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

These AI Minecraft characters did weirdly human stuff all on their own

November 27, 2024
Left to their own devices, an army of AI characters didn’t just survive — they thrived. They developed in-game jobs, shared memes, voted on tax reforms and even spread a religion. The experiment played out on the open-world gaming platform Minecraft, where up to 1000 software agents at a time used large language models (LLMs)…

Accelerating generative AI deployment with microservices

November 26, 2024
In this exclusive webcast, we delve into the transformative potential of portable microservices for the deployment of generative AI models. We explore how startups and large organizations are leveraging this technology to streamline generative AI deployment, enhance customer service, and drive innovation across domains, including chatbots, document analysis, and video generation. Our discussion focuses on…

The Download: rethinking AI benchmarks, and the ethics of AI agents

November 26, 2024
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. The way we measure progress in AI is terrible Every time a new AI model is released, it’s typically touted as acing its performance against a series of benchmarks. OpenAI’s GPT-4o, for example,…

We need to start wrestling with the ethics of AI agents

November 26, 2024
Generative AI models have become remarkably good at conversing with us, and creating images, videos, and music for us, but they’re not all that good at doing things for us.  AI agents promise to change that. Think of them as AI models with a script and a purpose. They tend to come in one of…

The way we measure progress in AI is terrible

November 26, 2024
Every time a new AI model is released, it’s typically touted as acing its performance against a series of benchmarks. OpenAI’s GPT-4o, for example, was launched in May with a compilation of results that showed its performance topping every other AI company’s latest model in several tests. The problem is that these benchmarks are poorly…

The Download: Trump’s tariffs, and the DOJ’s proposals for Google

November 25, 2024
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. How Trump’s tariffs could drive up the cost of batteries, EVs, and more President-elect Donald Trump’s “America First” plan to enact huge tariffs on imported goods threatens to jack up the cost and…

Google’s antitrust gut punch and the Trump wild card

November 25, 2024
This story originally appeared in The Debrief with Mat Honan, your weekly take on the tech news that really matters. Sign up here to get the next one in your inbox. Last week, the US Department of Justice released its recommendations for proposed remedies in its antitrust case against Google. While no one thought the DOJ would…

How Trump’s tariffs could drive up the cost of batteries, EVs, and more

November 25, 2024
President-elect Donald Trump’s “America First” plan to enact huge tariffs on imported goods threatens to jack up the cost and slow down the development of US cleantech projects. On the campaign trail, Trump pledged to enact 10% to 20% across-the-board tariffs on all overseas products, 60% to 100% tariffs on Chinese goods, and 25% to…

The Download: how OpenAI tests its models, and the ethics of uterus transplants

November 22, 2024
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. How OpenAI stress-tests its large language models OpenAI has lifted the lid (just a crack) on its safety-testing processes. It has put out two papers describing how it stress-tests its powerful large language…

Who should get a uterus transplant? Experts aren’t sure.

November 22, 2024
This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. Earlier this year, a boy in Sweden celebrated his 10th birthday. Reproductive scientists and doctors marked the occasion too. This little boy’s birth had been special. He was…