About six weeks ago, I sent an email to Satya Nadella complaining about the monolithic winner-takes-all architecture that Silicon Valley seems to envision for AI, contrasting it with “the architecture of participation” that had driven previous technology revolutions, most notably the internet and open source software. I suspected that Satya might be sympathetic because of…
Anthropic has announced two new AI models that it claims represent a major step toward making AI agents truly useful. AI agents trained on Claude Opus 4, the company’s most powerful model to date, raise the bar for what such systems are capable of by tackling difficult tasks over extended periods of time and responding…
On Dec. 21, 2022, just as peak holiday season travel was getting underway, Southwest Airlines went through a cascading series of failures in their scheduling, initially triggered by severe winter weather in the Denver area. But the problems spread through their network, and over the course of the next 10 days the crisis ended up…
Humans naturally learn by making connections between sight and sound. For instance, we can watch someone playing the cello and recognize that the cellist’s movements are generating the music we hear. A new approach developed by researchers from MIT and elsewhere improves an AI model’s ability to learn in this same fashion. This could be…
If you want to know where AI is headed, this year’s Google I/O has you covered. The company’s annual showcase of next-gen products, which kicked off yesterday, has all of the pomp and pizzazz, the sizzle reels and celebrity walk-ons, that you’d expect from a multimillion dollar marketing event. But it also shows us just…
Learn how Android XR and Gemini are coming to devices like glasses and headsets, and watch Google I/O demos.
AI’s potential to transform business is undeniable, but realizing tangible value remains a challenge. This session explores where AI is driving the greatest returns today, how to set and manage realistic expectations, and approaches to overcome cultural and operational inertia. Attendees will gain practical guidance and actionable insights to inform their AI strategies and guide…
It’s been quite a couple weeks for stories about AI in the courtroom. You might have heard about the deceased victim of a road rage incident whose family created an AI avatar of him to show as an impact statement (possibly the first time this has been done in the US). But there’s a bigger,…
With seemingly no limit to the demand for artificial intelligence, everyone in the energy, AI, and climate fields is justifiably worried. Will there be enough clean electricity to power AI and enough water to cool the data centers that support this technology? These are important questions with serious implications for communities, the economy, and the…
Behavioral economist Sendhil Mullainathan has never forgotten the pleasure he felt the first time he tasted a delicious crisp, yet gooey Levain cookie. He compares the experience to when he encounters new ideas. “That hedonic pleasure is pretty much the same pleasure I get hearing a new idea, discovering a new way of looking at…