According to a report by US-based tech portal, The Verge, the tech giant shall not restrict employees from speaking out on discrimination or harassment in the workplace.
Daily Crunch: UK-based news site The Guardian under ransomware attack, editor says
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It’s the mooooost wonderful tiiiiiiime of the yeeeaaar. Today, we’ve been skiving off work to explore the weirdest subgenres of holiday music. Trap Christmas is a thing. Christopher Lee (yes that Christopher Lee, Saruman in “Lord of the Rings”) recorded a heavy metal Christmas album, which is truly god-awful. Spinal Tap also did a holiday song, which…I mean. And we aren’t upset by disco Christmas or these goats singing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” either…
Anyway . . . what are your favorite out-of-left-field holiday tunes? Answers on an e-postcard, plz! — Christine and Haje
The TechCrunch Top 3
Extra, extra, read all about it: British newspaper The Guardian confirmed that it was hit by ransomware following some strange incidents the paper began noticing in its IT infrastructure. Carly has more.
Kids, get your parents’ permission: If you are a child of the ’80s, you might recall that we were constantly reminded to “ask your parents for permission to…” Well, Google has now instituted something similar for Google Play, letting children send purchase requests to their guardians, Ivan writes.
Some light reading for the new year: Anna and Alex collected them and now share some of the books startup founders and venture capitalists could not put down this year. Happy reading!
Startups and VC
Carl Eschenbach, a longtime enterprise software executive who joined Sequoia Capital in 2016 and went on to lead a number of lucrative deals for the venture firm, is going back to an operating role, Connie reports. As the new co-CEO of Workday, Eschenbach will co-lead the enterprise cloud applications giant with its co-CEO, cofounder and company chair Aneel Bhusri, until 2024, at which point Eschenbach will take over as sole CEO.
You know what? We have a few more:
Going down to AI, friendly faces everywhere, humble folks without temptation: Devin writes how “South Park” creators’ deepfake video startup Deep Voodoo conjures $20 million in new funding.
Come to Boston!: TechCrunch Early Stage focuses on fledgling founders, writes Lauren S — come along and surround yourself with startup smarts.
Making software easier to afford: Gynger launches out of stealth to loan companies cash for software, reports Kyle.
Tidying up the filing system: Healthcare data is a mess and Metriport is here with a broom, reports Haje.
Jurassic Park ain’t got nothing on this: Devin reports on the uber-creepy autonomous ornithopter that lands and perches on a single claw.
How to make the most of your investor relationships in 2023
Image Credits: anisah priyadi (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
As Santa Claus reviews his list of who’s been naughty and nice, it’s also a good time for startup founders to take stock of their investor relationships.
Vidya Raman, a partner at Sorenson Ventures, has written a TC+ article with do’s and don’ts for upcoming board meetings and gives his thoughts about which communication channels are best for different help requests, as well as specific data points to raise in your discussions.
“Be ruthless about how you spend your time,” he advises, “especially with your investors.”
Three more from the TC+ team:
The pros and cons of visas: Our friendly resident immigration lawyer Sophie Alcorn is back with the pros and cons of the E-2 and L-1A visas.
Calm down with the crypto already: India central bank chief warns crypto will cause the next financial crisis if permitted to grow, reports Manish.
A pile of small checks may come back and bite you: More investors, more problems, Becca explores.
TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code “DC” for a 15% discount on an annual subscription!
Big Tech Inc.
In July, the Federal Trade Commission sued Meta over its proposed acquisition of VR company Within. This week, it was Mark Zuckerberg’s turn on the stand, and Amanda has the details.
Now over to Tesla, where Darrell reports the carmaker may be making a fresh round of layoffs next quarter. That’s not the only trouble the company is finding itself in. It also has a bit of a share price problem. Rebecca writes that Tesla stock plunged to its lowest level in two years for reasons that include all the Twitter drama and loss of China sales.
Here’s four more for you:
SBF will come back to the USA: By the time this hits your inbox, beleaguered FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried may already be in the United States to face a number of criminal charges, Jacquelyn writes.
Time to make it your own: Aisha writes that Snapchat+ has some new customization features and the option to gift a subscription to that one person who’s always hard to buy for.
Talk about taking advantage of a bad situation: Expats are leaving China to avoid some of the country’s strict COVID regulations, but Rita writes one expat group at NetEase decided to go heads down and build a sci-fi game.
Probing for details: Broadcom’s proposal to acquire VMware caught the attention of European Union regulators, who are now taking a look at the deal in case there are any competition concerns, Ron reports.
Daily Crunch: UK-based news site The Guardian under ransomware attack, editor says by Christine Hall originally published on TechCrunch
Netflix branches out into fitness content with upcoming launch of Nike Training Club classes
Netflix is officially branching out into fitness content, as the company announced today that it’s going to start streaming Nike Training Club classes next week. The streaming service will release a total of 30 hours of exercise sessions in two seperate batches. The programs, which include workouts for all fitness levels, will be available in multiple languages on all Netflix plans.
The first batch of fitness classes will launch on December 30, with the second batch releasing in 2023. A total of 45 episodes will be part of the first batch, which will include the following classes: Kickstart Fitness with the Basics, Two Weeks to a Stronger Core, Fall in Love with Vinyasa Yoga, HIT & Strength with Tara and Feel-Good Fitness. Once the classes are released, Netflix users will be able to search “Nike” to access them.
For those unfamiliar with the Nike Training Club app, it offers a range of options for people of all fitness levels, including strength training, yoga and high-intensity workouts led by Nike’s certified trainers. Nike Training Club can in some ways be compared to Apple Fitness+ or Peloton.
“It’s not always easy to motivate yourself to exercise, but the option to feel the burn and then directly transition into one of your favorite shows does have a certain appeal,” the company wrote in a blog post. “And now, that’s exactly what you can do.”
This latest move from Netflix marks yet another way that the streaming service is branching out from its core business of TV shows and series. Over the past year, we saw the company delve into the world of gaming with the launch of Netflix Games. Now, we’re seeing another departure from its core business, as the streaming service begins testing the waters with fitness content.
The timing of the release likely isn’t a coincidence either, given that people around the world will soon make working out their New Year’s resolution. Considering that Netflix already has a significant user base, the streaming service may be able to entice people into trying out fitness content directly on the platform that they already regularly visit.
It’s worth noting that the launch won’t mark Netflix’s first foray into health-related content, as the streaming service launched mindfulness and meditation content from Headspace last year.
Depending on how successful the launch is, Netflix may decide to add even more fitness content to its platform to complete with the likes of Apple Fitness+ and Peloton. Beyond that, the company may even decide to produce its own fitness content if it can get enough people to see it as a viable option when it comes to fitness.
Netflix branches out into fitness content with upcoming launch of Nike Training Club classes by Aisha Malik originally published on TechCrunch
It was a big year for the space industry. 2023 will be even bigger
Another blockbuster year for the space industry draws to a close. In fact, 2022 may have been the most blockbuster year for space in recent memory – since 1969, at least. The historic cadence of SpaceX, the launch of Space Launch System and the return of the Orion capsule, big technical demonstrations, ispace’s fully private moon mission…it’s been a momentous year.
There’s a lot to look forward to – so much, that next year could even outdo this one as the biggest for the space industry yet. But many questions still remain, especially about the shorter-term economic outlook, ongoing geopolitical instability, and (ahem) some announced timelines that may or may not come to fruition. Here are our predictions for the space industry in 2023.
1. More pressure on launch
It seems clear that there will be increasing pressure on the launch market as even more next-gen vehicles come online. We’re not just looking out for the heavy-lift rockets – like SpaceX’s Starship and United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan – but a whole slew of smaller and medium-lift launch vehicles that are aiming for low cost and high cadence. These include Relativity’s Terran 1, Astra’s Rocket 4, RS1 from ABL Space Systems, Rocket Factory Augsburg’s One launcher, and Orbex’s Prime microlauncher. As we mentioned above, space industry timelines are notoriously tricky (and this caveat applies to the whole post) but it’s likely that at least a handful of new rockets will fly for the first time next year.
Proving new vehicles drives prices down and increases inventory, meaning more launches and dates are available to private and government concerns — and incumbent players will need to work hard to keep the lead they’ve established.
2. Big developments from the UK, China and India
The international space scene will continue to grow. While there’s much to look forward to from Europe, we’ve got our eyes on the United Kingdom, China and India. From the U.K., we expect to see the country’s first-ever space launch with Virgin Orbit’s “Start Me Up” mission from Spaceport Cornwall. We are also expecting a lot of activity from the Indian Space Research Organization, as well as the launch startup Skyroot there. China had a big 2022 – including completing its own space station in orbit and sending up multiple crews of taikonauts – and we predict there will be no slowdown next year as the country’s seeks to keep pace with American industrial growth.
How exactly the decentralizing of private space beyond a handful of major launch providers and locations will affect the industry is difficult to say, but it will definitely help diversify the projects and stakeholders going to orbit.
3. Continued growth for satcom and earth observation
Image Credits: Pixxel
Similar to launch, we’ll be seeing even more large and small satellite constellations going up next year that will put pressure on the satcom and earth observation (EO) industries. Just two examples: Amazon’s long-awaited Project Kuiper will likely see its first launches next year, and Pixxel will be launching 6 high-resolution hyperspectral imagery satellites in the latter half of the year.
Most estimates assume that both satcom and EO will experience more growth throughout the decade, so we’re not expecting newer entrants to squeeze out existing players. But we do think that we’ll see even greater adoption of, say, Starlink or sat-to-cell services here on Earth, as well as even greater relevance for earth observation technologies in sectors like agriculture and mining, and for understanding climate change.
4. Capital management will help decide winners and losers
The macroeconomic environment is poor. High inflation, high interest rates, and high risk-aversion means that cash is more expensive than ever. We see this trend slightly abating, but not completely, so we predict that capital management will be a huge determining factor in startup survival. Investors will also be looking for technical differentiators and real market potential more than ever before.
“One thing the market has changed a bit is, when you’re when you’re doing your technical diligence, I think it’s more important than ever that the company that you’re backing has a very clear technical differentiator and advantage,” Emily Henriksson of Root Ventures said on-stage during TC Sessions: Space earlier this month.
In the space industry especially, we saw a real investment slowdown in 2022. Many space companies that went public via SPAC merger continue to underperform. In 2023, it will be all about managing debt, institutional bloat (and possibly, sadly, more layoffs), and capital management.
5. Private astronauts will hit record numbers
Image Credits: Mario Tama / Staff / Getty Images
Private…astronauts? Ten years ago, that phrase would’ve been nonsensical. But no more: in 2022 alone, nearly 20 people went to suborbital space aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket and four people flew to the International Space Station with Axiom Space’s Ax-1 mission. Next year, we anticipate these numbers will be even higher. Not only will Polaris Dawn, billionaire Jared Isaacson’s private spaceflight program, make its maiden mission; Axiom will be conducting its second private launch to the ISS early next year.
In 2021 a ticket to space barely existed; in 2022 it became merely unusual; in 2023 we will probably get tired of hearing about it! Expect to hear more about the next big milestone in space tourism, privately accessible space stations, next year as well, but don’t expect any serious movement there until companies figure out how to make the business work.
6. More activity on the moon and cislunar space
This year is coming to a close with ispace’s Mission 1, the world’s first fully privately funded and built moon lander mission. But that’s just the beginning. Next year, look out for even more landers heading to the moon – we’ve got eyes on Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander and Astrobotic’s Peregrine – and even more infrastructure moves to cislunar space.
As more lunar tech companies make progress on their goals, the ones that don’t will become even more conspicuous. Mergers and acquisitions in this space would not be a surprise.
7. Even more emphasis on American manufacturing as supply chain crisis continues
Our final prediction is a broader one, but has big implications for the space industry. We see investors and founders placing an even greater emphasis on domestic supply chains and manufacturing in 2023, and this will likely only intensify if relations between the U.S. and foreign governments, China in particular, further sour.
It was a big year for the space industry. 2023 will be even bigger by Aria Alamalhodaei originally published on TechCrunch
Self-driving truck company TuSimple to lay off 25% of workforce
Well, we knew it was coming. Self-driving trucking technology company TuSimple confirmed Wednesday it plans to lay off 25% of its total workforce as part of a broader restructuring plan designed to keep the company running.
The layoffs come a couple of weeks after TuSimple and Navistar ended their deal to co-develop purpose-built autonomous semi trucks. The staff reductions, which we estimate to affect around 350 workers, also follow a rough year for the company, including a series of executive shakeups, multiple federal investigations, a truck crash and a plummeting stock price. Like many other companies exploring pioneer technology, TuSimple has struggled to make up enough revenue to cover its cash burn.
“It’s no secret that the current economic environment is difficult. We must be prudent with our capital and operate as efficiently as possible,” said Cheng Lu, TuSimple’s president and CEO, in a statement. Lu recently re-joined the company as CEO after he was ousted earlier this year. His predecessor and TuSimple’s founder Xiaodi Hou was firedfollowing an internal probe that showed certain employees having ties and sharing confidential information with Hydron, a China-backed hydrogen-powered trucking company.
“While I deeply regret the impact this has on those affected, I believe it is a necessary step as TuSimple continues down our path to commercialization. This is part of our overall strategy to prioritize investments that bring the most value to shareholders, and position TuSimple as a customer-focused, product-driven organization.”
TuSimple is in the process of selling off its Asia-focused business, so the layoffs are only affecting staff in the U.S. TuSimple has workers in San Diego, Arizona and Texas. It’s not yet clear which teams were affected or if the layoffs will hit a specific region, although one deep perception engineer in Los Angeles has already posted on LinkedIn about being cut. About 80% of the remaining staff are in research and development and are responsible for working in hardware and software resilience, reliability, safety and information security, TuSimple said in a statement.
The company is scaling back freight expansion, including unprofitable freight lanes and respective trucking operations that still rely on previous generations of autonomous software, which TuSimple says provides limited value to its ongoing technology development.
The focus now is on validating and commercializing its autonomous trucking technology by working with shipping partners, the company said. TuSimple had previously received around 7,000 reservations for its Navistar trucks with customers like DHL Supply Chain, Schneider and U.S. Xpress. It’s not clear if any of those partnerships remain, or if TuSimple will have to shop around again. A source familiar with the matter recently told TechCrunch TuSimple would find another truck-maker to work with in the future.
The restructure will cost TuSimple about $10 million to $11 million, a line item that’ll show up on Q4’s balance sheet and be paid in the first quarter of 2023. TuSimple estimates it’ll save $55 million to $65 million on an annual basis as a result of the layoffs and restructuring.
At the time of publishing, TuSimple is trading at $1.42, which is down nearly 6% today and 96% year-to-date. TuSimple did not respond in time to TechCrunch’s request for comment.
Self-driving truck company TuSimple to lay off 25% of workforce by Rebecca Bellan originally published on TechCrunch
Investor interest in SpaceX appears immune to Musk’s meddling
Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter sent Tesla’s stock price on a roller coaster this year as its value correlated — largely negatively — with each development at the social media company. But SpaceX’s support from investors seems immune to the drama.
Back in April, when Musk first announced his intention to acquire Twitter, it was just weeks after Tesla stock hit its 2022 price peak, $381.82 on April 4, according to Yahoo Finance data. Since then, it has declined fairly consistently — other than the few bursts when it looked like the Twitter transaction might not go through after all or that Musk was stepping down as Twitter CEO — and opened today at $139.34 a share, a 63.5% haircut from this year’s high.
The chatter around Tesla stock has been getting louder lately, too, as Wall Street analysts wrote down the investment amid predictions that Musk will sell more Tesla shares to keep Twitter afloat, making them less confident it is a good buy.
But while all this drama continues to unfold, SpaceX, one of Musk’s other companies, not only seems shielded from the Twitter noise, but largely undeterred.
Investor interest in SpaceX appears immune to Musk’s meddling by Rebecca Szkutak originally published on TechCrunch
Kickstarter shut down the campaign for AI porn group Unstable Diffusion amid changing guidelines
The group trying to monetize AI porn generation, Unstable Diffusion, raised more than $56,000 on Kickstarter from 867 backers. Now, as Kickstarter changes its thinking about what kind of AI-based projects it will allow, the crowdfunding platform has shut down Unstable Diffusion’s campaign. Since Kickstarter runs an all-or-nothing model and the campaign had not yet concluded, any money that Unstable Diffusion raised will be returned to the funders. In other words, Unstable Diffusion won’t see that $56,000, which more than doubled its initial $25,000 goal.
“Over the last several days, we’ve engaged our Community Advisory Council and we’ve read your feedback to us via our team and social media,” CEO Everette Taylor in a blog post. “And one thing is clear: Kickstarter must, and will always be, on the side of creative work and the humans behind that work. We’re here to help creative work thrive.”
Kickstarter’s new approach to hosting AI projects is intentionally vague.
“This tech is really new, and we don’t have all the answers,” Taylor wrote. “The decisions we make now might not be the ones we make in the future, so we want this to be an ongoing conversation with all of you.”
Right now, the platform says it is considering how projects interface with copyrighted material, especially when artists’ work appears in an algorithm’s training data without consent. Kickstarter will also consider whether the project will “exploit a particular community or put anyone at risk of harm.”
In recent months, tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion have been met with mainstream success, bringing conversations about the ethics of AI artwork into the forefront of public debate. If apps like Lensa AI can leverage the open source Stable Diffusion to instantly create artistic avatars that look like a professional artist’s work, how does that impact those same working artists?
Some artists took to Twitter to pressure Kickstarter into dropping the Unstable Diffusion project, citing concerns about how AI art generators can threaten artists’ careers.
Many cite the fate of Greg Rutkowski’s work as an example of what can go wrong. A living illustrator who has crafted detailed, high fantasy artwork for franchises like “Dungeons & Dragons,” Rutkowski’s name was one of Stable Diffusion‘s most popular search terms when it launched in September, allowing users to easily replicate his distinctive style. Rutkowski never consented to his artwork being used to train the algorithm, leading him to become a vocal advocate about how AI art generators impact working artists.
“With $25,000 in funding, we can afford to train the new model with 75 million high quality images consisting of ~25 million anime and cosplay images, ~25 million artistic images from Artstation/DeviantArt/Behance, and ~25 million photographic pictures,” Unstable Diffusion wrote in its Kickstarter.
Spawning, a set of AI tools designed to support artists, developed a website called Have I Been Trained, which lets artists see if their work appears in popular datasets and opt out. Per an April court case, there is legal precedent to defend the scraping of publicly accessible data.
Inherent problems in AI porn generation
Ethical questions about AI artwork get even murkier when considering projects like Unstable Diffusion, which center around the development of NSFW content.
Stable Diffusion uses a dataset of 2.3 billion images to train its text-to-image generator. But only an estimated 2.9% of the dataset contains NSFW material, giving the model little to go on when it comes to explicit content. That’s where Unstable Diffusion comes in. The project, which is part of Equilibrium AI, recruited volunteers from its Discord server to develop more robust porn datasets to fine-tune their algorithm, the same way you would upload more pictures of couches and chairs to a dataset if you wanted to make a furniture generation AI.
But any AI generator is prone to fall victim to whatever biases the humans behind the algorithm have. Much of the porn that’s free and easily accessible online is developed for the male gaze, which means that’s likely what the AI will spit out, especially if those are the kinds of images that users are inputting into the dataset.
In its now-suspended Kickstarter, Unstable Diffusion said that it would work toward making an AI art model that can “better handle human anatomy, generate in diverse and controllable artistic styles, represent under-trained concepts like LGBTQ and races and genders more fairly.”
Plus, there’s no way of verifying whether much of the porn that’s freely available on the internet was made consensually (however, adult creators who use paid platforms like OnlyFans and ManyVids must verify their age and identity before using these services). Even then, if a model consents to appearing in porn, that doesn’t mean that they consent to their images being used to train an AI. While this technology can create stunningly realistic images, that also means that it can be weaponized to make nonconsensual deepfake pornography.
Currently, few laws around the world pertain to nonconsensual deepfakedporn. In the U.S., only Virginia and California have regulations restricting certain uses of faked and deepfaked pornographic media.
“One aspect that I’m particularly worried about is the disparate impact AI-generated porn has on women,” Ravit Dotan, VP of responsible AI at Mission Control, told TechCrunch last month. “For example, a previous AI-based app that can ‘undress’ people works only on women.”
Unstable Diffusion did not respond to request for comment at the time of publication.
Kickstarter shut down the campaign for AI porn group Unstable Diffusion amid changing guidelines by Amanda Silberling originally published on TechCrunch
South Park creators’ deepfake video startup Deep Voodoo conjures $20M in new funding
Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of South Park and various other media over the years, have raised $20 million to continue work on their professional deepfake studio for creators, Deep Voodoo.
The company got its start during the media shutdown of 2020, when the pandemic prevented most travel and on-set productions. Parker and Stone had already begun assembling an AI artist team for a film they were developing, and when COVID intervened they focused on creating the tools for use later.
“We stumbled upon this amazing technology and ended up recruiting the best deepfake artists in the world,” Stone said in an announcement on Deep Voodoo’s site. I’ve reached out for more info and will update this post if I hear back.
The Parker/Stone cachet showed when the company made its public debut alongside no lesser a personage than Kendrick Lamar. The video for “The Heart Part 5” has the musician delivering his lyrics in seemingly one take, but when he addresses the camera directly his face takes on the aspects of others: OJ Simpson, Nipsey Hussle, Kobe Bryant and Kanye West:
Of course it’s obvious that deepfake tech was used for this — just as it’s obvious that the dragons in Game of Thrones aren’t real. It is still effective dramatically, even if the substitution is by no means perfect.
Since then, and with the help of the $20 million from Connect Ventures, Deep Voodoo “has begun offering” its tech to others in the business.
It’s not the only one doing so by a long shot, naturally. Digital de-aging and “re-facing” as it is sometimes called has become a staple of Disney media, though early attempts (a waxen Grand Moff Tarkin and unconvincing young Luke Skywalker) were poorly received by audiences.
The technology is clearly here to stay, but how it will be used creatively — and ethically — is still an open question. Stone and Parker, despite their notoriety for off-color humor and courting controversy, seem to be sound thinkers when it comes to fundamental questions of fairness and storytelling. That’s a start.
South Park creators’ deepfake video startup Deep Voodoo conjures $20M in new funding by Devin Coldewey originally published on TechCrunch
Quora launches Poe, a way to talk to AI chatbots like ChatGPT
Signaling its interest in text-generating AI systems like ChatGPT, Quora this week launched a platform called Poe that lets people ask questions, get instant answers and have a back-and-forth dialogue with AI chatbots.
Short for “Platform for Open Exploration,” Poe — which is invite-only and currently only available on iOS — is “designed to be a place where people can easily interact with a number of different AI agents,” a Quora spokesperson told TechCrunch via text message.
“We have learned a lot about building consumer internet products over the last 12 years building and operating Quora. And we are specifically experienced in serving people who are looking for knowledge,” the spokesperson said. “We believe much of what we’ve learned can be applied to this new domain where people are interfacing with large language models.”
Poe, then, isn’t an attempt to build a ChatGPT-like AI model from scratch. ChatGPT — which has an aptitude for answering questions on topics ranging from poetry to coding — has been the subject of controversy for its ability to sometimes give answers that sound convincing but aren’t factually true. Earlier this month, Q&A coding site Stack Overflow temporarily banned users from sharing content generated by ChatGPT, saying the AI made it too easy for users to generate responses and flood the site with dubious answers.
Quora might’ve found itself in hot water if, for instance, it trained a chatbot on its platform’s vast collection of crowdsourced questions and answers. Users might’ve taken issue with their content being used that way — particularly given that some AI systems have been shown to regurgitate parts of the data on which they were trained (e.g. code). Some parties have protested against generative art systems like Stable Diffusion and DALL-E 2 and code-generating systems such as GitHub’s Copilot, which they see as stealing and profiting from their work.
To wit, Microsoft, GitHub and OpenAI are being sued in a class action lawsuit that accuses them of violating copyright law by allowing Copilot to regurgitate sections of licensed code without providing credit. And on the art community portal Artstation, which earlier this year began allowing AI-generated art on its platform, members began widely protesting by placing “No AI Art” images in their portfolios.
Image Credits: Quora
At launch, Poe provides access to several text-generating AI models including ChatGPT. (OpenAI doesn’t presently offer a public API for ChatGPT; the Quora spokesperson refused to say whether Quora has a partnership with OpenAI for Poe or another form of early access.) Poe’s like a text messaging app, but for AI models — users can chat with the models separately. Within the chat interface, Poe provides a range of different suggestions for conversation topics and use cases, like “writing help,” “cooking,” “problem solving” and “nature.”
Poe ships with only a handful of models at launch, but Quora plans to provide a way for model providers — e.g. companies — to submit their models for inclusion in the near future.
“We think this will be a fun way for people to interact with and explore different language models. Poe is designed to be the best way for someone to get an instant answer to any question they have, using natural conversation,” the spokesperson said. “There is an incredible amount of research and development going into advancing the capabilities of these models, but in order to bring all that value to people around the world, there is a need for good interfaces that are easy to use. We hope we can provide that interface so that as all of this development happens over the years ahead, everyone around the world can share as much as possible in the benefits.”
It’s pretty well-established that AI chatbots including ChatGPT can generate biased, racist and otherwise toxic content — not to mention malicious code. Quora’s not taking steps itself to combat this, instead relying on the providers of the models in Poe to moderate and filter the content themselves.
“The model providers have put in a lot of effort to prevent the bots from generating unsafe responses,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson was quite clear that Poe isn’t a part of Quora for now — nor will it be in the future necessarily. Quora sees it as a separate, independent project, much like Google’s AI Test Kitchen, it plans to iterate and refine over time.
When asked about the business motivations behind Poe, the spokesperson demurred, saying that it’s early days. But it isn’t tough to conceive how Quora, which makes most of its money through paywalls and advertising, might build premium features into Poe if it grows.
For now, though, Quora says it’s focused on working out scalability, getting feedback from beta testers and addressing issues that come up.
“The whole field is moving very rapidly now and we’re more interested in figuring out what problems we can solve for people with Poe,” the spokesperson said.
Quora launches Poe, a way to talk to AI chatbots like ChatGPT by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch
Tesla said to be conducting a fresh round of layoffs next quarter
Tesla is battening down the hatches against feature oil a worsening economy, according to a new report from Electrek. The automaker will conduct a new round of layoffs in the first quarter of 2023, per the blog’s source, and will also freeze hiring across the board – after having just resumed hiring during the latter half of 2022 following a prior freeze and first round of layoffs in June.
Of course, macroeconomic conditions don’t look like they’re going to improve anytime soon, so that could definitely be a reason for Tesla to implement measures to slow or reduce spending on headcount. But the EV company is also facing additional pressures from its recent steep stock price drop, which began in late September/early October and worsened again towards the end of October when Elon Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter.
Musk has recently said that the problem is a general one regarding the stock market itself that results from rising bank account interest rates and general market volatility rather than any specific challenge facing Tesla. But critics still point to Musk’s general distraction as a contributor to the company’s poor performance with investors of late.
Tesla said to be conducting a fresh round of layoffs next quarter by Darrell Etherington originally published on TechCrunch