More than 450 tech workers from companies like Google, Meta, OpenAI, Amazon, and Salesforce have signed a letter urging their CEOs to call the White House and demand that United States Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) leave U.S. cities. “For months now, Trump has sent federal agents to our cities …
Read More »Apple will reportedly unveil its Gemini-powered Siri assistant in February
We’re about to get our first real look at the results of the recently announced AI partnership between Apple and Google, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. Gurman reports that Apple is planning to announce a new version of Siri in the second half of February. Using Google’s Gemini AI models, …
Read More »Synthesia hits $4B valuation, lets employees cash out
British startup Synthesia, whose AI platform helps companies create interactive training videos, has raised a $200 million Series E round of funding that brings its valuation to $4 billion — up from $2.1 billion just a year ago. Unlike some other AI startups that are still a long way from …
Read More »Science fiction writers, Comic-Con say goodbye to AI
In recent months, some of the major players in science fiction and popular culture have been taking firmer stances against generative AI. Separate decisions by San Diego Comic-Con and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) illustrate the depth of AI opposition within some creative communities — though they’re …
Read More »Humans& thinks coordination is the next frontier for AI, and they’re building a model to prove it
AI chatbots are getting better at answering questions, summarizing documents, and solving mathematical equations, but they still largely behave like helpful assistants for one user at a time. They’re not designed to manage the messier work of real collaboration: coordinating people with competing priorities, tracking long-running decisions, and keeping teams …
Read More »This founder cracked firefighting — now he’s creating an AI gold mine
Sunny Sethi, founder of HEN Technologies, doesn’t sound like someone who’s disrupted an industry that has remained largely unchanged since the 1960s. His company builds fire nozzles — specifically, nozzles that it says increase suppression rates by up to 300% while conserving 67% of water. But Sethi is matter-of-fact about …
Read More »ChatGPT is pulling answers from Elon Musk’s Grokipedia
Information from the conservative-leaning, AI-generated encyclopedia developed by Elon Musk’s xAI is beginning to appear in answers from ChatGPT. xAI launched Grokipedia in October, after Musk had been complaining that Wikipedia was biased against conservatives. Reporters soon noted that while many articles seemed to be copied directly from Wikipedia, Grokipedia …
Read More »TechCrunch Mobility: RIP, Tesla Autopilot, and the NTSB investigates Waymo
Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! A quick bit of breaking news that hit just as we were about to send this …
Read More »What is Bending Spoons? Everything to know about Eventbrite’s acquirer
Twelve-year-old Milan-based tech conglomerate Bending Spoons has quietly become one of the tech industry’s most prolific buyers, now owning Meetup, WeTransfer and many others, but it remains largely unknown to the general public. So what exactly is Bending Spoons? Despite its catchy name, the company has stayed remarkably under the …
Read More »Researchers say Russian government hackers were behind attempted Poland power outage
A failed December effort to bring down parts of Poland’s energy grid was the work of Russian government hackers known for causing past energy disruptions, according to a security research firm that investigated the incident. Last week, Polish Energy Minister Milosz Motyka told reporters that the attempted cyberattack on December …
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