Science & Technology

There are already fears of artificial intelligence (AI) taking our jobs, or even ending humanity all together. Now a robot has been filmed apparently groping a woman in Saudi Arabia. The seven-second clip was taken at DeepFest in Riyadh – an event billed as the ‘premier meeting place for the global artificial intelligence ecosystem’. During the showcase,…

Worms living near Chernobyl have developed a new ‘superpower’, scientists discover • Worms living near Chernboyl appear to be immune to radiation • Results give scientists clues to how DNA repair can vary between individuals From black frogs to a new species of dog, radiation exposure has forced many animals living near Chernobyl to mutate. But a…

Top scientist warns AI could surpass human intelligence by 2027 – decades earlier than previously predicted • Mathematics PhD, futurist Ben Goertzel said advanced AI could make its own AI • PhD predicts ‘artificial super intelligence’ smarter than all of human civilization The computer scientist and CEO who popularized the term ‘artificial general intelligence’ (AGI) believes AI…

On a late night in December, Shane Jones, an artificial intelligence engineer at Microsoft , felt sickened by the images popping up on his computer. Jones was noodling with Copilot Designer, the AI image generator that Microsoft debuted in March 2023, powered by OpenAI’s technology. Like with OpenAI’s DALL-E, users enter text prompts to create pictures. Creativity…

In an update that might reassure literally everyone on Earth, a new study is effectively debunking any speculation that the infamous asteroid Apophis will collide with our planet. Initially discovered in 2004 and officially named asteroid 99942, Apophis quickly gained notoriety as one of the most hazardous asteroids in our solar system. This was due to its…

A former Google software engineer has been charged by the US with stealing trade secrets about artificial intelligence (AI) while secretly working for two Chinese companies. Linwei Ding, also known as Leon Ding, was indicted in California on four charges and arrested on Wednesday. The Chinese national allegedly stole more than 500 confidential files. If convicted he…

Elon Musk shared posts mocking the global outage reported by users on Facebook and Instagram. Both these platforms are owned by Meta. Elon Musk took a dig at rival Meta after social media platforms Facebook and Instagram faced a global outage on Tuesday evening. The two platforms were back online after about an hour. Musk, who acquired…

For the first time, ‘mini-organs’ have been grown using human stem cells taken from pregnancy. Researchers say this could lead to advances in prenatal medicine, as human development can be observed in late pregnancy which could help treat and monitor any congenital conditions before birth. The mini-organs can retain the baby’s biological information, as the researchers explain…

Brussels on Monday fined Apple (AAPL.O), opens new tab 1.84 billion euros ($2 billion) for thwarting competition from music streaming rivals via restrictions on its App Store, the iPhone maker’s first ever penalty for breaching EU rules. A basic penalty of 40 million euros was inflated by a huge lump sum included as a deterrent – a…

Julius Baer’s clients had invested via a feeder fund into a Macquarie vehicle that held the Byju’s stake. Macquarie Capital is reportedly writing down nearly its entire investment in Byju’s, after Swiss bank Julius Baer Group alleged the edtech firm charged fees based on an outsized and outdated valuation. The unit of Australia’s Macquarie Group is, according…

The big smartphone show has the answer to the future of smartphones and an app to find a workout buddy The TechCrunch team is in Barcelona this week to bring you all the action going on at Mobile World Congress 2024. You already know what we’re expecting, so sit back, relax and stay tuned throughout the week…

A suspected surveillance balloon was found by commercial fishermen off the coast of Alaska, CNN reported citing three sources. They are expected to turn it over to the FBI for further examination at the lab in Quantico, Virginia. The unmanned balloon will be handed over to government representatives over the weekend. A suspected surveillance balloon was found…

Google delisted 23 apps from Indian developers for not complying with its payment policy, impacting businesses relying on Android. Google delisted at least 23 apps from nine Indian developers from its Play Store on Friday for not complying with its payments policy. These include all thirteen apps from Matrimony.com — such as Bharat Matrimony, Kerala Matrimony and…

U.S. Food and Drug Administration inspectors found problems with record keeping and quality controls for animal experiments at Elon Musk’s Neuralink, less than a month after the startup said it was cleared to test its brain implants in humans, according to an agency report reviewed by Reuters. The inspectors identified quality control lapses at the company’s California…

Odysseus, the first U.S. spacecraft to land on the moon in half a century, lost power and went dormant on Thursday as it entered a frigid lunar nightfall, ending its mission a week after a lopsided touchdown that hindered operations and its scientific output. Intuitive Machines (LUNR.O), opens new tab, the Texas-based aerospace company that NASA paid…

Several UK locations are set to be affected by the announcement, which is being blamed on big gaming market shifts. Sony has revealed plans for 900 job losses across its Playstation division, with the company’s operations in the UK among those affected. The Japan-based firm notified staff in an email that the Playstation London studio was to…

Google Gemini, the tech giant’s new AI chatbot meant to rival ChatGPT, invented several fake reviews – which it attributed to real people – meant to discredit my 2020 book on political biases at Google and other big tech companies. On Sunday, amid a sharp backlash against Google over its AI program’s apparent political biases, I asked…

Union Minister Jitendra Singh has said that Indian scientists have sequenced genomes of 10,000 Indians from diverse communities to create a database that could lead to gene-based remedies. Scientists on Tuesday announced that they have sequenced genomes of 10,000 Indians from diverse communities to create a database that could lead to gene-based remedies, with Union Science and…

Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O), opens new tab Google Cloud on Monday ramped up its criticism of Microsoft’s cloud computing practices, saying its rival is seeking a monopoly that would harm the development of emerging technologies such as generative artificial intelligence. Microsoft and Amazon (AMZN.O), opens new tab have recently attracted scrutiny in Britain, the European Union and the United…

Google has announced the closure of its payments app, Google Pay, in the U.S. from June 4, 2024. Google has declared it will discontinue Google Pay in the US to enhance user experience by simplifying the app. All users will be transitioned to Google Wallet. The standalone Google Pay app in the US will be unusable from…

Musk hasn’t provided additional details about Xmail, so it’s unknown when it will be accessible. However, it’s anticipated to be integrated into the X app. After releasing his own version of ChatGPT, billionaire Elon Musk has confirmed the forthcoming launch of ‘Xmail’, prompting speculations about its potential to compete with Google’s Gmail service. In a conversation on…

The escalation is symbolic of the tussle between lawmakers and tech companies over the future of safe harbour protections to generative AI platforms like Gemini and ChatGPT. The IT Ministry is in the process of issuing a notice to Google over “problematic and illegal” responses generated by its AI platform Gemini regarding Prime Minister Narendra Modi, The…

OpenAI’s recent text-to-video model Sora has fired a fresh warning shot to China about its gap with the world’s top artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, triggering questions about why the country has no equivalent product in an echo of the kind of soul-searching local researchers and investors went through after the 2022 launch of ChatGPT. Just a few…

Elon Musk’s comment came after Google paused the ability for Gemini AI to generate images of people, as controversy erupted over inaccuracies in AI-generated historical images. “I’m glad that Google overplayed their hand with their AI image generation, as it made their insane racist, anti-civilisational programming clear to all,” Musk wrote on X. I’m glad that Google…

Chip maker has become one of the most valuable U.S. companies, trailing only Microsoft and Apple It took Nvidia NVDA 0.36%increase; green up pointing triangle 24 years as a public company for its valuation to reach the rarefied air of $1 trillion. Thanks to the chip maker’s role in powering the AI revolution, a second trillion took…

Pharmacies across the United States are reporting that they are having difficulty getting prescriptions to patients because of a cyberattack on a unit of UnitedHealth. The company said in a regulatory filing Thursday its Change Healthcare business, which processes prescriptions to insurance for tens of thousands of pharmacies nationwide, was compromised by hackers who gained access to…

Vice Media Group is making drastic changes in the face of financial difficulties. In a memo to Vice employees Thursday, CEO Bruce Dixon said the company will be cutting “several hundred” jobs in the next week. As part of its major restructuring, Vice will discontinue publishing content on its own website, Vice.com, and will instead put “more…

An out-of-control satellite finally fell to Earth Wednesday afternoon after spending 13 years being slowly pulled out of orbit — harmlessly plunging into the Pacific Ocean, experts said. The European Space Agency’s 5,550-pound ERS-2 satellite reentered the atmosphere at 12:17 p.m. Eastern Time somewhere “over the North Pacific Ocean between Alaska and Hawaii,” according to ESA Operations.…

ChatGPT was described as ‘off the rails’ after the AI language model was seen threatening a user by insisting they imagine the bot is ‘in the room’ in a puzzling ‘Spanglish’ incident var brandingClass = useCustomForm ? ” : ‘publication-theme-button’ An “off the rails” artificial intelligence language model has users worried there could be a “sentient” robot…

Gemini’s senior director of product management told Fox News Digital it is working to improve the AI ‘immediately’ The latest version of Google’s Gemini artificial intelligence (AI) will frequently produce images of Black, Native American and Asian people when prompted – but refuses to do the same for White people. In a statement to Fox News Digital,…

Chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab is replacing Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab as Wall Street’s most traded stock by value, adding to its prominence after becoming the third-most valuable U.S. company and showing more evidence of how central AI-related bets have become to investors. Nvidia’s outsized representation in day-to-day stock trading could leave investors more vulnerable…

An international law enforcement operation led by Britain’s National Crime Agency and the FBI has arrested and indicted members of the Lockbit ransomware gang, in an unprecedented police operation that has struck one of the world’s most notorious cybercrime gangs. The United States has charged two Russian nationals with deploying Lockbit ransomware against companies and groups around…

After 16 years of operation, a defunct satellite will crash back to Earth this Wednesday at approximately 10 a.m. ET, says the European Space Agency, as of Sunday afternoon. The Agency launched the Heritage ERS-2 satellite in 1995 after its sister satellite, ERS-1. The ERS-2 ended its mission in September 2011. The space agency used the satellite…

Company has grown from a for-hire rocket launcher into a major national-security contractor SpaceX is deepening its ties with U.S. intelligence and military agencies, winning at least one major classified contract and expanding a secretive company satellite program called Starshield for national-security customers. The Elon Musk-led company entered into a $1.8 billion classified contract with the U.S.…

NASA is calling for volunteers to live in a simulated Mars colony for an entire year. The Earth-based mission is due to kick off in early 2025 and will see a four-person crew living inside a 1,700-square-foot facility – just like one that would be built on Mars. Nasa has revealed the criteria for its prospective astronauts…

The quasar is 12 billion light years away and its black hole is growing at the fastest rate ever seen. A quasar 500 trillion times brighter than the sun has been discovered by astronomers who say it may be the brightest and “most violent” place in the universe. The huge black hole powering it is said to…

Isro successfully launches weather satellite INSAT-3DS on GSLVF14 to boost ocean monitoring The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) on Saturday successfully launched the INSAT-3DS mission into space aboard the heavy-lift Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mk-II (GSLV-MkII). The mission, designed to operate in space for 10 years, aims to boost India’s environment monitoring, oceanic observations, weather forecasting, and…

Japan successfully launched its new H3 flagship rocket on Saturday, putting its space programme back on track after multiple setbacks including the failure of the rocket’s inaugural flight last year. The launch also marks a second straight win for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) after its lunar lander, SLIM, achieved a “pinpoint” touchdown last month and…

Microsoft, which has invested billions of dollars in OpenAI and incorporated ChatGPT features into Bing last year, has so far failed to make inroads in market share. Alphabet sank after a report that ChatGPT owner OpenAI is developing a web search product that would compete with Google. OpenAI’s service would be partly powered by Microsoft Corp.’s Bing…

Microsoft-backed startup stuns social media with hyper-realistic videos created using text prompts. OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, has unveiled a new form of artificial intelligence that creates realistic video based on text prompts, prompting stunned reactions online.The text-to-video model, named Sora, has “a deep understanding of language” and can generate “compelling characters that express vibrant emotions,” OpenAI…

What constitutes “political” content? It’s an important question that Meta has conspicuously left unanswered, despite the Mark Zuckerberg-led social giant vowing last week to clamp down on the topic across both Instagram and Threads — an extraordinary move that will have far-reaching and significant consequences for the public discourse. In a series of posts announcing the policy,…

APPLE fans have started returning the tech giant’s flashy new mixed reality headset over a series of complaints including headaches. The Apple Vision Pro was released in the US on February 2 costing an eye-watering $3,499 (£2,749). But the iPhone maker has a 14 day return policy which some have taken advantage of before the cut off…

In what could have come out of the Apple TV+ space drama “For All Mankind,” scientists have made an astonishing discovery on the surface of asteroids — water. This finding, a collaborative effort between NASA and the German Space Agency at DLR, marks the first time water has been detected on these celestial bodies, offering new insights…

Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg is the latest billionaire to build a bomb-proof bunker as podcaster Christina Randall claimed some of the world’s richest appear to be fulfilling a Biblical prophecy Some of the richest men on Earth are building doomsday bunkers in a move that was predicted in the last and most dramatic book of the Bible,…

The facilities have been made operational through select banks/non-banks/Third Party Application Providers in India, Mauritius, and Sri Lanka. New Delhi: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Monday said the digital payments connectivity with Sri Lanka will enable Indian travellers to make QR code-based payments at merchant locations in Sri Lanka using their UPI apps. Also, an…

Danish Faruqui, CEO of Fab Economics, tells BT that it is clear that Tower Semi definitely realises the success factors in investing in India which includes unparalleled capex-linked subsidy of 50% offered by ISM One of the Top 10 global chip players, Israel’s Tower Semiconductor, has identified India as a semiconductor destination. It had done so in…

Billionaire Elon Musk has now announced plans to move one million people to Mars. Taking to X, Musk replied to Tesla Owners Silicon Valley’s X post that talked about SpaceX’s Starship rocket. The Tesla CEO did not divulge in the details of who will be eligible for the flight and how he plans to materialise the plan.…

“Our goal is to preserve the ability for people to choose to interact with political content, while respecting each person’s appetite for it,” Instagram head Adam Mosseri wrote. Is politics a major buzzkill? Instagram execs seem to think so. In a blog post Friday, Instagram, the popular photo and video app owned by Meta, said it will…

I don’t know how to say this, but sometimes the emotional labor of opening another app on my phone and typing in some text is just too much. I need to gather details about an Airbnb reservation from two different confirmation emails and send them to my friends. Or I want to figure out when to leave…

Sule’s remarks came during a discussion on ‘The White Paper on Indian economy,’ where she highlighted the recent controversies surrounding Paytm Payments Bank Ltd (PPBL) as a glaring example of the risks associated with digital transactions. In a heated session at the Lok Sabha on Friday, NCP Member of Parliament Supriya Sule voiced apprehensions regarding popular digital…

Scientists in China have created the world’s first ‘AI child’, which has the emotional behaviour and capabilities of a three- or four-year-old human child. The artificial intelligence model, named Tong Tong, or Little Girl in English, was created by the Beijing Institute for General Artificial Intelligence (BIGAI). Although Tong Tong currently has the abilities of a toddler,…

Google is famous for having a million similar products with confusingly different names and seemingly nothing in common. (Can I interest you in a messaging app?) But when it comes to its AI work, going forward there is only one name that matters: Gemini. The company announced on Thursday that it is renaming its Bard chatbot to…

Apple (AAPL.O), opens new tab persuaded a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit by a Silicon Valley startup accusing it of illegally monopolizing the U.S. market for heart rate monitoring apps for its Apple Watch. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White in Oakland, California, ruled on Tuesday against AliveCor, which had developed an app for detecting irregular heartbeats.…

A group of founders have written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, and the Reserve Bank of India urging them to reconsider the recent sanctions against Paytm and engage in constructive dialogue with the Fintech ecosystem. The letter, which Moneycontrol has seen, has been signed by at least a dozen founders. A…

Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko on Sunday set a world record for total time spent in space, surpassing his compatriot Gennady Padalka who logged more than 878 days in orbit, Russia’s space corporation said. At 0830 GMT Kononenko broke the record, Roscosmos said. Kononenko is expected to reach a total of 1,000 days in space on June 5…

Facebook’s 20-year history has been chequered with controversy – from the Cambridge Analytica scandal and allegations of election interference, to lacking protections against harmful content. Sky News looks back at the good, the bad, and what might come next. On 4 February 2004 Mark Zuckerberg launched ‘thefacebook.com’ from his Harvard dormitory. Two decades later, many users struggle…

The attraction of lab-grown meat for some consumers and many investors is that it should vastly reduce the huge land requirement and punishing greenhouse gas emissions from conventional livestock farming. Ivy Farm, on the outskirts of Oxford, is not a farm as you know it. There is grass but it’s artificial, there are pigs and sheep but…

Apple’s Vision Pro could upend how people watch television at home and how they use computers at work, potentially positioning the headset to be a successor to both traditional television and the Mac. The $3,500 headset, which blends three-dimensional digital content with a view of the outside world, landed in the company’s physical U.S. stores on Friday.…

CHINA has entered the race to implant brain chips into human skulls in a bid to pit against Elon Musk’s Neuralink. The country unveiled a chilling timeline to develop what it calls a “brain-computer interface” – and aims to release products as early as 2025. China’s shock plan in the field of brain chips comes as Musk…

Tired of watching Elon Musk attack the principles behind workplace diversity, the billionaire Mark Cuban joined the fray to defend what is known as DEI. The two have spent the past month trading jabs on Musk’s X, a social-media platform that has long been full of unfiltered emotions and angry mobs ready to pounce. Their tenors differed…

Researchers in China have already developed a computing device that connects to the human brain via the inner ear The country unveiled a chilling timeline to develop what it calls a “brain-computer interface” – and aims to release products as early as 2025. China’s shock plan in the field of brain chips comes as Musk announced that…

The Vision Pro is among Apple’s most expensive products at $3,500. The Apple Vision Pro has officially hit stores in the US. Loyal Apple fans across the country were spotted lining up in significant numbers to either purchase or try out the first-generation headset. This marks the Cupertino giant’s first new product launch since the introduction of…

Meta Platforms (META.O), opens new tab and Amazon.com (AMZN.O), opens new tab added a combined $280 billion in stock market value late on Thursday after the Big Tech duo reported quarterly results that impressed investors, while Apple’s (AAPL.O), opens new tab value shrank by $70 billion after its results. Meta’s stock surged over 14% to a record…

Apple (AAPL.O), opens new tab on Thursday forecast a drop in iPhone sales and targeted overall revenue $6 billion below Wall Street expectations as its China business took a hit. This overshadowed overall fiscal first-quarter sales and profit that beat analysts’ targets, powered by iPhone growth, sending Apple shares down 3% in after-hours trade. The results confirmed…

After a phenomenal start on July 26 when bids worth Rs 1.45 lakh crore were received in a single day, the response has been tepid in the following days. The Centre received bids worth Rs 1,50,130 crore after a total of 37 rounds of bidding in the ongoing 5G Spectrum auction. The auction kicked off on July…

A Polish scientific institute has categorized domestic cats as an “invasive alien species.” The Polish Academy of Sciences has defined the house cat (felis catus) as “alien” as it was domesticated in the Middle East and has deemed cats as “invasive” due to the “negative influence of domestic cats on native biodiversity,” they explained in a statement.…