Author: azeeadmin

The European Union’s lead data protection supervisor has called for remote biometric surveillance in public places to be banned outright under incoming AI legislation.

The European Data Protection Supervisor’s (EDPS) intervention follows a proposal, put out by EU lawmakers on Wednesday, for a risk-based approach to regulating applications of artificial intelligence.

The Commission’s legislative proposal includes a partial ban on law enforcement’s use of remote biometric surveillance technologies (such as facial recognition) in public places. But the text includes wide-ranging exceptions, and digital and humans rights groups were quick to warn over loopholes they argue will lead to a drastic erosion of EU citizens’ fundamental rights. And last week a cross-party group of MEPs urged the Commission to screw its courage to the sticking place and outlaw the rights-hostile tech.

The EDPS, whose role includes issuing recommendations and guidance for the Commission, tends to agree. In a press release today Wojciech Wiewiórowski urged a rethink.

“The EDPS regrets to see that our earlier calls for a moratorium on the use of remote biometric identification systems — including facial recognition — in publicly accessible spaces have not been addressed by the Commission,” he wrote.

“The EDPS will continue to advocate for a stricter approach to automated recognition in public spaces of human features — such as of faces but also of gait, fingerprints, DNA, voice, keystrokes and other biometric or behavioural signals — whether these are used in a commercial or administrative context, or for law enforcement purposes.

“A stricter approach is necessary given that remote biometric identification, where AI may contribute to unprecedented developments, presents extremely high risks of deep and non-democratic intrusion into individuals’ private lives.”

Wiewiórowski had some warm words for the legislative proposal too, saying he welcomed the horizontal approach and the broad scope set out by the Commission. He also agreed there are merits to a risk-based approach to regulating applications of AI.

But the EDPB has made it clear that the red lines devised by EU lawmakers are a lot pinker in hue than he’d hoped for — adding a high profile voice to the critique that the Commission hasn’t lived up to its much trumpeted claim to have devised a framework that will ensure ‘trustworthy’ and ‘human-centric’ AI.

The coming debate over the final shape of the regulation is sure to include plenty of discussion over where exactly Europe’s AI red lines should be. A final version of the text isn’t expected to be agreed until next year at the earliest.

“The EDPS will undertake a meticulous and comprehensive analysis of the Commission’s proposal to support the EU co-legislators in strengthening the protection of individuals and society at large. In this context, the EDPS will focus in particular on setting precise boundaries for those tools and systems which may present risks for the fundamental rights to data protection and privacy,” Wiewiórowski added.

 

Alphawave IP is a global semiconductor IP company that focuses on the way semiconductors communicate — something which is going to be crucial as 5G data networks roll out and start to power everything from homes, industry and autonomous vehicles, for instance.

It’s therefore interesting to note that the Toronto-born company is planning a London public listing, with a valuation of $4.5bn, and has raised $510m in backing from Blackrock and Janus Henderson. The company will also move its HQ to the UK as part of the listing.

The move is being welcomed by City-watchers concerned with UK tech stock listings, after the collapse of Deliveroo’s valuation post-IPO.

Chief executive Tony Pialis said: “We have chosen to come to the UK to grow our business because the UK has an incredible technology and semiconductor industry ecosystem around it. There is a deep pool of knowledge, experience, and talent here… We are specialists in connectivity. Our founding team have worked together for over 20 years and have a long history of both semiconductor innovation and in creating significant value for investors.”

The proposed listing comes in the context of another UK-based deep-tech company, the proposed sale of computer chip designer Arm Holdings to a US company, which has been delayed subject to an investigation about the implications for UK national security grounds.

SpaceX has another successful human space launch to its credit, after a good takeoff and orbital delivery of its Crew Dragon spacecraft on Friday morning. The Dragon took off aboard a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida at 5:49 AM EDT (2:49 AM EDT). On board were four astronauts, including NASA’s Megan McArthur and Shane Kimbrough, as well as JAXA’s Akihiko Hoshide and the ESA’s Thomas Pesquet.

This was Spacex’s second official astronaut delivery mission for NASA, after its Crew-1 operation last year. Unlike Crew-1, Crew-2 included use of two re-flown components in the spacecraft system, including the first stage booster, which was used during the Crew-1 launch, and the Dragon capsule, which was used for SpaceX’s first ever human spaceflight, the final demonstration mission of its spacecraft certification program for NASA, which flew Bob Behnken (side note: this mission’s pilot, McArthur, is Behnken’s wife) and Doug Hurley to the ISS. SpaceX has characterized the use of re-flown elements as arguably even safer than using new ones, with CEO Elon Musk noting that you wouldn’t want to be on the “first flight of an airplane when it comes out of the factory” during a conversation with XPRIZE’s Peter Diamandis on Thursday evening.

Now that the Crew Dragon is in its target transfer orbit, it’ll be making its way to rendezvous with the Space Station, which will take just under 24 hours. It’ll be docking with the station early tomorrow morning, attaching to a docking port that was just cleared earlier this month when SpaceX’s other Crew Dragon relocated to another port on the ISS earlier this month.

This launch also included a recovery attempt for the booster, with a landing at sea using SpaceX’s drone landing pad. That went as planned, meaning this booster which has already flown two different sets of human astronauts, could be used to fly yet another after refurbishment.

SpaceX’s Commercial Crew program with NASA continues to be the key success story in the agency’s move to partner with more private companies for its research and space exploration missions. NASA also recently tapped SpaceX to develop the human landing system for its Artemis program, which will return humans to the Moon for the first time since the Apollo program, and which will use SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft. For SpaceX’s human spaceflight program, the next big milestone will be its first flight of a mission made up entirely of paying private citizens, which is currently set to take place this fall.

TechCrunch is embarking on a major new project to survey European founders and investors in cities outside the larger European capitals.

Over the next few weeks, we will ask entrepreneurs in these cities to talk about their ecosystems, in their own words.

This is your chance to put Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Bielefeld, Frankfurt on the Techcrunch Map!

If you are a tech startup founder or investor in these cities please fill out the survey form here.

We are particularly interested in hearing from women founders and investors.

This is the follow-up to the huge survey of investors (see also below) we’ve done over the last six or more months, largely in capital cities.

These formed part of a broader series of surveys we’re doing regularly for ExtraCrunch, our subscription service that unpacks key issues for startups and investors.

In the first wave of surveys, the cities we wrote about were largely capitals. You can see them listed here.

This time, we will be surveying founders and investors in Europe’s other cities to capture how European hubs are growing, from the perspective of the people on the ground.

We’d like to know how your city’s startup scene is evolving, how the tech sector is being impacted by COVID-19, and generally how your city will evolve.

We leave submissions mostly unedited and are generally looking for at least one or two paragraphs in answers to the questions.

So if you are a tech startup founder or investor in one of these cities please fill out our survey form here.

Thank you for participating. If you have questions you can email mike@techcrunch.com and/or reply on Twitter to @mikebutcher.

TechCrunch is embarking on a major new project to survey European founders and investors in cities outside the larger European capitals.

Over the next few weeks, we will ask entrepreneurs in these cities to talk about their ecosystems, in their own words.

This is your chance to put Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Bielefeld, Frankfurt on the Techcrunch Map!

If you are a tech startup founder or investor in these cities please fill out the survey form here.

We are particularly interested in hearing from women founders and investors.

This is the follow-up to the huge survey of investors (see also below) we’ve done over the last six or more months, largely in capital cities.

These formed part of a broader series of surveys we’re doing regularly for ExtraCrunch, our subscription service that unpacks key issues for startups and investors.

In the first wave of surveys, the cities we wrote about were largely capitals. You can see them listed here.

This time, we will be surveying founders and investors in Europe’s other cities to capture how European hubs are growing, from the perspective of the people on the ground.

We’d like to know how your city’s startup scene is evolving, how the tech sector is being impacted by COVID-19, and generally how your city will evolve.

We leave submissions mostly unedited and are generally looking for at least one or two paragraphs in answers to the questions.

So if you are a tech startup founder or investor in one of these cities please fill out our survey form here.

Thank you for participating. If you have questions you can email mike@techcrunch.com and/or reply on Twitter to @mikebutcher.

SpaceX is set to launch its second operational commercial crew mission to the International Space Station for NASA, with a liftoff time of 5:49 AM EDT (2:49 AM PDT) on Friday morning. The flight will carry four astronauts, including two from NASA, one from JAXA (the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and one from the ESA (European Space Agency), to the station, where they will begin a regular tour of duty conducting science experiments, and maintaining and upgrading the orbital platform.

This is the second commercial crew mission for SpaceX, which officially qualified its Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket for human flight last year. NASA then launched four astronauts using SpaceX’s human-certified launch system later that year in November, becoming the first private company to deliver people to the ISS, and the first American vehicle to do so since the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011. Since the end of that program, NASA has relied on buying rides aboard Russian Soyuz rockets to keep up its representation on the ISS.

There’s already a SpaceX Crew Dragon at the Space Station from that Crew-1 launch last year, and it was relocated to another port on the station earlier this month in preparation for the arrival of the one flying for Crew-2. The Crew-1 Dragon capsule is set to return back to Earth with astronauts on board once they’re relieved by this flight’s crew, likely later this month on April 28.

One major notable change for this launch is the use of a flight-proven Falcon 9 rocket booster. SpaceX has previously used new boosters fresh from the factory for its human launches, though it has a spotless track record when it comes to booster re-use for its cargo flights. It’s also the first re-use of a dragon spacecraft, and both components of this launch system actually previously supported human launches, with the first stage serving during Crew-1, and the Dragon capsule providing the ride for Demo-2, which flew astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley.

The astronauts on today’s flight are Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur from NASA, as well as Akihiko Hoshide from JAXA and Thomas Pesquet from the ESA. As mentioned, liftoff time is set for 5:49 AM EDT, but SpaceX will begin streaming live hours in advance at approximately 1:30 AM EDT on Friday (10:30 PM PDT on Thursday).

Move over Citi Bike, there’s a new docked, shared bike service in town — only this one is all electric. Next week, JOCO will be the first shared operator in New York City to launch a network of e-bike stations on private property for public use.

The service, powered by shared mobility platform Vulog, will start with 30 stations and 300 e-bikes located around Manhattan, expanding to 100 stations and 1,000 bikes by June. This is not the first new shared operator to hit the streets of New York this year. Last week, the city announced the winning companies of the e-scooter pilot in the Bronx. But while Bird, Lime and Veo are restricted to operating in a section of the Bronx, far from any Citi Bike territory, JOCO is under no such constraints.

The company’s bikes will initially be stationed at parking garages around the city, including at Icon Parking garages, the city’s largest parking operators, but the company says it hopes to expand to residential and commercial buildings in the near future. The company essentially pays landlords to provide this amenity, while absolving them from having to operate or maintain the e-bikes.

“What differentiates us from Citi Bike is, first of all, our bikes are 100% electric, 100% premium,” co-founder Jonathan “Johnny” Cohen from New York told TechCrunch. (The two co-founders are both named Johnathan Cohen — one is from New York, the other from London. JOCO…get it?). “You can reserve our bikes in advance, and as we’re on private property, there are hand sanitizer at our stations, the bikes aren’t getting rained on every night, they’re a bit cleaner and easier to access.”

Citi Bike’s fleet is about 30% electric. To charge the e-bikes, the Lyft-owned company must manually take the drained vehicles from their stations to charge them, whereas JOCO’s vehicles are charged at the stations. Like Citi Bike, each e-bike can last for about 30 miles on a charge.

“That’s enough to get around Manhattan several times,” said London Jo (another moniker for differentiating between the two John/Jon Cohens). “We expect our vehicles to always be charged and ready to go for the customer. It defeats the purpose when you’re taking a bike that’s extremely sustainable, and then come along in a gas-burning vehicle to swap the battery. We’re looking to be a truly environmentally friendly company and provide a more consistent and reliable service.”

Founded in 2019 and funded privately by a group of former CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, and specifically investors with technology and real estate backgrounds, JOCO offers e-bikes at a price point that’s comparable, if not directly competitive, to Citi Bike. It’ll cost riders $1 to unlock the bike and .25 cents a minute, so a 10 minute ride will come out to $3.50. If you can find an electric Citi Bike, it’ll cost a rider $3.50 to unlock and .18 cents a minute, which comes out to about $5.30.

“That’s significantly cheaper in our opinion for a brand new, gorgeous, full electric premium bike,” said NY Jo.

Neither company charges unlock fees for members. JOCO’s monthly membership is $49 per month with unlimited use, and Citi Bike’s is $20 per month, with monthly members continuing to pay 18 cents per minute, and annual members paying 12 cents per minute. Under Citi Bike’s annual membership, if a rider is averaging out about five 10-minute rides per week, the monthly spend is comparable between the two companies.

“Citi Bike has been around since 2013 and has done a tremendous job at driving cycling adoption on the streets of NYC,” Monica Wejman, Vulog’s North America managing director, told TechCrunch. “And now you have JOCO entering this space, powered by Vulog, really there to complement Citi Bike and satisfy what we’re seeing as a significant increase in demand for access to e-bikes. We’re truly empowering mobility operators to launch mobility programs at scale.”

While JOCO will not be reliant on the NYC Department of Transportation to carve out street and sidewalk space for docking stations, the operator is still taking steps to ensure a good working relationship with the city.

London Jo says JOCO’s bikes are made with safety-critical features, like hidden cables to make them less susceptible to vandalism, puncture-proof airless tires and bike-tracking, provided by Vulog’s backend.

“In addition, by operating in private spaces, we’re eliminating that problem of sidewalk clutter for the city,” said the British Cohen. “And they don’t have to worry about what has to go to fit 50 new bikes on the street. We’re taking a big headache off them, and it’s allowing us to stay in control a little bit more and not have to depend on the city.”

Move over Citi Bike, there’s a new docked, shared bike service in town — only this one is all electric. Next week, JOCO will be the first shared operator in New York City to launch a network of e-bike stations on private property for public use.

The service, powered by shared mobility platform Vulog, will start with 30 stations and 300 e-bikes located around Manhattan, expanding to 100 stations and 1,000 bikes by June. This is not the first new shared operator to hit the streets of New York this year. Last week, the city announced the winning companies of the e-scooter pilot in the Bronx. But while Bird, Lime and Veo are restricted to operating in a section of the Bronx, far from any Citi Bike territory, JOCO is under no such constraints.

The company’s bikes will initially be stationed at parking garages around the city, including at Icon Parking garages, the city’s largest parking operators, but the company says it hopes to expand to residential and commercial buildings in the near future. The company essentially pays landlords to provide this amenity, while absolving them from having to operate or maintain the e-bikes.

“What differentiates us from Citi Bike is, first of all, our bikes are 100% electric, 100% premium,” co-founder Jonathan “Johnny” Cohen from New York told TechCrunch. (The two co-founders are both named Johnathan Cohen — one is from New York, the other from London. JOCO…get it?). “You can reserve our bikes in advance, and as we’re on private property, there are hand sanitizer at our stations, the bikes aren’t getting rained on every night, they’re a bit cleaner and easier to access.”

Citi Bike’s fleet is about 30% electric. To charge the e-bikes, the Lyft-owned company must manually take the drained vehicles from their stations to charge them, whereas JOCO’s vehicles are charged at the stations. Like Citi Bike, each e-bike can last for about 30 miles on a charge.

“That’s enough to get around Manhattan several times,” said London Jo (another moniker for differentiating between the two John/Jon Cohens). “We expect our vehicles to always be charged and ready to go for the customer. It defeats the purpose when you’re taking a bike that’s extremely sustainable, and then come along in a gas-burning vehicle to swap the battery. We’re looking to be a truly environmentally friendly company and provide a more consistent and reliable service.”

Founded in 2019 and funded privately by a group of former CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, and specifically investors with technology and real estate backgrounds, JOCO offers e-bikes at a price point that’s comparable, if not directly competitive, to Citi Bike. It’ll cost riders $1 to unlock the bike and .25 cents a minute, so a 10 minute ride will come out to $3.50. If you can find an electric Citi Bike, it’ll cost a rider $3.50 to unlock and .18 cents a minute, which comes out to about $5.30.

“That’s significantly cheaper in our opinion for a brand new, gorgeous, full electric premium bike,” said NY Jo.

Neither company charges unlock fees for members. JOCO’s monthly membership is $49 per month with unlimited use, and Citi Bike’s is $20 per month, with monthly members continuing to pay 18 cents per minute, and annual members paying 12 cents per minute. Under Citi Bike’s annual membership, if a rider is averaging out about five 10-minute rides per week, the monthly spend is comparable between the two companies.

“Citi Bike has been around since 2013 and has done a tremendous job at driving cycling adoption on the streets of NYC,” Monica Wejman, Vulog’s North America managing director, told TechCrunch. “And now you have JOCO entering this space, powered by Vulog, really there to complement Citi Bike and satisfy what we’re seeing as a significant increase in demand for access to e-bikes. We’re truly empowering mobility operators to launch mobility programs at scale.”

While JOCO will not be reliant on the NYC Department of Transportation to carve out street and sidewalk space for docking stations, the operator is still taking steps to ensure a good working relationship with the city.

London Jo says JOCO’s bikes are made with safety-critical features, like hidden cables to make them less susceptible to vandalism, puncture-proof airless tires and bike-tracking, provided by Vulog’s backend.

“In addition, by operating in private spaces, we’re eliminating that problem of sidewalk clutter for the city,” said the British Cohen. “And they don’t have to worry about what has to go to fit 50 new bikes on the street. We’re taking a big headache off them, and it’s allowing us to stay in control a little bit more and not have to depend on the city.”

We test out Apple’s lost item finder, Google Fi gets a new unlimited plan and Facebook tests new video ad targeting features. This is your Daily Crunch for April 22, 2021.

The big story: First impressions of Apple’s AirTags

AirTags are Apple’s new Tile competitor designed to help owners locate lost objects. They use Bluetooth technology to announce their presence to nearby devices with iOS 14.5 or above.

Matthew Panzarino tried them out and reported that it could take 30 seconds or more to locate an AirTag. But once located, Apple was able to provide directions that were “extremely accurate down to a few inches.”

Matthew also got his hands on the purple iPhone and was extremely excited.

The tech giants

Google Fi turns 6 and gets a new unlimited plan — The new “Simply Unlimited” plan starts at $60 per month for a single line.

Apple downplays complaints about App Store scams in antitrust hearing — Apple was questioned on its inability to rein in subscription scammers on its App Store during yesterday’s Senate antitrust hearing.

Facebook tests topic targeting for in-stream video ads — The company says there are now 2 billion people each month who watch videos that are eligible for in-stream ads.

Startups, funding and venture capital

Tiger Global backs Indian crypto startup at over $500M valuation — CoinSwitch Kuber allows young users in India to invest in cryptocurrencies.

Universal Hydrogen raises $20.5M Series A to help launch hydrogen aviation — Universal Hydrogen aims to develop hydrogen storage solutions and conversion kits for commercial aircraft.

MasterClass co-founder’s Outlier.org raises $30M for affordable, virtual college courses — Like MasterClass, Outlier offers beautifully shot online courses; unlike MasterClass, students can actually earn college credit.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

How are VCs handling diligence in a world where deals open and close in days, not months? — For venture capitalists, the timeline for reaching conviction around a startup’s thesis and executing due diligence has become compressed.

Five emerging use cases for productivity infrastructure in 2021 — Cloud communications services, API platforms, low-code development tools, business process automation and AI software development kits grew exponentially in 2020.

Customer care as a service: Outsourcing can help your startup wow clients 24/7 — Your clients might not demand 24/7 customer service yet, but they’re certainly hoping for it.

(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Everything else

Look at this tiny new Polaroid camera can you believe it — The company says its latest camera, the Polaroid Go, is the world’s smallest analog instant camera.

To ensure inclusivity, the Biden administration must double down on AI development initiatives — EqualAI’s Miriam Vogel argues that left unchecked, seemingly neutral artificial intelligence tools can and will perpetuate inequalities.

Alexa von Tobel will join Disrupt 2021 as a Startup Battlefield judge — Battlefield applications are now open, so don’t hesitate to throw your hat in the ring!

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.

While the concept of “deepfakes,” or AI-generated synthetic imagery, has been decried primarily in connection with involuntary depictions of people, the technology is dangerous (and interesting) in other ways as well. For instance, researchers have shown that it can be used to manipulate satellite imagery to produce real-looking — but totally fake — overhead maps of cities.

The study, led by Bo Zhao from the University of Washington, is not intended to alarm anyone but rather to show the risks and opportunities involved in applying this rather infamous technology to cartography. In fact their approach has as much in common with “style transfer” techniques — redrawing images in an impressionistic, crayon, and arbitrary other fashions — than with deepfakes as they are commonly understood.

The team trained a machine learning system on satellite images of three different cities: Seattle, nearby Tacoma, and Beijing. Each has its own distinctive look, just as a painter or medium does. For instance, Seattle tends to have larger overhanging greenery and narrower streets, while Beijing is more monochrome and — in the images used for the study — the taller buildings cast long, dark shadows. The system learned to associate details of a street map (like Google or Apple’s) with those of the satellite view.

The resulting machine learning agent, when given a street map, returns a realistic-looking faux satellite image of what that area would look like if it were in any of those cities. In the following image, the map corresponds to the top right satellite image of Tacoma, while the lower versions show how it might look in Seattle and Beijing.

A close inspection will show that the fake maps aren’t as sharp as the real one, and there are probably some logical inconsistencies like streets that go nowhere and the like. But at a glance the Seattle and Beijing images are perfectly plausible.

One only has to think for a few minutes to conceive of uses for fake maps like this, both legitimate and otherwise. The researchers suggest that the technique could be used to simulate imagery of places for which no satellite imagery is available — like one of these cities in the days before such things were possible, or for a planned expansion or zoning change. The system doesn’t have to imitate another place altogether — it could be trained on a more densely populated part of the same city, or one with wider streets.

It could conceivably even be used, as this rather more whimsical project was, to make realistic-looking modern maps from ancient hand-drawn ones.

And should technology like this be bent to less constructive purposes, the paper also looks at ways to detect such simulated imagery using careful examination of colors and features.

The work challenges the general assumption of the “absolute reliability of satellite images or other geospatial data,” said Zhao in a UW news article, and certainly as with other media that kind thinking has to go by the wayside as new threats appear. You can read the full paper at the journal Cartography and Geographic Information Science.