Analytics can solve generative AI apps’ product problem
Technology alone isn’t a sustainable moat for AI products, especially with the barrier to entry only continuing to go down.
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Why the US and Europe could lose the race for fusion energy
Fusion energy holds the potential to shift a geopolitical landscape that is currently configured around fossil fuels. Harnessing fusion will deliver the energy resilience, security, and abundance needed for all modern industrial and service sectors. But these benefits will be controlled by the nation that leads in both developing the complex supply chains required and…
Technology
The Download: Big Tech’s AI stranglehold, and gene-editing treatments
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. Make no mistake—AI is owned by Big Tech —By Amba Kak, Sarah Myers West and Meredith Whittaker, members of the AI Now Institute Until late November, when the epic saga of OpenAI’s board…
AI’s carbon footprint is bigger than you think
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. World leaders are currently in Dubai for the UN COP28 climate talks. As 2023 is set to become the hottest year on record, this year’s meeting is a moment of reckoning for oil…
Make no mistake—AI is owned by Big Tech
Until late November, when the epic saga of OpenAI’s board breakdown unfolded, the casual observer could be forgiven for assuming that the industry around generative AI was a vibrant competitive ecosystem. But this is not the case—nor has it ever been. And understanding why is fundamental to understanding what AI is, and what threats it…
SoftBank Corp takes 51% of Cubic Telecom for $513M to drive into the connected car world
As automakers and technology companies continue to build ever-more sophisticated digital platforms into cars and other vehicles, a startup that’s built a system that makes it easy to connect that hardware to wireless networks around the world has picked up a major round of funding. Cubic Telecom, which provides a software-based networking solution for vehicles […]
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Fossil-fuel emissions are over a million times greater than carbon removal efforts
Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels are on track to reach a record high by the end of 2023. And a new report shows just how insignificant technologies that pull greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere are by comparison. Worldwide, those emissions are projected to reach 36.8 billion metric tons in 2023, a 1.1% increase…
AI invades ‘word of the year’ lists at Oxford, Cambridge and Merriam-Webster
Few would disagree that 2023 was, in the world of technology at least, dominated by artificial intelligence. The dictionaries have taken note in their “word of the year” lists, and notably all the AI-related words they highlight are, in fact, existing words that have been appropriated and regurgitated with new meanings. A little on the […]
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Capitalizing on machine learning with collaborative, structured enterprise tooling teams
Advances in machine learning (ML) and AI are emerging on a near-daily basis—meaning that industry, academia, government, and society writ large are evolving their understanding of the associated risks and capabilities in real time. As enterprises seek to capitalize on the potential of AI, it’s critical that they develop, maintain, and advance state-of-the-art ML practices…
I received the new gene-editing drug for sickle cell disease. It changed my life.
On a picturesque fall day a few years ago, I opened the mailbox and took out an envelope as thick as a Bible that would change my life. The package was from Vertex Pharmaceuticals, and it contained a consent form to participate in a clinical trial for a new gene-editing drug to treat sickle cell…
The Download: cleantech 2.0, and ‘jury duty’ on Chinese delivery apps
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. Climate tech is back—and this time, it can’t afford to fail A cleantech bust in 2011 left almost all the renewable-energy startups in the US either dead or struggling to survive. Over a…