Author: Advanced AI Editor

Meta Connect 2025 — the company’s biggest conference of the year where it unveils smart glasses and VR headsets — kicks off on Wednesday night. We’re expecting the star of Meta Connect 2025 to be the company’s new AI-powered smart glasses with Ray-Ban and Oakley, but the company may have some other surprises in store regarding the Metaverse, Quest headsets, or even its broader AI ambitions. Meta says it has sold millions of Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, and earlier this year, Meta unveiled its latest AI-powered smart glasses with Oakley, which were designed for athletes. Silicon Valley is leaning heavily…

Tesla is making a big change to its Full Self-Driving doghouse that drivers will like. The doghouse is a hypothetical term used to describe the penalty period that Tesla applies to drivers who receive too many infractions related to distracted driving. Previously, Tesla implemented a seven-day ban on the use of Full Self-Driving for those who received five strikes in a vehicle equipped with a cabin camera and three strikes for those without a cabin camera. It also forgave one strike per week of Full Self-Driving use, provided the driver did not receive any additional strikes during the seven-day period.…

Dive Brief: ChatGPT creator OpenAI has appointed the former finance chief of xAI, Mike Liberatore, to the role of business finance officer (BFO) for AI infrastructure, effective Tuesday, a company spokesperson confirmed to CFO Dive via email. Liberatore will report to OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar in the new role, and will “focus on supporting the team charged with scaling OpenAI’s access to compute,” the spokesperson said. The move comes after Liberatore abruptly departed from xAI in July after serving only four months as its finance chief — marking the latest in a series of executive leadership changes and departures for…

American artists Jennifer Packer and Marie Watt were named on Tuesday as the winners of this year’s Heinz Awards for the Arts. Now in its 30th year, the award is distributed by the Pittsburgh-based Heinz Family Foundation and carries an unrestricted cash prize of $250,000 for each winner. Six recipients are named annually, two in each of the three categories—arts, the economy, and the environment—with the intention to “celebrate the vision and the spirit that produce achievements of lasting good.” The two honored artists have distinct practices. The New York–based Packer is best known for her jewel-toned paintings whose subjects suggest a tremendous, if disquieted,…

Tesla has unveiled the Megablock and Megapack 3, the latest additions to its industrial-scale battery storage solution lineup.  The products highlight Tesla Energy’s growing role in the company, as well as the division’s growing efforts to provide sustainable energy solutions for industrial-scale applications. Megablock targets speed and scale During the “Las Megas” event in Las Vegas, Tesla launched Megablock, a pre-engineered medium-voltage block designed to integrate Megapack 3 units in a plug-and-play system. Capable of 20 MWh AC with a 25-year life cycle and more than 10,000 cycles, the Megablock could achieve 91% round-trip efficiency at medium voltage, inclusive of…

Robotics startup funding has hit the highest point in years, boosted by another giant round for a developer of humanoid bots. On Tuesday, San Jose, California-based Figure, the developer of general purpose humanoid robots, announced that it raised $1 billion in Series C financing. The round, led by Parkway Venture Capital, set a $39 billion post-money valuation for the company. Figure, founded in 2022 by Archer founder Brett Adcock, plans to use the Series C money to scale its artificial intelligence platform and manufacturing capabilities. Other investors in the round include Brookfield Asset Management, Nvidia, Macquarie Capital, Intel Capital, Align…

For years, Big Tech CEOs have touted visions of AI agents that can autonomously use software applications to complete tasks for people. But take today’s consumer AI agents out for a spin, whether it’s OpenAI’s ChatGPT Agent or Perplexity’s Comet, and you’ll quickly realize how limited the technology still is. Making AI agents more robust may take a new set of techniques that the industry is still discovering. One of those techniques is carefully simulating workspaces where agents can be trained on multi-step tasks — known as reinforcement learning (RL) environments. Similarly to how labeled datasets powered the last wave…

OpenAI joins other tech companies that have tried youth-specific versions of their services. YouTube Kids, Instagram Teen Accounts, and TikTok’s under-16 restrictions represent similar efforts to create “safer” digital spaces for young users, but teens routinely circumvent age verification through false birthdate entries, borrowed accounts, or technical workarounds. A 2024 BBC report found that 22 percent of children lie on social media platforms about being 18 or over. Privacy vs. safety trade-offs Despite the unproven technology behind AI age detection, OpenAI still plans to press ahead with its system, acknowledging that adults will sacrifice privacy and flexibility to make it…

Welcome to The #Content Report, a newsletter by Vince Mancini. I’ve been writing about movies, culture, and food since the late aughts. Now I’m delivering it straight to you, with none of the autoplay videos, takeover ads, or chumboxes of the ad-ruined internet. Support my work and help me bring back the cool internet by subscribing, sharing, commenting, and keeping it real.—It seems like every day, there’s a new article about how Chat GPT told a suicidal teen how to make and hide a noose from his family, or convinced a high school dropout corporate recruiter that he had invented…

KAWS, artist, entrepreneur, and hypebeast patron saint, has a new first on his CV: Uniqlo’s inaugural artist-in-residence. Starting immediately, he’ll be tasked with expanding the Japanese company’s “Art for All” philosophy, according to the clothing company.   More specifically, KAWS (aka Brian Donnelly) will curate art events across its stores worldwide and collaborate with the brand’s various museum partners, which include the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tate Modern, the Louvre, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Fans of the brand will have noted that in recent years, Uniqlo products have featured famed artworks from those respective…