It’s a clear day in Zermatt, a remote Swiss town anchored in a sharp valley under the gaze of the Matterhorn. We’ve taken off from Air Zermatt, home to some of the best high-altitude rescue pilots in the world. I’d flown in helicopters before but never piloted one. And this location was hardly a beginner course.
“Are you ready to take the reins?” the controller asks.
“Um, I think . . .?” I said nervously.
“I
In California, a high school teacher complains that students watch Netflix on their phones during class. In Maryland, a chemistry teacher says students use gambling apps to place bets during the school day.Around the country, educators say students routinely send Snapchat messages in class, listen to music and shop online, among countless other examples of how smartphones distract from teaching and learning.The hold that phones have on adolescents in America today is well-documented, but teac
For the past month, I’ve been letting an AI app called Rize analyze everything I do on my work computer.
It sees every app I open, every website I visit, and every appointment on my calendar. It knows, down to the minute, how much time I spend writing and how often I’m checking email, and it’s well-aware of when I’m wasting time on social media. I’m reminded of these things every time Rize encourages me to focus or blocks my biggest distractions.
Klarna is bullish on bots.
One month after taking its OpenAI-powered virtual assistant global, the Swedish buy-now, pay-later company has released new data touting its ability to handle customer communications, make shoppers happier, and even drive better financial results.
The app-based AI chatbot already handles two-thirds of all customer service chats, the company said Tuesday—some 2.3 million conversations so far—with the virtual assistant earning custome
If you grew up shopping at Gap, you can likely remember some of the great moments in its brand marketing history, from ads featuring a young Spike Lee in the 1980s to the slogan “For every generation” to the famous “Who Wore Khakis” series of print ads, featuring unexpectedly preppy styling from the likes of Miles Davis, Picasso, and James Dean. But it’s been a while since the Gap brand really crossed over to enter the sweater-buying pubic’s conscious
My colleagues and I have built a robot composed of many building blocks like the cells of a multicellular organism. Without a “brain” or a central controller in the system, our robot, dubbed Loopy, relies on the collective behavior of all of its cells to interact with the world.
In this sense, we call Loopy a robotic swarm. But Loopy can also be seen as a single robot since all the cells are connected; therefore, Loopy is also “a swarm of one.” This research
The European Union is looking into Microsoft’s partnership with French startup Mistral AI as part of its broader review of the booming generative artificial intelligence sector to see if it raises any competition concerns.
The 27-nation bloc’s executive commission said Tuesday in a brief statement that it’s analyzing the agreement between the two companies announced a day earlier. Microsoft declined to comment. Mistral did not respond to a request for comment.Mi
The recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling that frozen embryos should be considered “extrauterine children” and, therefore, human beings had an immediate chilling effect on IVF facilities in the state, where at least three in vitro fertilization providers to date have already halted services in the decision’s wake. It’s also the latest challenge for women’s and family health-focused tech startups in a femtech space grappling with restrictive new state laws that
I’ve always been a big proponent of experimenting with different web browsers. It’s one of the simplest ways to get out of your tech comfort zone, and you might even discover some new features that you never knew you needed.
So when I found out last week about a browser called Floorp, I had to give it a try. Beyond just having an excellent name (which requires all my willpower not to write in all caps), Floorp caters to browser power users with all kinds of customizati
On Monday, the Supreme Court began hearing oral arguments in two cases that have the potential to remake online speech in America by weighing how the First Amendment applies to social media platforms.
In Moody v. NetChoice and NetChoice v. Paxton, the justices will decide the constitutionality of a pair of laws that effectively strip tech companies’ agency to determine whose content they can restrict. Legal experts on both sides are calling them the two most importa