Gaza is back at work after being injured in an Israeli drone attack on the hospital, which has come under repeated fire.

According to AI, the future is bright. The prompts focused on how overcrowding, climate change and technological development are likely to change the cities of the future. The amazing results show many of the concrete jungles adorned with lush vegetation sprouting from sci-fi-looking hi-rises that winged vehicles soar around in bright blue skies. By 2050, almost three-quarters of the world population (68 percent) will live in cities, according to a UN prediction. While it might sound bleak, technology could turn congested regions into lush utopias.

The last time the Writers Guild of America went on strike, in 2007, workers pushed back against the nascent streaming industry, advocating for higher residual payments for content released over streaming. Now a new technology, artificial intelligence, stands to drastically change Hollywood again as Guild strikers return to the picket line. Streaming giants like Hulu, Netflix, and Disney have come to dominate the industry, changing the models by which content is produced and distributed and making it increasingly difficult for writers to earn a sustainable income. And as artificial intelligence technology rapidly improves, the WGA aims to place limits on the use of AI in movies and TV scripts. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) --which is negotiating the contract on behalf of Hollywood studios, streamers, and production companies--say their priority is "the long-term health and stability of the industry" and they are dedicated to reaching "a fair and reasonable agreement" according to the Associated Press.

Following two action-packed days of workshops, conferences, paper presentations, and tech talks, Machine Learning Developers Summit 2023 concluded by awarding 40 dynamic data scientists with the 40 Under 40 Data Scientists award. Aakash is a seasoned analytics leader with 15 years experience and has been instrumental in driving data and insight-led transformations. Over his career, he has worked closely with biz functions to drive revenue and achieve aggressive market growth by leveraging more than 50 analytical approaches. He also has experience in launching AI and tech-based solutions like Omni Channel Attribution, Customer Segmentation, Customer-360, Supply Chain Efficiency, Workforce Management and more at telecom, media, FMCG, retail, and ecommerce industries. Abhilash Surendran is assistant vice president, analytics, and data science at Merkle, leading the analytics practise for their high-tech portfolio. He comes with 15 years of experience in advanced analytics, data science, data visualisation and consulting.

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Etsy is seeking a Director of Engineering to lead our Data Applications and Services teams within Data Engineering. Data Engineering's mission is to make it easy for product, machine learning, marketing, and finance to leverage data. We are looking for an experienced engineering Director who is capable of leading a growing engineering department with multiple managers and squads, comfortable running teams with multiple stakeholders who often have competing priorities, and experienced with building big data products and services for internal business and engineering customers. You will collaborate with our stakeholders across product, engineering, analytics, marketing, and finance to ensure that our data products are meeting our customers' needs. This is a new role, with a lot of opportunity to be creative, build and scale for the future, and materially improve the user experience. The work on our teams includes ownership and development of high leverage and critical commonly used streaming and batch datasets, a reimagined data search and discovery experience, and reporting and data visualization tooling.

Google on Monday announced a $1 million grant to IIT Madras to set up a multi-disciplinary centre for responsible artificial intelligence to study and research various aspects of bias in AI while focusing on the Indian context. The tech giant is also going to offer a similar amount to independent non-profit Wadhwani AI in order to develop AI models which will help monitor crop diseases, predict yield outcomes and bring efficiencies to Kisan call centers. By providing @WadhwaniAI with this grant, we are enabling them to improve farmer outcomes by providing information on crop disease risks, yield forecasts and much more.#GoogleForIndia At the Google for India 2022 event, the company also announced that it will contribute to the agri stack as defined by the government of India through a combination of AI and remote sensing to better manage the problems arising in agriculture. Manish Gupta, Director of Google Research India, told the Indian Express that the tech giant will use its AI models over satellite images to identify things like the location of farms and farm boundaries to better understand the agricultural landscape.