All posts tagged: artificial intelligence

Tesla quietly closes its secret ~ billion AI hardware deal

Tesla quietly closes its secret ~$2 billion AI hardware deal

Published by skeptic

Tesla has closed the mysterious ~$2 billion acquisition of an AI hardware company that it first hinted at in April — and it did so, again, without naming the target or issuing a press release. The deal was confirmed in a single passage buried in Tesla’s Q2 2026 10-Q filing, which for the first time attached a final price: $1.95 billion, paid entirely in Tesla stock and equity awards. What the filing reveals According to the 10-Q, Tesla “acquired an AI hardware company in an asset acquisition for $1.95 billion in Tesla common stock and equity awards” during the second quarter. Of that, $1.73 billion is contingent — “subject to certain service conditions and/or performance milestones dependent on the successful deployment of the company’s technology.” Only $222 million was allocated to an actual asset: “a patent and related developed technology intangible asset.” Advertisement – scroll for more content In plain terms, Tesla assigned just $222 million of hard value to what it bought. The rest is stock tied to keeping the acquired team in place …

Silicon Valley Is Completely Divided Over Chinese AI

Silicon Valley Is Completely Divided Over Chinese AI

Published by skeptic

A huge debate is brewing in Silicon Valley over the proliferation of Chinese-made artificial intelligence tools, particularly “open-weight” AI systems that, by some measures, can compete with or even outperform some of the best US models. My WIRED colleague Hugo Lowell has written about the Trump administration’s internal debate on how to handle these Chinese models. Among AI companies in the Valley, the issue is proving even more divisive. A top concern in both DC and the Valley relates to distillation, in which a less capable AI model is trained on the outputs of a more powerful one. In June, Anthropic accused the Chinese tech giant Alibaba of illicitly stealing its IP through distillation attacks. Then, earlier this week, the White House said that it believes the Beijing-based Moonshot AI had developed its Kimi K3 model by distilling Anthropic’s Fable 5 model. Another big concern is how quickly China’s models are appearing and spreading. An open-weight AI model has its core components made public, so that it can be fine-tuned to suit a user’s needs. …

Some Kids Will Never Think AI Is Cool

Some Kids Will Never Think AI Is Cool

Published by skeptic

Forget cheating on homework and chatbot friends. Some kids are getting in on a new AI trend: thinking it sucks. In the four years since chatbots went mainstream, and their marketing campaigns went into overdrive, young people have grown increasingly skeptical of the hype around LLMs. Yes, many of them still use the tech for school assignments and companionship, but according to market research firm YPulse, 37 percent of teens aged 13 to 17 cringe when they see AI content like music and videos, and more than half worry about misinformation and deepfakes. The polling on youthful AI attitudes shows a great deal of contradiction. Adoption rates are high, with a majority of America’s teens reporting they use chatbots, but enthusiasm is mixed. A recent Pew Research report found that while many teens think AI will be good for them personally, over a fourth of their cohort believe AI will have a negative impact on society in the next 20 years, citing job loss, the decline of critical thinking skills, and environmental impacts as concerns. …

Meta’s New Feel-Good AI Ad Uses a Song About the World Ending

Meta’s New Feel-Good AI Ad Uses a Song About the World Ending

Published by skeptic

On Thursday morning, Meta published an ad to its official Instagram account with the message that artificial intelligence will not “make us less connected” or “leave us behind.” It was set to the 1972 David Bowie track “Five Years,” which is about, among other things, the end of the world. “Call us optimists, call us dreamers, call us whatever the hell you want — but we’re betting on people, and we like those odds,” the narrator says, as a toddler plays with a butterfly, two parents laugh with their infant, and Jalen Brunson waves at the Knicks Championship Parade. (The ad also takes special care to highlight use cases for its controversial smart glasses that are not, say, harassing women while surreptitiously recording them.) The snippet of “Five Years” used in the ad includes the following lyrics: I heard telephones, opera house, favorite melodies I saw boys, toys, electric irons and TVs My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare I had to cram so many things to store everything in …

Target Practice | Sophia Goodfriend

Target Practice | Sophia Goodfriend

Published by Jenni Sidey

In April 2024 international news sources circulated a video of a talk delivered by a senior Israeli military official during a tech conference at Tel Aviv University about a year earlier. The speaker, whose face is not shown, introduces himself only as “Colonel Yoav,” the head of data science and AI for Unit 8200, an elite outfit within Israel’s intelligence directorate. He is there to talk about the force’s embrace of artificial intelligence for the purposes of, as one slide in his presentation puts it, “finding new terrorists.” During Israel’s May 2021 assault on Gaza, Colonel Yoav explains, his unit had used AI to generate two hundred targets, a process that in the past would have taken “almost a year.” In comparison, he suggests, the algorithm could identify likely members of militant organizations in practically no time: “Let’s say we have some terrorists that form a group, and we know only some of them. By practicing our data science magic powder we are able to find the rest.” When Israel again began bombing Gaza after …

Genesis Mission launches 278 AI-powered projects across the US

Genesis Mission launches 278 AI-powered projects across the US

Published by skeptic

A total of 278 projects have been chosen following what the DOE described as the largest response ever received for one of its funding opportunities. The selected teams span all 50 US states and will focus on developing AI-enabled scientific workflows to advance research in energy, discovery science, and national security. The Genesis Mission aims to combine advanced AI, high-performance computing, and the expertise of leading researchers to increase scientific productivity. The selected projects will now move into the development phase, supported by specialised computing infrastructure and AI tools designed to speed up research and innovation. US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright commented: “America has no shortage of bold ideas or talented scientists, and the response to the Genesis Mission proves that. “The 278 projects selected today represent the very best of our nation’s scientific enterprise. “The remarkable number of high-quality proposals we received demonstrates that America’s innovation pipeline is strong, and it points to even greater opportunities for future investment and continued expansion of the Genesis Mission portfolio.” Record response drives nationwide research effort The …

How AI is transforming EU public procurement transparency

How AI is transforming EU public procurement transparency

Published by skeptic

The CEDAR project harnesses artificial intelligence (AI) and Common European Data Spaces to detect fraud and bring accountability to over €2tn in annual EU public spending Public procurement is the engine room of the European economy, approximately 14% of the EU’s GDP, over €2tn annually. Yet for decades, this vast expenditure has been managed through fragmented, localised systems that often lack transparency, leaving the process vulnerable to inefficiency, fraud, and corruption. The CEDAR project (Common European Data Spaces and Robust AI for Transparent Public Governance), a Horizon Europe initiative running from 2024 to 2026, is designed to revolutionise the full lifecycle of procurement data management. By leveraging advanced AI and the transformative power of Common European Data Spaces (CEDS), CEDAR goes beyond digitising records to build a cross-border intelligence layer that ensures public money is spent accountably and effectively. From fragmented data to FAIR intelligence The primary hurdle in public governance has never been a lack of data, but rather its siloed nature. Procurement notices, contract awards, and invoices are often scattered across thousands of …

Remember Jibo? Its Successor Is a Wearable That Turns Your Life Into AI Slop

Remember Jibo? Its Successor Is a Wearable That Turns Your Life Into AI Slop

Published by skeptic

Gu and the company aren’t ready to share specific details about what the iKairos will be capable of. In its press release, Lingverse says the iKairos will “continuously observe both you and your surroundings” and “begin to act as a personal AI guardian,” but did not clarify how that would function. iKairos works as both a wearable and a mounted home device, so it can collect data from the wearer’s perspective and from a stationary position. Put the device on the mount, and it will watch you and gather data about how you interact in the world. Having the option of those different viewpoints aims to give the iKairos more of a holistic sense of what is happening around it. Those details, apparently, can then be transformed into AI-generated images. After announcing its funding on Wednesday, Lingverse’s website for the iKairos now describes it as an “AI journal,” with the slogan “Every starred moment becomes a capsule. iKairos watches for what matters, then seals it.” What that seems to mean—based on the visual imagery on …

The White House Is Trying to Figure Out What to Do About Chinese AI

The White House Is Trying to Figure Out What to Do About Chinese AI

Published by skeptic

The Trump administration is split over how to respond to the rapid rise of China’s leading AI models, according to multiple people familiar with deliberations. The debate is broadly divided between parts of the White House, which has pushed for stricter controls on Chinese AI that may soon rival the most powerful US models, and the Commerce Department, which has viewed those restrictions as unworkable. The conundrum has become the latest flash point for the administration over AI, after China’s Moonshot AI lab last week released its Kimi K3 model that rivals the top US models from Anthropic and OpenAI. In recent days, senior White House officials have discussed possible measures to stop China’s AI labs from developing their models by training them on US models, a practice known as distillation, the people say. The White House is expected to take some sort of presidential action after Anthropic last month alleged the Chinese tech company Alibaba had carried out the “largest known distillation attack” against it to date. This action is not currently expected to …

Earnings at Musk’s Car Company Fall as Research Spending Cuts Into Profit From Selling Cars

Earnings at Musk’s Car Company Fall as Research Spending Cuts Into Profit From Selling Cars

Published by Sam Flores

Tesla said Wednesday that its profits fell last quarter as the car company run by Elon Musk shoveled more money into research and development, cutting into profits from a sharp increase in vehicle sales. The Austin, Texas, company reported second-quarter net income of $1.11 billion, or 32 cents per share. Excluding certain items, earnings were 33 cents per share, well short of the 53 cents per share forecast by Wall Street analysts, according to FactSet. Revenue rose 26% to $28.24 billion, beating analysts’ forecast of $26.42 billion. While the core car business had a solid quarter, Tesla is now focused on building out the infrastructure and AI software that underpins its robotaxis and robotics businesses, which Musk has said are the future of the company. And doing so requires a lot more spending. Research and development spending surged about 49% from a year earlier to $2.37 billion — higher than its been going back at least four quarters. “We’re investing a lot in growing the core business and really preparing for the future,” Musk said …