Author: GT

Google is doubling down on building out its AI business in the U.K. On Monday morning in London, the CEO of Google DeepMind Demis Hassabis and Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian appeared alongside customers BT and WPP to spell out some of its plans. The company said it would expand UK data residency to include Agentspace so that AI agents for enterprises built on Google infrastructure can be hosted locally — a key detail for organizations that are wary of hosting data outside of their own purview. Alongside this, Google is introducing more financial incentives for AI startups to work…

There has been a lot of excitement and many headlines generated by the recent launch of DeepSeek. And, while the technology behind this latest iteration of Generative AI is undoubtedly impressive, in many ways its arrival encapsulates the state of AI today. That is to say, it’s interesting, promising and maybe a little overhyped. I wonder whether that may be partly a generational thing. The baby boomer generation was the first to be widely employed in IT and that cohort learned the lessons of business the hard way.  Projects had to be cost-justified because technology was expensive and needed to…

Most of the focus in generative AI has been on text-based interfaces used to generate text, images and more. The next wave appears to be voice, and it’s rolling in fast. In the latest development, Google today announced that it would be adding Chirp 3 — its speech-to-text and HD text-to-speech models — to its Vertex AI development platform starting next week. Last week, Google quietly announced that Chirp 3 would be rolling out 8 new voices for 31 languages. Use cases for the platform include building voice assistants, creating audiobooks, developing support agents and voice-overs for videos. The news was…

Bitcoin (BTC) has steadied since last Tuesday, bouncing to its 200-day average above $84,000 over the weekend. Still, a crypto whale has taken a contrarian stance by raising a leveraged bearish bet on BTC worth millions on Hyperliquid while betting bullish on the MELANIA token. As of writing, the whale held a short position in BTC perpetual futures worth over $445 million, generating an unrealized gain of $1.3 million. The position employed a 40x leverage and a liquidation price of $86,000, according to data source Hyperliquid and Lookonchain. The outsized short anticipating a bitcoin price slide made waves on social…

All eyes are now on gold as the ultimate safe-haven asset. The price of gold just hit $3,000 per ounce, an all-time record. That comes amid a correction in the equity markets, a substantial decline in the crypto market, and widespread concerns about what’s going to happen next with U.S. economic policy. But don’t forget about Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC), which has often been referred to as “digital gold.” A growing number of top investors now consider Bitcoin to be superior to physical gold as a store of value, a hedge against inflation, and a safe haven amid economic uncertainty. But…

OpenAI and Google are each urging the US government to take decisive action to secure the nation’s AI leadership. “As America’s world-leading AI sector approaches AGI, with a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) determined to overtake us by 2030, the Trump Administration’s new AI Action Plan can ensure that American-led AI built on democratic principles continues to prevail over CCP-built autocratic, authoritarian AI,” wrote OpenAI, in a letter to the Office of Science and Technology Policy. In a separate letter, Google echoed this sentiment by stating, “While America currently leads the world in AI – and is home to the most…

Ryu Young-sang, CEO of South Korean telecoms giant SK Telecom, told CNBC that AI is helping telecoms firms improve efficiency in their networks.Manaure Quintero | Afp | Getty ImagesBARCELONA — Global telecommunications firms are talking up advances in key technologies like artificial intelligence as they look to transition away from being perceived as the “dumb pipes” behind the internet.At the Mobile World Congress technology conference in Barcelona, CEOs of multiple telecoms companies described how they’re piling money into new technological innovations, including AI, next-generation 5G and 6G networks, satellite internet and even smart cities.Makoto Takahashi, president and CEO of Japanese…

A broad coalition drawn from across the ranks of Europe’s tech industry is calling for “radical action” from European Union lawmakers to shrink reliance on foreign-owned digital infrastructure and services to bolster the bloc’s economic prospects, resilience, and security in increasingly fraught geopolitical times. In an open letter to European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and the EU’s digital chief, Henna Virkkunen, which TechCrunch reviewed ahead of publication, more than 80 signatories (representing around 100 organizations) said they want regional lawmakers to rethink current support efforts so that they are centered on fostering uptake of homegrown alternatives with the…

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The videos roll through TikTok in 30-second flashes.Migrants trek in camouflage through dry desert terrain. Dune buggies roar up to the United States-Mexico border barrier. Families with young children pass through gaps in the wall. Helicopters, planes, yachts, tunnels and jet skis stand by for potential customers.Laced with emojis, the videos posted by smugglers offer a simple promise: If you don’t have a visa in the U.S., trust us. We’ll get you over safely.At a time when legal pathways to the U.S. have been slashed and criminal groups are raking in money from migrant smuggling, social…

We move thanks to coordination among many skeletal muscle fibers, all twitching and pulling in sync. While some muscles align in one direction, others form intricate patterns, helping parts of the body move in multiple ways.In recent years, scientists and engineers have looked to muscles as potential actuators for “biohybrid” robots — machines powered by soft, artificially grown muscle fibers. Such bio-bots could squirm and wiggle through spaces where traditional machines cannot. For the most part, however, researchers have only been able to fabricate artificial muscle that pulls in one direction, limiting any robot’s range of motion.Now MIT engineers have…