Finally, a complete view of Piero Lissoni’s decades of work across architecture, interior design, furniture, furnishings, graphics, landscape and more. This substantial book, edited by Stefano Casciani, presents the Lissoni & Partners studio work in a well-organized and easy to peruse manner, from The Middle House hotel—our go-to in Shanghai, to the chic Sanlorenzo Yachts SP110 plus working, retail and living environments, there are beautiful images and inspiriting designs to inspire.
New York, NY (Top40 Charts) IBM (NYSE: IBM) today introduced AI Stories with IBM watsonx, a generative AI solution co-created alongside the Recording Academy® to generate and scale editorial content around GRAMMY nominees before and during the 66th Annual GRAMMY Awards.
Each year, nominees are celebrated in coverage across GRAMMY.com and GRAMMY social channels. Using AI Stories, powered by IBM’s AI and data platform watsonx, the Recording Academy editorial team will be able to expand its coverage of GRAMMY-nominated artists, ultimately creating a more personalized digital experience that further connects millions of music fans with the artists they love while also introducing them to new ones.
The produced content will consist of social-ready assets as well as longer-form coverage that will appear across GRAMMY digital platforms. Fans will be able to engage with the AI-generated content during GRAMMY livestream events – including moments on the red carpet, throughout the GRAMMY Awards Premiere Ceremony®, with the limo and fashion cams, and more – through an interactive widget available on live.grammy.com.
To create the AI-generated content, the Recording Academy editorial team will utilize an AI Content Builder dashboard using AI language models hosted in the watsonx.ai studio and trained using the Recording Academy’s own trusted data and brand guidelines. The team will engage with the dashboard through prompts to produce detailed insights on the various GRAMMY nominees including their philanthropic endeavors, cultural influence and other career highlights. “Through our long-standing partnership, IBM is proud to continue co-creating new solutions with the Recording Academy to digitally transform their most important work – whether it’s improving the membership experience, increasing engagement with fans, or celebrating artists with expanded and customized editorial coverage around Music’s Biggest Night®,” said Jonathan Adashek, Senior Vice President, Marketing and Communications at IBM. “AI Stories with watsonx is a powerful example of how AI can help drive productivity gains in a wide variety of use cases.”
“The ability to customize and scale our work ahead of Music’s Biggest Night is crucial as we look to bring the magic of the GRAMMY Awards to fans worldwide,” said Adam Roth, Senior Vice President, Partnerships & Business Development at the Recording Academy. “We are thrilled to continue our partnership with IBM to deploy cutting-edge solutions that unlock new possibilities for our digital content and beyond this GRAMMY season.”
IBM has been the official Cloud and AI Partner of the Recording Academy for over seven consecutive years. In addition to AI Stories with IBM watsonx, IBM Consulting has worked closely with the Recording Academy and Latin Recording Academy® to co-create new solutions that will enhance its business operations and create a more personalized digital experience for each of its 24,000 members. Explore AI Stories with IBM watsonx on grammy.com or on the Recording Academy social channels including Facebook and Instagram.
IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI, and consulting expertise. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Thousands of government and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM’s hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM’s breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and consulting deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM’s long-standing commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service. Visit www.ibm.com for more information.
Xbox has partnered with the European Space Agency (ESA) to give Starfield players a chance to win the spacesuit of their dreams.
To enter this contest, fans will be asked to submit a visual illustration of their suit design and details on the inspiration behind it. At the end of the contest period all submissions will be reviewed, and the winning design selected – one that truly gives weight to the phrase “out of this world.” Finally, the winning design will be fabricated in real life. This is a wearable, one-of-a-kind garment, fabricated for the most intrepid explorers.
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The contest will be open starting today through February 24,2024. Make sure to hit that spacesuit workbench soon.
For more information about the contest, including rules, regulations, and how to enter, please visit here.
Musk claimed that Dojo is already working and doing training programs as the company prepares it for tasks such as improving Full Self-Driving.
One of the biggest investments Tesla is making in its future is the development of the Dojo AI supercomputer. Built for the purpose of computer vision video processing and recognition, Dojo utilizes NVIDIA technology to power it and Tesla hopes it will eventually be capable of the kind of deep machine learning that could help power and improve the company’s Full Self-Driving program on its vehicles. The potential is high, but Elon Musk claims the move is a long shot, albeit one worth taking.
Musk commented on Dojo and its potential during the Q4 2023 earnings results conference call that accompanied Tesla’s earnings results this week. During the call, an analyst made mention of the fact that the Q4 2023 press release didn’t seem to mention Tesla Dojo at all. To this end, Elon Musk painted a picture of what’s going on with the project, including sharing that it’s both high-risk, but also high-reward.
“Think of Dojo as a long shot, a long shot worth taking… a high risk, high payoff program,” Elon Musk explained.
Tesla’s Dojo AI supercomputer is a massive investment for the company that could someday power machine-learning improvement of Full Self-Driving in the company’s vehicles. Source: Tesla
Despite his concerns about the Dojo AI supercomputer being so high-risk, Elon Musk shared that the program is still coming along well and making promising progress.
“Dojo is working and it is doing training programs,” Musk continued. “It’s possible with the right architectural decisions that Tesla may have more compute than everyone else combined.”
This was an interesting aside that wasn’t included in the press release for Tesla’s Q4 2023. Despite Tesla missing on revenue and EPS estimates, the company still remains one of the most dynamic electric vehicle companies in the world. It will be interesting to see if Dojo manages to pay off for Tesla’s ongoing ambitions. Stay tuned as we continue to report on Tesla and other companies reporting on quarterly earnings results.
TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.
If you’re reading this, you might have AI anxiety.
A recent survey from EY research shows that 71 percent of employees with knowledge of artificial intelligence are concerned about it. Considering how AI has rapidly entered education conversations, teachers and administrators are certainly represented in this statistic.
Feelings of AI anxiety are valid for a technology that brings so much change and uncertainty. Tools like ChatGPT have quickly destabilized our thoughts about the future of school and work.
One role of schools is to prepare students for the future. But how can teachers and schools fulfill this obligation when the future is so uncertain?
The answer lies in zooming out.
Instead of teaching specific facts and skills, teach timeless skills that allow students to adapt to any challenge or solve any problem. These competencies have been valuable in the past, are essential in the present and will be crucial for thriving in the future.
Critical Skills in the Age of AI
Which skills is the natural next question.
Power Skills, which include creativity, collaboration, resilience, leadership and critical thinking, make all other skills more effective. These skills have always been valuable, as anyone with a professional background can attest to. But as AI automates more aspects of the current workforce, learning Power Skills is more important and powerful than ever.
Teaching students Power Skills now prepares them to succeed and adapt in an uncertain future. But it also provides them with a strong foundation for academic and personal success today.
Imagine if all students deliberately practiced and improved upon their skills of critical thinking and team-based problem-solving throughout the school day. Undoubtedly, their performance in other classes, extra-curriculars and even their home lives would have great potential for improvement.
As the social-emotional learning (SEL) movement has shown, providing students with flexible and practical abilities that don’t fall narrowly within core subject areas is increasingly important. While SEL is a great starting point and is included in Power Skills, it’s insufficient. Power Skills build on the interpersonal and transcend to the practical.
[embedded content]Students learn critical skills through NXTLVL’s game-based learning program.
Make It Fun and Refreshing for Students
The great part about implementing Power Skills into K-12 education is that they are exciting and engaging for students to learn and practice. By definition, they require kids to work together, talk to each other and share unique and sometimes crazy ideas, all to solve interesting, challenging problems. This is sorely needed, as research shows students are more bored in school than ever.
Additionally, the opportunities to practice Power Skills are lacking from current methods of instruction. When 90 percent of class time is spent by teachers talking, there’s little room to practice collaboration or leadership. If what Sir Ken Robinson said about what schools do to creativity is true, then students need a chance to learn and practice the skill of creative thinking.
Power Skills are already widely discussed in the business and technology fields. However, their presence is sorely lacking in K-12 education. But the time for introducing them has never been better.
California School Embraces Power Skills
Meghan Freeman, CEO of Elite Academy, a California Distinguished School, wholeheartedly agrees.
“There’s so much changing in our world, especially now in the age of AI,” Freeman shares. “But we know that skills like leadership, creativity and decision-making never go out of fashion.
Importantly, Freeman notes how the introduction of technology like AI makes teaching Power Skills more timely than ever.
“As more of our work involves technology, these kinds of skills only become more important. That’s why we’re so excited about what our students are learning with NXTLVL.”
A NXTLVL SEL game exploring the intricacies of thoughts, emotions and actions
How NXTLVL Gives Students a Head Start on the Future
Freeman mentions that Elite Academy students learn and practice Power Skills through NXTLVL’s immersive, team-based problem-solving program. During these live, student-led learning games, students learn how to decode complex problems and collaborate to arrive at optimal solutions.
The result is a unique way for students to leverage existing skills and knowledge they don’t often get to tap into in school while also learning new Power Skills that will serve them today and for years to come.
We can’t overlook STEM. We can’t pretend technology advancements in artificial intelligence and elsewhere aren’t happening. But we also can’t ignore the adjustments we may have to make to help students thrive in a future different from today.
In an uncertain future, teaching students Power Skills is one sure way to help them reach the next level.
Jan 24, 2024 Beyond experimentation: A121 CEO Yoav Shoham on GenAI’s future and AI21’s journey
In this episode, Avishai sits down with AI pioneer Yoav Shoham. Yoav was a professor of computer science at Stanford for 28 years, where he was the director of the AI Lab. He is also a serial entrepreneur and has founded various companies across industries. Most recently, he co-founded AI21 labs. AI21 Labs aims to take AI to the next level and builds LLMs for enterprises that make machines thought partners. Join him and Avishai for a great discussion, and hear why Yoav doesn’t believe Gen AI truly exists, AI21’s mission, and his vision for the future.
The AI winter is over. AI is at the top of everyone’s mind today, but it has existed for decades. Yoav experienced the ‘AI Winter,’ a period during the 1990s when interest and funding in AI dropped. Yoav says that the effects of the winter have worn off, and that the learnings and changes from the period and beyond have helped us reach the AI boom of today.
Lots of experiments, little deployment. Yoav says that while there is mass experimentation with AI, there is much less deployment of the technology. Proving the ROI of AI is something companies like AI21 must do to encourage uptake from large enterprises.
Trust is key. Yoav identifies that reliability, predictability and explainability are key for LLMs. These models often don’t know when or why they are wrong. Ensuring that we can trust these models is key to their progression and adoption.
Welcome to another installment of ‘For Your Innovation’ in which Eric Creviston demystifies the smart home. Why has the journey towards smart living been a slow one? It’s all about understanding value and ease of implementation. Thanks to Matter and Ultra-Wideband (UWB), we’re entering a new era where smart lighting and intuitive audio are not just concepts, but realities. Explore how these innovations are making smart homes more accessible and attuned to your lifestyle.
This rollout of an electric fleet of vehicles and the means to power them is part of a 10-year plan to modernize the United States postal delivery network.
The United States Postal Service has announced a major rollout of new electric vehicles and charging stations throughout its network. The organization is set to equip hundreds of US Post Office facilities with electric delivery vehicles and the gear to keep them powered. It’s part of an official Delivering for America 10-year plan that aims to modernize and ready the US Postal Service for years to come.
The US Postal Service announced the rollout of its electric vehicle fleet and charging stations in a press release on the USPS newsroom website. According to the press release, USPS debuted its new fleet of electric vehicles, which are commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) delivery vehicles. The rollout is beginning at its South Atlanta Sorting and Delivery Center (S&DC) and will eventually expand to include hundreds of further S&DC facilities across the country over the course of the next 10 years.
US Postmaster General Louis DeJoy was proud to announce the rollout of an electric vehicle fleet for the US Postal network as part of a 10-year plan to modernize the service. Source: Tom Williams/Getty Images
This move to modernize the US Postal Service is an important step towards maintaining quality equipment that will allow the USPS to service customers across the United States well beyond its implementation, as shared by by Postmasster General Louis DeJoy:
The US government has shown heavy dedication to helping adopt electric vehicle technology across the United States, such as an expansion of US EV battery manufacturing through $2.8 billion USD in grants, as well as approval of plans for charging stations in all 50 of the states. The US Postal Service’s upgrades continue to push the nation in the direction widespread EV adoption. Stay tuned for more updates as further information becomes available.
TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.
Solutions by Text (SBT), an enterprise messaging and payments platform for consumer finance businesses, recently finalized a partnership with Prodigal, which offers artificial intelligence-powered consumer finance intelligence.
At a time when businesses are increasingly recognizing the importance of leveraging data for strategic decision-making, the companies highlighted this collaboration makes Prodigal’s ability to deliver real-time information from customer conversations available to consumer finance teams that use SBT for full-funnel text messaging.
Using Prodigal’s tools to analyze consumer communications can enable SBT customers to hone their outreach strategy, including identifying the best time, day, frequency, channel, and even messaging to increase customer engagement.
By integrating Prodigal’s advanced analytics solutions, Solutions by Text aims to empower its customers with actionable intelligence derived from data-driven decision-making.
“Partnering with Prodigal and offering their artificial business intelligence to our customers will drive powerful results for the businesses on our platform,” SBT chief executive officer David Baxter said in a news release.
“This collaboration reflects our commitment to promoting partners with world-class capabilities to our customers, representing the most innovative and effective solutions when combined with our fin-text platform,” Baxter continued.
Prodigal’s proprietary AI Intent Engine is trained on more than 300 million consumer finance conversations, delivering expertise so businesses can improve the KPIs that drive revenue, including open, click and payment rates.
“Partnering with Solutions by Text aligns perfectly with our mission to empower businesses with actionable intelligence,” Prodigal CEO Shantanu Gangal said in the news release.
“The combination of Solutions by Text’s communications expertise and Prodigal’s advanced analytics will create a synergistic effect, offering clients a holistic solution to drive their business forward,” Gangal went on to say.
With Jurassic World 4 being announced for 2025, franchise fans want to know if it’ll be a reboot. Will the movie start things from scratch or continue the story after Jurassic World: Dominion? Is Chris Pratt set to return? Here’s everything you need to know.
Will Jurassic World 4 reboot the franchise in 2025?
No, Jurassic World 4 will not be a complete reboot. It will be set in the same universe but will start a “new Jurassic era.”
Similar to how Jurassic World relaunched the franchise after three Jurassic Park movies, the next entry is sent to relaunch the franchise with an “all-new storyline”. THR reported that original Jurassic Park writer David Koepp is back to pen the script, which is already far along in the process.
The three Jurassic World movies showed dinosaurs interacting more with the human world. But they never fully dug into the idea of humans and dinosaurs coexisting in the same ecosystem. So, that’s what the upcoming story could explore, the true meaning of “Jurassic World.” Since cloning is a major plot point in the franchise, further experimentation in that field, and even the mixing of human and dinosaur DNA, could be seen. But it seems unlikely that another dinosaur park would be opened in the next film.
Will Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard return in Jurassic World 4?
With Jurassic World 4 launching a new story, it’ll likely add different leading characters played by new actors. But Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard could either cameo in it or return in a future crossover event.
THR mentioned that Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard’s Owen Grady and Claire Dearing may not be back. Instead, we might see fresh new faces playing the human leads. Since Universal is actually considering a 2025 release, the cast of Jurassic World 4 might come together and be announced very soon.
Meanwhile, Chris Pratt would be busy with future projects including The Terminal List: Dark Wolf, The Terminal List Season 2, The Super Mario Bros. Movie 2, Avengers 5, and a few others. So, his schedule may not allow him to return for Jurassic World 4 either.
But he can team up with the new leading cast in future Jurassic events, similar to how the original Jurassic Park characters teamed up with Owen, Claire, and Maisie in Jurassic World: Dominion. It’ll be interesting to see how the franchise takes a new direction while still keeping an eye on continuity.
