On Thursday, OpenAI announced its investment in neurotech startup Merge Labs, cofounded by its CEO, billionaire Sam Altman. OpenAI will collaborate with the new venture to develop technology to link people’s brains to computers. Merge Labs has raised $252 million in funding from OpenAI, private investment firm Bain Capital, video game developer Gabe Newell, and…
“We always have far more people applying than we actually accept into our apprenticeship programs,” Madello explains. How many trainees are admitted, he adds, depends largely on how many union members are expected to retire in the coming years. One problem, however, is getting people trained quickly enough to work on data center projects. Quinonez…
Jen Easterly, a longtime public- and private-sector cybersecurity practitioner who led the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency for more than three years, has been appointed CEO of RSA Conference, known as RSAC. The organization puts on the prominent annual gathering of cybersecurity experts, vendors, and researchers that started in 1991 as a small cryptography…
Whether you realize it or not, you’re already living in the Chinese century. From batteries to milk to electric vehicles, China is undoubtably doing it better—while the rest of us kick our feet up and watch. China is soaring ahead of the US in a space race called by Trump; China is putting up buildings…
In 2010, the FBI sent Wikipedia a letter that would be intimidating for any organization to receive. The missive demanded that the free online encyclopedia remove the FBI’s logo from an entry about the agency, claiming that reproducing the emblem was illegal and punishable with fines, imprisonment, “or both.” Rather than back down, a lawyer…
Thinking Machines cofounders Barret Zoph and Luke Metz are leaving the fledgling AI lab and rejoining OpenAI, the ChatGPT-maker announced on Thursday. OpenAI’s CEO of applications, Fidji Simo, shared the news in a memo to staff Thursday afternoon. The news was first reported on X by technology reporter Kylie Robison, who wrote that Zoph was…
Vlad Ionescu and Ariel Herbert-Voss, cofounders of the cybersecurity startup RunSybil, were momentarily confused when their AI tool, Sybil, alerted them to a weakness in a customer’s systems last November. Sybil uses a mix of different AI models—as well as a few proprietary technical tricks—to scan computer systems for issues that hackers might exploit, like…
At the start of 2024, Anthropic, Google, Meta, and OpenAI were united against military use of their AI tools. But over the next 12 months, something changed. In January, OpenAI quietly rescinded its ban on using AI for “military and warfare” purposes, and soon after it was reported to be working on “a number of…
Just days after launching, Roblox’s much-hyped AI-powered age verification system is a complete mess. Roblox’s face scanning system, which estimates peoples’ ages before they can access the platform’s chat functions, rolled out in the US and other countries around the world last week, after initially launching in a few locations in December. Roblox says it…
Reid Hoffman doesn’t do much in half measures. He cofounded LinkedIn, of course, and helped bankroll companies including Meta and Airbnb in their startup days. He has also fashioned himself, via books, podcasts, and other public appearances, as something of a public intellectual—a pro-capitalist philosopher who still insists that tech can be a force for…
