Author: kissdev

[ad_1] We’re so excited to announce that we’ve added a dedicated AI Stage presented by Google Cloud to TechCrunch Disrupt 2024. It joins Fintech, SaaS and Space as the other industry-focused stages — all under one big roof. We couldn’t possibly host TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 without a huge deep dive on all things artificial intelligence. So, here is our first sneak peek at the AI Stage agenda, happening all day on Wednesday, October 30. As a classic TechCrunch stage, we have some of the nascent industry’s heavy hitters, like Alexandr Wang and Aravind Srinivas, alongside our partners like Nebius AI…

[ad_1] Location data, for better or worse, continues to be a part of the bedrock of how apps are built. Now a startup developing AI market research based on that location data, Placer.ai, has quietly raised $75 million at an expanded valuation of nearly $1.5 billion, TechCrunch has learned. The startup provides a wide range of location-based analytics to companies in verticals like retail, events and entertainment, CPG, retail estate, financial services and healthcare by combining AI with anonymised data that it sources from third party apps. We first became aware of the funding by way of a Form D…

[ad_1] Starting Monday, Zoom users will have the option to open a document tool from within their video calling app and create sharable files based on their meetings—but they’ll also be prompted to use generative AI to help them write and edit them. This new feature, essentially Zoom’s version of Google Docs, is the latest effort to compete with Microsoft and Google to become an everything workplace for businesses.The docs feature Zoom’s AI Companion, a generative tool built on LLM models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and the company’s own models, unveiled last fall. It can take a meeting transcript and…

[ad_1] In a big move, Character.AI co-founder and CEO Noam Shazeer is returning to Google after leaving the company in October 2021 to found the a16z-backed chatbot startup. In his previous stint, Shazeer spearheaded the team of researchers that built LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications), a language model that was used for conversational AI tools. Character.AI co-founder Daniel De Freitas is also joining Google with some other employees from the startup. Dominic Perella, Character.AI’s general counsel, is becoming an interim CEO at the startup. The company noted that most of the staff is staying at Character.AI. Google is also signing a non-exclusive…

[ad_1] Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups.  This week we are looking at acquisitions of small startups, two new unicorns, wearable AI devices, and VCs who are supporting Kamala Harris. Let’s get into it. Most interesting startup stories from the week Image Credits: Bloomberg / Getty Images With the IPO market pretty much dead, we can’t help but track what’s going on with the other kind of exit: mergers and acquisitions. Even though they are not always the outcomes founders or investors were hoping for, we surely are…

[ad_1] For years, Elon Musk has talked about Dojo — the AI supercomputer that will be the cornerstone of Tesla’s AI ambitions. It’s important enough to Musk that he recently said the company’s AI team is going to “double down” on Dojo as Tesla gears up to reveal its robotaxi in October.  But what exactly is Dojo? And why is it so critical to Tesla’s long-term strategy? In short: Dojo is Tesla’s custom-built supercomputer that’s designed to train its “Full Self-Driving” neural networks. Beefing up Dojo goes hand-in-hand with Tesla’s goal to reach full self-driving and bring a robotaxi to…

[ad_1] A fireside chat between Jensen Huang and Mark Zuckerberg at SIGGRAPH 2024 took some unexpected turns. What started as a conversation about the capabilities of Nvidia GPUs and Zuckerberg’s vision of an AI chatbot future quickly became a more casual affair — including a swap of custom-made jackets, a rare F-bomb from the Meta CEO, and a slightly unsettling anecdote about slicing tomatoes. Bumble, Hinge and other apps were open to stalkers, with vulnerabilities that allowed users to be tracked within 2 meters of their physical location. It took researchers a bit of work to identify the issue, which…

[ad_1] Yelp might not be the first company that comes to mind when someone mentions artificial intelligence, but Chief Product Officer Craig Saldanha said AI is already transforming the Yelp experience. In fact, most of the company’s recent announcements center on AI, whether that’s adding new AI-powered summaries or launching an AI assistant to connect consumers with service providers. So I spoke to Saldanha (who joined Yelp after nearly a decade at Amazon) to learn more about Yelp’s AI strategy. We also discussed what advantages Yelp brings to the AI race, how Yelp can add AI without threatening the authenticity…

[ad_1] Despite increasing demand for AI safety and accountability, today’s tests and benchmarks may fall short, according to a new report. Generative AI models — models that can analyze and output text, images, music, videos and so on — are coming under increased scrutiny for their tendency to make mistakes and generally behave unpredictably. Now, organizations from public sector agencies to big tech firms are proposing new benchmarks to test these models’ safety. Toward the end of last year, startup Scale AI formed a lab dedicated to evaluating how well models align with safety guidelines. This month, NIST and the…

>> Source LinkSummary:Researchers have made significant strides in droplet microfluidics technology, enabling the production of polymer microspheres with a high electroactive (EA) phase, which is essential for developing piezoelectric devices for wearable applications. Traditional methods for creating these microspheres often resulted in irregular shapes and high energy consumption. The new approach, combining droplet microfluidics with off-chip thermal polymerization, allows for precise control over size and shape, achieving a uniformity that enhances performance. The team from the Institute of Nano Science and Technology (INST) engineered PVDF microspheres with an EA phase of approximately 82%, facilitated by artificial intelligence that optimized the…