Business

As conventional AI benchmarking techniques prove inadequate, AI builders are turning to more creative ways to assess the capabilities of generative AI models. For one group of developers, that’s Minecraft, the Microsoft-owned sandbox-building game. The website Minecraft Benchmark (or MC-Bench) was developed collaboratively to pit AI models against each other in head-to-head challenges to respond … Read more

President Donald Trump said he will label violence against Tesla dealerships as domestic terrorism, per a transcript shared by the White House pool reporters, a sign of deepening ties with Elon Musk. “Tesla Takeovers” have been breaking out across the globe at Tesla dealerships as people protest what they see as a hostile takeover of … Read more

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt is taking over as the CEO of Relativity Space, a 9-year-old rocket startup, a company spokesperson confirmed in a statement to TechCrunch. This is Schmidt’s first CEO job since he left Google nearly 15 years ago. On Monday, Schmidt told employees of Relativity Space that he made a significant investment … Read more

The CEO of Colossal, a startup that aims to use genetic editing techniques to bring back extinct species, including the wooly mammoth, assured audiences at SXSW that the company has no plans to create a real-life Jurassic Park — lest there was any doubt. “Modern conservation isn’t working […] and we’re gonna need a ‘de-extinction’ … Read more

A federal judge is allowing an AI-related copyright lawsuit against Meta to move forward, although he dismissed part of the suit. In Kadrey vs. Meta, authors including Richard Kadrey, Sarah Silverman, and Ta-Nehisi Coates have alleged that Meta has violated their intellectual property rights by using their books to train its Llama AI models, and … Read more

Signal President Meredith Whittaker warned Friday that agentic AI could come with a risk to user privacy. Speaking onstage at the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas, the advocate for secure communications referred to the use of AI agents as “putting your brain in a jar,” and cautioned that this new paradigm of computing — where … Read more

SpaceX’s Starship spiraled out of control while in space during a test flight on Thursday, marking the second launch in a row that the vehicle has run into a fatal problem on its way to orbit. The company launched Starship using its Super Heavy booster and things looked normal for the first eight minutes of the … Read more

President Donald Trump has delayed tariffs on automobile imports from Canada and Mexico for one month after requests from executives at the Big Three automakers — General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis — with the expectation that automakers will move any offshore operations to the United States by April 2. The reprieve, which Politico first reported, … Read more

Just over four years ago, climate friendly fintech startup Aspiration was on the verge of a $2 billion public listing. Now, one of the startup’s board members has pleaded guilty to wire fraud and one of the co-founders has been arrested for allegedly conspiring to defraud investors, according to a federal criminal complaint filed by … Read more

Thought Pokémon was a tough benchmark for AI? One group of researchers argues that Super Mario Bros. is even tougher. Hao AI Lab, a research org at the University of California San Diego, on Friday threw AI into live Super Mario Bros. games. Anthropic’s Claude 3.7 performed the best, followed by Claude 3.5. Google’s Gemini … Read more