February 5, 2025

XOi raises $230M, acquires Specifx to expand its tech for field service technicians

Field service engineers may not be the first group of customers that come to mind when you think about lucrative opportunities in B2B technology. But that same blind spot speaks of the opportunity in the space for those who are stepping up and targeting “the job site.” One of the players in that space, XOi  […]

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Technology

Politicians commit to collaborate to tackle AI safety, US launches safety institute

November 1, 2023

The world is locked in a race, and competition, over dominance in AI, but today, a few of them appeared to come together to say that they would prefer to collaborate when it comes to mitigating risk. Speaking at the AI Safety Summit in Bletchley Park in England, the U.K. minister of technology, Michelle Donelan, […]

© 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Tackling our biggest problems

November 1, 2023
For all of history we’ve turned to technology, again and again, to help us solve our hardest problems. Technology gave us warmth and light when it was cold and dark. It helped us pull fish from the sea and crops from the earth so we would not be hungry. It enabled us to cross over…

What are the hardest problems in tech we should be more focused on as a society?

November 1, 2023
Technology is all about solving big thorny problems. Yet one of the hardest things about solving hard problems is knowing where to focus our efforts. There are so many urgent issues facing the world. Where should we even begin? So we asked dozens of people to identify what problem at the intersection of technology and…

China wants to win the gene therapy race—and it’ll spend millions

November 1, 2023
This story first appeared in China Report, MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday. Last week, I worked with my colleague Antonio Regalado, our senior editor for biomedicine, to break a truly inspiring and honestly kind of wild story: Chinese scientists used gene therapy to restore…

The Download: Biden’s executive order, and calling out AI harms

October 31, 2023
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Three things to know about the White House’s executive order on AI The US has set out its most sweeping set of AI rules and guidelines yet in an executive order issued by…

Shield AI raises $200M at a $2.7B valuation to scale military autonomous flying tech

October 31, 2023

Shield AI has raised $200 million in new funding as it looks to scale its autonomous flying systems for the U.S. military and its allies. The startup, which was founded in 2015, is now valued at $2.7 billion. This latest round was led by U.S. Innovation Technology Fund (USIT) with major participation from Riot Ventures, […]

© 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

People shouldn’t pay such a high price for calling out AI harms

October 31, 2023
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. This week everyone is talking about AI. The White House just unveiled a new executive order that aims to promote safe, secure, and trustworthy AI systems. It’s the most far-reaching bit…

Three things to know about the White House’s executive order on AI

October 30, 2023
MIT Technology Review Explains: Let our writers untangle the complex, messy world of technology to help you understand what’s coming next. You can read more from the series here. The US has set out its most sweeping set of AI rules and guidelines yet in an executive order issued by President Joe Biden today. The order…

Unlocking supply chain resiliency

October 30, 2023
Tracking a Big Mac hamburger’s journey from ranch to fast-food restaurant isn’t easy. Today’s highly segmented beef supply chain consists of a wide array of ranches, feedlots, packers, processors, distribution centers, and restaurants, each with its own set of carefully collected data. Yet in today’s complex digital world, organizations need more visibility than ever to…

The Download: Joy Buolamwini on AI, and Meta’s beauty filter lawsuit

October 30, 2023
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Joy Buolamwini: “We’re giving AI companies a free pass” AI researcher and activist Joy Buolamwini is best known for a pioneering paper she co-wrote with Timnit Gebru in 2017 which exposed how commercial…