Author: Art Ryan

AI startup Perplexity is crawling and scraping content from websites that have explicitly indicated they don’t want to be scraped, according to internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare. On Monday, Cloudflare published research saying it observed the AI startup ignore blocks and hide its crawling and scraping activities. The network infrastructure giant accused Perplexity of obscuring its identity when trying to scrape web pages “in an attempt to circumvent the website’s preferences,” Cloudflare’s researchers wrote. AI products like those offered by Perplexity rely on gobbling up large amounts of data from the internet, and AI startups have long scraped text, images, and videos from…

Google’s AI-powered bug hunter has just reported its first batch of security vulnerabilities. Heather Adkins, Google’s vice president of security, announced Monday that its LLM-based vulnerability researcher Big Sleep found and reported 20 flaws in various popular open source software. Adkins said that Big Sleep, which is developed by the company’s AI department DeepMind as well as its elite team of hackers Project Zero, reported its first-ever vulnerabilities, mostly in open source software such as audio and video library FFmpeg and image-editing suite ImageMagick. Given that the vulnerabilities are not fixed yet, we don’t have details of their impact or severity, as Google does…

Tencent has expanded its family of open-source Hunyuan AI models that are versatile enough for broad use. This new family of models is engineered to deliver powerful performance across computational environments, from small edge devices to demanding, high-concurrency production systems. The release includes a comprehensive set of pre-trained and instruction-tuned models available on the developer platform Hugging Face. The models come in several sizes, specifically with parameter scales of 0.5B, 1.8B, 4B, and 7B, providing substantial flexibility for developers and businesses. Tencent has indicated that these models were developed using training strategies similar to its more powerful Hunyuan-A13B model, allowing them to…

Many companies are focused on building robots, or the hardware components to help them move, grip objects, or interact with the world around them. Silicon Valley-based OpenMind is focused under the hood. OpenMind is building a software layer, OM1, for humanoid robots that acts as an operating system. The company compares itself to being the Android for robotics because its software is open and hardware agnostic. Stanford professor Jan Liphardt, the founder of OpenMind, told TechCrunch that humanoids and other robots have been around and able to do repetitive tasks for decades. But now that humanoids are being developed for use cases that require more…

When it comes to salaries, today’s top AI talent are enjoying unprecedented paychecks. That’s according to a report Friday (Aug. 1) by Ars Technica, which cites the example of Matt Deitke, an artificial intelligence (AI) researcher offered $250 million — over four years — to bring his expertise to Meta. Such a figure, the report said, “shattered every historical precedent” for scientific and technical compensation the publication was able to find, including the salaries of the people involved in the space race and developing the atomic bomb. For example, J. Robert Oppenheimer, head of the Manhattan Project, made $10,000 per year in 1943, or…

Apple has reportedly formed a team to develop a search experience similar to ChatGPT. That’s according to a report Sunday (Aug. 3) by Bloomberg News, which says the so-called “Answers, Knowledge and Information” (AKI) group is building an “answer engine” — a system capable of crawling the web for responses to general-knowledge questions. The report says Apple is exploring a standalone app, as well as new back-end infrastructure aimed at powering search capabilities in future iterations of Siri, Spotlight, and Safari. Bloomberg notes that Apple has also recently begun advertising job openings for the team on its careers site: “Our work fuels intuitive…

As artificial intelligence embeds itself deeper into the fabric of modern life, industries from healthcare to transportation are reconfiguring how they operate. But as machines take on tasks once reserved for humans-driving, diagnosing, even writing-the risk landscape is shifting dramatically, and insurers are being forced to catch up. For every promise AI delivers-greater efficiency, faster decision-making, and cost savings-it brings a parallel stream of uncertainties. Who is accountable if a self-driving vehicle causes a crash? What happens when generative AI spreads misinformation, or when automated hiring tools discriminate unlawfully? These are no longer hypothetical concerns. In recent years, algorithmic missteps…

Agentic AI, the latest evolution of AI, enables developers to focus on higher-level strategic initiatives, providing federal agencies with additional resources to support their missions. Recent executive actions underscore the significant potential of agentic AI for the federal government, prompting agencies to leverage AI to enhance value to taxpayers, improve the quality of public services, and drive operational efficiency. One area of immediate applicability is in agency software development. Agentic AI enables this transformation by introducing intelligent systems that are capable of taking initiative, making independent decisions, and executing complex tasks in collaboration with developers. This significantly accelerates the software…

A year ago, most chief product officers (CPOs) were still getting a feel for gen AI’s ability to create text, images, video and audio from human inputs underpinning large language models (LLMs). Product leaders had high expectations for the software’s ability to partially automate and streamline labor-intensive tasks ranging from production innovation and production costs to data security and compliance. But few had firmed up plans to fold the technology into their operations. That’s all changed. Today, nearly all product leaders say they believe gen AI will reshape how they work. Nearly all expect it to streamline workflows within three…

Bank of America’s CashPro platform is undergoing a transformation, fueled by artificial intelligence (AI), real-time data and digital capabilities. This has contributed to CashPro netting more than 40,000 corporate and commercial clients around the world. The global treasury management platform now supports everything from mobile-based biometric logins to self-service forecasting using machine learning. “Clients … are looking for more productivity and efficiency out of tools that help them manage cash, payments and receivables,” said Tom Durkin, global product head of CashPro in Global Payments Solutions at Bank of America. According to Durkin, the cash flow managed by BofA’s corporate clients sits on top…

Amazon’s second-quarter cloud revenue growth was good, but it wasn’t Microsoft or Google Cloud good. And that put the tech giant on the defensive about its position in generative AI. Amazon (AMZN) stock retreated Friday. “Amazon’s quarter was defined by AWS growth, which was a bit disappointing as expectations heading into the print had been primed by significant growth acceleration from Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud,” William Blair analysts Dylan Carden and Arjun Bhatia wrote to clients Thursday. “While AWS accelerated, its acceleration was much more modest than its peers.” Amazon Web Services grew sales a stronger-than-forecast 17.5% to $30.78 billion in…

Delta Air Lines said on Friday it will not use artificial intelligence to set personalized ticket prices for passengers after facing sharp criticism from U.S. lawmakers and broad public concern. Last week, Democratic Senators Ruben Gallego, Mark Warner and Richard Blumenthal said they believed the Atlanta-based airline would use AI to set individual prices, which would “likely mean fare price increases up to each individual consumer’s personal ‘pain point.’” Delta said it has not used AI to set personalized prices but previously said it plans to deploy AI-based revenue management technology across 20% of its domestic network by the end of 2025 in…

In a bold move to attract elite AI talent, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly extended astonishing compensation packages worth up to $1 billion, targeting researchers at Thinking Machines Lab, founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati. However, Astonishingly, not a single member of the 50-person team accepted the offer, reaffirming their commitment to the startup’s independent vision. 🎯 Why They Said “No” 🧠 Thought Leadership Over Pay Led by Mir­a Murati, the team rejected Meta’s offers—totaling between $200M to $1B—to retain autonomy and pursue their mission to develop open, ethical, and impact-first AI solutions. 🧱 Cultural & Leadership Concerns Sources…

Chinese engineers have unveiled the world’s first brain-like computer made up of more than 2 billion artificial neurons. The neuron count of the “Darwin Monkey” approaches that of a macaque and could be used to advance human brain-inspired artificial intelligence (AI), according to its developers at Zhejiang University. The Darwin Monkey is the latest generation of brain-inspired computers produced by Zhejiang University researchers. “This is the world’s first brain-like computer based on a dedicated neuromorphic chip with more than 2 billion neurons,” the university said on its social media account on Saturday. The computing system, made up of 960 Darwin 3 brain-inspired…

In a Wall Street Journal opinion published July 30, 2025, tech economist Nicholas H. Christakis argues that artificial intelligence is quietly contributing at least $97 billion annually in economic value—even though this gain isn’t yet visible in gross domestic product figures. 💡 Why We’re Seeing AI’s Economic Effect Lag 📊 What This $97 Billion Figure Means 🔎 Reframing Productivity: AI as a Digital Labor Force 🛠 Why This Thought Matters for Policy & Strategy ✅ Bottom Line Artificial intelligence is delivering massive productivity gains, but they’re largely hidden from current economic indicators. The $97 billion estimate is a lower-bound snapshot of…

I come from Trinidad and Tobago. As a country that was once colonized by the British, I am wary of the ways that inequalities between the global north and global south risk being perpetuated in the digital age. When we consider the lack of inclusion of the global south in discussions about artificial intelligence (AI), I think about how this translates to an eventual lack of economic leverage and geopolitical engagement in this technology that has captivated academics within the industrialised country I reside, the United States. As a scientist, I experienced an early rite of passage into the world of Silicon Valley,…

As global events continue to bring uncertainty across markets, businesses worldwide grapple with an increasingly unpredictable economic landscape. Yet rather than retreat into defensive strategies, a growing number of companies are embracing this volatility as an opportunity to transform their operations through advanced technology solutions. According to Wolfgang Kobek, executive vice president and international general manager of global enterprise software provider Infor, trade tariff and geopolitical tensions have created an environment where businesses struggle to plan for tomorrow, let alone the next quarter. However, while volatility is typically viewed as a barrier to investment, more forward-thinking organizations choose to see…

Artificial intelligence is already replacing thousands of jobs each month as the U.S. job market struggles amid global trade uncertainty, a report has found. The outplacement firm Challenger, Gray, and Christmas said in a report filed this week that in July alone the increased adoption of generative AI technologies by private employers led to more than 10,000 lost jobs. The firm stated that AI is one of the top five reasons behind job losses this year, CBS News noted. On Friday, new labor figures revealed that employers only added 73,000 jobs in July, a much worse result than forecasters expected. Companies announced more…

When the Trump administration released its AI Action Plan last week, the message was clear: “the United States is in a race to achieve global dominance in artificial intelligence.” This is not simply a competition over who has the best algorithms or semiconductors – it is a race to shape the future of medicine, energy, education, media and more. It was a bold and necessary declaration. The 28-page plan outlines more than 90 policy actions that the administration says can be implemented within a year to build the infrastructure for data centers and to make U.S. software and chips the standard platform for AI…

Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O), opens new tab growth-stage venture arm CapitalG and Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab are in talks to invest in artificial intelligence infrastructure provider Vast Data in a new funding round that could value the startup as high as $30 billion, two sources said. The startup is raising several billion dollars from tech giants, private equity and venture capital investors, which could make it one of the most valuable AI startups, the two sources with knowledge of the matter said, as companies building the backbone for the AI boom come into sharper focus. CapitalG and existing backer Nvidia are in discussions to participate…