Archive: March 2017

After a grueling three-week trial that dragged some of the biggest names in the tech industry onto the witness stand to testify, made private correspondence and diaries public, and placed the details of private lives under scrutiny, the jury in Elon Musk’s case against OpenAI over its decision to become a for-profit entity came to a decision: it is barred by the statute of limitations and no decision on the legitimacy of the claims will be provided. On the

Representational embeddings inferred from human and DNN behavior. Credit: Nature Machine Intelligence (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s42256-025-01041-7 While humans concentrate on the meaning of objects, artificial intelligence focuses on visual characteristics. "These dimensions represent various properties of objects, ranging from purely visual aspects, like 'round' or 'white,' to more semantic properties, like 'animal-related' or 'fire-related,' with many dimensi

Credit: Tima Miroshnichenko from Pexels A new study from the University of Kansas explores the role of working memory in word problem-solving for students with and without math difficulties. Researchers found that using interventions to improve working memory can potentially benefit students who struggle with math. Working memory is a limited amount of information humans can store while processing other information and executing other tasks. It plays a cen

Until it reached the fan I got a B2B SaaS project in the stage that any tech lead dreams of: "Almost ready. Release in two weeks." Two out of three API calls returned HTTP 500. Several generations of agent fixes had accumulated in the code. Whenever a new error was found, the agent was asked to figure it out and fix the bug. The agent would insert a patch in the form of another condition. The state of the object was determined by indirect signs. In 21 plac

if ( !emtpy($headline_subheadline ) ) : ?> Google's temporary halt on some bug bounty submissions underscores a broader problem facing enterprises: AI is making vulnerability discovery cheaper and faster, but security teams are struggling to validate, prioritize and remediate a growing flood of machine-generated findings. endif; ?> Credit: Gorodenkoff / Shutterstock Artificial IntelligenceVulnerabilitiesSecurity

Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images In an attempt to climb back up the leaderboard, Peloton just announced a flashy pivot to AI. To set the scene, the in-home fitness company hit its personal record in 2020 when its valuation skyrocketed from about $8 billion to nearly $50 billion. It was a clear winner in the pandemic economy — but ever since people were able to leave their homes again, it’s b

From left, engineering professor Morteza Lahijanian and graduate student Karan Muvvala watch as a robotic arm completes a task using wooden blocks. Credit: Casey Cass/University of Colorado Boulder Imagine for a moment that you're in an auto factory. A robot and a human are working next to each other on the production line. The robot is busy rapidly assembling car doors while the human runs quality control, inspecting the doors for damage and making sure t

Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Alilo AI / Getty Images Last month, an AI-powered teddy bear from the company FoloToy ignited alarm and controversy after researchers at the US PIRG Education Fund caught it having wildly inappropriate conversations for young children, ranging from providing step-by-step instructions on how to light matches, to giving a crash course in sexual fetishes like bondage and teacher-student roleplay. The bac

Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Sven Hoppe / picture alliance via Getty Images Microsoft has continued to focus more and more on AI — almost certainly at the expense of its core products, like the Windows operating system. And unfortunately for the Redmond giant, the gambit doesn’t seem to be paying off. Current and former employees tell The Wall Street Journal in new reporting that the company’s confusing branding and grating lack

Credit: cottonbro studio from Pexels A recent study by the University of Portsmouth has found that focusing on audio alone improves the performance of the interviewer during interviews, particularly in criminal investigations. The research, published in The European Journal of Psychology Applied to Legal Context, examined how the interviewer's cognitive load—how hard the brain is working—influences the performance of the interviewer and the outcome of the

Credit: CC0 Public Domain Software giant Salesforce is planning to invest $15 billion in San Francisco over the next five years to strengthen the city's dominance in artificial intelligence. "This $15 billion investment reflects our deep commitment to our hometown—advancing AI innovation, creating jobs, and helping companies and our communities thrive in this incredible new era," said Salesforce Chief Executive Marc Benioff in a statement. The funding is t

Posted Nov 12, 2026 at 4:36 PM UTCTExternal LinkTerrence O'BrienYahoo is the first to sign up for new pay-to-scrape collective AI licensing.Last year, several companies backed RSL, a new licensing standard that would require AI companies to pay for scraping content through a collective license rather than one-off deals with specific outlets. Now Yahoo, one of the backers of what is now called the Internet Licensing Collective (ILC), is its first official l

In a world where cars can drive In part one of our "Future of Driving" series, we looked at the current state of self-driving car technology and tried to predict how that technology would progress in the coming decades. Now we're going to assume that the technical problems we discussed can be solved and explore how self-driving cars could change society. Some benefits of self-driving cars are obvious—less time spent behind the wheel and fewer accidents—but

A major developer is offering $10,000 to every family in a small Pennsylvania town if they don’t object to the construction of a mega data center project. Nevertheless, local advocates are standing their ground, according to a recent Wall Street Journal report. NorthPoint Development wants to build a major data center complex on 1,300 acres of land in Hazle Township near Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains. Faced with growing local opposition, the developer fo