Cybersecurity firm Darktrace agrees $5.3bn sale to US private equity business

UK company’s offer from Thoma Bravo is 44% higher than average share price over past three monthsBusiness live – latest updatesThe Cambridge-based cybersecurity and artificial intelligence company Darktrace is likely to become the latest British technology champion to be swallowed up by a US suitor, after it agreed a $5.3bn (£4.2bn) sale to US private equity business Thoma Bravo.Darktrace, whose co-founding investor Mike Lynch is currently on trial for fraud and conspiracy in t

Challenge cited California state law that allows plaintiffs and defendants to remove judge they believe can’t grant impartial trialThe California judge presiding over Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, has removed himself from the case. Judge Ethan Schulman on Monday sustained a challenge from Musk’s lawyers, which cited a California state law that allows plaintiffs and defendants to remove a judge they believe cannot grant an impartial trial.The law, k

AlphaFold breakthrough may bolster work in fields from antibiotics and cancer therapy to resilient cropsResearchers have hailed another “leap forward” for artificial intelligence after Google DeepMind unveiled the latest version of its AlphaFold program, which can predict how proteins behave in the complex symphony of life.The breakthrough promises to shed fresh light on the biological machinery that underpins living organisms and drive breakthroughs in fields from antibiotics and ca

Paintings identified as fake using cutting-edge technology are ‘tip of the iceberg’ specialist Dr Carina Popovici saysA “Monet” and a “Renoir” are among up to 40 fake paintings that are being offered for sale on eBay, according to research by a leading expert.Dr Carina Popovici, a specialist in authenticating artwork, said she applied cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) technology to pictures advertised on the online platform and was shocked to discover

Netflix’s hit show The Circle recently introduced an AI chatbot contestant, a potentially worrying sign of where we’re headingAccording to his profile, Max, a contestant on season six of the Netflix reality show The Circle, is 26 years old, brunette and into his Australian shepherd, Pippa. He is a veterinary intern from Pismo Beach, California, and a bit cheeky – “single, but my dog is taken”. He enters into the Circle chat, the fake social media service contestants

Program aims to help create better disability support plans to guide carers and support workers’ response to challenging behaviourGet our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcastAustralian researchers hope a new AI-supported educational program will help reduce the use of restraints and seclusion on people with disability.The Promoting Positive Behaviour Support Practice program is designed to help practitioners create safer, respectful, constructive plans to guide

With large language models needing quality data, some publishers are offering theirs at a price while others are blocking accessOpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, knows that high-quality data matters in the artificial intelligence business – and news publishers have vast amounts of it.“It would be impossible to train today’s leading AI models without using copyrighted materials,” the company said this year in a submission to the UK’s House of Lords, adding that limit

Victoria Shi is modelled on Rosalie Nombre, a singer and former contestant on Ukraine’s version of the reality show The BachelorUkraine on Wednesday presented an AI-generated spokesperson called Victoria who will make official statements on behalf of its foreign ministry.The ministry said it would “for the first time in history” use a digital spokesperson to read its statements, which will still be written by humans. Continue reading...

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.
Eurobot Open 2024: 8–11 May 2024, LA ROCHE-SUR-YON, FRANCEICRA 2024: 13–17 May 2024, YOKOHAMA, JAPANRoboCup 2024: 17–22 July 2024, EINDHOVEN, NETHERLANDSCybathlon 2024: 25–27 October 2024, ZURICHEnjoy today’s videos! In this

Head coach Jon Lewis credits AI with helping draw Ashes‘It will help with borderline decisions in terms of selection’The England Women’s head coach, Jon Lewis, has revealed how he is using AI as a selection tool and credits the technology with helping his side draw last summer’s Ashes series.Lewis was first exposed to the work of London-based PSi when he took charge of the Women’s Premier League franchise UP Warriorz in India and now uses the company to bolster the

Researchers and Silicon Valley are using tools powered by AI to read what had long been thought unreadableMore than 2,000 years after Plato died, the towering figure of classical antiquity and founder of the Academy, regarded by many as the first university in the west, can still make front-page news.Researchers this week claimed to have found the final resting place of the Greek philosopher, a patch in the garden of his Athens Academy, after scanning an ancient papyrus scroll recovered from the

Researchers and Silicon Valley are using tools powered by AI to uncover lives of ancient philosophersMore than 2,000 years after Plato died, the towering figure of Classical antiquity and founder of the Academy, regarded by many as the first university in the west, can still make front page news.Researchers this week claimed to have found the final resting place of the Greek philosopher, a patch in the garden of his Athens Academy, after scanning an ancient papyrus scroll recovered from the libr

In history, as in romance, beginnings matter – so what we do now will be crucial in shaping the futureIn these times of planetary polycrisis, we try to get our bearings by looking to the past. Are we perhaps in The New Cold War, as Robin Niblett, the former director of the foreign affairs thinktank Chatham House, proposes in a new book? Is this bringing us towards the brink of a third world war, as the historian Niall Ferguson has argued? Or, as I have found myself suggesting on occasion,

Music giant pulled content amid row over issues such as deepfake AI-generated music and artists’ compensationTikTok and Universal Music Group have reached a deal that will allow songs and artists from its labels including Olivia Rodrigo and Drake to return to the platform.The world’s largest music company began pulling content from TikTok in February after falling out with TikTok over issues including artist compensation and the use of artificial intelligence-generated music on the v

Challenger to market leader OpenAI says it wants to ‘meet users where they are’ and become part of users’ everyday lifeOpenAI’s ChatGPT is facing serious competition, as the company’s rival Anthropic brings its Claude chatbot to iPhones. Anthropic, led by a group of former OpenAI staff who quit over differences with chief executive Sam Altman, have a product that already beats ChatGPT on some measures of intelligence, and now wants to win over everyday users.“

Revenue at Amazon Web Services increases to $25bn as retail giant releases earnings report surpassing Wall Street expectationsAmazon profits soared once again in the first quarter of 2024, the company announced on Tuesday – the latest in a series of robust earnings reports for the retail giant. The company attributed the boost to artificial intelligence and advertising sales.The company reported overall revenue of $143.3bn in the first three months of the year – up 13% from the same

Revenue at Amazon Web Services increases to $25bn as retail giant releases earnings report surpassing Wall Street expectationsAmazon sales surged once again in the first quarter of 2024, the company announced on Tuesday – the latest in a series of robust earnings reports for the retail giant. The company attributed the boost to artificial intelligence.In a statement accompanying the report, the chief executive, Andy Jassy, said Amazon’s continuing focus on AI has “reaccelerat[e

The Chicago Tribune, Denver Post and others file suit saying the tech companies ‘purloin millions’ of articles without permissionA group of eight US newspapers is suing ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging that the technology companies have been “purloining millions” of copyrighted news articles without permission or payment to train their artificial intelligence chatbots.The New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, Denver Post and other papers filed the lawsuit on T

One of the biggest challenges for robotics right now is practical autonomous operation in unstructured environments. That is, doing useful stuff in places your robot hasn’t been before and where things may not be as familiar as your robot might like. Robots thrive on predictability, which has put some irksome restrictions on where and how they can be successfully deployed.But over the last few years, this has started to change, thanks in large part to a couple of pivotal robotics challenge

In 2021, the web felt dead because algorithms were driving people to act like robots. Now, the robots are posting like people• Don’t get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up for the full article hereI know I’m real. And you, dear reader, know you’re real. But do you ever suspect that everyone else on the internet is acting strange? That the spaces you used to frequent feel a bit … dead? You aren’t alone. “Dead internet theory” first hit the w

In 2021, the web felt dead because algorithms were driving people to act like robots. Now, the robots are posting like people• Don’t get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up for the full article hereI know I’m real. And you, dear reader, know you’re real. But do you ever suspect that everyone else on the internet is acting strange? That the spaces you used to frequent feel a bit … dead? You aren’t alone. “Dead internet theory” first hit the w