Archive: February 2023

A handful of big tech companies operate a large, global network of massive AI data centers. Those companies, chief among them Meta, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle, are often referred to as hyperscalers. As the top AI chipmaker, Nvidia provides the hardware for these hyperscalers, and in turn, the hyperscalers are the chip giant’s biggest customers. During the rise of the AI hype era, any investment made into AI infrastructure by these hyperscalers w

In an era where Silicon Valley’s conservatism is both expressed openly and becoming more intense by the day, it’s strange to think that tech was once seen as a hive of liberalism. The right-wing nature of today’s tech industry means that its products tend to also be seen as serving right-wing interests, either in their actual operation (like X’s openly and unrepentantly right-wing chatbot Grok) or by the simple fact that their existence serves to enrich a

Published on August 5, 2025 at 07:29 Comment Share 2 𝕏 Print © Solen Feyissa (Unsplash) For some users, ChatGPT serves as a confidant, or even a therapist. The bot must better support important life decisions, while incorporating reminders to preserve mental well-being. ChatGPT now counts 700 million active users each week (compared to 500 million in March). These are 700 million different people, each with their own needs, experiences, and sometimes conce

If you’ve ever lived with your grandparents or other seniors, you may have had some squabbles over the temperature setting being too low. That’s often because people feel more sensitive to the cold as they age. Research out this week appears to have figured out a key reason why this happens. Scientists at the City of Hope Medical Center in California studied brown fat cells in mice. They found evidence these cells are less able to switch into their highly

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain A Los Angeles-area startup is using artificial intelligence and robotics in an unlikely way: making sashimi and other fish dishes taste better, last longer and be more humane. El Segundo, California-based Shinkei Systems wants to bring a traditional Japanese method of handling fish to fine dining in America, using technology to replace the labor-intensive process historically handled by practitioners on board ships. Invest

Robin the Robot. Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Sources: Robin the Robot via Instagram / Getty A new face is lighting up hospitals and nursing homes across the country. It’s an animated, cartoonish persona displayed on a digital screen roughly the size of an iPad, mounted on top of a robotic torso shaped like an elongated traffic cone. It slowly rolls around from place to place, cracking jokes with patients, making silly faces, and playing

Photo Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Image Source: Getty Images Freelance gig board Fiverr is laying off 250 workers — a full 30 percent of its workforce — in a pivot to AI, months after the CEO exhorted workers to use AI to stay relevant. It’s a pretty dickish move by CEO Micha Kaufman, who announced the reduction in staff in an X post last week, and also ironic: a company that helps people get freelance jobs that are increasingly endange

AI Generated Video The mass adoption of generative AI has given rise to some bizarre waves of incomprehensible slop. There was the “good ending,” a glut of AI generated images depicting Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg as starcrossed lovers, which surfaced as their public feud threatened to turn violent. Then of course there was “Shrimp Jesus,” followed closely by the “baby monk,” a disturbing series featuring babies clad in robes being eaten alive by fire an

Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: AI Generated Footage Screenshot via YouTube / Cuomo for NYC Disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo just doesn’t get it. After numerous sexual harassment claims, he was forced to resign from his post in August 2021. Then, after running a hopelessly out of date comeback campaign, he lost New York’s Democratic primary in July of this year. Yet the political nepo baby refuses to accept reality, continuing

Product showcase: Stellar Cyber’s ISOC platform provides full-cycle architecture An AI SOC that starts with somebody else’s alert is already too late. Stellar Cyber collects and normalizes telemetry, detects suspicious activity, correlates evidence, builds cases, investigates incidents, triages findings, and drives response from the same security architecture. That gives people and AI access to the evidence behind the alert – not just the alert itself. Ful

Credit: Rachel Barton/Texas A&M Engineering Concern over pollution and its impact on weather patterns continues to increase—but what if severe weather events are also impacting pollution? Researchers from Texas A&M University are using artificial intelligence to track pollution caused by accidental chemical emissions following natural hazards. An increased understanding of the relationship between natural hazards and unplanned chemical emissions may help r

OpenAI’s head ethicist, Chloé Bakalar, quietly left the company at some point in July after having been hired the previous August. Before working at OpenAI, she was Meta’s chief ethicist, and established AI ethics policies for Instagram and Facebook, according to a story by the Financial Times. The FT’s anonymous source apparently told that paper that Bakalar specialized in “ethical approaches to model development, how humans interact with AI and debate ov

Siri AI doesn’t suck, which is a minor miracle. But new reporting from the Wall Street Journal suggests Apple is feeling itself so much that it’s in talks with news publishers to form licensing deals that allow it to deliver up-to-the-minute information via its AI-powered voice assistant. If reading this gives you a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach but you can’t remember why, it’s because Apple tried something similarly ambitious, and the ensuing

Published on March 6, 2026 at 12:14 Comment 1 𝕏 Print Ben Affleck. © Bethany Mollenk/netflix The streaming giant has just made a major acquisition by acquiring InterPositive. This discreet technology company founded by actor and director Ben Affleck develops AI tools specifically designed for the film industry. AI is no longer a taboo subject in Hollywood. Rather than acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery, Netflix has announced the purchase of the company Inter