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.
But despite this being the case, rarely are solutions teams adequately staffed and resourced, according to entrepreneur Dan Chen.
So with his friend Michael Graczyk (with whom Chen also co-founded Hero), he created Quilt, a platform that hosts AI assistants for solutions sales teams.
Surveys show that many businesses are concerned about the privacy and security risks associated with generative AI.
But the majority believe generative AI has the potential to boost productivity by streamlining existing tasks.
“Given the kinds of customers Quilt is working with, we’re well-positioned to be the preferred AI partner for solutions teams,” Chen said.
Stell, a two-year-old software startup, is focused on this latter part of the engineering ecosystem.
The company has developed a tool for requirements management that allows teams to track, verify and validate requirements on complex projects.
She founded Stell in 2022 with Anne Wen, a professional with experience in venture capital and getting space startups off the ground.
They imagined something different: a tool that was truly useful and user-friendly, that cut down on paperwork, and that engineers would actually want to use.
People might not have time to go to a two-week training on how to use a tool,” McLemore said.
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.
Stability has announced Stable Diffusion 3, the latest and most powerful version of the company’s image-generating AI model.
Sora, OpenAI’s impressive video generator, apparently works on similar principles (Will Peebles, co-author of the paper, went on to co-lead the Sora project).
(Anthropic, for its part, has not focused on image or video generation publicly, so it isn’t really part of this conversation.)
Stable Diffusion seems to want to be the white label generative AI that you can’t do without, rather than the boutique generative AI you aren’t sure you need.
Interestingly, the company has put safety front and center in its announcement, stating:We have taken and continue to take reasonable steps to prevent the misuse of Stable Diffusion 3 by bad actors.
After serving as an AI policy manager at Zillow for nearly a year, she joined Hugging Face as the head of global policy.
Her responsibilities there range from building and leading company AI policy globally to conducting socio-technical research.
Solaiman also advises the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the professional association for electronics engineering, on AI issues, and is a recognized AI expert at the intergovernmental Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Irene Solaiman, head of global policy at Hugging FaceBriefly, how did you get your start in AI?
The means by which we improve AI safety should be collectively examined as a field.
Media streamer Plex’s long-delayed plans to launch a marketplace for TV and movie rentals are finally being realized after multiple false starts.
The media startup originally announced its plan to expand its streaming service to include rentals just ahead of the Covid-19 pandemic, which impacted launch plans alongside other technical concerns.
Then, at CES a year ago, Plex said the rentals market was due for a second-quarter launch.
With those headaches behind it, the rentals service is finally nearing launch — for real this time, Plex says.
In addition to the TVOD store, the report noted Plex’s plans for the year ahead included a redesign and additional social features, too.
Apple will be halting sales of its Series 9 smartwatch, TechCrunch has confirmed.
The news, shared by 9to5Mac, follows an October ruling by the International Trade Commission (ITC), owing to a patent dispute with California-based med tech firm, Masimo.
This includes pausing sales of Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 from Apple.com starting December 21, and from Apple retail locations after December 24.
Apple strongly disagrees with the order and is pursuing a range of legal and technical options to ensure that Apple Watch is available to customers.
Should the order stand, Apple will continue to take all measures to return Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 to customers in the U.S. as soon as possible.
“I think crypto has always been made by very technical people and for technical people,” Johann Kerbrat, the general manager of crypto at Robinhood, said on the Chain Reaction podcast.
“At the end of the day, I think customers, when they use crypto, they don’t really care what is the protocol under it?
Robinhood users can do more technical things like transfer to its crypto wallet and use “advanced charts and autotypes where you can put, for example, a stop loss,” Kerbrat said.
The platform might not be as highly technical as one that’s crypto-focused, Robinhood is doing research to understand what customers want and are missing.
With that said, the platform still has 14 cryptocurrencies and one stablecoin, USDC, available for users to buy and sell.
This award is significant because it showcases YouTube TV’s unique and innovative features that allow users to access sports highlights, key plays, player stats and game scores. By providing this…
