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Perplexity looking to fundraise at an $8B valuation, Lyft is working on a ‘service animal opt-in feature’, DJI sues Department of Defense, and Can AI sandbag safety checks? Oct 22, 2024

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AI search engine Perplexity is in fundraising talks and hopes to raise around $500 million at an $8 billion valuation, according to the Wall Street Journal. If a deal happens with those terms, it would more than double Perplexity’s valuation from its $3 billion valuation when it raised from SoftBank over the summer; Uber and Lyft need to do more to support disabled passengers, especially those who are blind or visually impaired, according to protesters who gathered outside the companies’ headquarters on October 15; Drone-maker DJI filed a lawsuit Friday against the US Department of Defense over its inclusion on a DoD list of “Chinese military companies.” A DJI spokesperson said the company filed the suit after “attempting to engage with the DoD for more than sixteen months” and deciding “it had no alternative other than to seek relief; AI companies claim to have robust safety checks in place that ensure that models don’t say or do weird, illegal, or unsafe stuff. But what if the models were capable of evading those checks and, for some reason, trying to sabotage or mislead users? Turns out they can do this, according to Anthropic researchers.

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Experts say OpenAI’s patent pledge amounts to little more than ‘virtue signaling’ Oct 21, 2024

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OpenAI quietly published a statement on its website pledging not to use its patents offensively. Asserting its commitment to the principles of “broad access” and “collaboration,” OpenAI said that it would only use its patents in a way that supports innovation

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Sam Altman’s Worldcoin becomes World, and shows new iris-scanning ‘Orb’ to prove your humanity Oct 19, 2024

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Worldcoin, the Sam Altman co-founded “proof of personhood” crypto startup that scans people’s eyeballs, announced on Thursday that it dropped the “coin” from its name and is now just “World.” The startup also unveiled its next generation of iris-scanning “Orb” and other tools at a live event in San Francisco

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Instagram rolls out new safety features to protect teens from sextortion Oct 18, 2024

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Instagram is introducing a series of new safety features to protect users from sextortion scammers, the company announced on Thursday. Most notably, the company is no longer going to allow people to screenshot or screen record ephemeral images or videos sent in private messages.

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Can AI make us feel less alone? The founder of Manifest thinks so Oct 18, 2024

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Amy Wu, founder of the AI-based mental health app Manifest, has a bold prediction for the next wave of tech. “Separately from the AI trend, I think so many people are seeing this loneliness epidemic that’s happening with Gen Z,” she said.

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Doctors complain of IT ‘in the stone age’, Waymo's honking apology, Mastodon toys, and more Oct 17, 2024

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The United Kingdom’s NHS — the world’s largest public health service — is working on creaking IT infrastructure. In any sector, that’s a ticking time bomb. But when you consider that the NHS holds medical records for nearly 67 million people, a breach of that system could become a meltdown; Sophia Tung set up a livestream this past summer, showing self-driving Waymo cars honking from the San Francisco parking lot near her apartment at all hours of the night; Meta’s X rival Threads is rolling out a new “activity status” feature that will let you see when someone on the social network is online. Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced the feature on Tuesday in a Threads post, noting that it’s meant to act as “a way to help you find others to engage with; and if you like open-source, decentralized social networks that put the power in the hands of the people instead of billionaires, you can now support that cause…by buying toys. On Tuesday, Mastodon, a decentralized alternative to X, began selling its own merchandise in the form of cute, plushie mastodons – the proto-elephants with long tusks

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How Tesla’s plans for ‘unsupervised FSD’ and robotaxis could run into red tape Oct 17, 2024

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During Tesla’s much-hyped robotaxi reveal event last week, CEO Elon Musk said he expects Tesla to release an “unsupervised” version of FSD, the automaker’s advanced driver assistance system, in Texas and California in 2025 on certain Model 3 and Model Y vehicles.

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Tesla Optimus bots were controlled by humans during the ‘We, Robot’ event Oct 16, 2024

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During Tesla’s “We, Robot” event last week, which TechCrunch covered late into the night,, sources on the ground sent me a handful of videos of the automaker’s Optimus humanoid robots walking around the party, dancing, mixing drinks, and talking to guests.

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Google signed a deal to power data centers with nuclear micro-reactors from Kairos — but the 2030 timeline is very optimistic Oct 16, 2024

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With the deal, Google joins Microsoft and Amazon in turning to nuclear power to satiate its thirst for electricity.

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Constellation Technologies & Operations wants to work with telecom operators to deliver 5G internet from space Oct 15, 2024

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The telecom industry is undergoing its greatest period of disruption since the telegraph, as companies work to open up space as the next frontier for communications. French startup Constellation hopes to take part by repurposing 5G tech to provide a Starlink-like satellite broadband that uses telecoms’ existing assets.

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