(TechCrunch) When Skydio, a young maker of drones in San Mateo, California, sent a customer proposal in 2023 to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, its chief of staff, Mike Gennaro, forwarded the email to VC Ben Horowitz. “Which deployment are you looking to do?” Horowitz wrote back. “Whatever you want, Ben,” Gennaro replied, according…
(TechCrunch) Anthropic on Thursday said it is teaming up with data analytics firm Palantir and Amazon Web Services (AWS) to provide U.S. intelligence and defense agencies access to Anthropic’s Claude family of AI models. The news comes as a growing number of AI vendors look to ink deals with U.S. defense customers for strategic and…
(Inc.) “I don’t like my job. And I don’t think I’m going to go anymore.” That there is maybe the best line from the 1999 Mike Judge movie Office Space, the precursor to the even more on-the-nose Silicon Valley. Look at the four-digit-number in that sentence again. That line was uttered (checks watch) 25 years…
(AP) Tech behemoth OpenAI has touted its artificial intelligence-powered transcription tool Whisper as having near “human level robustness and accuracy.” But Whisper has a major flaw: It is prone to making up chunks of text or even entire sentences, according to interviews with more than a dozen software engineers, developers and academic researchers. Those experts…
(KKR Academy) The power need for the largest hyperscale data centers is currently 1 GW, and estimates show that 18 GW of additional power capacity will be needed to service US data centers by 2030. For comparison, the total power demand for New York City is currently around 6 GW. In other words, there is…
(Bloomberg) OpenAI has hired former Uber Technologies Inc. executive Scott Schools to serve as its first chief compliance officer, bolstering the startup’s efforts to adapt to emerging global regulations around artificial intelligence. Schools most recently was the chief ethics and compliance officer at Uber, another tech company that has dealt with a complicated regulatory landscape…
(WSJ) The tech industry is enamored with nuclear power, but for now it will lean heavily on fossil fuels to power its artificial-intelligence boom. Amazon.com, Google and Microsoft each struck recent deals meant to bring more nuclear power online to satiate burgeoning energy demand tied to AI. They are betting billions of dollars that nuclear…
(Financial Times) Elon Musk could face a hefty fine as European regulators look at including revenues from the billionaire’s business empire to calculate a potential fine against social media platform X. Under the bloc’s Digital Services Act (DSA), a landmark piece of legislation aimed at setting the rules on how tech companies should police the…
(Axios) Google will block election ads across all of its platforms after the last polls close on Nov. 5, according to a memo sent to its advertising partners Thursday and obtained by Axios. Why it matters: The policy, first introduced during the 2020 election, is meant to prevent misinformation about voting, including candidates prematurely claiming…
(Politico) In one of the zanier twists of this campaign season, two Virginia congressional candidates will face off tonight, in a virtual debate, against an AI bot. The candidates are Bentley Hensel and David Kennedy, both running for Virginia’s 8th district — both independents, and both expected to lose. The bot is based on Rep.…