We need to improve the accuracy of AI accuracy discussions

 Reading the tech press, you would be forgiven for believing that AI is going to eat pretty much every industry and job. Not a day goes by without another reporter breathlessly reporting some new machine learning product that is going to trounce human intelligence. That surfeit of enthusiasm doesn’t originate just with journalists though — they are merely channeling the wild optimism… Read More


Source: Tech Crunch

The un-lonely planet

 It used to be easy to get lost. Pick up your passport, board an airplane, and zoom, you were gone, disconnected, all on your own, until and unless you stopped by an Internet cafe or an international phone booth. Nowadays my T-Mobile plan gives me free data roaming in more than a hundred countries, and even those without, like Vietnam, where I write this, tend to have near-ubiquitous… Read More


Source: Tech Crunch

Meet the women inventing the future in the TechMAKERS mini-series

 MAKERS spotlights five women at the forefront of technologies remaking our world, from AI to robotics to telepathy to deep space exploration. They are engineers and computer scientists at the top of their game in an industry where women make up only a quarter of technical jobs. They are exploding silicon ceilings and motivating a new generation of female “makers” to join their… Read More


Source: Tech Crunch

Facebook co-founder says its rise reveals the fault lines destroying the “American Dream”

 In April 2004, a couple of Harvard undergraduate roommates took a walk in the pouring rain around the university campus. They were two of the three co-founders of an internet company that had launched a couple of months earlier — a social network start-up that we now know as Facebook. One of the young men, a history student called Chris Hughes, was making his case to the other, a… Read More


Source: Tech Crunch

Where did venture capitalists go to college?

 The educational backgrounds of VC investment professionals are in some ways surprisingly diverse, even if the population of investors generally isn’t. Still, there are some definite trends to suss out at all levels of the educational continuum, and that’s what we’re going to do today. Read More


Source: Tech Crunch

GV partner Lo Toney wants to raise $50 million to fund diverse investors

 GV partner Lo Toney is looking to raise up to $50 million for his new fund, Plexo Capital, Axios first reported. Since 2017, Toney has been incubating Plexo Capital inside GV, formerly known as Google Ventures. The idea with Plexo Capital, which is backed by Alphabet, is to invest as a limited partner in seed funds led by people of color and/or female general partners, Toney said in an… Read More


Source: Tech Crunch

The incredible multi-dimensional chess of Qualcomm vs. Broadcom

 Game of Thrones may be out of season, but the complex and multi-dimensional strategic drama at the heart of the acclaimed series can still be witnessed in today’s on-going showdown between Broadcom and Qualcomm. This week, we even had a character “death” of one of the “royals” to boot.
For those who have not been paying attention to this epic match… Read More


Source: Tech Crunch

Corporate bio VCs are backing more rounds and making bigger bets

 Biotech is a lot like venture capital. Vast amounts of research, testing and marketing go into a wide range of therapies. But in the end, it’s just a tiny fraction that deliver most returns.
That similarity may be why most of the biggest biotech and pharmaceutical companies have a long history of engaging in the venture business as startup investors, spin-out creators and strategic partners. Read More


Source: Tech Crunch

Now you can have a conversation with Alexa without screaming ‘Hey, Alexa’ for every request

 Those with digital home assistants know this phenomenon all too well. You ask Siri, Google or Alexa to hook it up with the facts, they provide an answer, but then you have a follow-up question. In order to ask that follow-up question, you have to say “Hey, Siri,” “Hey, Google” or “Alexa” all over again. It’s a true annoyance in this first-world we… Read More


Source: Tech Crunch

Some hard truths about Twitter’s health crisis

 It’s a testament to quite how control freaky and hermetically sealed to criticism the tech industry is that Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey went unscripted in front of his own brand livestreaming service this week, inviting users to lob awkward questions at him for the first time ever. Read More


Source: Tech Crunch