All posts tagged: AI

AI tool builds entirely new languages, then checks its own grammar

AI tool builds entirely new languages, then checks its own grammar

Published by Jenni Sidey

ConlangCrafter creates new languages by building their sounds, grammar, and words in separate steps. The system checks its own work and fixes contradictions, producing more varied and consistent languages than a single AI prompt. The technology could assist fictional world-building and research involving languages with limited written examples. An artificial language with no consonants sounds like a puzzle. A language spoken through colors and tentacle gestures sounds stranger still. ConlangCrafter can build both, while trying to keep every rule, word, and translation consistent. “The idea of ConlangCrafter is: ‘How can we make new languages that have different linguistic features than what we normally see in natural languages?’” said Alper, the paper’s first author and an incoming University of Miami computer science professor. The team has created more than 60 languages and released the code online. Users can also set unusual constraints before generation begins. The system uses large language models to create constructed languages, or conlangs, one layer at a time. (CREDIT: Shutterstock) Building a language in separate layers A general-purpose model may produce something …

Monday.com is the latest tech company to blame AI for layoffs — here are 20 others

Monday.com is the latest tech company to blame AI for layoffs — here are 20 others

Published by skeptic

Monday.com, the Tel Aviv-based work management software company known for its colorful, customizable project-tracking boards, this week became the latest tech company to cite AI as a factor in job cuts. On Wednesday, the company said in an SEC filing that it will lay off about 20% of its workforce, or just over 600 employees, as part of a “restructuring plan” tied to its “ongoing transformation of its product, marketing, and go-to-market strategy” in support of “a leaner, more focused operating model” as it continues investing in its “AI-driven growth strategy.” Co-founder Eran Zinman told employees in a LinkedIn memo that the move “was not made to reduce costs or replace people with AI,” positioning it instead as adapting the organization to a new AI-first vision the company laid out roughly a year ago when it rebranded around a platform-wide AI push. Monday.com, which has two offices in the U.S., expects $45 million to $55 million in net restructuring charges but still projects up to 20% year-over-year revenue growth for 2026. So far, according to …

Free iPhone deal: T-Mobile is giving away the Apple iPhone 17 for free — how to qualify

Free iPhone deal: T-Mobile is giving away the Apple iPhone 17 for free — how to qualify

Published by skeptic

TL;DR: The iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Pro are available for free right now with T-Mobile. Here’s how to qualify for this limited-time offer. Free when you trade in your eligible phone on an Experience More or Experience Beyond plan.. Free when you switch to T-Mobile and bring your number on an Experience Beyond plan. Samsung has been the center of attention this week, and that’s totally fair. It’s not every week that a major brand drops three new foldables smartphones, two smartwatches, and smart glasses. But can we hold some space for Apple? Apple prices are bumping in the face of RAMageddon, but you can still secure a special offer on iPhones from T-Mobile. This popular mobile carrier has just dropped a fresh batch of free iPhone deals on the latest handsets: Apple iPhone 17 — free when you trade in your eligible phone on an Experience More or Experience Beyond plan. Apple iPhone 17 Pro — free when you switch to T-Mobile and bring your number on an Experience Beyond plan (no trade-in …

I tried out OpenAI’s new AI keypad — which will be fun for some coders and slightly mystifying to everyone else

I tried out OpenAI’s new AI keypad — which will be fun for some coders and slightly mystifying to everyone else

Published by skeptic

OpenAI launched its first piece of hardware last week — a fancy little keypad built to pair with ChatGPT. Micro, which was developed in collaboration with specialty keyboard designer Work Louder, is essentially an artisanal workplace novelty that many tech enthusiasts will love and that may leave everyone else a little puzzled. OpenAI’s entrance into the hardware market hasn’t arrived without drama. Several weeks ago, Apple sued the AI lab and accused it of trade theft — kicking off what’s certain to be a long-simmering legal battle. Meanwhile, news of another smart home product in development at OpenAI has also raised eyebrows, as the supposed device — which is being built to pair with ChatGPT — was reportedly developed by former Apple engineers. Until the legal battle works itself out and OpenAI’s broader hardware ambitions materialize, the most the startup has to offer is Micro — a funky little keypad clearly engineered to delight the tech industry’s code monkeys. OpenAI sent TechCrunch a Micro test unit. The first big thing you notice when initially handling …

Google justifies its massive AI spending with a booming cloud business

Google justifies its massive AI spending with a booming cloud business

Published by skeptic

Alphabet investors have very publicly worried that the company’s massive AI spending isn’t worth the money. With the company’s latest earnings report, those investors should be able to relax a little. The takeaway: Google’s cloud business — driven largely by enterprise AI adoption — is booming. The search giant saw Google Cloud revenue spike 82% from where it was this time last year, climbing to $24.8 billion. That’s well above last quarter’s generous year-over-year growth, which showed a revenue jump of 63% to $20 billion — and it also handily beats what Wall Street analysts expected for this quarter’s growth (the expectation was $22.46 billion). Those cloud gains were driven largely by enterprise AI solutions and enterprise AI infrastructure adoption, the company said, while also noting that its backlog of cloud contracting work — that is work that it hasn’t yet converted into revenue — had climbed to $514 billion. The company’s profit hit $112.1 billion, which is a massive jump from this time last year, when the company reported $28.1 billion in profit, the …

Darren Aronofsky Raising Money for AI Studio Primordial Soup

Darren Aronofsky Raising Money for AI Studio Primordial Soup

Published by Daniella Wilson

Primordial Soup, the AI Film and content studio launched by filmmaker Darren Aronofsky (The Whale, Black Swan, Requiem For a Dream) is raising cash as AI-first filmmaking continues to proliferate, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. Earlier this month Primordial Soup Labs, Inc., which lists Aronofsky and his producing partner Dylan Golden as executive officers, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a $15 million equity raise. The document said that the company had sold just over $11 million of that total so far, with the first sale taking place July 1. It is not clear what Primordial Soup will use the cash for, though the company’s website suggests that it is in the midst of something that amounts to a hiring spree, with open roles for “generative artists,” social media strategists, a chief of staff, and a “Head of Studio.” The head of studio role underscores the scale of the endeavor, with the description noting that the person they hire will run content strategy and studio operations. “You’ll oversee the development, production and commercialization …

Odyssey AI Filmmakers Say They Want to Live Alongside Chris Nolan

Odyssey AI Filmmakers Say They Want to Live Alongside Chris Nolan

Published by Daniella Wilson

The news caught people aback, as it was meant to do, as it inevitably would do. An AI filmmaker was making his own 135-minute movie inspired by The Odyssey — public-domain work, to be sure, but also clearly the domain of Christopher Nolan in this Summer of Our Damon-ian Lord 2026.  The filmmaker said he’d hold off from releasing the work — titled Odysseus: The Fall — for at least another several weeks. But that didn’t stop the backlash. Just what exactly was the game of this provocateur, an Iran-born, England-raised Millennial engineer named Ash Koosha? Why was he making a movie on the same subject as Nolan’s $250 million epic for a few thousand dollars and no actors? And how did his new feature square with Dreams of Violet, his far more sympathy-producing AI film about the recent Iranian democracy protests, which debuted at Tribeca last month? That it hit at a moment when Nolan disagreed with his own star Matt Damon about whether there was a future for large-scale analogue filmmaking (Damon said “I knew that this was the last chance I was …

Scientists reveal limits of AI – where it succeeds and where it fails

Scientists reveal limits of AI – where it succeeds and where it fails

Published by Jenni Sidey

Artificial intelligence promises clear answers from complex data. Yet new research suggests there are limits that no amount of data can overcome. Some problems, scientists now show, cannot be solved by AI at all. A study explores where machine learning succeeds and where it fails. Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the University of California Santa Barbara designed mathematical systems meant to expose these limits. Their findings reveal a deeper truth. In some cases, learning is not just difficult, it is impossible. Mapping The Boundaries Of AI Modern science often relies on AI to study systems that are too complex for traditional equations. These include ocean currents, brain activity, and robotic motion. Instead of writing down exact rules, scientists collect data and train algorithms to learn patterns. Convergent general-purpose methods for Koopman learning. (CREDIT: Nature Communications) This approach has led to major breakthroughs. Still, it does not always work. Models can give unstable results or predictions that drift over time. Dr Matthew Colbrook, the study’s lead author from Cambridge’s Department of Applied Mathematics and …

Free to Speak, Not to Listen: Freedom of Expression in the Age of AI Chatbots

Free to Speak, Not to Listen: Freedom of Expression in the Age of AI Chatbots

Published by Jenni Sidey

Can you lose your free speech even when you are not prevented from saying anything? To answer this question, let us consider two ways in which governments could regulate AI chatbots in the near future. First, imagine a government prohibiting the commercialization of AI chatbots that fail to meet safety benchmarks. For instance, chatbots should not provide users with detailed instructions for building weapons, generate dangerous conspiracy theories, or encourage self-harm. We’ll call this case AI Safety. My second case is Political Bias. In this scenario, the government prohibits the commercialization of AI chatbots unless their developer can demonstrate that the chatbots are not politically biased and that the information they provide on controversial issues reflects a diversity of viewpoints. Would any of these scenarios violate stakeholders’ moral right to freedom of expression? This, of course, depends on who the stakeholders are. Consider, for a moment, that AI chatbots might possess speech rights. This may seem preposterous, but some scholars argue that conversational AI agents have a legal right to freedom of expression. Yet there are serious philosophical reasons to …

Netflix Bought Ben Affleck’s AI Company for 7M Filing Reveals

Netflix Bought Ben Affleck’s AI Company for $587M Filing Reveals

Published by Daniella Wilson

When Netflix acquired Ben Affleck’s mysterious AI company InterPositive earlier this year, it took the industry by storm. What was the company? What tools did it create for filmmakers? How would Netflix use them, and use Affleck, who committed to work as a senior advisor to the company in the deal? And then there was the question of price. How much was the company worth to the streaming giant? Thanks to a new securities filing, we know the answer to that final question. Netflix disclosed in an SEC filing Friday that it paid $587 million for InterPositive, in cash. The disclosure was made in the company’s form 10-Q, writing that “in March 2026, the Company completed an acquisition which was accounted for as a business combination for a total purchase price of approximately $587 million, consisting of cash consideration.” While the filing does not name InterPositive, Netflix announced the deal on March 5. The sale price was also filed in the company’s Q1 10-Q, which was filed in May. InterPositive was formed in 2022 as …