The tech giant said a group called "Outsider Enterprise" used AI to scam hundreds of thousands of victims, sending 2.5 million text messages over a span of two weeks.
You'd be forgiven for thinking this day would never come. Siri has spent a decade and half somewhere between "sort of useful at a few things" and "utterly disastrous, why did I even try, can it honestly not even set a timer." But the wildest thing just happened: Apple put out a new version of Siri, and it actually seems to be pretty good.
On this episode of The Vergecast, David and Nilay talk about their early experiences with Siri AI, and what it means for users, and the rest of the AI industry, for the iPhone's built-in assistant to be good enough at most things. There's very little about Siri AI that feels bleeding edge or brand new, but …
Elon Musk's net worth has passed the trillion-dollar mark after SpaceX's IPO. His net worth, which was hovering around $800 billion before the IPO, includes the value of his 4.8 billion shares in SpaceX, along with his wealth from his other companies, like Tesla. Shares of SPCX opened at $150 and have remained well above the $138 benchmark that gives Musk a 13-figure net worth.
SpaceX combined Musk's rocket, AI, and social media platforms earlier this year, and said in its S-1 that its goal is to "build the systems and technologies necessary to make life multiplanetary, to understand the true nature of the universe, and to extend the light …
The IPO market is back, and it’s not the same companies leading the charge. FAANG had a good run, but a new acronym is taking over: MANGOS — Meta (or Microsoft, depending on who you ask), Anthropic, Nvidia, Google, OpenAI, and SpaceX. Half of that bunch is heading to public markets in the same window, and it’s a stress test for investors, for valuations, and for […]
Researchers at NYU Langone Health recorded the activity of hundreds of neurons simultaneously across several brain regions in mice. By tracking how signals move from the hippocampus to the neocortex, where long-term memories are kept, they found that a subset of hippocampal neurons appears to participate in routing information between regions in distinct patterns. These cells participate in both incoming and outgoing signaling, but do so using distinct patterns of activity.
Separate Channels Through the Same Cells
The study focused on a series of interconnected brain regions: CA3, which processes rapidly changing information; CA1, which serves as a central hub; and the retrosplenial cortex, which is important for navigation and spatial memory. About one in four CA1 neurons receives most of the signals from CA3. When these same neurons send signals to the retrosplenial cortex, they fire in a different pattern, creating a separate outgoing channel using the same cells.
Rather than using new neurons, the brain separates these channels by changing how the same neurons fire together. The researchers suggest this arrangement may help reduce interference between new learning and more stable cortical memories.
“Our findings help explain how memory can be both moldable and enduring,” said co-lead author Joaquín Gonzalez, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Psychiatry at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. “By changing how the same cells fire together instead of turning on new cells, the brain can keep information organized and protect older memories.”
What Happens During Sleep
The CA1 neurons involved in learning during the day also stay active at night. The researchers found that these cells remain busy during sleep events called sharp-wave ripples, which are bursts of activity the hippocampus uses to replay and strengthen memories from the day.
Since overlapping neurons are recruited during both waking activity and sleep replay, the same circuit elements appear to participate in both learning and consolidation. This theoretically allows the brain to use a single system for both learning and storing memories, without the two processes interfering with each other.
“Our study shows how learning and memory consolidation can coexist in the same network,” said co-lead author Mihály Vöröslakos, MD, PhD. “Our discovery was made possible because for the first time, we were able to record hundreds of individual neurons across all the key regions simultaneously in animals that were moving around naturally.”
Implications for Disease and AI
The system identified in this research may help explain how memory disorders begin. In Alzheimer’s disease, for example, the hippocampal circuits examined here are some of the earliest to deteriorate. These networks are essential for sorting and organizing new experiences.
“Our discovery of a ‘memory switchboard’ deep in the hippocampus may provide clues as to how memory circuits fail in Alzheimer’s disease,” said co-senior author Zhe S. Chen, PhD, a professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at NYU Grossman School of Medicine.
Artificial intelligence systems have a hard time holding onto what they’ve already learned when faced with new tasks, a problem researchers call catastrophic forgetting. The human brain appears able to update memories without catastrophic forgetting by altering the use of existing neural circuits. By studying how our brains pull this off, scientists hope to design AI that can keep learning new things without forgetting the old.
“By showing how the mammalian brain can safeguard memories during learning, our research may offer a biological blueprint for designing next-generation AI technology that can update itself continuously without overwriting what it has already acquired,” said co-senior author György Buzsáki, MD, PhD, the Biggs Professor of Neuroscience at NYU Grossman School of Medicine.
The researchers plan to investigate whether similar switchboard-like channels exist in other memory circuits. The authors caution that their findings in mice under controlled conditions do not yet allow conclusions about the human brain.
Austin Burgess is a writer and researcher with a background in sales, marketing, and data analytics. He holds an MBA, a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, and a data analytics certification. His work focuses on breaking scientific developments, with an emphasis on emerging biology, cognitive neuroscience, and archaeological discoveries.
SpaceX’s IPO on Friday allows the public to buy shares of the combined rocket, AI, and social media company for the first time, and raised enough money to make Elon Musk the first trillionaire.
He has more wealth, on paper at least, than the economies of nations like Ireland, Sweden, or his home country of South Africa (CNN cites the International Monetary Fund saying only 20 countries have economies larger than $1.1 trillion), now linked to the promise of a business based on launching AI datacenters into space.
In the last few years, the hype around artificial intelligence has become stratospheric. Riding a wave of venture capital, tech leaders promised us AI would revolutionize work, boost productivity and lead to incredible new breakthroughs. OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, set a new record when it attained US$110 billion in investments several months ago—and its CEO, Sam Altman, recently claimed Australia could become a "data capital of the world."
TechCrunch has followed SpaceX's start, struggles, and successes from the early days. And we're here for what happens next too. This package of SpaceX IPO coverage includes who stands to win (and maybe some who won't), pre-IPO deals, and what's tucked inside its S-1 registration document.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos says his new AI startup will work toward developing an "artificial general engineer," according to reports from The New York Times and CNBC. The startup, called Prometheus, aims to develop AI-powered engineering tools to aid in the design of physical products.
The NYT first reported on Prometheus last November, but now Bezos is sharing more information about the startup after a $12 billion funding round, putting the company at a $41 billion valuation. Bezos serves as co-CEO of Prometheus alongside Vik Bajaj, who co-founded Alphabet's health-focused research group, Verily. The startup currently has around 150 employ …
Chris Kemp thinks he could be the last person left working at Astra — but not for the reason most people might think. His company rode the SPAC boom five […]
Artificial Intelligence is rapidly transforming how organizations analyze data, make decisions, and uncover opportunities. As AI-powered assistants become
A empresa espacial de Elon Musk fixou o preço a 135 dólares por ação, numa avaliação de 1,77 biliões de dólares que "pulveriza" todos os recordes anteriores. As ações da SPCX estreiam-se hoje às 14:30 (hora de Portugal continental) no Nasdaq.
‘Listen, that's not what I'm here for.' | Image: Apple
Our early testing has already shown that Siri AI knows when to shut up, and that's very much by design. In an interview with Mostly Humanspotted by MacRumors, Craig Federighi said Apple's new Siri won't act all sycophantic like chatbots made by OpenAI, Google, and others.
"As you may know, if you use many of the existing chatbots, they're really focused on engagement to a large degree," said Federighi, who is responsible for software at Apple. "And sycophancy, right? They kind of want to pull you in. They might encourage you to reveal things about yourself, and then use that as a basis to establish a connection."
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