During the "We, Robot" event at Warner Bros. Discovery studio this Thursday, Elon Musk unveiled his highly-anticipated line of robotaxis, showcasing the futuristic-looking Cybercab and Robovan. Expected to enter production "before 2027," the $30,000 Cybercab is a fully autonomous robotaxi made for small groups of passengers. Meanwhile, the Robovan is a more heavy-duty robotaxi, capable of hauling up to 20 people or being used for transporting goods. Both robotaxis leverage Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology, but the complete lack of steering wheels and pedals along with skepticism around FSD may make it difficult for it to pass safety regulations.
After having claimed the Nobel Prize in physics just earlier this week, AI has now taken half of this year's Nobel Prize in chemistry, awarded to a group of three scientists. One half was awarded to Google DeepMind duo Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, who used their AI-based AlphaFold Protein Structure Database to revolutionize protein structure prediction. Meanwhile, the other half of the prize was awarded to US biochemist David Baker for his breakthrough in creating proteins that did not exist before with never-before-seen functions.
A few months after its debut in May of this year, Google has made its most advanced and capable AI image generation model yet, Imagen 3, available to Gemini users worldwide. Imagen 3 is widely regarded as a more polished model than its predecessor, offering higher-quality images with fewer artifacts, a knack for text rendering, and no daily limits. However, Imagen 3 does come with a limitation, as Google requires users to subscribe to Gemini Advanced (costing $20/mo) to be allowed to generate images of people.
MediaTek has been gearing up to release its next flagship mobile chipset in Q4 2024 with the recent announcement of the Dimensity 9400. This AI-centric processor offers a 40% power efficiency boost over its predecessor. It features one Arm Cortex-X925 core, three Cortex-X4 cores, and four Cortex-A720 cores, resulting in 35% faster single-core and 28% faster multi-core performance, according to MediaTek. The Dimensity 9400 chipset also includes the new 12-core Immortalis-G925 GPU for 40% faster ray tracing and supports AI video generation, agentic applications, and tri-fold phone scaling.
San Francisco-based AI startup Writer is aiming to raise $200 million in funding to shoot itself up to a near $1.9 billion valuation after debuting its latest enterprise AI model, Palmyra X 004. Writer leverages synthetic data to compete with enterprise offerings from OpenAI and Anthropic at a fraction of the training cost, despite experts warning that it could degrade performance and exaggerate biases. Still, the approach seems to hold some merit, as Writer's technology is used by over 250 customers, including Uber and Salesforce, from creating LinkedIn job posts to custom AI apps for market analysis.
Following a disappointing exit by former Planetly executives Cari Davidson, Giuseppe Gentile, and Micha Schildmann, the trio of startup employees co-founded Forward Earth to solve a similar problem that Planetly failed to. After having raised $4.5 million in seed funding, Forward Earth's more AI-centric approach offers an AI-powered platform to help mid-market companies calculate complex CO2 footprints for their supply chains and assist with regulatory reporting such as the EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, all while easily integrating with existing software.