Tag Archives: business

In September, researchers at Google’s DeepMind AI unit in London were paying unusual attention to the weather across the pond. Hurricane Lee was at least 10 days out from landfall—eons in forecasting terms—and official forecasts were still waffling between the storm landing on major Northeast cities or missing them entirely. …

When US president Joe Biden meets with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in the San Francisco Bay Area this week, the pair will have a long list of matters to discuss, including the Israel-Hamas war and Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Behind the scenes at the APEC summit, however, US …

Early in the pandemic, an agent—literary, not software—suggested Fei-Fei Li write a book. The approach made sense. She has made an indelible mark on the field of artificial intelligence by heading a project started in 2006 called ImageNet. It classified millions of digital images to form what became a seminal …

The UK’s communications regulator, Ofcom, says it is prepared to “disrupt” tech platforms that don’t comply with the country’s controversial new Online Safety Act, including cutting them off from payment systems or even blocking them from the UK. The act—a sprawling piece of legislation that covers a spectrum of issues, …

Katherine Charles’ workdays are relentless. She’s one of thousands of call center workers who help Americans find suitable health insurance as part of the Affordable Care Act, or ACA. Charles spends all day on the phone, with only a six-minute daily allowance to use the bathroom. She also gets two …

Meta just launched its first ad-free option for Facebook and Instagram. The update is in response to the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, passed in 2018. Subscriptions for the ad-free experience are only available to users located in the EU as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland. In …

The plan for the first small-scale US nuclear reactor was exciting, ambitious, and unusual from the get-go. In 2015, a group of city- and county-run utilities across the Mountain West region announced that they were betting on a new frontier of nuclear technology: a mini version of a conventional plant …

In August 2016, WIRED visited the San Francisco offices of a young startup recently snapped up by a surprising buyer. General Motors acquired three-year-old Cruise for a reported $1 billion in hopes the straitlaced Detroit automaker could coopt the self-driving technology tipped to disrupt the auto industry. Cruise CEO Kyle …

For months, an odd sight has intrigued a San Francisco cop regularly stationed outside the downtown offices of the startup Humane. Out of its door have streamed employees with a small, square device pinned to their chests, not unlike the officer’s bulkier, department-issued body-worn camera. “Been wondering what those are,” …

This week, OpenAI announced a service that makes it possible for just about anyone to build a custom version of ChatGPT, no coding skills required. The company suggests that users may want to build a bot that knows the rules of all board games, teaches kids about math, or can …