Y Combinator is famed for its Demo Days, where portfolio companies pitch their apps and wares in hopes of growing from a fledgling company into the next Airbnb. But on Thursday, the startup incubator hosted a mélange of founders, venture capitalists, and US policymakers in its airy industrial space in …
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This week, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and Arianna Huffington, founder and CEO of the health company Thrive Global, published an article in Time touting Thrive AI, a startup backed by Thrive and OpenAI’s Startup Fund. The piece suggests that AI could have a huge positive impact on public health …
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On a cloud-darkened morning in March, a group of software developers fought their way through the crowds of tourists and puddled streets of Central London. In twos and threes, they filtered into an office on the edge of Soho, hidden in plain sight on a street of showy Tudor and …
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In late April a video ad for a new AI company went viral on X. A person stands before a billboard in San Francisco, smartphone extended, calls the phone number on display, and has a short call with an incredibly human-sounding bot. The text on the billboard reads: “Still hiring …
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Some Fortune 500 companies have begun testing software that can spot a deepfake of a real person in a live video call, following a spate of scams involving fraudulent job seekers who take a signing bonus and run. The detection technology comes courtesy of GetReal Labs, a new company founded …
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When a Finn talks to an AI helper like ChatGPT, they often get the sense that something is subtly wrong. “You really feel that this conversation is not the way that you would have a discussion in Finland,” says Peter Sarlin. For a start, Finnish people are known for a …
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A Sam Altman–funded nonprofit studying the effects of giving monthly checks of up to $1,000 to lower-income households in the US espouses transparency in its operations. “We aim to share data, findings, and insights widely,” OpenResearch says on its website, which describes its work as a “public good.” But like …
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It’s 10 pm on a Wednesday night and I’m standing in Blessed, a south London takeaway joint, half-listening to a fellow customer talking earnestly about Jesus. I’m nodding along, trying to pay attention as reggae reverberates around the small yellow shop front. But really, all I can really think about …
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Drones have changed war. Small, cheap, and deadly robots buzz in the skies high above the world’s battlefields, taking pictures and dropping explosives. They’re hard to counter. ZeroMark, a defense startup based in the United States, thinks it has a solution. It wants to turn the rifles of frontline soldiers …
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In his polarizing “Techno-Optimist Manifesto” last year, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen listed a number of enemies to technological progress. Among them were “tech ethics” and “trust and safety,” a term used for work on online content moderation, which he said had been used to subject humanity to “a mass demoralization …
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