Is the key to autonomous cars that don’t run over pedestrians and crash into telephone poles a humanoid robot behind the wheel?
The researchers, one of whom consults for Toyota, developed and trained a “musculoskeletal humanoid” called Musashi to drive a small electric car through a test track.
With its mechanical hands, it can rotate the car’s key, pull the handbrake and switch on the turn signal.
Musashi did use the accelerator in a separate experiment, the researchers say.
Fortunately, the researchers say they’re up for the challenge, with plans to develop a next-gen robot and software.
This week in AI, Apple stole the spotlight.
At the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in Cupertino, Apple unveiled Apple Intelligence, its long-awaited, ecosystem-wide push into generative AI.
The company promised Apple Intelligence is being built with safety at its core, along with highly personalized experiences.
Apple revealed in a blog post that it trains the AI models that power Apple Intelligence on a combination of licensed datasets and the public web.
Grab bagThis week marked the sixth anniversary of the release of GPT-1, the progenitor of GPT-4o, OpenAI’s latest flagship generative AI model.
Lawmakers passed legislation early Saturday reauthorizing and expanding a controversial U.S. surveillance law shortly after the powers expired at midnight, rejecting opposition by privacy advocates and lawmakers.
Critics, including lawmakers who voted against the reauthorization, say FISA also sweeps up the communications of Americans while spying on its foreign targets.
Following the passage in the early hours of today, Senator Mark Warner, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that FISA was “indispensable” to the U.S. intelligence community.
FISA requires the government to seek an annual certification from the secretive FISA Court, which oversees and approves the government’s surveillance programs.
The FISA Court last certified the government’s surveillance program under Section 702 in early April, allowing the government to use its lapsed authority until at least April 2025.
Tesla layoffs hit high performers, some departments slashed, sources say 'I lost 20% of my team, some really good players too'Tesla management told employees Monday that the recent layoffs — which gutted some departments by 20% and even hit high performers — were largely due to poor financial performance, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.
High performers also cutMany of the laid-off employees were high performers, according to two sources who spoke to TechCrunch on condition of anonymity.
Some departments saw layoffs beyond the 10% outlined in the companywide email, according to sources.
In 2022, he told employees that he wanted a “clean robotaxi” with no steering wheel or pedals.
Patel told TechCrunch he decided Sunday evening to leave Tesla because of “[b]ig overall changes” at the company.
Tesla layoffs hit high performers, some departments slashed, sources say 'I lost 20% of my team, some really good players too'Tesla management told employees Monday that the recent layoffs — which gutted some departments by 20% and even hit high performers — were largely due to poor financial performance, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.
Its margins, however, took a hit after Tesla repeatedly slashed prices in a bid to drum up sales and undercut the competition.
High performers also cutMany of the laid-off employees were high performers, according to two sources who spoke to TechCrunch on condition of anonymity.
In 2022, he told employees that he wanted a “clean robotaxi” with no steering wheel or pedals.
Patel told TechCrunch he decided Sunday evening to leave Tesla because of “[b]ig overall changes” at the company.
Microsoft and Quantinuum today announced a major breakthrough in quantum error correction.
This new system also allowed the team to check the logical qubits and correct any errors it encountered without destroying the logical qubits.
This, the two companies say, has now moved the state-of-the-art of quantum computing out of what has typically been dubbed the era of Noisy Intermediate Scale Quantum (NISQ) computers.
The physical qubits are entangled together so that it becomes possible to detect an error in a physical qubit and fix it.
Now, Microsoft and Quantinuum argue that their new hardware/software system demonstrates the largest gap between physical and logical error rates, improving on using only physical qubits by up to 800x.
Scores of accelerator programs run every year with the aim of identifying and cultivating founders in the earliest stages of building a company.
Only a fraction seek out founders who are explicitly aligned with some set of values — let alone classically conservative values like family, patriotism and faith.
Discipulus Ventures, which kicked off its first 10-person cohort yesterday, is a singular exception.
“You can’t say what matters, you can’t say what you think is true, and that’s obviously not going to be good if you want to solve these problems,” he said.
The city’s reputation has grown in recent months as a breeding ground for a new type of hard tech founder, one very much like the type Discipulus is trying to attract.
Scores of accelerator programs run every year with the aim of identifying and cultivating founders in the earliest stages of building a company.
Only a fraction seek out founders who are explicitly aligned with some set of values — let alone classically conservative values like family, patriotism and faith.
Discipulus Ventures, which kicked off its first 10-person cohort yesterday, is a singular exception.
“You can’t say what matters, you can’t say what you think is true, and that’s obviously not going to be good if you want to solve these problems,” he said.
The city’s reputation has grown in recent months as a breeding ground for a new type of hard tech founder, one very much like the type Discipulus is trying to attract.
What do you call an AI company that is suffering from very public gyrations regarding its business health, place in the market, and leadership structure?
Well, you might call it Stability AI.
Stability AI’s latest leadership shakeup is no joke, with its CEO Emad Mostaque departing to work on AI products that are less centralized — which is to say, owned and built by a single company, like, say, Stability AI.
The startup’s fundraising journey is well-known to tech folks, while its best-known product — Stable Diffusion — is known even more broadly.
We dig into all that and more in today’s TechCrunch Minute:
It contains the personal information of some 73 million AT&T customers.
Some AT&T customers have confirmed their leaked customer data is accurate.
But AT&T still hasn’t said how its customers’ data spilled online.
Hunt concluded the leaked data was real by asking AT&T customers if their leaked records were accurate.
But by now AT&T should be able to provide a better explanation as to why millions of its customers’ data is online for all to see.
