UK opens office in San Francisco to tackle AI risk
Ahead of the AI safety summit kicking off in Seoul, South Korea later this week, its co-host the United Kingdom is expanding its own efforts in the field. The AI Safety Institute – a U.K. body set up in November 2023 with the ambitious goal of assessing and addressing risks
Read moreWhy companies are turning to internal hackathons
Companies are always looking for an edge, and searching for ways to encourage their employees to innovate. One way to do that is by running an internal hackathon around a theme and having employees attack a problem together. It not only brings in new ideas and new ways to solve
Read moreI’m rooting for Melinda French Gates to fix tech’s broken ‘brilliant jerk’ culture
Women in tech still face a shocking level of mistreatment at work. Melinda French Gates is one of the few working to change that. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
Read moreBlue Origin successfully launches its first crewed mission since 2022
Blue Origin has successfully completed its NS-25 mission, resuming crewed flights for the first time in nearly two years. The mission brought six tourist crew members to the edge of space, including artist and former Air Force Captain Ed Dwight. In 1961, Dwight was selected by President John F. Kennedy
Read moreHollywood agency CAA aims to help stars manage their own AI likenesses
Creative Artists Agency (CAA), one of the top entertainment and sports talent agencies, is hoping to be at the forefront of AI protection services for celebrities in Hollywood. With many stars having their digital likeness used without permission, CAA has built a virtual media storage system for A-list talent —
Read moreOpenAI and Google lay out their competing AI visions
Welcome back to TechCrunch’s Week in Review. This week had two major events from OpenAI and Google. OpenAI’s spring update event saw the reveal of its new model, GPT-4o, which has voice and vision capabilities that can turn ChatGPT into a virtual assistant seemingly aspiring to be “Her.” Hot off
Read moreExpedia says two execs dismissed after ‘violation of company policy’
Expedia says Rathi Murthy and Sreenivas Rachamadugu, respectively its CTO and senior vice president of core services product & engineering, are no longer employed at the travel booking company. In a statement shared with Bloomberg and elsewhere, Expedia said Murthy and Rachamadugu are “no longer employed at Expedia Group” due
Read moreWith AI startups booming, nap pods and Silicon Valley hustle culture are back
When Jeffrey Wang posted to X asking if anyone wanted to go in on an order of fancy-but-affordable office nap pods, he didn’t expect the post to go viral. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
Read moreVCs and the military are fueling self-driving startups that don’t need roads
A new crop of early-stage startups — along with some recent VC investments — illustrates a niche emerging in the autonomous vehicle technology sector. Unlike the companies bringing robotaxis to city streets, these startups are taking their tech off-road. Two recent entrants — Seattle-based Overland AI and New Brunswick-based Potential
Read moreDeal Dive: Sagetap looks to bring enterprise software sales into the 21st century
When the founders of Sagetap, Sahil Khanna and Kevin Hughes, started working at early-stage enterprise software startups, they were surprised to find that the companies they worked at were trying to sell their innovative tech through old-school methods like repeated cold emails and calls. Khanna, a former product marketer, and
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