Given the frequency with which their developers toss around the phrase “general purpose humanoids,” more attention ought to be paid to the first bit.
After decades of single purpose systems, the jump to more generalized systems will be a big one.
The use of generative AI in robotics has been a white-hot subject recently, as well.
One of the biggest challenges on the road to general purpose systems is training.
The proliferation of multi-purpose systems would take the industry a step closer to general purpose dream.
Apple Tuesday unveiled Apple Intelligence, its long awaited, ecosystem-wide push into generative AI.
As earlier rumors suggested, the new feature is called Apple Intelligent (A.I., get it?).
The company promised the feature will be built with safety at its core, along with highly personalized experiences.
it’s personal intelligence.
and it’s the next big step for Apple.”
Meta has announced it’s testing new features on Instagram intended to help safeguard young people from unwanted nudity or sextortion scams.
This includes a feature called Nudity Protection in DMs, which automatically blurs images detected as containing nudity.
Nudity screensNudity Protection in DMs aims to protect teen Instagram users from cyberflashing by putting nude images behind a safety screen.
But Meta is taking a further step of not showing the “Message” button on a teen’s profile to potential sextortion accounts, i.e.
For example, in July 2021 Meta switched to defaulting young people’s Instagram accounts to private just ahead of the UK compliance deadline.
If the decisions made by corporate boards of directors can indicate where a company wants to be focusing, Amazon’s board just made an interesting move.
The company announced on Thursday that Andrew Ng, known for building AI at large tech companies, is joining its board of directors.
And given the AI whiplash that every big tech company is currently dealing with, it feels timely that McGrath is stepping away from the board now.
To stay at the forefront of the tech industry, Amazon will be looking for better thought leadership on the next steps in its artificial intelligence strategy.
It’s worth remembering that Amazon has been a leading player in AI for a long time.
This grant, pegged for the company’s U.S. subsidiary, TSMC Arizona, is the latest step by the U.S. to strengthen its domestic supply of semiconductors as it seeks to reshore manufacturing of chips amid escalating geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and China.
The Act is primarily aimed at attracting manufacturing stateside, and also prohibits recipients of the funding from increasing their semiconductor manufacturing footprint in China.
With the new investment, Taiwan-based TSMC, which is the world’s largest producer of semiconductors, is broadening its plans for its fabrication plants in Arizona.
Intel could receive approximately $20 billion in grants and loans from the CHIPS and Science Act for its semiconductor manufacturing.
Meanwhile, Samsung, which announced a $17 billion additional investment in Taylor, Texas, is expected to receive more than $6 billion in grants for its chip facility in Texas.
In 2023, higher egg prices provided an opportunity for alternative protein companies to show they could compete with traditional egg manufacturers.
At this capacity, Onego Bio is close to reaching competitive price points to traditional ways of making egg proteins, she added.
Onego Bio claims Bioalbumen is “bioidentical” to ovalbumin, which is the major protein in chicken egg white.
In preparation for this, Onego Bio recently secured $40 million in Series A funding to get Bioalbumen to market and increase manufacturing capabilities.
Tomosaku Sohara, managing partner of Nordic Ninja said in a statement: “Onego Bio is taking all the right steps to commercialize in record time … with a clear path to industrialization, go-to-market and profitability.
Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch Space.
As a preliminary step, the company used that second pad to launch an uncrewed Dragon capsule to the International Space Station.
This is the fifth and final mission Rocket Lab has performed for NRO under a contract the company was awarded back in 2020.
This week in space historyOn March 30, 1982, the space shuttle Columbia touched down at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.
The shuttle was carrying astronauts Jack R. Lousma and C. Gordon Fullerton, who were returning home after a successful eight-day mission.
Waymo will start letting its autonomous vehicles traverse Austin without a safety operator behind the wheel as of tomorrow, a crucial step before the company opens the program up to the public.
The company announced Tuesday that it will begin shuttling employees around 43 square miles of the Texas capital, including the Barton Hills, Riverside, East Austin and Hyde Park neighborhoods, as well as downtown Austin.
Waymo didn’t offer a timeline for when it plans to start offering autonomous rides to the citizens of Austin.
Waymo continues to steadily expand its autonomous ride-hailing program, which it calls Waymo One, even as other companies in the space have struggled.
Just last month, one of the company’s autonomous vehicles collided with a cyclist in San Francisco — an incident that the California Department of Motor Vehicles is investigating.
Consolidation is afoot in the world of HR services, with larger players snapping up interesting, smaller startups en route to more robust unit economics and providing one-stop shops for customers looking to cut down on suppliers.
In the latest development, Deel — the $12 billion HR business out of Paris — is scooping up Zavvy, a Munich-based AI-based “people development” startup building tools for personalized career progression, training, and performance management.
Finally, Deel will also make its existing Deel HR tool, which was free for organizations of up to 200 users, now “free” for existing customers regardless of their size.
Originally Deel approached Zavvy with a partnership proposal before making an offer to buy it outright.
By Zavvy’s and Deel’s accounts, the former company has not found it hard to build its business in a tighter market.
Uber has signed a memorandum of understanding with an Indian government-backed program that aims to make mobility and commerce more accessible across the South Asian nation.
The ride-hailing giant said Thursday that it will explore an integration with Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) to explore integrations with the network and expand range of its mobility offerings on the Uber app.
The ONDC is an ambitious initiative seeking to disrupt the country’s fast-growing e-commerce and mobility sectors.
Though firms like Amazon and Flipkart have expressed intentions to participate in the open network, their engagement remains limited.
“As the Open Network is continuously evolving, MTT (mobility, transport and travel) is certainly a critical sector for us.
