Tesla issues widespread recall in response to Autopilot flaw following fatal Virginia crash and technology concerns.

Posted on December 17, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

Tesla has recalled nearly all vehicles sold in the United States to fix a flaw in Elon Musk’s electric car company’s Autopilot driver assistance system. The move comes after Virginia authorities discovered the vehicle’s software had been activated during a previous fatal crash. July.

The recall of more than 2 million vehicles, reportedly the largest in Tesla history, was revealed as part of an ongoing investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The investigation, which began more than two years ago and includes an investigation into 956 crashes in which Autopilot was implicated, found that existing safety measures “may not be sufficient to prevent driver misuse of the software.” It was determined that there is.

“In certain situations, when Autosteer is activated and the driver is not responsible for operating the vehicle and is not prepared to intervene if necessary, or when Autosteer is canceled or activated. Failure to recognize when it is not present can increase the risk of a crash,” NHTSA said in a release.

Electric car manufacturer announces recall This will consist of an over-the-air software update that was expected to be rolled out on Tuesday or a little later. This update applies to Tesla Model 3, Model S, Model X, and Model Y vehicles manufactured in certain years, including those dating back to 2012.

The vehicle will be provided with “additional controls and warnings” to remind drivers to take precautions when using Autopilot, such as keeping both hands on the steering wheel and keeping their eyes on the road.

Tesla shares fell more than 1.5% in Wednesday trading before closing up 1%.

The announcement came on the same day that Virginia officials revealed that Autopilot was being used. Pablo Teodoro III, 57, crashed his Tesla into a tractor-trailer, causing a fatal accident. Authorities also determined that the Tesla vehicle was speeding before the accident.

A spokeswoman for the Fauquier County Sheriff’s Office said Teodoro appeared to have taken action a second before the accident, but it was unclear what he did.

The investigation also found that the car’s systems “recognized something on the road and sent a message.”

NHTSA is still investigating the crash.

The recall also Washington Post’s shocking report Tesla claimed it was allowing Autopilot to be used in areas the software was not designed to handle.

The media claimed to have found at least eight fatal or serious accidents involving Tesla Autopilot on roads where “driving assistance software cannot reliably operate,” such as roads with hills or sharp curves.

In response to this article, Tesla defended the safety of its Autopilot software with a lengthy argued that “we have a moral obligation to keep improving what is already the best product.” -In-class safety system. ”

“The data is clear: the more automation technology provided to support drivers, the safer they and other road users will be,” the company said.

Tesla President Elon Musk reiterated that Autopilot is safe to use and emphasized the company’s commitment to developing driver assistance and fully self-driving features as an important part of the company’s long-term plans.

with post wire

Source: nypost.com

The new Airbus A321neo plane from Delta Air Lines includes AirPod technology

Posted on December 17, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

Now listen to this.

cookie dough brands If you fly on Delta’s new Airbus A321neo, you can use Bluetooth technology to connect your Apple AirPods to Delta’s seatback TV screen.

Delta’s A321neo, which began accepting commercial flyers in May 2022, features smooth leather recliners in first class, wide privacy dividers between seats and 13-inch high-definition touchscreen monitors.

TikToker Elise Brulotte On my Wednesday trip from Seattle to Honolulu, I was captivated by the in-flight entertainment.

“Finally, I can now watch movies on my AirPods on Delta’s new plane,” Brulot, who co-founded Hot Take Cookie Dough with her sister, wrote in a text. on her TikTok.

“As someone who has never bought over-ear headphones, I’m already blown away. Game changer,” she emphasizes in the caption of her video, which has been viewed over 520,000 times on TikTok. .

“The A321neo is our first aircraft to offer Bluetooth connectivity, available in the first class cabin,” a Delta representative said in a statement.

Bluelott told the Post that he was happy to see Delta Air Lines “achieve something I’ve wanted for a while.”

“I wish more airlines would integrate this feature, but it seems like a no-brainer to me,” Brulot said. “I’ve never seen it on a plane before, so it was very refreshing! I’ll be looking for more from now on.”

Delta Air Lines began commercial flights with the Airbus A321neo in May 2022. Getty Images

As of NovemberDelta Air Lines operates 35 A321neos and has a contract to purchase 155 of the aircraft through 2027.

The 194-seat aircraft features 20 domestic first class seats, 42 Comfort+ seats and 132 main cabin seats.

The in-flight entertainment system is It said it was loaded There are over 500 movies and over 100 TV series.

Meanwhile, Apple launched AirPods, wireless Bluetooth earphones, in 2016.

Brulotte’s 300,000 TikToker followers shared their experiences with AirPod technology on other flights.

“I ate this on a United Airlines flight. It changed the game,” one flyer said.

“The new Virgin Airlines has this and I was very happy (lol),” laughed the next.

“We just did this on Emirates!” exclaimed a third.

Source: nypost.com

The Proliferation of Fake AI Images Persists – 8 Notable Examples | Science & Technology Updates

Posted on December 16, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

Fact-checkers highlighted some notorious examples of AI-generated images that went viral this year, such as Prince William and Prince Harry embracing at the royal coronation.

Midjourney OpenAIWith DALL-E 3, you can now create realistic images faster and easier than ever using only text prompts.

While being a proponent of the technology known as generative; artificial intelligence,please tell me can empower artistsleading to concerns. Possibility of spreading false information.

Charity Full Fact has selected eight examples from 2023 that have been shared thousands of times.

They have since been marked as AI-generated or removed by social media platforms.

Prince William and Prince Harry reunite

Slideshow of 8 images showing prince of wales and the Duke of Sussex king’s coronation spread widely to Facebookover 78,000 likes!

In one of the photos, they appear to be hugging each other with teary eyes, but none of the photos are real.

According to a Full Fact investigation, these photos were originally published in a blog post in which the author explained how to use Midjourney’s image generator to “imagine a heartfelt reconciliation” between two people.

Julian Assange goes to prison

Photo of WikiLeaks founder The scenes at Belmarsh Prison were created using Midjourney.

The creator confirmed as much in an interview with Germany’s Bild newspaper, but not until the image was shared on Facebook and reposted 29,000 times. X.

Donald Trump’s portrait

Before the former US president posted a photo of his real face on Xmany fake versions were circulating.

Some of them have been viewed more than a million times, even though the jumble of letters behind him is a major feature. AI generators often have a hard time recreating text within images.

Mr Trump He had previously been the subject of an AI-generated image that appeared to show the moment of his arrest.

President Emmanuel Macron during the French riots

meanwhile riots in franceThe photo of has become a hot topic Emmanuel Macron He was sitting in the street as garbage burned behind him.

The image was widely shared, with one post garnering more than 55,000 views and comments suggesting the media was ignoring the story, according to Full Fact.

Pope Francis’ large audience

Photo of pope His speech to a large crowd in Lisbon was viewed tens of thousands of times on social media.

But a closer look revealed that it wasn’t real. One hand of the Pope had three fingers.

It comes months after an eerily convincing AI image of the Pope wearing a down jacket went viral.

Elon Musk’s “Robot Wife”

SpaceX Billionaire He makes no secret of his desire to create humanoid robots.but not “The Robot Wife.”

A post featuring an image of him kissing one such model was created by a digital artist and shared on Facebook and X.

Titanic submarine wreckage

While searching for titan submersibleMidjourney was used to create an image purporting to show debris.

It showed a game controller floating in the water, with the caption: “Breaking news: Exploded Titanic submarine controller found floating near the surface.”

The submarine is controlled using a modified controller and has been reported to have been sighted over 300,000 times on the X.

Rishi Sunak’s Bad Pint

critic of prime minister The shot of him pouring out bad beer was an example of how he was portrayed as an out-of-touch person.

This image is a compilation of photos from the beer festival in August. Pint’s appearance worsened and onlookers looked confused.

It received over 78,000 views on X. The fact that Labor MP Karl Turner shared it also didn’t help.

Full Fact said the government and regulator Ofcom must prioritize public media literacy ahead of the next election, helping them recognize fake images and question what they see online. Ta.

Chief Executive Chris Morris added: “Failure to take action risks reducing people’s trust in what they see online. This risks undermining democracy, particularly during elections. Yes,” he added.

Source: news.sky.com

Tesla Announces Recall of Over 2 Million Cars in the US Due to Autopilot Safety Concerns | Science and Technology Update

Posted on December 16, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

Tesla is recalling more than 2 million vehicles in the United States over concerns about its advanced driver assistance system, Autopilot.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said the system’s methods of determining whether drivers are paying attention may be inadequate and could lead to “foreseeable abuse of the system.”

NHTSA is investigating Elon Musk’s Over two years, the company has suffered a series of crashes, some fatal, that occurred while using the Autopilot system.

tesla He said Autopilot’s software system controls “may not be sufficient to prevent driver misuse” and could increase the risk of a crash.

Tesla’s Autopilot is intended to allow the car to automatically steer, accelerate, and brake within the line, but while the enhanced Autopilot can assist with lane changes on the highway, self-driving It won’t be.

One of the Autopilot components is Autosteer, which maintains a set speed or following distance and works to keep the vehicle within its lane of travel.

Tesla disagrees with NHTSA’s analysis, but notes that “additional controls and warnings already exist in affected vehicles to further encourage drivers to comply with ongoing driving responsibilities each time Autosteer engages.” “We will deploy an over-the-air software update that incorporates this.” “I’m engaged.”

The update says it includes increased prominence of visual alerts on the user interface, easier activation and deactivation of Autosteer, and additional checks when Autosteer is activated.

Tesla added that the update will eventually result in a driver’s use of Autosteer being suspended if the driver “repeatedly fails to demonstrate continued and sustained driving responsibility while the feature is activated.” .

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The recall applies to models Y, S, 3, and X produced between October 5, 2012 and December 7 of this year.

The update was expected to be sent to some affected vehicles on Tuesday, with the remaining vehicles sent out later.

NHTSA will continue its investigation into Autopilot “to monitor the effectiveness of Tesla’s remedies,” the agency said.

Since 2016, regulators have investigated 35 Tesla crashes in which the vehicles were suspected of being driven on automated systems. At least 17 people were killed in the clashes.

It is unclear whether this recall affects Tesla vehicles in other countries, including the UK.

This is the second time this year Tesla recalls its vehicles In the United States.

Source: news.sky.com

An Interview with Nvidia’s Deepu Talla on Robotics Technology

Posted on December 16, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

A version of this Q&A first appeared in Actuator, TechCrunch’s free robotics newsletter. Subscribe here.

We conclude our year-end robotics Q&A series with this entry by Deepu Talla. In October, he visited NVIDIA’s Bay Area headquarters. Talla has served as Vice President and General Manager of Embedded & Edge Computing for this leading chip company for over 10 years. He provides unique insight into the current state and future direction of robotics in 2023. Over the past few years, NVIDIA has established the leading platform for robotics simulation, prototyping, and deployment.

Previous Q&A:

Image credits: Nvidia

What role will generative AI play in the future of robotics?

We are already seeing productivity gains from generative AI across a variety of industries. It is clear that the impact of GenAI will be transformative across robotics, from simulation to design and more.

Simulation: Models can now accelerate simulation development by bridging the gap between 3D technical artists and developers by building scenes, building environments, and generating assets. These GenAI assets will see increased use in synthetic data generation, robotic skill training, and software testing.
Multimodal AI: Transformer-based models improve robots’ ability to better understand the world around them, allowing them to operate in more environments and complete complex tasks.
Robot (re)programming: Improves the ability to define tasks and functions in a simple language to make robots more versatile/multipurpose.
Design: Novel mechanical designs (end effectors, etc.) to improve efficiency.

What do you think about the humanoid form factor?

Designing autonomous robots is difficult. Humanoids are even more difficult. Unlike most of his AMRs, which primarily understand floor-level obstacles, humanoids are locomotion manipulators that require multimodal AI to have a deeper understanding of their surrounding environment. It requires a huge amount of sensor processing, advanced control, and skill execution.

Breakthroughs in generative AI capabilities for building foundational models are making the robotic skills needed for humanoids more commonplace. In parallel, we are also seeing advances in simulation that can train AI-based control and perception systems.

What will be the next major category of robots after manufacturing and warehousing?

Markets where companies are feeling the effects of labor shortages and demographic changes will continue to coincide with corresponding robotic opportunities. This spans robotics companies across a variety of industries, from agriculture to last-mile delivery to retail and more.

The main challenge in building various categories of autonomous robots is building the 3D virtual world needed to simulate and test the stack. Again, generative AI helps by allowing developers to build realistic simulation environments faster. Integrating AI into robotics will enable greater automation in environments that are less active and “robot friendly.”

How far have true general-purpose robots evolved?

We continue to see robots becoming more intelligent and able to perform multiple tasks in a given environment. We hope to continue to focus on mission-specific issues while making it more generalizable. True universal embodied autonomy is even further afield.

Will household robots (beyond vacuum cleaners) become commonplace within the next 10 years?

We plan to make useful personal assistants, lawn mowers, and robots available for joint use to assist the elderly.

The trade-offs that have hampered home robots so far are between how much someone will pay for their robot and whether the robot provides that value. Robot vacuums have long offered value for their price point, which is why they’re growing in popularity.

And as robots become smarter, having an intuitive user interface will be key to increasing adoption. Robots that can map their environment and receive voice commands will be easier for home consumers to use than robots that require programming.

The next category to take off will likely focus on things like automated outdoor lawn care. Other domestic robots, such as personal/healthcare assistants, also hold promise, but must address some of the indoor challenges encountered in dynamic, unstructured home environments.

What are some important robotics stories/trends that aren’t getting enough coverage?

The need for a platform approach. Many robotics startups are unable to scale because they develop robots suited to specific tasks or environments. For large-scale commercial realization, it is important to develop more versatile robots. That is, robots that can quickly add new skills or bring existing skills to new environments.

Robotics engineers need a platform with tools and libraries to train and test AI for robotics. The platform should provide simulation capabilities to train models, generate synthetic data, run the entire robotics software stack, and be able to run modern generative AI models directly on the robot.

Tomorrow’s successful startups and robotics companies will need to focus on developing new robotic skills and automation tasks, and take full advantage of available end-to-end development platforms.

Source: techcrunch.com

Ofcom investigates TikTok for lack of parental control information | Science and Technology News

Posted on December 16, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

Ofcom has initiated an inquiry into TikTok to determine if it provided false information about parental controls.

The UK’s media regulator has requested details from Chinese-owned apps and other online video platforms like Snapchat, to report on measures taken to protect children.

While they were generally commended for their efforts, Ofcom stated that it had “reasons to believe” that TikTok provided “inaccurate” information about the family pairing system.

This feature allows adults to link their account to their child’s account and control settings such as screen time limits.

Ofcom will now investigate whether the company “failed in its obligations” by not taking appropriate action.

TikTok attributed the issue to a technical problem, and Ofcom said it is aware and will provide the necessary data.

A spokesperson mentioned that the platform enforces an age requirement of 13 years and that the report notes the platform’s significant effort and resources in locating and removing underage users.

Ofcom’s report is the first in two years following guidance on video sharing apps about how to protect young users from encountering harmful content.

YouTube and Facebook were not covered in the report as they fall under Irish jurisdiction, a result of EU rules that the UK continues to follow, despite leaving the EU gradually through the online safety bill.

An Ofcom report published on Thursday found that TikTok, Snapchat, and Twitch all met the requirements set out two years ago.

All three platforms categorize and label content to ensure it is age-appropriate.

However, while Snapchat and TikTok offer parental controls, Twitch requires parents to supervise their children in real time as per its terms of service.

Ofcom stated that although steps were being taken to protect young users, “victims can still be victimized while using these platforms”.

Source: news.sky.com

Pope Francis advocates for global oversight of artificial intelligence | Science and Technology

Posted on December 16, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

Pope Francis has voiced support behind calls for regulation of AI.

pope With the annual World Peace Day message, artificial intelligence Safely developed and ethically used.

He warned that the technology lacks human values such as compassion and morality, and could blur the line between what is real and what is fake.

The Pope should know, considering he was the subject of some of the most infamous AI-generated images of 2023.

In March, he was photographed wearing a stylish down jacket, leaving social media in awe.

This surreal image created using the AI tool Midjourney was certainly too good to be true.

how Chat GPT Generating text content allows users to request images using a simple prompt.

The fake photo originated on Reddit and was shared tens of millions of times on social media, fooling people, including celebrities, and becoming one of the first major examples of AI-powered misinformation at scale.

This week: British charity Full Fact highlighted another false image of FranciscoThe photo showed him addressing a large crowd in Lisbon earlier this year.

Pope shares his biggest concerns about AI

Cardinal Michael Czerny, director of the Vatican Development Authority, shared the pope’s concerns in a written statement.

“The biggest risk is dialogue,” he said.

“Because without truth there can be no dialogue, and without responsibility there can be no truth.”

The Pope said the regulatory priorities are to prevent disinformation, discrimination and distortion, promote peace and guarantee human rights.

read more:
How the confusion arose in the creators of ChatGPT
The first year of the chatbot that changed the world

His intervention was a few days later. EU reaches agreement on how to regulate AIwhich covers generation tools such as Midjourney and ChatGPT, but will not come into effect until 2025 at the earliest.

joe biden us president The White House announced its own proposal in OctoberThis included the possibility of requiring AI-generated content to be watermarked.

In Britain, the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak They are becoming more cautious about AI laws, arguing they risk stifling innovation.

Source: news.sky.com

Naughty Dog, the developer of ‘The Last of Us,’ cancels their next game: Science and Technology Update

Posted on December 16, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

The next game in the popular “The Last Of Us” series has been cancelled.

Developer Naughty Dog said it had made an “incredibly difficult decision”, recognizing that the scope of the project would negatively impact other future titles.

The studio said in a blog post that it knows “this news will be tough” for fans and added that they are “equally devastated.”

Unlike previous releases, playstation The studio is known for single-player, story-driven blockbusters, but the canceled game was an online multiplayer experience.

Similar to titles like call of duty and fortnite updated regularly to keep players coming back.

Naughty Dog said it is “enthusiastic about the direction” of the project, but that supporting it post-launch risks “significantly impacting the development of future single-player games.”

It said such a game, such indiana jones-Like the Uncharted series, it “defined the Naughty Dog tradition.”

A studio committed to single-player roots

The studio has dabbled in multiplayer in the past, but only as an additional play mode.

First released in 2013, The Last Of Us had a popular online experience called Factions that pitted players against each other in competitive shooting matches.

It was also slated to be part of 2020’s The Last Of Us: Part II before Naughty Dog decided to spin it off and release it as a separate release, but it’s now canned .

“I’m extremely proud of everyone at the studio who worked on this project,” the blog post added.

“The technology learnings and investments from this game will be reflected in our project development and will be invaluable in the direction we are heading as a studio.”

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What’s next?

Naughty Dog’s next release is the PlayStation 5 re-release of The Last Of Us: Part II, scheduled for January.

The company’s games have been well-received by critics, but the company has released three versions of the original between 2013 and 2022, and has been criticized for milking the post-apocalypse Zombies series.

There is no doubt that they are trying to capitalize on the popularity of . HBO TV animationarrived earlier this year.

But the company’s blog post said it was also developing “several ambitious, ally-new single-player games.”

Source: news.sky.com

“Handheld Devices: More Popular than Ever as Christmas Gifts” – Science and Technology Update

Posted on December 16, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

Twenty-five years ago, Nintendo’s Game Boy Color was at the top of the Christmas list for many. This iconic mobile device, launched in November 1998, featured classic games like Pokemon, Super Mario Land, and Tetris, and became one of the most successful gaming consoles ever created, with approximately 120 million units sold.

Although the rise of smartphones and games like Candy Crush temporarily overshadowed portable gaming devices, dedicated fans continued to be drawn to the power of consoles and PCs. However, it seems that the mobile device market is healthier than ever this Christmas season.

Nintendo’s Switch, which was released about seven years ago, continues to sell well, with sales exceeding 130 million copies. Inspired by the success of the Switch, Valve released the Steam Deck, a portable gaming device that allows games that were once exclusive to consoles and computers to be taken on the go. Valve has also announced a new model for the Christmas sales season, the Deck OLED, which boasts a better screen, battery life, and lightweight construction.

This handheld gaming craze has expanded beyond Switches and decks to include rivals such as the Asus ROG Ally and Lenovo Legion Go. According to engineer Lawrence Yang, this marks the beginning of a new handheld game console category, where the line between games played at home and games played on the go is blurring.

In addition to these advancements, cloud gaming services like Google Stadia, and streaming services such as Netflix are also making it easier for gamers to access their favorite titles from anywhere.

Leading console makers Sony and Microsoft are also paying attention to the increasingly popular handheld gaming trend, with Sony launching the Playstation Portal and Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass becoming more accessible. Additionally, services like Antstream are offering over 1,400 retro titles available on multiple platforms.

It’s clear that the convenience and accessibility of handheld gaming devices are appealing to many, making it possible to play games on the go without compromising on graphics or gameplay.

Source: news.sky.com

Enterprise CIOs are hesitant to embrace generative AI technology

Posted on December 16, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

Hearing the vendor hype, enterprise buyers might think they’re all in when it comes to generative AI. But as with any new technology, large companies tend to tread carefully. Throughout this year, CIOs have been paying attention as vendors have eagerly announced new generation products powered by his AI.

Some companies are actually looking at reducing spending, or at least smoothing out spending, and are not necessarily looking for new ways to spend. The big exception is when technology allows companies to operate more efficiently and accomplish more with less.

Generative AI certainly has the potential to do that, but it either increases the cost of these features in a SaaS product or the cost of using a large language model API if you build your own. It also comes with its own costs, such as how much it costs. Software internally.

Either way, it’s important for those implementing the technology to understand whether they’re getting a return on their investment. Many companies are proceeding cautiously, with 56% of respondents reporting that generative AI is impacting their investment priorities, according to a July Morgan Stanley survey of CIOs of large companies. However, only 4% of people actually launched any significant projects. In fact, most were still in the evaluation or proof-of-concept stage. This may be a rapidly changing area, but it’s also consistent with what we heard in our conversations with CIOs.

That said, similar to the consumerization of IT a decade ago, CIOs are under pressure to deliver the kind of experience people see when they play ChatGPT online, says Madrona Ventures Partner says Jon Turow.

“I think it’s undeniable that all of our corporate employees, who are internal customers of CIOs and CTOs, have tried ChatGPT and know how great it is. , and know where the great words are. So CIOs are under pressure to achieve that level,” Turow told TechCrunch.

Particularly where some of the pressure may be coming from the CEO, the desire to please internal customers and potentially transformative things like generative AI. There is also a tension between CIOs’ natural tendency to act cautiously. Jim Rowan, a principal at Deloitte, said that making this happen requires building some structure and organization over time, and how to build generative AI across the enterprise in an organized way. He said he is working with customers.

“A lot of the way we work with companies is to think about what infrastructure they need to be successful. Infrastructure doesn’t necessarily mean technology, but people. Who is that, what is the process and governance…and giving them the ability to set it up,” Rowan said. A big part of that is talking about use cases and how the technology can be used to address specific problems.

This is consistent with how the CIOs we spoke to are implementing this in their organizations. Monica Caldas, her CIO at insurance company Liberty Mutual, started with a proof of concept for a few thousand people and is looking for ways to scale it at her 45,000-employee company.

“We know that generative AI will continue to play a critical role in virtually every part of our company. We are investing in use cases to further develop and refine them,” she said. she said.

Mike Haney, CIO of Battelle, a science and technology-focused company, is also exploring generative AI use cases this year. “So we’ve been working on advancing AI for the past six to nine months, and we’re currently building out specific use cases for different teams and functions within the company.” Although it is still early and they are still exploring ways in which it can help, they caution that so far the results have been good in terms of providing more efficient methods.

Kathy Kay, executive vice president and CIO of financial services firm Principal Financial Group, says her company started from scratch with a research group. “So we opened it up to any employee with an interest or passion, and the number grew to about 100 people. It’s a combination of engineers and business people, and now she’s probably working on 25 use cases. of which she plans to put three into production. [soon],” she said.

Sharon Mandel, Juniper Networks CIO, said her company is participating in an early pilot with Microsoft for Copilot for Office 365, and anecdotally, some people like Copilot and others are less impressed. says they’ve heard mixed feedback. Measuring productivity gains remains a challenge, he said, even though Microsoft has started offering dashboards that at least show levels of adoption and usage.

“The difficult thing about this is that we don’t have data on people’s productivity levels. So no matter what, we want to make sure that we have a good understanding of Microsoft’s dashboards that show how our users are using them. Until then, we will be using somewhat anecdotal information,” she said.

When companies hear about the potential power of generative AI, it’s no surprise that they want to learn more about it and leverage it to make their organizations run more efficiently, but at the same time, executives are becoming somewhat cautious. Of course. We recognize that these are still in their early stages and we need to learn through experimentation whether this is truly a revolutionary technology.

Source: techcrunch.com

Harvard team makes significant strides in error correction technology

Posted on December 16, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

Quantum computing has advanced significantly with a new platform from Harvard University that is capable of dynamic reconfiguration and can demonstrate low error rates in two-qubit entangled gates. This breakthrough, highlighted in a recent Nature paper, represents a major advance in overcoming the challenges of quantum error correction and places Harvard’s technology alongside other leading quantum computing methods. Masu. This research, in collaboration with MIT and others, represents an important step toward scalable, error-correcting quantum computing. Credit: SciTechDaily.com

A method developed by a team at Harvard University to reduce errors addresses a critical hurdle in scaling up technology.

Quantum computing technology has the potential to achieve unprecedented speed and efficiency, vastly exceeding the capabilities of even the most advanced supercomputers currently available. However, this innovative technology has not been widely scaled or commercialized, primarily due to inherent limitations in error correction. Quantum computers, unlike classical computers, cannot correct errors by copying encoded data over and over again. Scientists had to find another way.

Now, a new paper Nature depicting Harvard University quantum computing A potential platform to solve a long-standing problem known as quantum error correction.

The Harvard team is led by quantum optics expert Mikhail Lukin, Joshua and Beth Friedman Professor of Physics and co-director of the Harvard Quantum Initiative. The research reported in Nature was a collaboration between Harvard University. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston-based QuEra Computing. George Busmer Leverett Professor of Physics and Marcus Greiner’s group also participated.

Unique Harvard Platform

The Harvard University platform, an effort over the past several years, is built on an array of very cold rubidium atoms captured by a laser.Each atom They act as bits (called “qubits” in the quantum world) that can perform extremely fast calculations.

The team’s main innovation is configuring a “neutral atomic array” so that the layout can be dynamically changed by moving and connecting atoms during calculations. This is called “entanglement” in physics terms. 2 Operations that entangle pairs of atoms called qubit logic gates are units of computing power.

Running complex algorithms on a quantum computer requires many gates. However, these gating operations are known to be error-prone, and the accumulation of errors renders the algorithm useless.

In a new paper, the team reports near-perfect performance of the two-qubit entanglement gate with extremely low error rates. For the first time, they demonstrated the ability to entangle atoms with an error rate of less than 0.5 percent. In terms of operational quality, this puts the performance of the company’s technology on par with other major types of quantum computing platforms, such as superconducting qubits and trapped ion qubits.

Benefits and future prospects

However, Harvard’s approach has significant advantages over these competitors due to its large system size, efficient qubit control, and the ability to dynamically reconfigure the atomic layout.

“We demonstrate that the physical errors of this platform are low enough that we can actually imagine large-scale error correction devices based on neutral atoms,” said lead author and Harvard University Griffin School of Arts and Sciences. student Simon Evered said. group. “Currently, our error rates are low enough that if we group atoms into logical qubits (information is stored non-locally between the constituent atoms), we can Errors can be even lower than individual atoms.”

The Harvard team’s progress was tracked by former Harvard graduate student and current princeton university, former Harvard University postdoctoral fellow Manuel Endres, now at the California Institute of Technology. Taken together, these advances lay the foundation for quantum error correction algorithms and large-scale quantum computing. All of this means that quantum computing on neutral atomic arrays is reaching its full potential.

“These contributions open the door to very special opportunities in scalable quantum computing, and truly exciting times ahead for the field as a whole,” Lukin said.

Reference: “High-fidelity parallel entanglement gates on neutral atom quantum computers” Simon J. Evered, Dolev Bluvstein, Marcin Kalinowski, Sepehr Ebadi, Tom Manovitz, Hengyun Zhou, Sophie H. Li, Alexandra A. Geim, Tout T Wang, Nishad Maskara, Harry Levine, Julia Semeghini, Markus Greiner, Vladan Vretić, Mikhail D. Lukin, October 11, 2023. Nature.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06481-y

This research was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Quantum Systems Accelerator Center. Ultracold Atom Center. National Science Foundation. Army Research Office Interdisciplinary University Research Initiative.And thatDARPAOptimization with a noisy intermediate-scale quantum device program.

Source: scitechdaily.com

Analyzing Metafuels’ $8 million seed deck for climate technology

Posted on December 15, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

Approximately 2% The world’s CO₂ emissions come from pressurized, jet-driven sausages traveling through the air. Earlier this week, he covered Metafuels, a startup that believes it has a solution to reducing aircraft emissions.

I also negotiated with the company’s founders to provide them with pitch materials for their $8 million seed round, allowing me to take a closer look at the materials the company used to raise money.

We’re looking for more unique proposal decks, so if you’d like to submit your own, you can do so in the following ways:

This deck slide

Metafuels was kind enough to share its entire deck with TechCrunch+ for this teardown. There are some minor edits, but the majority of this slide deck remains intact.

cover slide
Market size slide
Product/Technology Slide 3
product manufacturing slides
Unit economics (large scale production numbers)
unique selling point
technology roadmap
Business model slides (production version)
Business model slide (license)
Commercialization slide
Market traction slide
team slide
end slide

3 things to love

If you’ve been reading my Pitch Deck Deconstruction article, even just skimming the list of slides above, you’re probably thinking, “Oh, Haje won’t be happy with this, there’s a ton of information missing!” . And yes, you would definitely be right. However, this is an interesting challenge for deep tech startups. If it takes a long time to get your product to market, by definition you’re missing a lot of things.

Is it a bird? Is it an airplane?No, the market size is skyrocketing

It takes special chutzpah to say “all aviation fuel” is your market, but that’s what Metafuels is doing here.

[Slide 2] Aiming for 70% of the aviation fuel market is quite bold. I like that. Image credits: meta fuel

Currently, the market size for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is quite limited. According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), around 300 million liters of sustainable aviation fuel will be produced in 2022, doubling to more than 600 million liters this year. This is equivalent to a drop in the ocean of all the fuel used in the world. Although there was a significant drop during the pandemic; Approximately 360 billion liters of fuel were used by commercial airlines in 2019.

In other words, SAF represents approximately 0.17% of the total aviation fuel consumed.

It is therefore no surprise that Metafuels has decided to start forecasting from 2030. That’s when the company really ramps up production, and that’s when the market is likely to take off. A major enforcement feature is the RefuelEU aviation regulation, which sets targets for blending sustainable fuels with petroleum-compatible fuels.

Metafuels tells its story well. It provides a comprehensive picture of a rapidly growing market, in which the company has established itself as a key player.

From this slide, you can learn how to connect the “why now” part of your story to broader macro changes. If you know which way the wind is blowing, you can set up your company to make the most of it.

Let’s get geeky about technology

When building a deep tech company, the tallest pole in the tent will always be the technology itself.what do you have you Did you notice that no one else has been able to identify it?

[Slide 4] Oh yeah, talk about nerdy stuff, baby. Image credits: meta fuel

Metafuels has discovered one exception to the “investors don’t care about your product” rule. Metafuels is a deep technology company, and its failure or success will be based entirely on its ability to deliver on the technology side. Refreshingly, the three-slide set (slides 3-5) explains the process itself, how it works at scale, and how the company can produce fuel at an affordable price. is.

clear roadmap

[Slide 7] I like the clarity of Metafuels’ plan. Image credits: meta fuel

Make it work, then make it work on a small scale, then scale it to production scale. This is a very obvious route, but it’s rarely explained this clearly. Slide 10 details how the company scaled up from his 50 liters per day to 700 million liters per day. This is a tremendous scale operation.

The main takeaway from this part of the deck is to look to the future and how it can be expanded upon. In particular, having a clear understanding of unit economics (i.e., how the financials of your product change as you start increasing volumes) is often a key part of the story.

Here, Metafuels is talking about producing 1-2 liters per day and scaling it up to 700 million. That’s… a tough job. And while the manufacturing processes and factories to produce that much fuel will be more expensive, the cost per liter will be significantly lower. Metafuels tackles that beautifully with this deck.

In the rest of this teardown, we’ll take a look at three things Metafuels could have improved or done differently, as well as its full pitch deck.

Source: techcrunch.com

Andreessen Horowitz is willing to provide funding to politicians in support of technology deregulation.

Posted on December 14, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

Venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz has announced its intention to begin lobbying the U.S. government, but their plan is as tone-deaf and insensitive as this summer’s dreaded “Techno-Optimist Manifesto.” Essentially, they would give anyone — literally anyone — Someone who “supports an optimistic technology-enabled future.”

These are called single-issue voters, and co-founder Ben Horowitz (who wrote the blog post) believes that publicizing themselves that way lends a childlike innocence to lobbying. It seems like it is, but it is quite the opposite.

The fact is that they are rich ideologues who have expressed a willingness to pay politicians who promote their agenda, regardless of what that politician’s other opinions may be. It’s really easy!

Fundamental to their approach is that technology is more important than people. They claim to be pro-human in the sense that they are pro-technology, e.g., writing, “Artificial intelligence has the potential to lift all humanity to an unprecedented quality of life.” right.

Therefore, being more AI-oriented means being more human-oriented.And actually, if you think about it, if you have AI. did it It justifies taking actions that lead to a 100-fold improvement in the human condition in the long term but have worse outcomes in the short term. For example, supporting politicians who oppose basic civil rights simply because they propose more liberal technology regulations.

For example, if a politician proposing a national abortion ban or a widespread ban on “Wake Agenda” books said he trusts AI companies to do what’s best for everyone, Andreessen and Would Horowitz support it? Now, according to A16Z’s statement of purpose here, abortion is not their business. They are “nonpartisan, one-issue voters.”

But that’s just bullshit, right?

To begin with, the idea that this one issue is bipartisan is at risk. Supporters of forced birth will likely describe themselves as independent, one-issue voters. After all, it’s not about politics, it’s about the right to life. It is irrelevant that a single political party has cynically linked this and other “traditional values” to all other policy proposals for decades.

No, no, you can’t just do that declare Nonpartisanship in blog posts. Technology regulation, like everything else, is a partisan issue. Net neutrality, Section 230, TikTok, social media disinformation, A16Z’s pet tech Debate about AI, cryptocurrencies, and biotech are all partisan. That’s just the nature of politics today.flat do not have Participating in lobbying is, in a sense, a partisan decision because it shows that you are not taking sides.

But that partisan language is just the usual pretense for this kind of announcement. Everyone claims it because it is a meaningless property and cannot be proven or disproved. The problem with A16Z’s philosophy here is that it is a wolf in sheep’s clothing: an overtly deregulatory and pro-capitalist agenda masked superficially in the language of empowerment.

You have to imagine some tobacco industry executive wrote a similar blog post in the 60’s. We are nonpartisan, single issue voters on a faulty regulatory system that unfairly prevents Americans from enjoying the great taste and health benefits of our natural tobacco products.

The same goes for plastics, food additives, leaded gas, and everything else. All they were interested in, and all Andreessen Horowitz was interested in, was removing onerous obstacles to increasing wealth from the boardroom.

If they actually cared at all about people and how politics and lobbying affect them, then perhaps “the people” would theoretically mean “exalted” in some imagined future. It would have been referred to as more than an abstract concept that could be ” or hurt.

It’s unrealistic to think that by donating to politicians who support a vision of deregulation, A16Z won’t also support other policies that people are actually voting for right now. voting rights, reproductive care, education, etc. This obvious conflict of interest is conveniently avoided. Are any positions or proposals so despicable that they will withdraw their support, or will they stand by their principles, if it can be described as such?

They cannot expect us to believe that their understanding of lobbying and politics is this simple. There are smart people in that company. We have to take at face value their statements that they really don’t care about anything other than growing the areas they’re investing in. But what they are proclaiming is not an idealistic pro-humanity position as they suggest, but cynical selfishness. Basically an anti-people attitude.

But A16Z doesn’t care. people — I’m curious about that. Human race.

And as we enter this golden age of technology and enter a dark age of social policy, humanity will no doubt be grateful, right? Women like Kate Cox may not have physical independencebut at least they will have blockchain.

Source: techcrunch.com

Revolutionary New Technology Accelerates Diaper Recycling by 200 Times

Posted on December 14, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

The superabsorber becomes a liquid under ultraviolet light after absorbing enough water. It can then be reused. Credit: Ken Pekarsky, KIT

Water and UV light effectively and quickly break down the cross-linked polymers in diaper liners without the use of any chemicals. This process allows recycled plastic molecules to be reused for a variety of uses.

Superabsorbent materials such as sodium polyacrylate are important components of a variety of hygiene and medical products, including diapers, bandages, and dressings. These cross-linked polymers are typically insoluble in water, although they are known for their high absorbency. Recycling them traditionally required the use of strong acids.

It will not melt at high temperatures, it will only deteriorate. However, the acid “breaks” the chains and stabilizes the polymer after about 16 hours at 80 degrees. Celsius Therefore, recycling is now possible. Because this process is complex and expensive, superabsorbents are rarely recycled. Approximately 2 million tons of this waste is thrown away or incinerated each year.

Turns into liquid in 5 minutes instead of 16 hours

Researchers from KIT’s Institute of Biochemical Systems, Institute of Biointerfaces, and Institute of Chemical Technology and Polymer Chemistry have discovered that crosslinked sodium polyacrylate polymers degrade under ultraviolet light after uptake of water. .

“The chains that connect the polymers are broken by light, and they are so loose that they swim underwater and turn into liquid fibers,” explains Pavel Levkin, a professor at the Institute of Biochemical Systems. For the study, researchers cut liners from traditional diapers, wetted them with water and exposed them to a 1000 W lamp. After 5 minutes, the solid material turned into a liquid and fell into the collector. “This method using ultraviolet light is about 200 times faster than using acids,” Revkin says.

Recycled polymers can be used in a variety of ways

The team then used known processes to convert the liquid into new adhesives and dyes. “The observation that this substance is soluble and processable was very important. It could probably be turned into many other products,” explains the scientist.

In the test, the researchers used clean diapers. However, it is also possible to separate superabsorbents from used diapers. “Therefore, there is no reason why a near-realistic use should not be possible,” Revkin says. By using solar power, you can optimize recycling methods that are cost-effective and environmentally friendly. “We have discovered a promising strategy to recycle superabsorbents, which significantly reduces environmental pollution and contributes to a more sustainable use of polymers.”

Reference: “From diapers to thickeners and pressure-sensitive adhesives: recycling superabsorbents by UV degradation” by Shuai Li, Johannes M. Scheiger, Zhenwu Wang, Birgit Huber, Maxi Hoffmann, Manfred Wilhelm, Pavel A. Levkin , September 7, 2023 ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.3c06999

Source: scitechdaily.com

A few years Earlier, when the pandemic was still in full swing, Raj Kapoor and Josh Felser started investing in climate change technology startups.they called their operation climax, and initially placed bets using their own money. Although we are both experienced founders, managers, and investors, this is our first time focusing on this specific sector and we started by testing the waters.

The company announced today that it has closed a $65 million founding fund and used it to support founders launching a climate technology software company.

Mr. Kapur and Mr. Felser both have long histories as investors, with Mr. Felser co-founding Freestyle Capital and Mr. Kapur spending seven years as a managing director at Mayfield Funds. They also founded and sold their own software startup.

It’s a little surprising that it took this long for the two to work together. Their resumes are strikingly similar. Felser said that in 1997 he founded Spinner (sold to AOL) and in 2004 he founded Crackle (sold to Sony). He also launched the #Climate nonprofit in 2014 and created a public-private coronavirus task force during the pandemic. Mr. Kapur previously served as chief strategy officer at Lyft, and before that he founded Snapfish (acquired by HP) and FitMob (acquired by ClassPass). He also launched a nonprofit climate social app in 2007.

Those experiences, combined with a growing concern about the state of the Earth’s climate, led the two to form Climactic.

“If we can get the top 50 supply chains to meet their net-zero goals, rather than just pay lip service, we’ll have the biggest impact,” Kapur told TechCrunch+. “To get there, we think the low-hanging fruit is software, because there are a lot of efficiencies to be gained.”

The in-vehicle technology used by Ford, GM and others to ensure drivers pay attention to the road has come a long way. However, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says it is still not enough to prevent or reduce the harm caused by drunk driving.

This assessment is included throughout the agency’s new 99-page Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. released Tuesday was a pit stop of sorts on the way to enacting regulations that would require in-vehicle technology to recognize when a driver has been drinking.

NHTSA is currently seeking assistance in determining what technology should be incorporated into vehicles to completely reduce or prevent this problem, in part because NHTSA has no commercially available options. states that it does not exist. After the notice is published in the Federal Register, the public has 60 days to submit comments.

NHTSA says it evaluated 331 driver monitoring systems and found no commercially available systems that adequately handle the identification of alcohol impairment. The magazine noted that there are three DMS systems that claim to detect alcohol-induced impairment, but said they are still in the research and development stage. (We did not reveal the names of those systems.)

However, driver monitoring is not the only option at NHTSA’s disposal. NHTSA embarked on this mission after President Biden ordered the agency to find a solution in 2021 with bipartisan infrastructure legislation. The act charged NHTSA with developing federal motor vehicle safety standards that could determine whether a driver is impaired by passively monitoring the driver. Or it could be by passively (and accurately) detecting whether the blood alcohol concentration is too high, or a combination of both.

Accuracy is key, and NHTSA findings suggest that blood alcohol detection technology is a more viable solution in the short term. After all, dozens of states already require breathalyzer-based alcohol ignition interlocks for repeat offenders or high-BAC offenders. However, this technology is considered ‘active’, meaning that drivers must actively engage with it, which is contrary to the law’s passive requirement.

There may be another option.

Since 2008, NHTSA has been working with the Alliance for Automobile Traffic Safety (ACTS) on a public-private partnership called Driver Alcohol Sensing Systems for Safety (DADSS). As part of that program, DADSS has developed both breath-based and contact-based methods to detect driver impairment. Breath-based methods are also considered active and therefore non-starters, while touch sensors are designed to be embedded in something the driver needs to touch to operate the vehicle (such as a push-start button). NHTSA has “preliminarily determined that such touch sensors may be considered passive.”

ACTS CEO Robert Strassberger said he believes touch sensors may be the best option in the short term, given the technology’s limitations in being passive. He wants to know what the public thinks.

“That’s going to be one of the areas of interest for me when I read the comments that are ultimately submitted. How do people feel about it? Will it ultimately be accepted by consumers? It depends,” he says. “I think one of the things we definitely want to avoid doing is asking drivers to learn a new way of interacting with their cars.”

Timing is critical. Not only does drunk driving kill thousands of people each year and cost the country billions of dollars, final regulations need to be standardized by November 2024.

Judging by the number of questions NHTSA raises in its notice, achieving this goal may be difficult. The agency is raising all sorts of thorny questions, as well as seeking further comment on driver monitoring and the definition of “passive.” For example, if the start/stop button has a touch sensor, how does it know that the driver is pressing it? If the system determines that the driver is too drunk to start the car, Should you prevent your car from starting? What if the driver is trying to escape a wildfire?

“This is very complex rulemaking,” Strassberger said. “There are a lot of details that the agency needs to get right.”

true anomaly has closed $100 million in new funding, a strong signal that the appetite for startups operating at the intersection of space and defense is not slowing down.

The new round was led by Riot Ventures with participation from Eclipse, ACME Capital, Menlo Ventures, Narya, 645 Ventures, Rocketship.vc, Champion Hill Ventures, and FiveNine Ventures. The funds will be used to continue expanding all parts of the business, according to a press release.

True Anomaly aims to fill critical gaps in space situational awareness and defensive operations through software and hardware, including a line of autonomous reconnaissance and tracking spacecraft called Jackals. These vehicles are equipped with an array of sensors and cameras to track, monitor, and collect data on objects in space. On the software side, the company is developing an integrated operating platform called Mosaic that will eventually be able to work in conjunction with the Jackal in orbit.

In a previous interview with TechCrunch, True Anomaly CEO Even Rogers pointed to a significant “information asymmetry” between the United States and its adversaries in space. Jackal, Mosaic, and the company’s other efforts in space domain awareness aim to fill that gap.

Founded in 2022 by a quartet of former Space Force members, the startup is rapidly moving towards this goal. During the company’s first full year of business, he opened his 35,000 square foot facility in Centennial, Colorado and doubled his headcount to more than 100 people.

In September, True Anomaly won a $17.4 million contract from the U.S. Space Force to help warfighters find and track objects in space, characterize those objects, and use artificial intelligence to predict changes in space. The agreement was signed to build a suite of space domain awareness capabilities, including prediction and identification. Object behavior.

The first two Jackal spacecraft are scheduled to launch on SpaceX’s Transporter 10 rideshare mission in March. In August, the company received permission from regulators to conduct imaging beyond Earth and demonstrate close space rendezvous operations with two spacecraft. This is such a huge technical challenge that I have no doubt that many people in both Silicon Valley and Washington will be paying close attention to how the demo mission unfolds.

AI can decode brainwave recordings and predict words someone is reading

Vertigo3d/Getty Images

A team of scientists has announced that a sensor-equipped helmet, combined with artificial intelligence, can translate a person’s thoughts into text.

In this study, participants read passages of text while wearing hats, and their brain electrical activity was recorded through the scalp. These electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings were converted to text using an AI model called DeWave.

Lin Ching Tian Researchers from Australia’s University of Technology Sydney (UTS) say the technology is non-invasive, relatively cheap and portable.

The system is far from perfect, with an accuracy of about 40%, but recent data currently under peer review shows an improvement in accuracy of more than 60%, Lin said.

In a study published in NeurIPS conference In New Orleans, Louisiana, the DeWave program does not use spoken language, but instead has participants read sentences aloud. However, in the researchers’ latest study, participants read the text silently.

Last year, the team he led was jerry tan Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin reported similar accuracy in converting thoughts into text, but used MRI scans to interpret brain activity. Using EEG is more practical because the subject does not have to remain still in the scanner.

UTS team member Charles Zhou said the DeWave model was trained by looking at many examples where brain signals matched a particular sentence.

“For example, when you think of saying ‘hello,’ your brain sends a specific signal,” Zhou says. “DeWave learns how these signals relate to the word ‘hello’ by looking at many examples of these signals for different words and sentences.”

Once DeWave had a good understanding of the brain signals, the team connected it to an open-source large-scale language model (LLM) similar to the AI that powers ChatGPT.

“This LLM is like a smart writer who can craft sentences. We tell these writers to pay attention to the signals from DeWave and use that as a guide to craft their sentences. ” says Zhou.

Finally, the team trained both DeWave and a language model together to further improve their ability to write sentences based on EEG data.

Researchers predict that further improvements to the system could revolutionize communication for people who have lost language due to stroke or other conditions, and could also have applications in robotics.

craig gin from the University of Sydney said he was impressed by Lin’s team’s work. “It’s great progress,” he says.

“People have long wanted to convert brainwaves to text, and the team’s model shows amazing accuracy. A few years ago, EEG-to-text conversion was complete and utter nonsense. .”

topic:

Builders, bakers, and body conditioners may not be the first professions that come to mind when you think of how AI is changing the way we work. But today, growing interest in the company is driving healthy funding for startups building AI-powered business tools, especially for small businesses and the thousands of other categories that make up the service industry world. announced a funding round. product.

durable — Vancouver, Canada-based startup builds an AI website creator and a host of other AI-powered tools to help small business owners plan, create, and run business apps more easily — Series A We have raised $14 million which will be used to continue expanding our platform and customer base.

This round is not the largest Series A, but it comes with an interesting list of investors. Spark Capital led the round, along with Torch Capital, Altman Capital (a VC founded and managed by Jack Altman, brother of OpenAI’s Sam Altman), Dash Fund, South Park Commons, Infinity Ventures, Soma Capital ( All previous supporters) are participating. are also participating. The startup has now raised a total of $20 million.

Durable’s AI-powered website builder is aimed at people with a very novice online presence and has already been used to create more than 6 million websites since its launch a year ago. That’s what it means.

“We have a lot of traditional companies that have been around for a long time but don’t have an online presence. They don’t have the software, they don’t have the systems. That’s a big part of our customer base. ,” founder and CEO James Clift said in an interview. “Plumbers, skilled craftsmen, personal trainers. A lot of businesses with one to six people don’t have the time or resources to actually build an online presence or create marketing materials.”

Durable will continue to build on that momentum and leverage advances in the world of AI to build more tools for users.

The end goal, Clift said, is an omniscient assistant that not only answers users’ questions, but also proactively suggests ways to run their business better.

Clift said in an interview that a beta version of its “automated proactive assistant” will be released “soon,” likely within about three months.

Based on the different needs of a user’s specific profile (a baker may not want or need the same information as a body conditioner or a builder), we can train it in areas such as taxes. ” he said. “You press a button and your business runs in the background. He texts you once a day, and you have work booked on your calendar, so all you have to do is show up to work.”

Other tools Durable has built to complement its flagship website builder include a CRM platform, an invoicing service, a blog builder, and a precursor to Proactive Assistant, an AI bot that allows users to ask questions relevant to their business. there is. Her AI assistant uses LLM’s OpenAI, among other things.

The gap in the market that Durable is filling is actually a well-known one in the technology world.

Small businesses and sole proprietors have been an elusive target for startups developing business tools. Despite accounting for more than 99% of his total business in markets like we and EnglandSmall businesses are more complex users to litigate because they spend less individually than larger businesses (making ROI per customer harder for vendors) and are generally a fragmented population when it comes to their technology needs. This is a group of

Of course, none of the above is new information in the world of technology. There are dozens of startups and large tech companies targeting small and medium-sized businesses, especially those in the service industry and building apps to manage everything from teams, accounting, banking, payroll, and more.

Clift said Durable’s unique selling point is that it applies advances in AI to problems to bring small business owners and employees into the modern era.

In his view, AI has a democratizing role. First, SMBs now have access to more affordable tools that were previously out of reach. For example, Durable works to create a logo and branding builder for its users, but if that service were provided by a consultancy, it would have been beyond most customers’ budgets.

Second, the use of AI means that Durable itself can scale out its services more easily, avoiding the problems of selling and distributing services to a fragmented customer base.

“Advances in software will allow us to start delivering a ton of value that even last year would only have been available to enterprise customers,” he said. “We can now provide an even better level of service to independent stores who previously couldn’t afford something like this. It’s a very long tail, but it’s a huge market opportunity. .”

Durable turned to OpenAI after gaining access thanks to Altman Capital, which led Durable’s seed round.

“OpenAi has been a great partner from day one,” Clift said. Given the trajectory of OpenAI, which is reportedly working to close a new funding round with a valuation of more than $80 billion, the startup is probably one to watch as it is a close partner with ties to the CEO. right.

“One of the ideas I’m most interested in right now is how we can leverage AI to help founders build products from scratch that are 10x better than anything that exists today. in a space that helps you do it cheaper, faster and more accurately,” Jack Altman told me. “When I met James, I was not only very impressed with him as a founder, but also excited about the potential of what this product could do for entrepreneurs and small business owners. Since our initial investment. , seeing how well he and the team have done only increases my expectations for what Durable will be like.”

“At Spark, we have always pursued founders who challenge the status quo. James and the Durable team are not only doing this uniquely, but also helping entrepreneurs do the same with a frictionless user experience powered by AI. We are also creating a global platform for ,” said Natalie Sandman, general partner at Spark Capital. statement.

Semiconductors have become a focus of U.S. efforts to thwart China’s technological advances in recent years. Washington is now turning its attention to another hot technology area where China is making significant progress: electric vehicle batteries.

Earlier this month, the Treasury and Energy Departments was suggested Joe Biden approved a rule last year that would limit electric vehicle buyers from claiming tax credits if their cars contain battery materials from China or other countries deemed “hostile” to the United States. Under the president’s flagship climate change law, consumers are entitled to up to $7,500 in subsidies for electric vehicles. Purchasing EVs manufactured in the U.S. using primarily domestic materials.

In response, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce counterattacked Last week, it said the U.S. rules “discriminate against Chinese companies and violate WTO rules.” Excluding Chinese suppliers from U.S. tax incentives is “typical of non-market-oriented policies and practices,” the department said.

The rule, aimed at reducing U.S. dependence on Chinese supply chains in a new era of decoupling, comes as part of the president’s plan to cut global warming greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030. This is likely to hinder Biden’s efforts to boost sales of EVs.

Also at stake is America’s aim to curb China’s dominance in a field that is booming as countries transition to electric vehicles. China’s two largest battery manufacturers, CATL and BYD, together accounted for about 53% of global EV battery usage in the first 10 months of this year, according to data from China. SNE Research.

According to the research firm, as of the third quarter of this year, China was the world’s largest EV market with a 58% share, followed by the United States and Germany. counterpoint.

Major South Korean companies such as LG, Samsung, and SK On offer competitive alternatives to China’s cheap and advanced batteries and are most likely to benefit from deteriorating US-China relations. . But even the South Korean company is reeling from new geopolitical complications.

Even though SK-on has been approached by both Ford and Hyundai to launch battery projects in the United States, Choi Tae-won, president of parent company SK Group, recently said, blamed The US keeps battery costs high. The artillery division of South Korean conglomerates is now forced to look elsewhere for materials outside of China.China Owns the majority of the global supply chain for EV batteriesfrom mining rare minerals to refining and cell production.

To maintain cost appeal, Chinese battery companies are setting up factories in the U.S. and requiring buyers to continue to qualify for the EV tax credit. Industry giants like Gotion, BYD, and CATL have strategic plans to manufacture in the United States, but the path is not without obstacles. Ford, for example, suspended plans to build a $3.5 billion EV battery factory with CATL in Michigan as U.S. politicians scrutinize its contract with the Chinese company.

In the heat transfer highway, thermal energy travels through quantum particles called phonons. but,
nanoscale today’s cutting edge
semiconductor, those phonons do not remove enough heat. Purdue researchers are therefore focused on opening new nanoscale lanes on the heat transfer highway using hybrid quasiparticles called “polaritons.”

thomas beachem

really like

heat transfer. He talks about it loudly and proudly, like a preacher in a big tent revival.

“There are several ways to describe energy,” says Beechem, an associate professor of mechanical engineering. “When we talk about light, we describe it in terms of particles called ‘photons.’ Heat also transports energy in a predictable manner. We call these energy waves “phonons.” However, in some materials, photons and phonons can come together to create new objects called “polaritons.” It carries energy in a unique way, different from photons and phonons. ”

Like photons and phonons, polaritons are not physical particles that can be seen or captured. These are similar ways of describing energy exchange.

as if

They were particles.

Still vague? How about another analogy? “Phonons are like an internal combustion engine, and photons are like an electric car,” Beechem says. “Polaritons are Toyota’s Prius. They are a hybrid of light and heat, retaining some of the properties of both. But they are special in their own right.”

Polariton is used in optical applications ranging from stained glass to home health testing. However, their ability to transfer heat has been largely ignored, as the effect becomes noticeable only when the size of the material becomes very small. “We now know that phonons do most of the heat-transferring work,” says Dr. Jacob Minyard. student in Beechem’s lab. “Polariton effects are observable only at the nanoscale. But thanks to semiconductors, we haven’t had to deal with heat transfer at that level until now.”

“Semiconductors have become incredibly small and complex,” he continued. “The people who design and manufacture these chips are starting to realize that phonons do not dissipate heat efficiently at very small scales. Our paper shows that on such length scales polaritons are not very efficient at conducting heat. We have demonstrated that we can contribute to a larger portion of the rate.”

Their research on polaritons was selected as a featured article in a magazine.

applied physics journal
.

DOI: 10.1063/5.0173917

Astronomers have detected a rare and extremely energetic particle falling to Earth.

Scientists say the ray, named after the Japanese sun goddess Amaterasu, is one of the most energetic cosmic rays ever detected.

The Amaterasu particle has an energy of more than 240 exaelectron volts (EeV), making it the second particle in recorded history, after another ultra-high-energy cosmic ray, the Oh My God particle (320 EeV), detected in 1991.

The origins of the particles are unknown, but experts believe that only the most powerful astronomical phenomena, larger than an exploding star, can produce them.

Toshihiro Fujii, associate professor at Osaka Metropolitan University, Japansaid that when he first discovered this particle, he thought, “There must have been a mistake.”

“We’ve seen energy levels unprecedented in the last 30 years,” he said.

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The particle seems to come out of nowhere, further deepening the mystery for scientists.

John Matthews, a research professor in the University of Utah’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, explains that there was nothing in the area high-energy enough to cause this phenomenon.

It appeared to emerge from the Local Void, the empty space adjacent to the Milky Way.

“We should be able to point to where in the sky they came from,” Professor Matthews says.

“But in the case of the Oh My God particle and this new particle, even if we trace its trajectory back to its source, there is nothing high enough energy to produce it.

“That’s the mystery – what the hell is going on?”

Typically, when ultra-high-energy cosmic rays hit Earth’s atmosphere, they create a cascade of secondary particles and electromagnetic radiation known as a massive air shower.

Some charged particles in air showers travel faster than the speed of light and produce a type of electromagnetic radiation that can be detected with special equipment.

One of those instruments is the Telescope Array Observatory in Utah, which discovered the Amaterasu particle.

It is now hoped that this particle will pave the way for further research that will help uncover ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays and their origins.

Experts suggest this may indicate a much larger magnetic deflection than predicted, an unidentified source within the local void, or an incomplete understanding of high-energy particle physics.

Another Utah professor, John Beltz, said he was “throwing out crazy ideas” to try to explain the mystery.

“These events appear to be coming from completely different places in the sky. There is no one mysterious source,” he said. “It could be a flaw in the fabric of space-time, causing cosmic strings to collide.”

However, he added, “There is no conventional explanation.”

Two exhibition booths stood out at the Staking Summit in Istanbul, a conference attended by hundreds of individuals involved in staking practices in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. They belonged to Tencent and Huawei. In a backdrop dominated by people in their 20s wearing trendy corporate hoodies and handing out well-designed merchandise, China’s two tech giants feel a little out of place under the more formal corporate flag. It looked like there was.

Next to them were engineers, marketers, and business developers deeply into staking, where individuals pledge crypto assets like Ethereum to protocols in exchange for a return. The borrowed assets are then used to verify transactions within the blockchain, which implements a “proof-of-stake” method.

Over the past year, several Chinese tech giants, including Alibaba, Tencent, and Huawei, have appeared at crypto events around the world. Hoping to carve market share in the nascent Web3 space, they appear at these events with a more low-profile presence, either as official sponsors or simply as participants.

The Chinese tech giant’s participation in crypto falls somewhere at the intersection of Web 2 and Web 3, thanks to a widespread ban on crypto trading and initial coin offerings in its home country. In the most common case, these technology companies are selling their computing resources to his Web3 startups in a manner not too different from how they have sold cloud services to more established technology industry companies. Masu.

Cloud costs for companies building or leveraging decentralized networks are still understood to be negligible. While it’s not uncommon for Web2 “midsize” companies to spend $1 million or more on cloud computing, companies that qualify as Web3 midsize may only spend in the low hundreds of thousands of dollars, the speakers said. said several participants at the meeting. said the event.

However, the limited ticket size does not prevent Chinese cloud providers from venturing into cryptocurrencies. Chinese companies, the underdogs in the global cloud market, have less brand recognition, especially in the West, and are far more proactive and flexible with their customers. Therefore, companies must compete by offering cheaper or better services.

In addition to providing cloud infrastructure, Chinese companies are moving into areas outside of their core products, exposing them to competition from crypto-native companies. This includes building blockchain for enterprises. Most Chinese tech companies have stayed away from the public blockchain space, where tokens play a key role, due to the country’s cryptocurrency crackdown.

Some players also offer node-as-a-service business. A blockchain is a decentralized database that stores and encrypts transaction data and runs on distributed nodes.However, these nodes are expensive and complex to maintain, making companies like Huawei Provide node hosting services for developersis an attractive solution for companies that want to build decentralized applications but lack the technical sophistication to do so in-house.

Tencent and Alibaba were the first Chinese technology giants to enter the Web3 space and have also worked on high-profile projects to improve their reputation in the industry.

For example, Tencent has partnered with public blockchains such as Sui and Avalanche, as well as Ethereum scaling solution Scroll.

Meanwhile, Alibaba partnered with Aptos, a blockchain developed by a former Meta employee, to make its name known in the world of Web3. In a joint announcement today, Alibaba Cloud and Aptos Foundation announced that they will jointly host a hackathon using the Move programming language in the Asia Pacific region.

So far, Web3 is barely making inroads into the revenue of China’s technology giants, but these companies recognize the potential of a rapidly growing industry and are willing to take advantage of significant market swings and financial system collapse. Even in the face of it, we understand that we cannot afford to miss this opportunity. Major companies such as FTX.

Shield AI The company has secured $200 million in fresh funding to expand its autonomous flight systems for the U.S. military and its allies.

Established in 2015, the startup currently holds a valuation of $2.7 billion. The latest funding round was led by US Innovation Technology Fund (USIT) with significant participation from Riot Ventures, a previous investor in Shield AI. Other contributors include existing investors Disruptive and Snowpoint, as well as new investor ARK Invest, an investment management company founded by Cathie Wood.

USIT, guided by billionaire Thomas Tull, served as the sole investor in Shield AI’s initial $60 million Series E funding. This substantial Series F round is a testament to the company’s successful track record of fundraising – the Series E raised a total of $225 million, and its Series D ranged between $210 million and $300 million.

It also highlights the capital-intensive nature of defense-focused startups, even for companies like Shield AI that offer more affordable systems compared to their traditional counterparts.

The startup specializes in developing hardware and software to transform drones and aircraft into autonomous systems capable of carrying out missions in conflict zones. The company’s flagship product is Hivemind, an AI pilot software that enables drones and aircraft to operate autonomously without relying on GPS assistance. Shield AI has also introduced a drone swarm feature called V-Bat Teams, which allows a single human operator to command at least four V-Bat drones (developed by Martin UAV, acquired by Shield AI in 2021).

“Our nation faces the challenging reality of having insufficient pilots, and rule-based autonomous solutions are insufficient for the existence of such swarms,” said Ryan Tseng, CEO and co-founder, when announcing V-Bat Teams earlier this month. “Shield AI changes this. For nearly nine years, Shield AI has been building the world’s most advanced AI pilots using a unified AI foundation that is applicable and deployable across all aircraft types, from quadcopters to F-16s. We’ve been steadfastly focused on that.”

The San Diego-based company is also working on integrating Hivemind into unmanned fighter jets and other aircraft. The Shield AI technology stack has garnered significant interest from the Department of Defense due to increasingly sophisticated counter-drone technologies that focus on disrupting drone communications and navigation.

“The battlefield is increasingly dominated by drone warfare, and adversaries are turning the battlefield into a hostile environment by disrupting communications and GPS,” stated Stephen Marcus, co-founder and general partner at Riot Ventures. “We are doing everything we can to address this. Modern Air Forces are operating blindly. Shield’s AI pilots are intelligent and adaptable to their environment, requiring no GPS or communications. Their AI is trainable and adaptable for diverse missions, and they have successfully flown teams of copters, V-BATs, and modern fighter jets. The most comparable technology we have seen thus far is what Tesla is doing with their self-driving stack.”

The new funding arrives amidst a surge in investor support for defense technology startups, driven in part by escalating geopolitical tensions and the U.S. lagging behind its adversaries. Engineers and the Pentagon are keenly aware of the risks at hand. In fact, some Shield AI executives have made noteworthy comparisons: Back in 2021, co-founder Ryan Tseng drew parallels between the Chinese military and Netflix, and the U.S. military and Blockbuster.

Elon Musk’s X has started testing potential sign-up fees for new users.

The company formerly known as twitter introduced a fee of $1 (82 pence). new zealand And that Philippinesmost of the main features are behind a paywall.

New accounts that do not pay will not be able to post anything or interact directly with other users.

Instead, you are limited to viewing and listening to content and following other accounts.

X said the move was aimed at “reducing spam, platform manipulation, and bot activity.”

musk We have long complained about the presence of fake accounts on the platform; and tried to use his concerns to get out of the contract to buy it last year..

The trials in New Zealand and the Philippines came after the billionaire businessman discussed plans to introduce “small monthly payments” to all users.

Speaking at an event with the Israeli Prime Minister Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Musk said last month that the fee would help fight “a horde of bots.”

Fees will make X “difficult to operate”

Since Musk took ownership of the company, much of his focus has been on monetizing Company X’s user base, with advertiser spending declining due to concerns over his moderation policies. ing.

X already offers a premium subscription for £9.60 per month. This gives users a verification check, allows them to write longer posts or edit existing ones, and gives their account priority visibility in search results.

Musk acknowledged that the new $1 fee “will not completely stop bots,” but argued that it will “make it 1,000 times harder to manipulate the platform.”

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This means that Company X israel-hamas war To spread.

EU officials warned Musk to take actionsaid it violated the block’s new online content rules.

Misleading content includes video game footage purporting to depict scenes of conflict and reusing unrelated war clips.

Later, X announced changes to the Community Notes feature. This allows volunteer posters to attach fact-checks to their posts, making them more visible if other users find them useful.

However, there are concerns that the tool is being manipulated, and all notes must include a source.

New research has found that diabetes may be diagnosed with just a short audio recording from a mobile phone.

Scientists can determine whether someone has diabetes with nearly 90% accuracy using just a 6-10 second audio sample and basic health data such as age, gender, height, and weight I created an AI model.

Klick Labs recruited 267 people for the study, including some who had already been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.

Each subject was asked to record a phrase on their phone six times a day for two weeks, and the team used AI to analyze more than 18,000 samples to determine the acoustic differences between diabetics and non-diabetics. I looked into it.

These included changes in pitch caused by type 2 diabetes that are imperceptible to the human ear.

This model had an accuracy rate of 89% for women and 86% for men.

Study author Jaycee Kaufman said the results could “change” the way we screen for diabetes.

More than 90% of adults with diabetes in the UK have type 2 diabetes, but many go undetected for years as symptoms may be systemic or absent. I am.

Testing for this disease usually requires a visit to a general practitioner and urine and blood tests.

“Current detection methods can be time-consuming, travel-intensive, and costly,” Kaufman said.

“Voice technology has the potential to completely remove these barriers.”

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Previous research has shown that audio recordings can be used in conjunction with AI to diagnose other diseases. Including new coronavirus infection.

Klick Labs believes this technology can also diagnose conditions such as prediabetes and hypertension.

This peer-reviewed study was published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings journal.

Snap announced Wednesday that it is partnering with edtech company Inspirit to bring augmented reality to classrooms to help students better understand STEM lessons. The two companies are working together to create 25 AR lenses and his STEM curriculum that will be used by at least 50 people across the U.S. next year.

One of the AR lenses is designed to help students find the volume of a cylinder, and the other is designed to help users tap on a bubble to select the appropriate volume to pop it. Masu.

Image credits: snap

Snap says that since the pilot program began, 85% of students said AR helped them improve their memory and memory retention. The company also found that AR lessons increased his engagement by nearly 50%, and that 92% of his students found his AR content easy to understand.

“By incorporating custom-built lenses into an easy-to-use mobile application using a camera kit, Inspirit has designed an innovative curriculum that combines Snap’s AR technology with comprehensive learning guides to help teachers create dynamic learning. “We’ve empowered students to achieve their best, regardless of grade. They can learn in the classroom or at home,” the company said in a blog post. “This curriculum is designed to stimulate participation in class, increase confidence levels, and increase students’ sense of self-efficacy.”

Snap’s push into AR for education comes a month after the company shut down its AR Enterprise Services division less than a year after it launched. The initiative, announced in March, gives brands access to tools that allow him to perform AR try-on features, a 3D viewer to see products from multiple angles, fit and sizing recommendation technology, an enterprise manager, and more. became. their digital assets. The company said that ramping up its efforts would require “significant” investments and that it could not continue to fund the efforts.

Despite Snap’s declining revenue, the company’s stock rose nearly 12% yesterday. report revealed Snap Inc. could report better-than-expected results next year, according to an internal memo. The note reveals that Snap could reach more than 475 million daily active users in 2024, up from analysts’ prediction of 448 million, according to a report by It is said that it exceeds that. The Verge.

Snap is scheduled to announce its third quarter 2023 financial results on October 24th.

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