Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA
Box CEO Aaron Levie wouldn’t be surprised if his engineers set up a tokenmaxxing leaderboard. Loading audio narration… “Honestly, they might exist,” he told Business Insider. “I just don’t know that it’s gone super viral across the entire company yet.”Levie wouldn’t be against it, per se. He said the trend — in which engineers race against each other to spend as many AI tokens as possible — is a “fun, novel thing” that leads in the right direction. It will push AI agents to their limits, he said, and find the biggest productivity gains.Token rankings are the new hot-button topic…
The promise of physical AI is that engineers will be able to program physical agents the same way they do digital ones. We’re not there yet. Robotics is still held back by a paucity of data from physical spaces. To train their machines, companies need to build mock-up warehouses to test their machines, while an entire industry is springing up around surveilling factory lines and gig workers to train deep learning models to operate robots. Another option is simulation; detailed virtual replicas of real-world environments could provide the data and workspaces that roboticists need to do this work in a…
A company announcing layoffs cited AI. How original. Loading audio narration… Snap is cutting 16% of its workforce, with CEO Evan Spiegel referencing “rapid advancements” in AI.It joins the ranks of Block, Atlassian, and a handful of others that have cited the tech as one of the driving reasons behind the layoffs.We could argue over whether these cuts are actually AI-related. Snap’s stock is down 25% this year and more than 90% from its all-time high. That’s despite a big surge over the past month. (It’s a favorite among teens for messaging, so there’s that.)Regardless of the reason, it doesn’t…
A swell of backlash against the data center development boom has left the industry struggling to reboot its image. Loading audio narration… The mounting opposition over issues such as rising power costs, water usage, and AI’s broader impact on the job market and environment could threaten trillions of dollars of projects backed by Big Tech, Wall Street investment giants, and a growing collection of developers.Large and prominent projects have already become casualties of the blowback. In late March, a Virginia appeals court invalidated a rezoning for Digital Gateway, a planned 22 million square foot data center complex on a rural…
DeepL, a translation company best known for its text tools, released a voice-to-voice translation suite today that covers use cases like meetings, mobile and web conversations, and group conversations for frontline workers through custom apps. The company is also releasing an API that lets outside developers and businesses build on top of DeepL’s tech for customized use cases, such as call centers. “After spending so many years in text translation, voice was a natural step for us,” DeepL CEO Jarek Kutylowski told TechCrunch in an interview. “We have come a long way when it comes to text translation and document…
Once in a while, something happens in tech land that’s prime meme fodder. The latest: A shoe company suddenly — and seemingly inexplicably — pivots to go all in on AI. Loading audio narration… Allbirds found itself the subject of many jokes on social media on Wednesday. Investors in the long-beleaguered company, though, had something to celebrate. Its stock price shot through the roof after it rebranded itself as NewBird AI and said it would provide GPU compute-as-a-service.Have a look at some of these top-tier comedy offerings:#1 As Ross Geller once yelled in a legendary ‘Friends’ episode: ‘PIVOT!’#2 Someone’s going…
Jensen Huang says Nvidia invests in a lot of tech companies, instead of selecting a handful, for a reason. Loading audio narration… “There are so many great, amazing foundation model companies, and we try to invest in all of them,” he said on an episode of the “Dwarkesh” podcast released on Wednesday. “We don’t pick winners. We need to support everyone.”Huang, who cofounded Nvidia in 1993, said that there were two reasons behind this. One, he said its not Nvidia’s job to pick winners. Two, the company’s history is a lesson.”When Nvidia first started, there were 60 3D graphics companies,”…
Just 15 minutes, from concept to publish. That’s how long it took for me to create a basic version of a work management tool like Asana without writing a single line of code. Loading audio narration… The idea struck me one weekday when I asked my team: “What annoys you most about our workflow? What’s the one thing you want me to change?”One pain point came up: They weren’t a huge fan of the Google Doc I’d been using to track our long-term reporting. So, I thought: I have 15 minutes for a coffee break. Let me see how far…
Gone are the days of needing a convoluted phone plan with a contract full of pitfalls to get cell service. Mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) like Visible Wireless do away with unnecessary extras, keeping plans as simple as a monthly subscription service, as you’d expect from your favorite streaming service.As a longtime paying customer of the brand, I’m happy to report that Visible is as good as it looks. Using Verizon’s network, it offers a reliable connection and data that, while deprioritized to Verizon’s higher-paying customers, almost never fails. Plans also include sweet perks like high-quality video streaming and global…
Thinking Machines Lab, the startup founded by ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, has lost another founding member to Meta. Loading audio narration… A veteran software engineer, Joshua Gross, built and shipped Thinking Machines Lab’s flagship product, Tinker, from “zero-to-one,” according to his LinkedIn profile.He joined Meta Superintelligence Labs last month and now leads engineering teams, according to his LinkedIn profile. Gross had previously worked at OpenAI and Meta (formerly Facebook).Thinking Machines Lab, which raised a huge $2 billion funding round at a $12 billion valuation last year, has become an AI talent hub. It has faced a wave of poaching from…