Tech

Paris taxi firm suspends use of Tesla cars after car crash

Published

1 year ago

December 15, 2021

ticker NEWS

Paris’ leading taxi company, G7 has suspended the use of Telsa Mode 3 vehicles within its fleet following a fatal accident involving on of its vehicles over the weekend

The Deputy Chief Executive of G7 taxis, Yann Ricordel confirmed that an off-duty taxi driver was taking his family to a restaurant when the accident happened on Saturday evening.

The accident killed one person. Twenty others were wounded, one of the persons close to the investigation said, adding that three were in serious condition.

According to French media reports, the Tesla collided and hit a cyclist and three pedestrians and then crashed into a van, and seven people were seriously injured.

G7 said it would suspend the use of 37 Tesla Model 3 cars in its fleet until a police investigation into the case is completed.

Tesla has not responded to the incident

Ricordel cited Tesla as saying on Monday that an initial inquiry had ruled out a technical dysfunction of the vehicle. The G7 executive said the driver had tried to brake but the car instead accelerated. It was unclear if the car was operating in Autopilot mode.

Jerome Coumet, mayor of Paris’ 13th arrondissement, said on Twitter, “The first elements of the investigation indicated that the accelerator would have gotten stuck.”

Ricordel said: “Today, we have two divergent views on the subject. We will maintain the suspension of the Tesla Model 3 while the investigation is ongoing, as a safety measure for our drivers, customers and other road users.”

Tesla collects detailed data from the sensors and cameras on its vehicles and has used such data in the past to challenge claims that accidents were caused by malfunctioning technology.

Ricordel said the Tesla Model 3 owners in its fleet would be fully compensated for lost earnings during the suspension and that the company was looking for alternatives so the drivers could resume driving for G7 as soon as possible.

Ricordel stated that the G7 was in contact with the government as it awaited the outcome of the police investigation.

G7 is one of Paris’ biggest taxi companies, with 9,000 affiliated drivers, who are independent operators who own their vehicles. Half of the G7 fleet are electric or hybrid vehicles and the company aims to have a 100% green fleet by 2027.

Tech

Elon Musk and experts call for six-month pause on A.I.

Published

1 day ago

March 30, 2023

ticker NEWS

The Future of Life Institute fears there may be potential risks to society

Elon Musk and a group of leading A.I. experts are calling for a six-month pause on developing systems, more powerful than OpenAI latest version of GPT-4.

The Future of Life Institute fears there may be potential risks to society.

In an open letter signed by some of the biggest and influential minds in tech, the Institute wants the pause so frameworks can be constructed to better handle A.I.

“Powerful A.I. systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable,” the open letter said.

British computer scientist Stewart Russell is a signatory to the open letter, and he explains what is occurring in the sector that scares him.

“With what is gestating in computer and research labs, is for general purpose A.I,” Russell declared recently. “A.I. that can do anything that the human mind can be turned to.

“Because of the enormous advantages machines have over humans, I expect general purpose A.I. will far exceed human capabilities in almost every dimension.”

Business

Alibaba shares soar as company breaks into parts

Published

2 days ago

March 29, 2023

ticker NEWS

Alibaba shares have soared as company executives announce a business shake-up

It’s been a good day for investors in Chinese tech giant Alibaba.

Shares in the company soared as executives announced a plan to break the business into parts.

Alibaba’s commerce leader says he will split the $220 billion empire into six individual units.

The major restructuring is the company’s biggest in 24 years.

Alibaba shares gained more than 14 per cent in New York and were up 13 per cent in Hong Kong.

The move follows reports Alibaba founder Jack Ma resurfaced in China this week after a long absence.

The units will have their own chief executives and boards of directors.

They will be allowed to raise capital and seek stock market listings.

Alibaba says the units will “capture opportunities in their respective markets and industries, thereby unlocking the value of Alibaba Group’s respective businesses”.

“The market is the best litmus test, and each business group and company can pursue independent fundraising and IPOs when they are ready,” says chief executive Daniel Zhang. #trending #featured

Tech

Facial recognition has been used a million times by U.S. police

Published

3 days ago

March 28, 2023

ticker NEWS

Controversial facial recognition has been used a million times by police to help track criminals

As facial recognition becomes more prominent, the founder of tech firm Clearview says his company has run nearly a million searches for U.S. police.

It’s also been revealed the company has scraped 30 billion images from platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, taken without users’ permissions.

The company has been fined numerous times in Europe and countries like Australia for breaches of privacy laws.

In the U.S., critics say the use of Clearview by authorities puts everyone into a “police line-up”.

The company’s high-tech system allows law enforcement to upload a photo of a face and find matches in a database comprising of billions of images it has collected.

It then provides links to where matching images appear online.

The tool is considered to be one of the world’s most powerful and accurate.

While the company is banned from selling its services to most U.S. companies, there is an exemption for police.