A number of high-profile whistleblowers in the technology industry have stepped into the spotlight in the past few years. For the most part, they have been revealing corporate practices that thwart the public interest: Frances Haugen exposed personal data expl
We’ve made a mess of the Earth’s oceans. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP) — which is exactly what it sounds like — is estimated to cover an area of over 1.6 million square kilometers (620,000 square miles). It contains thousands of tons
If you’re concerned about the biases and bigotry of AI models, you’re gonna love the latest addition to the ranks: a text generator trained on 4chan’s /pol/ board. Short for “Politically Incorrect,” /pol/ is a bastion of hate speech, conspiracy theories, and far-right extremism. It’s also 4chan’s most active board, accumulating around 150,000 daily posts. These attributes attracted Yannick Kilcher, an AI whizz and YouTuber, to use /pol/ as a testing ground for bots. Kilcher first fine-tunedthe G
What happens when an autonomous vehicle gets stuck in the mud? Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University wanted to find out. They took an all-terrain vehicle off-road. With researchers on board, it traveled through challenging situations such as driving through dense vegetation and puddles. It was put through the paces with aggressive driving up and down hills, at speeds of 30mph (48mph), and sharp turns. The researchers generated a dataset called TartanDrive. It consists of roughly 200,000
As an entrepreneur or founder, increasing trust in your brand should be your top priority. We all know it takes decades to build up trust, but only a few days, or even hours, to lose it. In Denmark, where I live, we are good at trusting one another. It is common for Danish startups to grant their employees ‘trust with responsibility’ by allowing them to make important decisions on their own. In fact, according to OECD, Danes are one of the most trusting countries in the world. This is an encoura
Anthony Bourdain once wrote, “Good food, good eating, is all about blood and organs, cruelty and decay.” But if Mosa Meat gets its way, you might soon be able to get the blood and organs without all the cruelty to the animals and decay of the planet. I’ve been vegan for a few years now, but for most of my life, I would consume several pounds of meat a day. With established plant-based options like Impossible Foods, Beyond Meat, and newcomers like Juicy Marbles making headway into the meat market
Apple has joined the thriving “buy now, pay later” industry, with a customized service called Apple Pay Later. The service was announced earlier this week at the 2022 Worldwide Developers Conference, and will initially be launched in the United States later this year. Pay Later will be built into the Apple Wallet and eligible for use on any purchase made through Apple Pay. Customers will be able to split the cost of a purchase into four equal payments, with zero interest and fees, spread over a
An uncrewed vessel dubbed “Mayflower” recently completed the first fully autonomous transatlantic journey on the open sea. Powered by IBM’s AI, the ship was designed and built by non-profit maritime research organization Promare. Its purpose is to boldly go where no robot has gone before, and collect oodles of data from our oceans. Up front: IBM isn’t exactly in the autonomous boating business. We’re probably not going to see Big Blue selling robo-yachts anytime soon. Instead, IBM’s involvement
I recently attended a panel discussion on profitability featuring representatives from several rideshare providers at Micromobility Europe. Panelists were asked if their companies were profitable. It might surprise you to know that despite whopping masses of funding, only one out of four was generating a profit: ❌ Lime was founded in 2017 in the US and received $1.5B in funding. ❌ Dott was founded in 2018 in the Netherlands and raised $210.8M ❌ Swappable battery company Swobbee was founded i
Back in 2015, Tesla introduced its Powerwall battery energy storage system for homes, having surpassed 200,000 installations last year. Now, Toyota is throwing its hat in the ring with its very own smart system for residential use. Incorporating technology from the automaker’s electrified vehicles, the so-called O-Uchi Kyuden System features a 8.7kWh capacity and a 5.5kWh output. The O-Uchi Kyuden System. Credit: Toyota It’s designed as an emergency electricity source during power outages, as we