May 6, 2025

The Download: a longevity influencer’s new religion, and humanoid robots’ shortcomings

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. Bryan Johnson wants to start a new religion in which “the body is God” Bryan Johnson is on a mission to not die. The 47-year-old multimillionaire has already applied his slogan “Don’t Die”…

The Download: the AI Hype Index, and “normal” AI

April 29, 2025
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 AI Hype Index: AI agent cyberattacks, racing robots, and musical models Separating AI reality from hyped-up fiction isn’t always easy. That’s why we’ve created the AI Hype Index—a simple, at-a-glance summary of…

Here’s how to watch LlamaCon, Meta’s first AI developer event

April 29, 2025
On Tuesday, Meta is hosting LlamaCon, its first-ever AI developer event. It’ll center around the company’s Llama family of open AI models, and we’re expecting some big updates for developers. Also on the agenda: keynotes from Meta executives and fireside chats with Big Tech CEOs and Meta’s chief, Mark Zuckerberg. Meta is hosting a small […]

Yelp debuts AI voice agents for restaurants and service providers

April 29, 2025
Yelp said on Tuesday that it’s working on deploying AI-powered “voice agents” to help service providers and restaurants handle calls, answer basic questions, and accomplish tasks like adding a customer to a restaurant waitlist. Yelp says its agents don’t require a complicated setup or API integrations, and can draw from existing metadata along with data […]

The AI Hype Index: AI agent cyberattacks, racing robots, and musical models

April 29, 2025
Separating AI reality from hyped-up fiction isn’t always easy. That’s why we’ve created the AI Hype Index—a simple, at-a-glance summary of everything you need to know about the state of the industry. AI agents are the AI industry’s hypiest new product—intelligent assistants capable of completing tasks without human supervision. But while they can be theoretically…

Is AI “normal”?

April 29, 2025
Right now, despite its ubiquity, AI is seen as anything but a normal technology. There is talk of AI systems that will soon merit the term “superintelligence,” and the former CEO of Google recently suggested we control AI models the way we control uranium and other nuclear weapons materials. Anthropic is dedicating time and money…

A16z backs UK startup Dex to scale ‘AI talent agent’ and recruitment matchmaker

April 29, 2025
Storied Silicon Valley VC firm Andreessen Horowitz is backing a fledgling U.K. startup that’s setting out to “redefine” how AI is used to match companies with talent. Dex, as the startup is called, targets candidates and companies with various AI-powered recruitment smarts, including matchmaking and coaching, with a view toward improving retention in the long […]

Grouphug is a stealth-mode startup that plans use AI inside WhatsApp groups

April 29, 2025
Veterans of the European startup scene, who’ve launched multiple consumer apps in the past, are partly coming out of stealth Tuesday with a new app. On the face of it, Grouphug will simply generate memes from the archive of a group WhatsApp chat. However, that masks a wider play.  Grouphug is led by Felix Petersen, […]

IXI raises $36.5M from Amazon and more to bring the concept of autofocus to prescription glasses

April 29, 2025
Blink and you’ll miss it: a startup out of Finland is taking a new look at the market for prescription eyewear. Tapping into innovations in eye-tracking and liquid crystal lens technology, IXI is building low-power glasses that will invisibly, automatically adjust to account for Presbyopia (far-sightedness), for the wearer. Four years into its life, Hensinki-based […]

Reddit now supports translation of posts and comments into Hindi

April 29, 2025
In a bid to broaden its user base in India, Reddit has updated its machine translation feature to support the automatic translation of posts and comments into Hindi. “With this expansion, authentic, more people-powered content is now accessible in one of India’s most spoken languages,” the company wrote in an update to a blog post. […]