Journals

Steven Levy / Wired: An interview with Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor, co-founders of conversational AI startup Sierra, on using several AI models at once, building AI agents, and more  —  Sierra hopes every company will use its empathetic AI… Read More »An interview with Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor, co-founders of conversational AI startup Sierra, on using several AI models at once, building AI agents, and more (Steven Levy/Wired)

Tim Higgins / Wall Street Journal: Elon Musk says his companies “have probably done more to undermine Russia than anything” and calls accusations that he is a Vladimir Putin apologist “absurd”  —  Billionaire maintains his companies are doing the most… Read More »Elon Musk says his companies “have probably done more to undermine Russia than anything” and calls accusations that he is a Vladimir Putin apologist “absurd” (Tim Higgins/Wall Street Journal)

Can Emir / Interesting Engineering: Amsterdam-based Monumental, which is developing AI-powered bricklaying robots, emerges from stealth and raised $25M co-led by Plural and Hummingbird  —  Screenshots of the robot while building the wall.  —  Monumental  —  By subscribing, you agree… Read More »Amsterdam-based Monumental, which is developing AI-powered bricklaying robots, emerges from stealth and raised $25M co-led by Plural and Hummingbird (Can Emir/Interesting Engineering)

Zeke Faux / Bloomberg: A Florida court filing accuses the Bahamas-based Deltec Bank of giving Alameda Research a short-term line of credit worth billions of dollars to buy Tether  —  – Deltec is alleged to have provided a short-term line… Read More »A Florida court filing accuses the Bahamas-based Deltec Bank of giving Alameda Research a short-term line of credit worth billions of dollars to buy Tether (Zeke Faux/Bloomberg)

Jessica Traynor / The Guardian: A look at the data center economy of Ireland, which had 82 data centers in 2023, amid concerns about rolling blackouts due to pressure on the electrical grid  —  Datacentres are part of Ireland’s vision… Read More »A look at the data center economy of Ireland, which had 82 data centers in 2023, amid concerns about rolling blackouts due to pressure on the electrical grid (Jessica Traynor/The Guardian)

Michael Crider / PCWorld: SPEC invalidates 2,600 benchmark results for some Intel Xeon CPUs, saying their compiler artificially inflated the results of its benchmark by as much as 9%  —  SPEC says Intel’s Xeon processors were using a compiler that… Read More »SPEC invalidates 2,600 benchmark results for some Intel Xeon CPUs, saying their compiler artificially inflated the results of its benchmark by as much as 9% (Michael Crider/PCWorld)

Telegraph: Sources: UK chip designer Graphcore explores a sale to foreign owners in a deal that could be worth $500M+; rumoured buyers include OpenAI, SoftBank, and Arm  —  Graphcore in talks with major tech companies after struggling to cash in… Read More »Sources: UK chip designer Graphcore explores a sale to foreign owners in a deal that could be worth $500M+; rumoured buyers include OpenAI, SoftBank, and Arm (Telegraph)

Washington Post: How tech workers, spurred by geopolitical threats, are embracing battlefield tech; PitchBook: VCs invested $108B in defense tech companies between 2021 and 2023  —  After a decade of building the future, tech’s new guard is going back to… Read More »How tech workers, spurred by geopolitical threats, are embracing battlefield tech; PitchBook: VCs invested $108B in defense tech companies between 2021 and 2023 (Washington Post)

Bloomberg: Sources: the UK, the US, and other allies are working to provide Ukraine with thousands of new AI-enabled drones that could swarm Russian targets simultaneously  —  – Technology could help Ukraine overwhelm some Russian targets  — Germany’s Scholz calls… Read More »Sources: the UK, the US, and other allies are working to provide Ukraine with thousands of new AI-enabled drones that could swarm Russian targets simultaneously (Bloomberg)

Maxwell Zeff / Gizmodo: Despite Google and OpenAI’s promises, Gemini and ChatGPT appear to have almost no safeguards against creating AI disinfo for the 2024 US presidential election  —  Google and OpenAI’s chatbots have almost no safeguards against creating AI… Read More »Despite Google and OpenAI’s promises, Gemini and ChatGPT appear to have almost no safeguards against creating AI disinfo for the 2024 US presidential election (Maxwell Zeff/Gizmodo)