The Technology Partener
More than two years after Google was caught flat-footed by the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the company has dramatically picked up the pace. In late March, Google launched an AI reasoning model, Gemini 2.5 Pro, that leads the industry on several benchmarks measuring coding and math capabilities. That launch came just three months after the…
Google DeepMind on Wednesday published an exhaustive paper on its safety approach to AGI, roughly defined as AI that can accomplish any task a human can. AGI is a bit of a controversial subject in the AI field, with naysayers suggesting that it’s little more than a pipe dream. Others, including major AI labs like…
While Meta, Snap, and X issued a joint statement praising the Utah bill’s passage, Google calls it “concerning.” Rather than protect kids and give parents more control, Google director of public policy Kareem Ghanem writes, the legislation “requires app stores to share if a user is a kid or teenager with all app developers (effectively…
The U.K. government wants to make a hard pivot into boosting its economy and industry with AI, and as part of that, it’s pivoting an institution that it founded a little over a year ago for a very different purpose. Today the Department of Science, Industry and Technology announced that it would be renaming the…
Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei is worried about competitor DeepSeek, the Chinese AI company that took Silicon Valley by storm with its R1 model. And his concerns could be more serious than the typical ones raised about DeepSeek sending user data back to China. In an interview on Jordan Schneider’s ChinaTalk podcast, Amodei said DeepSeek generated…
Character AI is facing at least two lawsuits, with plaintiffs accusing the company of contributing to a teen’s suicide and exposing a 9-year-old to “hypersexualized content”, as well as promoting self-harm to a 17-year-old user. Amid these ongoing lawsuits and widespread user criticism, the Google-backed company announced new teen safety tools today: a separate model for…
With just weeks left to pass legislation before Congress adjourns, X CEO Linda Yaccarino announced she worked with the authors of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) to update the bill in what seems like a play to win over the Republican House leaders standing in the way of it becoming law. The striking announcement…
Indoor climbing is a tricky sport to track. That’s why Spanish startup Lizcore caught TechCrunch’s eye at MWC earlier this year. The team of two co-founders — led by CEO Edgar Casanovas Lorente, a climbing instructor and guide turned entrepreneur — were showing off hardware they hope will see climbing gyms ushering in the kind of social gamification…
Another one of OpenAI’s lead safety researchers, Lilian Weng, announced on Friday she is departing the startup. Weng served as VP of research and safety since August, and before that, was the head of the OpenAI’s safety systems team. In a post on X, Weng said that “after 7 years at OpenAI, I feel ready…
Hollywood is squaring off against Silicon Valley in the battle over SB 1047, California’s first-of-its-kind AI safety bill. Amid doubts about whether Governor Gavin Newsom will sign the legislation, a wave of star-studded endorsements mark the first organized celebrity effort to advance AI regulations beyond the direct interests of the entertainment industry. On Tuesday, over…
