Echo Wang / Reuters: Sources: e-commerce marketing platform Klaviyo confidentially files for a US IPO; source: the firm seeks to raise $750M+; Klaviyo was valued at ~$9.5B in 2021 — Data and marketing automation firm Klaviyo Inc confidentially submitted paperwork on Friday with U.S. regulators for an initial public offering …
Autonomous delivery startup Nuro will lay off 30% of its workforce, or ~340 people, as part of a restructuring; Nuro laid off 20% of its staff in November 2022 (Kirsten Korosec/TechCrunch)
Kirsten Korosec / TechCrunch: Autonomous delivery startup Nuro will lay off 30% of its workforce, or ~340 people, as part of a restructuring; Nuro laid off 20% of its staff in November 2022 — Autonomous delivery robot startup Nuro will lay off 30%, or about 340 employees, across the company as part of a restructuring […]
Current and former employees say Foxconn has hired ~10K contract workers in Chennai, India, since November 2022, paying between ~$190 and ~$225 per month (Nilesh Christopher/Rest of World)
Nilesh Christopher / Rest of World: Current and former employees say Foxconn has hired ~10K contract workers in Chennai, India, since November 2022, paying between ~$190 and ~$225 per month — Every Saturday, a clutch of engineering colleges in south India turn into venues for walk-in interviews for Apple contract manufacturers.
What is the future of AI? Google and the EU have very different ideas
While Google and other tech giants are rolling out new AI products at speed, the European Union is working on a law to restrict them
Putting the STING into cancer immunotherapy
Immune checkpoint blockade therapies have been revolutionary in the treatment of some cancer types, emerging as one of the most promising treatments for diseases such as melanoma, colon cancer, and non-small cell lung cancer. While in some cases checkpoint blockade therapies elicit a strong immune response that clears tumors, checkpoint inhibitors do not work for […]
Finding “hot spots” where compounding environmental and economic risks converge
A computational tool developed by researchers at the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change pinpoints specific counties within the United States that are particularly vulnerable to economic distress resulting from a transition from fossil fuels to low-carbon energy sources. By combining county-level data on employment in fossil fuel (oil, natural […]
Four researchers with MIT ties earn 2023 Schmidt Science Fellowships
Four researchers with ties to MIT have been named Schmidt Science Fellows this year. Lillian Chin ’17, SM ’19; Neil Dalvie PD ’22, PhD ’22; Suong Nguyen, and Yirui Zhang SM ’19, PhD ’23 are among the 32 exceptional early-career scientists worldwide chosen to receive the prestigious fellowships. “History provides powerful examples of what happens […]
Yes, the Metaverse Is Still Happening
Don’t get left behind while competitors continue to invest in virtual environments.
How Mid-Market Tech Vendors Can Retain Customers During a Downturn
Three strategies that will help you save your accounts.
AI Can Be Both Accurate and Transparent
Historically, tech leaders have assumed that the better a human can understand an algorithm, the less accurate it will be. But is there always a tradeoff?
Google Is Opening the AI Floodgates
This week, we recap all the news from Google I/O and discuss how the company is reshaping its core business with generative tools.
Local media: a Montenegro court plans to release Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon from jail after accepting a €400,000 bail, pending a trial (Andrew Rummer/The Block)
Andrew Rummer / The Block: Local media: a Montenegro court plans to release Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon from jail after accepting a €400,000 bail, pending a trial — – Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon is set to be freed from jail pending trial after a court agreed to a €400,000 ($436,000) bail …
Document: the EU plans a €45M internet cable in the Black Sea to improve connectivity to Georgia and reduce its “dependency” on lines running through Russia (Financial Times)
Financial Times: Document: the EU plans a €45M internet cable in the Black Sea to improve connectivity to Georgia and reduce its “dependency” on lines running through Russia — Move to improve connectivity to Georgia amid global concerns over spying and sabotage
Toyota says the vehicle data of 2.15M users in Japan, or almost all of its cloud service customers, has been public since November 2013 due to a human error (Reuters)
Reuters: Toyota says the vehicle data of 2.15M users in Japan, or almost all of its cloud service customers, has been public since November 2013 due to a human error — Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) said on Friday the vehicle data of 2.15 million users in Japan, or almost the entire customer base …
Study reveals new ways for exotic quasiparticles to “relax”
New findings from a team of researchers at MIT and elsewhere could help pave the way for new kinds of devices that efficiently bridge the gap between matter and light. These might include computer chips that eliminate inefficiencies inherent in today’s versions, and qubits, the basic building blocks for quantum computers, that could operate at […]
A symbol with a story
Most people don’t grasp every reference in the MIT Press publisher logo, or “colophon,” at first glance. The symbol’s vertical lines are straightforward enough, but understanding what they represent requires the mind to fill in some gaps. The lines create a lowercase m-i-t-p. They are made to look like book spines on a shelf. But […]
The 22 Best Shows on Hulu Right Now
The Great and Class of ’09 are just two of the shows you won’t want to miss on this streaming service.
Your Dog Is a Secret Weapon in the Fight Against Cancer
Every year, thousands of pets develop tumors very similar to those found in people. Find drugs that work for canines, and human treatments should follow.
‘The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’ Review—Evolution, Not Revolution
Nintendo’s latest was never going to beat Breath of the Wild at its own game, but that’s not the point. What it brings to the table is more than enough.
Sources: NBCUniversal’s head of advertising Linda Yaccarino is in talks to become the new CEO of Twitter (Wall Street Journal)
Wall Street Journal: Sources: NBCUniversal’s head of advertising Linda Yaccarino is in talks to become the new CEO of Twitter — Twitter owner Elon Musk said earlier he had picked a new chief executive, without naming the person — NBCUniversal’s head of advertising Linda Yaccarino is in talks to become …
Riot Games names its global president A. Dylan Jadeja as the company’s new CEO starting later in 2023, succeeding Nicolo Laurent, who will stay on as an advisor (Ryan Dinsdale/IGN)
Ryan Dinsdale / IGN: Riot Games names its global president A. Dylan Jadeja as the company’s new CEO starting later in 2023, succeeding Nicolo Laurent, who will stay on as an advisor — Succeeding Nicolo Laurent. — IGN can reveal that Riot Games global president A. Dylan Jadeja will succeed Nicolo Laurent as the company’s […]
Anthropic expands Claude’s context window from 9K to 100K tokens, or ~75K words it can digest and analyze; OpenAI’s GPT-4 has a context window of ~32K tokens (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch)
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Anthropic expands Claude’s context window from 9K to 100K tokens, or ~75K words it can digest and analyze; OpenAI’s GPT-4 has a context window of ~32K tokens — Historically and even today, poor memory has been an impediment to the usefulness of text-generating AI.
Mysterious sounds in stratosphere can’t be traced to any known source
Solar-powered balloons floating 20 kilometres above ground have recorded inaudible low-frequency signals that have so far not been traced back to any known source
What is the AI alignment problem and how can it be solved?
Artificial intelligence systems will do what you ask but not necessarily what you meant. The challenge is to make sure they act in line with human’s complex, nuanced values
Five MIT faculty elected to the National Academy of Sciences for 2023
The National Academy of Sciences has elected 120 members and 23 international members, including five faculty members from MIT. Joshua Angrist, Gang Chen, Catherine Drennan, Dina Katabi, and Gregory Stephanopoulos were elected in recognition of their “distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.” Membership to the National Academy of Sciences is one of the highest […]
Laying the foundation to diversify the economics field and center racial equity in economics research
J-PAL North America is embarking on a year-long planning period to advance racial equity in its work. Throughout this year, J-PAL North America will develop a strategic vision for how to effectively and intentionally prioritize research that addresses racial equity. This includes developing guidance to determine when and how randomized evaluations can advance research related […]
3 Questions: Jacob Andreas on large language models
Words, data, and algorithms combine, An article about LLMs, so divine. A glimpse into a linguistic world, Where language machines are unfurled. It was a natural inclination to task a large language model (LLM) like CHATGPT with creating a poem that delves into the topic of large language models, and subsequently utilize said poem as […]
How Generative AI Changes Creativity
Conversations with a video artist and innovation researchers about the new technology.
Why Overhauling Internal Communications Could Be Your Greatest Revenue-Driver – SPONSOR CONTENT FROM AXIOS HQ
Sponsor content from AXIOS HQ.
What It Takes to Sell Cloud-Based Software to the U.S. Government
Complying with FedRAMP is worth the investment.
A Republican-Led Lawsuit Threatens Critical US Cyber Protections
Three states are suing to block security rules for water facilities. If they win, it may open the floodgates for challenges to other cyber rules.
Google Doesn’t Need You to Buy Its Folding Phone
The company’s pricey new Pixel Fold probably won’t sell in huge numbers. But Google still wins.
Self-Driving Cars Are Being Put on a Data Diet
Growing fleets, fancier sensors, and tighter budgets are forcing autonomous vehicle developers to get pickier about what stays on their servers.
EU lawmakers agree to ban facial recognition in public, limit predictive policing, and impose transparency on generative AI; EU Commission will finalize details (Reuters)
Reuters: EU lawmakers agree to ban facial recognition in public, limit predictive policing, and impose transparency on generative AI; EU Commission will finalize details — European lawmakers came a step closer to passing new rules regulating artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT …
Australian edtech startup Go1 acquires Berlin-based Blinkist, which offers 15-minute non-fiction book summaries, and raised $30M from Insight Partners (Ingrid Lunden/TechCrunch)
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Australian edtech startup Go1 acquires Berlin-based Blinkist, which offers 15-minute non-fiction book summaries, and raised $30M from Insight Partners — After raising $100 million at a valuation of over $2 billion last year, the Australian ed-tech startup Go1 is making an acquisition …
Tech firms are increasingly hiring in South and Central America because remote hires there often accept lower pay than in the US but have similar time zones (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg: Tech firms are increasingly hiring in South and Central America because remote hires there often accept lower pay than in the US but have similar time zones — Pandemic-era labor shortages made it hard for Austin-based Fetch Package Inc. to fill positions in the US.
Government’s invisible hand in developing countries
In the countryside of northern Ghana, there is not much evidence of government in action. There are few paved roads, state buildings, or law enforcement officials. It is easy to think the state lacks the resources to control much of anything in such places. “In the rural periphery of the developing world, we tend to […]
Everything Google Announced at I/O 2023
From new mobile hardware and AI enhancements to search and productivity tools, here are the key takeaways from the May 10 presentation.
Google Is Racing to Bring More AI to Android
From generative wallpapers to chatbot-enabled text messaging, your next Android phone will get a boost from Google’s tools powered by artificial intelligence.
Google Pixel Fold Hands-On: A Pricey Folding Pixel
This folding smartphone costs $1,799. It has two screens, five cameras, and a few unique software tricks.
Disney Q2: Disney+ subscribers were down 2% QoQ to 157.8M, vs. 163.17M est., its second consecutive quarterly drop; ESPN+ rose 2% QoQ to 25.3M, Hulu hit 48.2M (Jennifer Maas/Variety)
Jennifer Maas / Variety: Disney Q2: Disney+ subscribers were down 2% QoQ to 157.8M, vs. 163.17M est., its second consecutive quarterly drop; ESPN+ rose 2% QoQ to 25.3M, Hulu hit 48.2M — On the bright side, the Mouse House also managed to narrow its streaming business losses by $400 million, down 26% year over year.
Filings: the US Internal Revenue Service filed claims worth nearly $44B against FTX companies, including a $20.4B claim against Alameda in partnership taxes (Tracy Wang/CoinDesk)
Tracy Wang / CoinDesk: Filings: the US Internal Revenue Service filed claims worth nearly $44B against FTX companies, including a $20.4B claim against Alameda in partnership taxes — The largest of the claims includes a $20.4 billion claim against Alameda Research LLC, which details nearly $20 billion in unpaid partnership taxes.
Google Pixel 7a review: the best midrange Android phone, with wireless charging and good performance, camera, and screen, but a slow fingerprint scanner (Allison Johnson/The Verge)
Allison Johnson / The Verge: Google Pixel 7a review: the best midrange Android phone, with wireless charging and good performance, camera, and screen, but a slow fingerprint scanner — It’s $50 more than the Pixel 6A, but some key upgrades keep Google’s A-series at the top of the midrange class.
Robot injected in the skull spreads its tentacles to monitor the brain
A soft robot inserted through a hole in the skull can deploy six sensor-filled legs on the surface of the brain to monitor electrical activity. The design has been tested in miniature pigs and could someday help people who experience epileptic seizures
Colour-changing wrap could let you know when food has spoiled
A biodegradable plastic-like wrap made from silk changes colour when exposed to rotting foods and degrades quickly in soil
Study: AI models fail to reproduce human judgements about rule violations
In an effort to improve fairness or reduce backlogs, machine-learning models are sometimes designed to mimic human decision making, such as deciding whether social media posts violate toxic content policies. But researchers from MIT and elsewhere have found that these models often do not replicate human decisions about rule violations. If models are not trained […]
Success at the intersection of technology and finance
Citadel founder and CEO Ken Griffin had some free advice for an at-capacity crowd of MIT students at the Wong Auditorium during a campus visit in April. “If you find yourself in a career where you’re not learning,” he told them, “it’s time to change jobs. In this world, if you’re not learning, you can […]
Inaugural J-WAFS Grand Challenge aims to develop enhanced crop variants and move them from lab to land
According to MIT’s charter, established in 1861, part of the Institute’s mission is to advance the “development and practical application of science in connection with arts, agriculture, manufactures, and commerce.” Today, the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) is one of the driving forces behind water and food-related research on campus, much […]
How to Disagree Productively
Three strategies.
When Your Employee Tells You They’re Burned Out
A guide to responding with compassion — and a plan.