THE BRIEF

9 out of 10 consumers say they are curious about the metaverse, while over half say they are excited by it and would use it when it becomes accessible to them, according to research published by Capgemini.

7 7% of consumers expect immersive experiences to impact how they interact with people, brands and services

43 % would like to use the metaverse mainly as a place to interact with their family and friends

A new breed of chatbot is ready to take its place in business, according to new research, but companies will need more than words if this is to be successful. OpenAI’s headline-grabbing generative AI platform, ChatGPT, isn’t just hype; it could, in fact, be used by businesses to help with crucial tasks – including enterprise support, customer interaction and even product development, a new report claims.

US football team the Los Angeles Chargers has partnered with a conversational AI company to take artificial intelligence into the locker room. MeetKai – also based in LA – has been tasked with creating fresh, engaging experiences using conversational AI and other new technologies. As the ‘Official AI partner’ of the Los Angeles Chargers, MeetKai and the team will work together to develop new in-stadium and at-home experiences.

Tech workers are nearly twice as likely as those in other industries to find that distractions make it hard to care about their jobs and are also more than three times as likely to do the bare minimum around security, according to new research. The data emerged in security and privacy company 1Password’s annual State of Access Report, Distraction on overdrive: Security in a time of perma-crisis, based on a survey of 2,000 North American workers.

 BEAMERY AI talent lifecycle management platform Beamery has announced it has closed a US$50mn Series D funding round, taking the company to a valuation of over US$1bn – and into unicorn status.

 INFINITY AI

Researchers in the US say they have demonstrated how machine learning could predict rare disastrous events, including earthquakes and pandemics Predicting extreme events, including earthquakes, pandemics or ‘rogue waves’, can be problematic as computational modelling often falls short; statistically speaking, these events are so rare that there’s just not enough data to use predictive models to accurately forecast when they’ll happen again.

A team of researchers from Brown University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology say they may have solved this problem and in a new study in Nature Computational Science, the scientists describe how they combined statistical algorithms – which need less data to make accurate, efficient predictions –with a powerful machine learning technique developed at Brown.

Infinity AI, a startup that generates automated synthetic training data, has announced a US$5mn seed round led by Matrix, with participation from founders and operators from companies like Snorkel AI, Tesla, and Google.

 CHINESE CHIP INDUSTRY

The US Government has added Chinese memory chipmaker YMTC and 21 ‘major’ Chinese players in the artificial intelligence chip sector to a trade blacklist, broadening its crackdown on China's chip industry.

 FAKE FACES

Facebook parent company Meta says more than twothirds of the influence operations it found and took down this year used profile pictures that were generated by a computer.

G O O D T I M E S B A D T I M E S

FEB 23