As school districts struggle to support the mental health of their students, a startup called Sonar Mental Health has built a “wellbeing companion” called Sonny to help. As described in the Wall Street Journal, Sonny is a chatbot that relies on a combination of human staff and AI. When students text their questions to Sonny, […]

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The National Institute of Standards and Technology could fire as many as 500 staffers, according to multiple reports — cuts that further threaten a fledgling AI safety organization. Axios reported this week that the US AI Safety Institute (AISI) and Chips for America, both part of NIST, would be “gutted” by layoffs targeting probationary employees […]

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The General Services Administration, the agency that manages buildings owned by the federal government, is planning to shut down its entire network of electric vehicle chargers, according to a report in The Verge. The GSA reportedly operates a network of hundreds of EV chargers with a total of 8,000 plugs that can be used to […]

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Artificial intelligence could eventually help us understand when animals are in pain or showing other emotions — at least according to researchers recently profiled in Science. For example, there’s the Intellipig system being developed by scientists at the University of the West of England Bristol and Scotland’s Rural College, which examines photos of pigs’ faces […]

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Broadcom and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) are separately exploring deals to take over parts of Intel, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. Broadcom is reportedly considering an acquisition of Intel’s chip-design and marketing business, and would want a partner for the company’s manufacturing business, while TSMC is reportedly looking at controlling […]

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After warnings that Paramount content was about to disappear from Google’s pay TV service YouTube TV, the companies announced late Saturday that they’d reached a deal that averts any disruption to channel availability. Those announcements didn’t include many specifics about the agreement, but a statement from a Paramount spokesperson said it includes “an expanded streaming […]

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Workers at an Amazon warehouse in Garner, North Carolina voted against unionizing in election results announced today. According to Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment (CAUSE), the worker group seeking to form the union, 3,276 ballots were cast in the election, with 25.3% of votes in favor of unionizing and 74.7% against. The results […]

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Apple is planning to add Apple Intelligence to its Vision Pro headset in an update that could come as early as April, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. Just a couple weeks after Apple Intelligence was first announced in June 2024, Gurman reported that Apple was looking to bring its suite of AI tools to the […]

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Perplexity has become the latest AI company to release an in-depth research tool, with a new feature announced Friday. Google unveiled a similar feature for its Gemini AI platform in December. Then OpenAI launched its own research agent earlier this month. All three companies even have given the feature the same name: Deep Research. The […]

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The latest model from DeepSeek, the Chinese AI company that’s shaken up Silicon Valley and Wall Street, can be manipulated to produce harmful content such as plans for a bioweapon attack and a campaign to promote self-harm among teens, according to The Wall Street Journal. Sam Rubin, senior vice president at Palo Alto Networks’ threat […]

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After the PlayStation Network experienced a global outage that lasted for nearly a day, Sony says it will compensate PlayStation Plus subscribers by giving them an extra five days of service. The outage seems to have lasted from Friday evening until Saturday evening in the United States, with many PlayStation owners reporting difficulty loading their […]

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President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the company formerly known as Twitter appears to be over. Trump sued the social media platform for banning him in the aftermath of January 6, 2021, when Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. While a federal judge dismissed the suit in 2022, the then-former president’s lawyers continued to appeal. Soon […]

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Elon Musk recently said he is “not chomping at the bit to acquire TikTok.” Musk made those remarks during an interview at the WELT Economic Summit on January 28. A video of the interview was published today. The interview came after President Donald Trump delayed a law requiring parent company ByteDance to sell TikTok or […]

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Fei-Fei Li, the Stanford computer scientist and startup founder sometimes known as “the Godmother of AI,” has outlined “three fundamental principles for the future of AI policymaking” ahead of next week’s AI Action Summit in Paris. First, Li said policy must be based on “science, not science fiction.” In other words, policymakers should focus on […]

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OpenAI is announcing a new AI “agent” designed to help people conduct in-depth, complex research using ChatGPT, the company’s AI-powered chatbot platform. Appropriately enough, it’s called deep research. OpenAI said in a blog post published Sunday that this new capability was designed for “people who do intensive knowledge work in areas like finance, science, policy, […]

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Apple will be giving iCloud users a new way to invite people to parties, meetings, and other events, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The company has code-named the service Confetti, and it could launch as early as this week, Gurman says. There aren’t many details about how it will actually work, but Confetti is reportedly […]

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X is now suing more advertisers in an antitrust lawsuit focusing on what the company’s CEO Linda Yaccarino has claimed is a “systematic illegal boycott.” The company formerly known as Twitter first filed the lawsuit against the World Federation of Advertisers and its brand safety initiative the Global Alliance of Responsible Media in August 2024. […]

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Adobe’s chief strategy officer Scott Belsky announced this week that he will be joining A24, the independent movie studio behind “Civil War,” “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” and many more titles. Belsky first joined Adobe in 2012 through the acquisition of Behance, leaving briefly in 2016 to become a VC at Benchmark but eventually returning […]

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To make smart bets on the current wave of startups, Matt Hartman thinks venture capitalists will need a deeper understanding of the tech those startups are building. Hartman (pictured above) spent nine years as a partner at Betaworks before starting a new firm, Factorial Capital, where he’s developed a different approach to identifying the startups […]

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Perplexity AI has submitted a revised proposal to merge with TikTok in an arrangement that would give the U.S. government up to 50% ownership of the new entity. The Associated Press first reported on the new proposal. A source with knowledge of the bid confirmed to TechCrunch that the AP’s reporting is accurate. The AI […]

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