AI News & Artificial Intelligence | TechCrunch

Norwegian startup Factiverse wants to fight disinformation with AI

Sun, 17 Nov 2024 17:00:00 +0000

In the wake of the U.S. 2024 presidential election, one fact became clear: Disinformation proliferated online at a startling rate, shaping Americans’ views about each candidate as well as a diverse set of topics, including public health, climate change, and immigration. Generative AI – with its ability to produce deepfakes in seconds and its propensity to […]

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Robust AI’s Carter Pro robot is designed to work with, and be moved by, humans

Sun, 17 Nov 2024 16:00:00 +0000

Two things are immediately notable when watching the Carter Pro robot navigate the aisles of the demo warehouse inside Robust AI’s San Carlos, California, headquarters. The first is the shelving units: standardized, modular, and off-the-shelf. The wire frames will look familiar to anyone who has spent time in warehouses, and that’s certainly by design. The second […]

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A popular technique to make AI more efficient has drawbacks

Sun, 17 Nov 2024 15:00:00 +0000

One of the most widely used techniques to make AI models more efficient, quantization, has limits — and the industry could be fast approaching them. In the context of AI, quantization refers to lowering the number of bits — the smallest units a computer can process — needed to represent information. Consider this analogy: When […]

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Consumer tech is bouncing back, and consumer founders like Brynn Putnam are bouncing back with it

Sun, 17 Nov 2024 01:14:09 +0000

When Brynn Putnam sold her last company, Mirror, to Lululemon for $500 million at the start of the pandemic, it looked to this editor like she’d sold the smart fitness company too soon. Instead, the timing proved brilliant. The home fitness craze crashed nearly as abruptly as it peaked during that first year of lockdowns. […]

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Marc Lore has big plans for Wonder that go beyond fast casual

Sat, 16 Nov 2024 18:10:00 +0000

This week on Strictly VC Download, Connie Loizos is joined live on stage by serial entrepreneur Marc Lore to discuss his newest venture, Wonder, a vertically integrated dining and delivery platform. From its origins in food trucks to its innovative electric kitchens and recent $650 million acquisition of Grubhub, Lore shares his creative vision for […]

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EU AI Act: Everything you need to know

Sat, 16 Nov 2024 14:00:00 +0000

The European Union’s risk-based rulebook for artificial intelligence — aka the EU AI Act — has been years in the making. But expect to hear a lot more about the regulation in the coming months (and years) as key compliance deadlines kick in. Meanwhile, read on for an overview of the law and its aims. […]

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‘AI Granny’ is happy to talk with phone scammers all day

Sat, 16 Nov 2024 05:11:58 +0000

On Thursday, the UK’s largest mobile network operator, O2, introduced a chatbot designed to frustrate phone scammers. Called “dAIsy,” it mimics an older woman with all kinds of time to chat – about knitting, her cat Fluffy – with the aim of keeping fraudsters endlessly engaged as they try obtaining her (fake) bank details. A […]

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OpenAI’s tumultuous early years revealed in emails from Musk, Altman, and others

Fri, 15 Nov 2024 23:28:54 +0000

A lawsuit by the world’s wealthiest man against one of the fastest growing companies of all time is necessarily interesting stuff. But while the allegations are yet to be proven, the case has already exposed a batch of emails between Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and others during OpenAI’s early days. Here are a few of […]

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Here’s the full list of 44 US AI startups that have raised $100M or more in 2024

Fri, 15 Nov 2024 23:03:00 +0000

In the first half of 2024 alone, more than $35.5 billion was invested into AI startups globally.

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OpenAI at one point considered acquiring AI chip startup Cerebras

Fri, 15 Nov 2024 20:27:35 +0000

OpenAI was at one point considering acquiring Cerebras, an AI chipmaking company that’s in the process of going public, according to new legal filings. Elon Musk’s ongoing lawsuit against OpenAI has new exhibits that describe how OpenAI was contemplating snatching up Cerebras in or around 2017 — a year after Cerebras’ founding, and just a […]

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This ‘AI Granny’ hack wastes telephone scammers’ time with boring chit-chat

Fri, 15 Nov 2024 18:11:21 +0000

Telephone scams are nothing new, but with the advent of AI, it has become harder than ever for people to know whether the person they’re speaking to is in fact who they say they are. But U.K. mobile network O2 is turning the tables, creating what it calls an “AI granny” to keep scammers on […]

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Microsoft bets a carbon removal bake-off will help offset its skyrocketing AI emissions

Fri, 15 Nov 2024 17:23:57 +0000

Microsoft is buying 10,000 tons of carbon credits from Deep Sky, a direct air capture developer.

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X sues to block California anti-deepfakes bill

Fri, 15 Nov 2024 16:48:19 +0000

Per Bloomberg, X, Elon Musk’s social media company, has sued to block California law AB 2655, which requires large online platforms to remove or label AI deepfakes related to elections. X argues that the law, also known as the “Defending Democracy from Deepfake Deception Act of 2024,” will lead to widespread censorship of political speech. […]

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Musk’s amended lawsuit against OpenAI names Microsoft as defendant

Fri, 15 Nov 2024 04:22:47 +0000

Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI accusing the company of abandoning its nonprofit mission was withdrawn in July, only to be revived in August. Now, in an amended complaint, the suit names new defendants, including Microsoft, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and former OpenAI board member and Microsoft VP Dee Templeton. The amended filing also adds new […]

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Sam Altman and Arianna Huffington’s Thrive AI Health assistant has a bare-bones demo

Thu, 14 Nov 2024 21:54:13 +0000

In a splashy op-ed in Time published this summer, Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced Thrive AI Health, a venture with the goal of building an AI-powered assistant to promote healthier lifestyles. Backed by Huffington’s mental wellness firm Thrive Global and the OpenAI Startup Fund, Thrive AI Health would seek to […]

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ChatGPT can now read some of your Mac’s desktop apps

Thu, 14 Nov 2024 18:00:00 +0000

OpenAI’s ChatGPT is starting to work with other apps on your computer. On Thursday, the startup announced the ChatGPT desktop app for macOS can now read code in a handful of developer-focused coding apps, such as VS Code, Xcode, TextEdit, Terminal, and iTerm2. That means developers will no longer have to copy and paste their […]

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AI pioneer François Chollet leaves Google

Thu, 14 Nov 2024 16:08:06 +0000

François Chollet, a leading figure in the AI world, is leaving Google after close to a decade. In a post on X, the 34-year-old French developer said he’s starting a new company with “a friend,” but he declined to reveal many details. “I’m very grateful for my decade at Google,” Chollet wrote in the post. […]

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Nearly half of AI data centers may not have enough power by 2027

Thu, 14 Nov 2024 15:31:22 +0000

AI’s insatiable thirst for electricity is expected to surge in the coming years.

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EU AI Act: Draft guidance for general purpose AIs shows first steps for Big AI to comply

Thu, 14 Nov 2024 15:26:16 +0000

A first draft of a Code of Practice that will apply to providers of general-purpose AI models under the European Union’s AI Act has been published, alongside an invitation for feedback — open until November 28 — as the drafting process continues into next year, ahead of formal compliance deadlines kicking in over the coming […]

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Mach9 is equipping infrastructure operators with better information

Thu, 14 Nov 2024 15:00:00 +0000

Clean water, safe roads, accessible broadband and electricity: These things are not a given. They depend on vast infrastructure networks that need to be constantly maintained and improved in order to function. America is failing badly on this front. In its latest report card, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the country’s aging infrastructure […]

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