PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel talks quarter-life crises and how to tackle the state November 2, 2014 It's not every day that you get to speak to Silicon Valley royalty. And Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, first outside investor in Facebook, fund manager, and leader of multiple firms, is a dynasty heavyweight. Having just published his new book, Zero to One, he’s keen to talk about some of his latest ideas. [...]
Elon Musk: “We need to be careful with artificial intelligence” October 27, 2014 Elon Musk may have made millions from technology, but that doesn't mean he doesn't worry about it bringing about a Terminator-style end to humanity. During a talk to students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the SpaceX-Tesla-PayPal tycoon warned that "we should be very careful" about how we use artificial intelligence, adding it could be humanity's [...]
London is no Silicon Valley – here’s why that may be a good thing October 20, 2014 Geeks and startup types are again gathering today in Billingsgate for TechCrunch’s Disrupt conference, a celebration of London’s tech sector. There’s a lot to celebrate: the sector hasn’t been this hot since the days of the dot-com boom. Investors are toasting two billion-dollar exits this year: games designers Natural Motion and artificial intelligence wizards Deep [...]
London’s tech boom is more than just hype – and the City is at its heart September 18, 2014 WHILE London Technology Week may not yet rival London Fashion Week for glamour, there is real substance to the capital’s tech boom. This is why, for the first time, TechCrunch is bringing its Silicon Valley conference to London this October. A number of things are driving this tech boom. London has long acted as a [...]
Robots won’t take all City jobs – they could even give you a pay rise September 11, 2014 You're back from the summer, but for how long? In case you missed it, one tech visionary thinks many City jobs could be automated within a decade. Dave Coplin, who glories in the title of chief envisioning officer at Microsoft UK, told the Telegraph that “the City could be run by algorithms”. Ten years is [...]
Robots are after your job in the City September 1, 2014 And you thought you were irreplaceable? If you're a banker or analyst in the City, watch your back. You’re about to be replaced – by a robot. Not the walking, talking, C-3PO Star Wars kind, but by artificial intelligence, or computer programs which think for themselves – more HAL in 2001 a Space Odyssey. Within [...]
Meet the magical computing that puts the human into artificial intelligence August 3, 2014 Think Artificial Intelligence and the first thing that comes to mind is probably robots. Thanks to popular culture, AI is considered distinctly un-human, and can prompt people to worry about the role of technology in our daily lives and who is really in control. However, there’s a new wave of technology fighting to put the [...]
From manufacturing to space farming: Meet Baxter, the multi purpose robot July 24, 2014 Baxter was originally designed as an industrial robot for working alongside humans on factory floors, excelling at fast, repetitive manufacturing tasks. Each with its own pair of chunky robot arms connected to a computer brain, hundreds of Baxters are already busily working away in factories and packing stations across the US. First launched [...]
Journalists beware: Financial news could soon be written by robots July 2, 2014 Are earnings reports so mundane that a robot can be trusted to produce them? The Associated Press thinks so. The news service will soon entrust reports on earnings and some other business stories to an automated system so it can better resource more in-depth business coverage. The AP expects to produce more than 4,000 reports [...]
A human step for artificial intelligence June 23, 2014 Robots are getting smarter. They still need instructions, but they no longer need to be so detailed. Now you can just say “make me a bowl of noodles”, rather than telling them that they need to heat the water, too. This is because of work being done by a scientist in California, who is designing them [...]