This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. “Well, what about China?” This is a comment I get all the time on the topic of climate change, both in conversations and on whatever social media site is currently en vogue.…
In the post-COVID era, virtual shopping experiences are revolutionizing the retail landscape, merging the efficiency of technology with the personal touch of traditional shopping.
Can software work alongside human physicists and engineers in R&D labs to develop new quantum computers? That’s the question Qruise, a startup in TechCrunch’s Battlefield 200 competition at Disrupt 2023, is attempting to answer. Qruise, a spinoff of Forschungszentrum Jülich, a national research institute based in Germany, is building what its founders describe as a […]
News aggregation startup Artifact co-founder Kevin Systrom doesn’t believe in AI doomerism, even as he’s developing a new app that’s embracing novel AI technologies. The Instagram co-founder, speaking on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023, said it’s good that people are questioning the potential impacts of AI but feels it’s more likely that people will become […]
The pandemic had a profound impact on countless careers, but few jobs were hit quite like nursing. As hospitals overflowed, staff was forced to take on impossible long shifts, risking their own health in the process. In many ways, it was the perfect environment to introduce a robot like Diligent’s Moxi, a system designed to […]
Secoda, a startup developing what it describes as an AI-powered data search and cataloging platform, today announced that it raised $16 million in a funding round led by Craft Ventures with participation from Abstract Ventures and several angel investors. Bringing Secoda’s total raised to $18.3 million, Secoda co-founder and CEO Etai Mizrahi said that the […]
For years, Forethought and other vendors have been selling chatbots to help answer common customer service questions without a human agent. With the growing popularity of generative AI, the company sees even more potential to expand that capability. Today, Forethought introduced the next logical step in that journey called Autoflows. “We’re announcing a concept called […]
Astronauts have been conducting experiments on the International Space Station for as long as the station has been in orbit, but astronaut labor is expensive: crew time costs $130,000 per hour, and companies are capped at 25 hours per year. Frontier Space Technologies, a participant of the Startup Battlefield 200 cohort at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023, […]
Unplug Day are days when companies give employees the freedom to step away from their desks, attend zero meetings, and even take the day off entirely. This emerging trend is designed to combat burnout and promote work-life balance, and thus boost productivity.