A spokesperson for Change Healthcare did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Change Healthcare is an American healthcare tech giant and one of the country’s largest processors of prescription medications, handling prescriptions and billing for more than 67,000 pharmacies across the U.S. healthcare system.
The healthcare tech giant handles 15 billion healthcare transactions annually — or about one-in-three U.S. patient records.
Change Healthcare merged with healthcare provider Optum in 2022 as part of a $7.8 billion deal under UnitedHealth Group.
The cyberattack at Change Healthcare began on February 21 early on the U.S. East Coast, causing widespread outages at pharmacies and healthcare facilities.
Google is hopeful it will soon be able to ‘unpause’ the ability of its multimodal generative AI tool, Gemini, to depict people, per DeepMind founder, Demis Hassabis.
The capability to respond to prompts for images of humans should be back online in the “next few weeks”, he said today.
Asked by moderator, Wired’s Steven Levy, to explain what went wrong with the image generation feature, Hassabis sidestepped a detailed technical explanation.
Instead he suggested the issue was caused by Google failing to identify instances when users are basically after what he described as a “universal depiction”.
The issue is “very complex”, he suggested — likely demanding a whole-of-society mobilization and response to determine and enforce limits.
We’ll publish several pieces throughout the year as the AI boom continues, highlighting key work that often goes unrecognized.
Miranda Bogen is the founding director of the Center of Democracy and Technology’s AI Governance Lab, where she works to help create solutions that can effectively regulate and govern AI systems.
For the most part, AI systems are still missing seat belts, airbags, and traffic signs, so proceed with caution before using them for consequential tasks.
Consider how the success of the AI system you are working on has been defined, who that definition serves, and what context may be missing.
Intense competitive pressure to release the newest, biggest, and shiniest new AI models is leading to concerning underinvestment in responsible practices.
We’ll publish several pieces throughout the year as the AI boom continues, highlighting key work that often goes unrecognized.
Mutale Nkonde is the founding CEO of the nonprofit AI For the People (AFP), which seeks to increase the amount of Black voices in tech.
It established AI for the People as a key thought leader around how to develop protocols to guide the design, deployment, and governance of AI systems that comply with local nondiscrimination laws.
There is so much work to be done on reskilling our workforce for a time when AI systems do low-stakes labor-saving tasks.
What information can they give us about how AI systems work and do not work from them, and how can we use these insights to make sure AI truly is for the People?
Three local councils in the United Kingdom continue to experience disruption to their online services, a week after confirming a cyberattack had knocked some systems offline.
Robert Davis, a spokesperson for Canterbury City Council, told TechCrunch last week that the council’s initial investigation suggests that no customer data was accessed.
However, the U.K.’s Information Commissioner’s Office told TechCrunch on Friday that the data regulator has received a breach report from the three councils.
Thanet District Council spokesperson Clare Winter shared an updated statement with TechCrunch, which has also been published on the council’s website.
“Thanet District Council is currently limiting access to a number of its online systems,” the statement reads.
A year after securing $24.5 million in Series A capital, ingredient company Elo Life Systems is back with a $20.5 million Series A extension from existing investors.
This new cash infusion gives Elo Life $45 million in venture-backed capital to date.
North Carolina-based Elo Life was founded in 2021 and is focused on a number of technologies from developing plant-based sweeteners to crop protection.
Its first product, launching in 2026, will be a natural, monk fruit-derived sweetener that Elo Life touts is 300 times sweeter than sugar without the calories.
Simply put, it uses plants as “biofactories” to produce the monk fruit sweetener in other easier-to grow-crops, like watermelons and sugar beets.
Three councils in the United Kingdom have taken some of their public-facing systems offline due to an ongoing cybersecurity issue.
The NCSC and the three councils declined to say whether the cybersecurity issue relates to an in-house system or an outside vendor.
TechCrunch found that some of Canterbury City Council’s payments systems, provided by EKS, were unavailable.
Dover and Thanet are also both reporting issues with online forms and online payments.
Since 2018, outsourcing giant Civica has provided EKS services as part of a seven-year deal to cut costs across the three councils.
VF Corp., the parent company of the popular apparel brands Vans, Supreme, and The North Face, said Thursday that hackers stole the personal data of 35.5 million customers in a December cyberattack.
The Denver, Colorado-based company reported the data breach to regulators in a filing on Thursday.
The filing did not say specifically what kinds of personal data was taken, or if the company yet knows what was stolen.
VF Corp. spokesperson Colin Wheeler did not respond to an email from TechCrunch requesting more information.
VF Corp. previously said the hackers disrupted its operations “by encrypting some IT systems,” implying a ransomware attack.
Figure today announced a “commercial agreement” that will bring its first humanoid robot to a BMW manufacturing facility in South Carolina.
BMW has not disclosed how many Figure 01 models it will deploy initially.
Nor do we know precisely what jobs the robot will be tasked with when it starts work.
Adcock alludes to Figure 01 being tasked with an initial set of jobs that require high dexterity.
Figure 01 will very much be learning on the job, as well, refining its approach during real-world testing, much as we humans do.
Electric boat startup Navier has landed the first official pilot program for its hydrofoiling watercraft, partnering with Stripe to bring passengers from San Francisco’s outskirts to the downtown area.
Stripe will pay Navier to shuttle employees from Larkspur, where a number of them are concentrated, to its office near Oyster Point.
But as a pilot program, the intent is not to operate at scale but to identify the means of and barriers to that scale.
Other coastal cities with commute problems may take notice if the pilot program goes well.
“We’re introducing a water shuttle service equipped with amenities that enhance on-the-go productivity, such as desks and Wi-Fi.
