Devin Coldewey
Writer & Photographer
The Latest from Devin Coldewey
How to tell friends you got home safe with iPhone’s new Check In feature
Making sure loved ones got home safe at the end of the night is something we all try to do. But it can be easy for that “Home safe! 😙” message to be missed or forgotten. Apple’s n
This AI used GPT-4 to become an expert Minecraft player
AI researchers have built a Minecraft bot that can explore and expand its capabilities in the game’s open world — but unlike other bots, this one basically wrote its own code through trial and
Turncoat drone story shows why we should fear people, not AIs
Update: The Air Force denies any such simulation took place, and the Colonel who related the story said that, although though the quote below seems unambiguous about training and retraining an AI usin
Lightmatter’s photonic AI hardware is ready to shine with $154M in new funding
Photonic computing startup Lightmatter is taking its big shot at the rapidly growing AI computation market with a hardware-software combo it claims will help the industry level up — and save a lot o
Amazon settles with FTC for $25M after ‘flouting’ kids’ privacy and deletion requests
Amazon will pay the FTC a $25 million penalty as well as “overhaul its deletion practices and implement stringent privacy safeguards” to avoid charges of violating the Children’s Onl
No ChatGPT in my court: Judge orders all AI-generated content must be declared and checked
Few lawyers would be foolish enough to let an AI make their arguments, but one already did, and Judge Brantley Starr is taking steps to ensure that debacle isn’t repeated in his courtroom. The T
Pluton Biosciences takes its carbon-fixing microbes to market with a fresh $16.6M
Pluton Biosciences is hard at work identifying beneficial microorganisms and putting them to work in agriculture, and just raised a $16.5 million Series A round to commercialize its most promising fin
No tears, only launches now: Virgin Galactic heads back to space as Virgin Orbit goes under
Update: The flight, launch, and glide were all successful and the crew is back Earthside. 🙌 Touchdown, VSS Unity! Our crew and spaceship are back on Earth after landing smoothly at Spaceport Americ
28 years later, Windows finally supports RAR files
It’s 1999, and my friends and I are surfing warez sites using Internet Explorer on our 98SE gaming rig. Finally we push past the scams and porn to find an FTP server with a list of files labeled
Kenya’s Tawi takes on auditory processing disorder to win Microsoft Imagine Cup
Microsoft’s student tech-for-good competition, the Imagine Cup, has crowned this year’s winner: Tawi, a team from Kenya that applied machine learning tools to help kids with auditory proce
OpenAI leaders propose international regulatory body for AI
AI is developing rapidly enough and the dangers it may pose are clear enough that OpenAI’s leadership believes that the world needs an international regulatory body akin to that governing nuclea
From root to crown, Mast Reforestation is regrowing the tree economy for the 21st century
Here’s the problem: The planet is burning, and there’s not much we can do about it. Forests are in peril not just because of the ravages of climate change, but because the industries that
The week in AI: Google goes all out at I/O as regulations creep up
Keeping up with an industry as fast-moving as AI is a tall order. So until an AI can do it for you, here’s a handy roundup of the last week’s stories in the world of machine learning, along with
SLAIT pivots from translating sign language to AI-powered interactive lessons
Millions of people use sign language, but the methods of teaching this complex and subtle skill haven’t evolved as quickly as those for written and spoken languages. SLAIT School aims to change
AI2 Incubator’s new $30M fund triples down on early-stage AI startups
The AI startup world may be getting hotter by the day, but there’s a difference between a startup that uses AI and an AI-first startup — and the Allen Institute for AI prides itself on fosteri
Acapela lets anyone back up their own voice for free in minutes — just in case
Synthetic speech can be a fearful object these days when paired with deepfakes and other AI deceptions, but it’s also an indispensable tool for anyone who can no longer speak on their own. Acape
Optery using its new funding to evolve from data broker opt-outs to personal info platform
We can all agree that data brokers are creepy and bad, and that in this age they have feasted upon our personal information like never before. Opting out is hard enough — which is why Optery is ther
Navier’s hydrofoiling electric boat cruises West Coast waterways to line up first pilot programs
Electric boats are still a rarity on America’s waterways, but everyone seems to agree they represent a cleaner, quieter future for our lakes, rivers and coastal waters. Navier has moved impressi
Google and OpenAI are Walmarts besieged by fruit stands
OpenAI may be synonymous with machine learning now and Google is doing its best to pick itself up off the floor, but both may soon face a new threat: rapidly multiplying open source projects that push
Vint Cerf on the ‘exhilarating mix’ of thrill and hazard at the frontiers of tech
Vint Cerf has been a near-constant influence on the internet since the days when he was helping create it in the first place. Today he wears many hats, among them VP and chief internet evangelist at G