Former Magic Leapers launch a platform for AR experiences

December 20, 2024

Pairing live support with accurate AI outputs

A live agent spends hours each week manually documenting routine interactions. Another combs through multiple knowledge bases to find the right solution, scrambling to piece it together while the customer waits on hold. A third types out the same response they’ve written dozens of times before. These repetitive tasks can be draining, leaving less time…

April 24, 2024

When Trace’s future co-founders Greg Tran, Martin Smith and Sean Couture joined Magic Leap in Spring/Summer 2015, it was about as hot as startups come. After years of secrecy, the augmented reality company captured Silicon Valley’s imagination with in-device footage, before capping the year with an $827 million raise. The story of the intervening years […]

Hinge adds a way to mute requests containing words you specify

April 24, 2024

Hinge is adding a “Hidden Words” feature to its app, which will filter out likes with comments containing those phrases or words. It pretty much works like a mute filter on social media apps. On Hinge, users can send a message when they like a profile — that message can contain any text. Rivals, such […]

India’s central bank cracks down on Kotak Mahindra Bank over IT, risk management lapses

April 24, 2024

India’s central bank ordered Kotak Mahindra Bank to immediately cease onboarding new customers through its online and mobile banking channels and to stop issuing fresh credit cards, citing serious deficiencies in the bank’s IT systems and risk management practices. Kotak Mahindra Bank is one of the largest private banks in India. It’s also one of […]

Three takeaways about the state of Chinese tech in the US

April 24, 2024

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. I’ve wanted to learn more about the world of solar panels ever since I realized just how dominant Chinese companies have become in this field. Although much of the technology involved was…

Parloa, a conversational AI platform for customer service, raises $66M

April 24, 2024

Conversational AI platform Parloa has nabbed $66 million in a Series B round of funding, a year after the German startup raised $21 million from a swathe of European investors to propel its international growth. The company is focusing on the U.S. market in particular, where Parloa opened a New York office last year — […]

What tech learned from Daedalus

April 24, 2024

Today’s climate-change kraken may have been unleashed by human activity—which has discharged greenhouse-gas emissions into Earth’s atmosphere for centuries—but reversing course and taming nature’s growing fury seems beyond human means, a quest only mythical heroes could fulfill. Yet the dream of human-powered flight—of rising over the Mediterranean fueled merely by the strength of mortal limbs—was…

This creamy vegan cheese was made with AI

April 24, 2024

As Climax Foods CEO Oliver Zahn serves up a plate of vegan brie, feta, and blue cheese in his offices in Emeryville, California, I’m keeping my expectations modest. Most vegan cheese falls into an edible uncanny valley full of discomforting not-quite-right versions of the real thing. But the brie I taste today is smooth, rich,…

Job titles of the future: AI prompt engineer

April 24, 2024

The role of AI prompt engineer attracted attention for its high-six-figure salaries when it emerged in early 2023. Companies define it in different ways, but its principal aim is to help a company integrate AI into its operations. Danai Myrtzani of Sleed, a digital marketing agency in Greece, describes herself as more prompter than engineer.…

How we transform to a fully decarbonized world

April 24, 2024

In 1856, Napoleon III commissioned a baby rattle for his newborn son, to be made from one of the most precious metals known at the time: light, silvery, and corrosion-resistant aluminum. Despite its abundance—it’s the third most common element in Earth’s crust—the metal wasn’t isolated until 1824, and the complexity and cost of the process…

Quartz, cobalt, and the waste we leave behind

April 24, 2024

Some time before the first dinosaurs, two supercontinents, Laurasia and Gondwana, collided, forcing molten rock out from the depths of the Earth. As eons passed, the liquid rock cooled and geological forces carved this rocky fault line into Pico Sacro, a strange conical peak that sits like a wizard’s hat near the northwestern corner of…

Pairing live support with accurate AI outputs