Technical

A group of well-known AI ethicists have written a counterpoint to this week’s controversial letter asking for a six-month “pause” on AI development, criticizing it for a focus on hypothetical future threats when real harms are attributable to misuse of the tech today. Thousands of people, including such familiar names as Steve Wozniak and Elon Musk, signed the open letter from the Future of Life institute earlier this week, proposing that development of AI models like GPT-4 should be put on hold in order to avoid “loss of control of our civilization,” among other threats. Timnit Gebru, Emily M. Bender, Angelina McMillan-Major and Margaret Mitchell are all major figures in the domains of AI and ethics, known (in addition to their work) for being pushed out of Google over a paper criticizing the capabilities of AI. They are currently working together at the DAIR Institute, a new research outfit aimed at studying and exposing and preventing AI-associated harms. But they were not to ...

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here . Fri-yay Crunch! We are pretty excited about Disrupt 2023 getting a whole stage dedicated to fintech . And while we’re talking about events…There’s just a few hours left to save $200 on TC Early Stage tickets in Boston in a couple of weeks, so get yer tickets while you can! On that note, enjoy your weekend! — Christine and Haje The TechCrunch Top 3 Italy gives ChatGPT the boot : Italy’s government has been on a blocking kick lately. A few days ago, we wrote about a possible ban on cultivated meat , and today Italy wants to block ChatGPT, citing data protection concerns. Natasha L writes that the country’s data protection authority is opening an investigation into whether OpenAI is breaching the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation. Groupon gets its Czech book : Ingrid reports that Groupon has lost 99.4% of its value since its IP...

There’s enough trouble on this planet already that we don’t need new problems coming here from the sun. Unfortunately, we can’t yet destroy this pitiless star, so we are at its mercy. But NASA at least may soon be able to let us know when one of its murderous flares is going to send our terrestrial systems into disarray. Understanding and predicting space weather is a big part of NASA’s job. There’s no air up there, so no one can hear you scream, “Wow, how about this radiation!” Consequently, we rely on a set of satellites to detect and relay this important data to us. One such measurement is of solar wind, “an unrelenting stream of material from the sun.” Even NASA can’t find anything nice to say about it! Normally this stream is absorbed or dissipated by our magnetosphere, but if there’s a solar storm, it may be intense enough that it overwhelms the local defenses. When this happens, it can set electronics on the fritz, since these charged particles can flip bits or disrupt volat...

A U.S. District Court Judge for the Eastern District of New York threw out a lawsuit against Meta this week that had been simmering for a year and a half. The suit, filed in late 2021 by now-shuttered social app Phhhoto, alleged that Meta violated federal antitrust law by copying its core features with the Instagram-adjacent video looping app Boomerang . Like Boomerang, which Meta launched in October of 2015 and later integrated into Instagram itself, Phhhoto invited users to share very short GIF-like loops. U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto ultimately granted Meta’s motion to dismiss the complaint due to time-limits imposed by the relevant statutes of limitations. “Phhhoto has failed in its 69-page Amended Complaint of 222 paragraphs to allege sufficient facts that cure the untimeliness of all of its federal claims,” Matsumoto wrote in the opinion, calling the possibility of any amendment to resolve the issue of the lawsuit’s timing “futile.” New antitrust suit from Phhhoto a...

April 1 is the dumbest day on the internet, and this year, it’s not just because brands will try to prank you by selling “hot iced coffee.” Starting on Saturday, Twitter will begin removing blue checks from “legacy verified” users if they don’t sign up for a Twitter Blue subscription. This is part of new owner Elon Musk’s grand plan to make Twitter profitable, but this particular scheme has a glaring issue: if anyone with $8 per month can get a blue check, the symbol won’t be cool anymore (and also disinformation will proliferate , but Musk doesn’t seem super worried about that). Twitter initially launched its verification system in 2009 to protect celebrities from impersonation. Someone made an account pretending to be former St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa, but instead of just asking for the account to be taken down, La Russa sued Twitter. And so, the three-year-old company introduced its iconic blue check badge. Now, we’ve come full circle. Celebrities are a day awa...

As repeatedly promised by Twitter CEO Elon Musk, Twitter has opened a portion of its source code to public inspection, including the algorithm it uses to recommend tweets in users’ timelines. On GitHub, Twitter published two repositories containing code for many parts that make the social network tick, including the mechanism Twitter uses to control the tweets users see on the For You timeline. In a blog post, Twitter characterized the move as a “first step to be[ing] more transparent” while at the same time “[preventing] risk” to Twitter itself and people on the platform. On a Twitter Spaces session today, Musk clarified: “Our initial release of the so-called algorithm is going to be quite embarrassing, and people are going to find a lot of mistakes, but we’re going to fix them very quickly,” Musk said. “Even if you don’t agree with something, at least you’ll know why it’s there, and that you’re not being secretly manipulated … The analog, here, that we’re aspiring to is the gr...

Hulu is slowly rolling out a new interface on streaming devices like Fire TV, Apple TV and Roku, among other compatible devices. The new redesign moves the navigation to the left side with options for TV, Movies and My Stuff. The company confirmed to TechCrunch that the updated interface began rolling yesterday. It will be available across all supported connected TV devices in the coming months, including Android TV devices as well as Chromecast, LG smart TVs, Samsung smart TVs, Vizio SmartCast TVs and more. Cord Cutter News was the first to report the new interface. Users that have seen the update were welcomed with a message from Hulu that writes, “Over the next few weeks, Hulu’s navigation menu will move to the left side of the screen on living room devices. Press ‘back’ to open the menu for easy access to TV, Movies, My Stuff, and more.” The update makes it easier for TV users to navigate to these destinations. Previously, viewers had to scroll all the way up to the top of the...

Virgin Orbit is laying off around 85% of its workforce in order to further reduce expenses, after the troubled space company said it was unable to secure additional funding to keep it afloat. The news, which Virgin Orbit filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Thursday, comes just two weeks after the company furloughed all employees and entered an “operational pause” in order to find more cash. There were talks that Matthew Brown, a Texas-based venture capitalist, may come to the rescue, but those talks dissolved over the last weekend. Today’s filing confirms that Virgin was unable to find another lifeline. According to audio of an employee all-hands on Thursday afternoon obtained by CNBC, Virgin CEO Dan Hart – reportedly choking up, again per CNBC – said, “We have no choice but to implement immediate, dramatic and extremely painful changes.” He said the call would “probably the hardest all-hands that we’ve ever done in my life.” The layoffs span all departments. Bu...

More than five years ago, a newly minted Waymo took the wraps off of what would become its first commercialized autonomous vehicle: a Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivan loaded with sensors and software. Now, the minivan, a symbol of the early and hypey AV days, is headed for retirement as Waymo transitions its fleet to the all-electric Jaguar I-Pace vehicles equipped with its fifth-generation self-driving system. When the Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid AV was first revealed, it might not have been what people expected from the former Google self-driving project turned Alphabet-owned business. The design wasn’t ripped from the pages of a graphic sci-fi novel and it was hardly flashy. But the white minivan — highlighted with the same blue and green accent colors found on the Waymo logo — embodied the company’s aim. Waymo wanted a friendly looking vehicle people would feel comfortable using. The partnership with established manufacturer Fiat Chrysler — now Stellantis — also derisked an alread...

Unacademy has laid off 12% of its workforce, or over 350 roles, in its latest round of layoffs — just over four months after cutting about 350 roles  in November. Unacademy co-founder and CEO Gaurav Munjal announced the new layoff decision in a Slack post to employees. “We have taken every step in the right decision to make our core business profitable, yet it’s not enough. We have to go further, we have to go deeper,” he wrote in the message reviewed by TechCrunch. “Today’s reality is a contrast from two years ago where we saw unprecedented growth because of accelerated adoption of online learning. Today, the global economy is enduring a recession, funding is scare and running a profitable business is key. We have to adapt to these changes, build and operate in a much leaner manner so we can truly create value for our users and shareholders,” he said. The latest move comes just days after the Bengaluru-based startup hived off programming learning platform CodeChef, which it ac...

When Stellantis brand Jeep descended on Moab, Utah this week for its annual off-roading and concept roadshow, electrification ruled the road. The automaker showed off this week seven concepts — four of which are electrified — from the Jeep brand and Jeep Performance Parts (JPP) by Mopar ahead of the Easter Jeep Safari, an annual multi-day event hosted by Moab’s Red Rock 4-Wheelers. Jeep is not the organizer of the Easter Jeep Safari. However, the company does use the annual gathering to showcase a handful of concept vehicles to give the world (and media) a sense of what might be coming down the road.  TechCrunch was on hand to test all of them in a controlled off-road environment. While the concept vehicles were equipped with an array of powertrains, it was hard to ignore the variety of plug-in hybrid and battery-electric setups. (Although it was also sure hard to miss the Jeep Scrambler 392 concept equipped with a 6.4-liter HEMI V-8 engine that’s inspired by the 1981 Jeep Scramb...

Lyft might once again drop its shared rides offering, just one of several changes the company’s newly appointed CEO could make in a bid to focus on its core ride-hailing business and become profitable. David Risher, who is taking over as Lyft’s CEO in mid-April , told TechCrunch in a wide ranging interview that other features may also be axed. For instance, the Wait & See feature, which allows riders in certain regions to pay a lower fare if they wait for the best-located driver, may end, he said. “It’s possible that maybe we don’t need both of those anymore and that we can focus all our resources on doing a fewer number of things better,” Risher, the former Amazon executive, told TechCrunch. “Maybe it’s time for us to say the shared rides were great for a time, but it’s time to let that go.” Lyft, co-founded by Logan Green and John Zimmer, launched shared rides in 2014 on a small scale before expanding the service. Uber launched Uber Pool the same year. Both companies dropped t...

The first crewed flight test of Boeing’s Starliner capsule is facing yet another delay, with NASA officials saying Wednesday that it was now targeting no earlier than July 21 for launch. The space agency and Boeing blamed the delay on certification issues related to the capsule’s parachute system and other verifications on Starliner’s components and capabilities, as well as scheduling constraints with other missions scheduled to fly to and from the International Space Station (ISS). Steve Stich, NASA’s program manager for the commercial crew program, told reporters that NASA and Boeing needs to complete an additional ground test on the parachute system, as well as a test of Starliner’s abort system. Stress testing of the flight and guidance, navigation and control systems and additional testing with crew are due to be complete by the end of this month. “The Starliner spacecraft is in really good shape,” Stich told reporters during a media briefing Wednesday, adding that it’s “largel...

If you think embedded insurance is the only hot thing in insurtech these days, we’ve got a surprise in store for you: While it’s true that startups that help sell insurance together with other products and services are enjoying tailwinds, there are plenty of other opportunities in the space, several investors told TechCrunch+. You see, insurtech startups often need to take into account the myriad rules and regulations in place when they seek to innovate and embed insurance into products, which might make it difficult to pull it off. And given the current emphasis on achieving cost efficiency to extend runways in the broader startup ecosystem, it appears investors are open to insurtech startups that can build a sustainable business model, regardless of it including embedded insurance. “Insurtech startups that do not offer embedded insurance, and rather provide other innovative solutions will still attract VC funding this year, especially if they can show cost-efficient and sustainabl...