Devin Coldewey, Author at TechCrunch

Announcing the agenda for the Space Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024

Aria Alamalhodaei, Devin Coldewey, Richard Smith — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 15:00:00 +0000

We’re out-of-this-world excited to announce that we’ve added a dedicated Space Stage to TechCrunch Disrupt 2024. It joins Fintech, SaaS and AI as the other industry-focused stages — all under one big roof. And we’re excited to share we’ll be hosting a pitch competition this year “The Space Challenge, powered by Aerospace” as part of […]

This Week in AI: Generative AI is spamming up academic journals

Kyle Wiggers, Devin Coldewey — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 17:05:00 +0000

Hiya, folks, and welcome to TechCrunch’s regular AI newsletter. This week in AI, generative AI is beginning to spam up academic publishing — a discouraging new development on the disinformation front. In a post on Retraction Watch, a blog that tracks recent retractions of academic studies, assistant professors of philosophy Tomasz Żuradzk and Leszek Wroński […]

Rocket Lab’s Peter Beck on reshaping the space economy at Disrupt 2024

Devin Coldewey — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 15:00:00 +0000

The future of the space industry may look a lot like its past, or so believes Peter Beck, founder and CEO of Rocket Lab. At TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 in San Francisco, he’ll be explaining how full-service, vertically integrated space companies will (again) be the big winners of this evolving space economy. Rocket Lab was started […]

Apple joins the race to find an AI icon that makes sense

Devin Coldewey — Sat, 15 Jun 2024 18:01:00 +0000

No one knows what AI looks like, or even is supposed to look like. It does everything, but looks like nothing.

Former NSA head joins OpenAI board and safety committee

Devin Coldewey — Thu, 13 Jun 2024 22:17:27 +0000

The high-profile addition is likely intended to satisfy critics who think that OpenAI is moving faster than is wise for its customers and possibly humanity.

Flow claims it can 100x any CPU’s power with its companion chip and some elbow grease

Devin Coldewey — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 13:01:00 +0000

A Finnish startup called Flow Computing is making one of the wildest claims ever heard in silicon engineering: by adding its proprietary companion chip, any CPU can instantly double its performance, increasing to as much as 100x with software tweaks. If it works, it could help the industry keep up with the insatiable compute demand […]

iPhones will soon text via satellite

Devin Coldewey — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 17:45:44 +0000

"Messages via Satellite," announced at Apple's WWDC 2024 keynote, works much like the SOS feature does.

Cartwheel generates 3D animations from scratch to power up creators

Devin Coldewey — Wed, 05 Jun 2024 17:01:11 +0000

Cartwheel helps animators go from zero to basic movement, so creating a scene or character with elementary motions like taking a step, swatting a fly or sitting down is easier.

Kobo’s new e-readers are a sidegrade most can skip (with one exception)

Devin Coldewey — Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:31:00 +0000

Kobo put out a handful of new e-readers a few weeks back: color versions of the excellent Libra 2 and Clara, as well as an updated monochrome version of the latter. But after testing them all out, I can say that for most users, there’s no reason to switch. First, the color editions. I’ve been […]

WTF is AI?

Devin Coldewey — Sat, 01 Jun 2024 20:00:29 +0000

What is AI? We've put together this non-technical guide to give anyone a fighting chance to understand how and why today's AI works.

Voice cloning of political figures is still easy as pie

Devin Coldewey — Fri, 31 May 2024 08:01:00 +0000

The 2024 election is likely to be the first in which faked audio and video of candidates is a serious factor. As campaigns warm up, voters should be aware: voice clones of major political figures, from the president on down, get very little pushback from AI companies, as a new study demonstrates. The Center for […]

Misinformation works, and a handful of social ‘supersharers’ sent 80% of it in 2020

Devin Coldewey — Thu, 30 May 2024 18:01:00 +0000

The studies, by researchers at MIT, Ben-Gurion University, Cambridge and Northeastern, were independently conducted but complement each other well.

Valar Labs debuts AI-powered cancer care prediction tool and secures $22M

Devin Coldewey — Thu, 30 May 2024 15:59:00 +0000

Biotech startup Valar Labs has built a tool that accurately predicts certain treatment outcomes, potentially saving precious time for patients.

AI models have favorite numbers, because they think they’re people

Devin Coldewey — Tue, 28 May 2024 20:00:27 +0000

AI models are always surprising us, not just in what they can do, but also in what they can’t, and why. An interesting new behavior is both superficial and revealing about these systems: They pick random numbers as if they’re human beings, which is to say, badly. But first, what does that even mean? Can’t […]

This Week in AI: OpenAI and publishers are partners of convenience

Kyle Wiggers, Devin Coldewey — Sat, 25 May 2024 13:15:00 +0000

Keeping up with an industry as fast-moving as AI is a tall order. So until an AI can do it for you, here’s a handy roundup of recent stories in the world of machine learning, along with notable research and experiments we didn’t cover on their own. By the way, TechCrunch plans to launch an AI newsletter […]

$6M fine for robocaller who used AI to clone Biden’s voice

Devin Coldewey — Thu, 23 May 2024 18:09:13 +0000

The FCC has proposed a $6 million fine for the scammer who used voice-cloning tech to impersonate President Biden in a series of illegal robocalls during a New Hampshire primary election. It’s more about robocalls than AI, but the agency is clearly positioning this as a warning to other would-be high-tech scammers. As you may […]

ZeroPoint’s nanosecond-scale memory compression could tame power-hungry AI infrastructure

Devin Coldewey — Thu, 23 May 2024 12:01:00 +0000

ZeroPoint claims to have solved compression problems with hyper-fast, low-level memory compression that requires no real changes to the rest of the computing system.

FCC proposes all AI-generated content in political ads must be disclosed

Devin Coldewey — Wed, 22 May 2024 20:06:06 +0000

Under the envisioned framework, both candidate and issue ads would be required to include an on-air and filed disclosure that AI-generated content was used.

Autodesk acquires AI-powered VFX startup Wonder Dynamics

Devin Coldewey — Tue, 21 May 2024 20:00:00 +0000

Autodesk — the 3D tools behemoth — has acquired Wonder Dynamics, a startup that lets creators quickly and easily make complex characters and visual effects using AI-powered image analysis. The two companies have worked closely together for years but are making it official today. Wonder Dynamics, founded by VFX artist Nikola Todorovic and actor Tye […]

Alchemist’s latest batch puts AI to work as accelerator expands to Tokyo, Doha

Devin Coldewey — Tue, 21 May 2024 15:01:00 +0000

Alchemist Accelerator has a new pile of AI-forward companies demoing their wares today, if you care to watch, and the program itself is making some international moves into Tokyo and Doha. Read on for our picks of the batch. Chatting with Alchemist CEO and founder Ravi Belani ahead of demo day (today at 10:30 a.m. […]