Author: Advanced AI Editor

As apocalyptic warnings for the job-killing potential of AI mount, here comes a test for Wall Street. Verint Systems, a $1.2 billion maker of software for call centers, has hired bankers to seek a buyer, according to people familiar with the matter. The process will give an early indication ofAI’s disruption to long-established industries — why sit on hold in a world where personal AI agents can negotiate refunds and flight changes? And importantly for companies, why employ thousands of humans to answer those calls? Verint’s stock is down about 25% year-to-date, despite efforts to position itself to the market…

Close-up of an unrecognizable man using a computer and wearing headphones on his head while holding an electric guitar and recording the sound. Musician and technology concept | Image Credits:Alberto Case / Getty Images A small company called Songscription launched last week with AI models that automate music transcription, turning an audio file of a song into sheet music within minutes. Operating on a freemium model, the product is geared toward both professional and hobbyist musicians. “We hope to make playing music more enjoyable,” Andrew Carlins, CEO of Songscription and a student in Stanford’s MBA/MA in Education program, told TechCrunch.…

Mark Zuckerberg is stacking the deck in the AI race, betting that unlimited capital, top talent, and raw computing power will ensure victory. If the winning hand Zuckerberg is chasing—AI “superintelligence”— is still very much a vague and theoretical concept, the Meta CEO’s remarkable series of moves unveiled Monday instantly changed the reality for everyone else in the game, particularly the pioneering AI startups without Meta’s resources. Zuckerberg announced a major revamp of its AI operations on Monday, putting the company’s collection of AI businesses and projects under the umbrella of a newly created organization called Meta Superintelligence Labs, or…

Sam Altman said that the average ChatGPT query uses about one-fifteenth of a teaspoon of water, equivalent to 0.000083 gallons of water, or the energy required to power a lightbulb for a few minutes, per Business Insider. In addition to that, the chatbot requires 0.34 watt-hours of electricity to operate. OpenAI has unveiled o3-pro, an enhanced version of its o3, a reasoning model that the chatGPT maker launched earlier this year. O3-pro is available for ChatGPT and Team users and in the API, while Enterprise and Edu users will get access in the third week of June. OpenAI upgraded ChatGPT’s…

Screenshot | Image Credits:Airial The travel industry has gathered extensive data over the years about trips and transportation, and founders are using it to create every conceivable kind of AI travel startup. In fact, every word of this sentence is a link to a new AI travel tool. Now startups and incumbent travel tech companies are in a race to build one comprehensive tool that could plan and manage every part of your trip. Airial is one of the contenders that’s banking on its ability to map out your entire travel experience end-to-end. At a surface level, here’s how it…

Image Credits:Slava Blazer Photography / TechCrunch Navin Chaddha, managing director of the 55-year-old Silicon Valley venture firm Mayfield, is betting big on AI’s ability to transform people-heavy industries like consulting, law, and accounting. The veteran investor, whose wins include Lyft, Poshmark, and HashiCorp, recently discussed at TechCrunch’s StrictlyVC evening in Menlo Park why he believes “AI teammates” can create software-like margins in traditionally labor-intensive sectors, and why startups should right now target neglected markets rather than compete head-to-head with giants like Accenture — though he acknowledged that disrupting outfits where relationships and trust matter is sometimes harder than Silicon Valley…

Image Credits:Peter Dazeley / Getty Images Welcome back to Week in Review! Lots of news for you this week — Travis Kalanick is possibly returning to the world of self-driving vehicles, CoreWeave’s CEO is now worth $10 billion, Apple users aren’t happy with how the company is promoting its new “F1” movie, and much more. Quick note that we will be off next week for the July 4 holiday. Have a great weekend! And another one: Meta snagged a key OpenAI researcher, Trapit Bansal, to boost its new AI superintelligence team. He’s the same guy who helped kick off OpenAI’s…

Stack of books | Image Credits:Benjamin White / Flickr under a CC BY-SA 2.0 license. An open letter from authors including Lauren Groff, Lev Grossman, R.F. Kuang, Dennis Lehane, and Geoffrey Maguire calls on book publishers to pledge to limit their use of AI tools, for example by committing to only hire human audiobook narrators. The letter argues that authors’ work has been “stolen” by AI companies: “Rather than paying writers a small percentage of the money our work makes for them, someone else will be paid for a technology built on our unpaid labor.” Among other commitments, the authors…

Image Credits:alashi / Getty Images For those of you wondering if AI agents can truly replace human workers, do yourself a favor and read the blog post that documents Anthropic’s “Project Vend.” Researchers at Anthropic and AI safety company Andon Labs put an instance of Claude Sonnet 3.7 in charge of an office vending machine, with a mission to make a profit. And, like an episode of “The Office,” hilarity ensued. They named the AI agent Claudius, equipped it with a web browser capable of placing product orders and an email address (which was actually a Slack channel) where customers could…

Image Credits:Anthropic Silicon Valley has opined on the promise of generative AI to forge new career paths and economic opportunities – like the newly coveted solo unicorn startup. Banks and analysts have touted AI’s potential to boost GDP. But those gains are unlikely to be distributed equally in the face of what many expect to be widespread AI-related job loss. Amid this backdrop, Anthropic on Friday launched its Economic Futures Program, a new initiative to support research on AI’s impacts on the labor market and global economy and to develop policy proposals to prepare for the shift. “Everybody’s asking questions…