IT on The Soothsayer / page 10

Signal President Meredith Whittaker has sounded the alarm on the potential risks of agentic AI, warning that the technology could compromise user privacy and security. Whittaker, a vocal advocate for secure communications, expressed concerns that AI agents, which are designed to perform tasks on behalf of users, could access sensitive information and undermine the security…

Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, has acquired a 1 million-square-foot property in Southwest Memphis to expand its AI data center footprint. This move is part of xAI’s efforts to upgrade its primary Memphis-based facility, Colossus, to 1 million Nvidia GPUs. While this expansion is expected to boost AI innovation, it has also raised concerns about…

French AI developer Mistral has launched a new API, Mistral OCR, which enables developers to convert complex PDF documents into text files, making them easily ingestible by AI models. This multimodal API can detect and process illustrations, photos, and text within documents, outputting formatted Markdown files. The API is expected to simplify access to internal…

Mach Industries, a defense tech startup founded by 21-year-old Ethan Thornton, has landed a contract with the U.S. Army to develop a vertical takeoff precision cruise missile called “Strategic Strike.” The company also plans to build its first factory, Forge 1, in Huntington Beach, California, which will be one of many decentralized factories to support…

Signal, a privacy-focused messaging app, has seen a significant surge in popularity in the Netherlands, becoming the most downloaded free app on iOS and Android. The app’s growth can be attributed to a combination of factors, including growing awareness of privacy, distrust of big tech, and the political reality in the Netherlands. This shift in…

OpenAI has released GPT-4.5, its largest AI model to date, which boasts a deeper world knowledge and higher emotional intelligence. However, the model’s performance is mixed, and it falls short of newer AI reasoning models from Chinese AI company DeepSeek and Anthropic. The industry is holding its breath to see if GPT-4.5 will be a…

Recent data breaches have exposed the personal information of millions of individuals, including students, teachers, and patients. The PowerSchool breach, one of the largest in recent history, affected over 62 million students and 9.5 million teachers in the United States. Additionally, a hacker stole a million patient records from a nonprofit healthcare provider, and stalkerware…

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has issued new guidance stating that most meme coins are not considered securities under United States federal law. This shift in stance is expected to have significant implications for the cryptocurrency market, with potential benefits for investors and the growth of the industry. The SEC’s decision comes as a…