Coinbase cuts 18 percent staff; Google suspends engineer for ‘sentient’ AI claim; HDFC Bank, 100X.VC strike partnership

Coinbase is laying off almost a fifth of its workforce amid a collapse in its stock and crypto prices, CNBC reports. The cryptocurrency exchange will cut 18 percent of full-time jobs, according to an email sent to employees on Tuesday. Coinbase has roughly 5,000 full-time workers, translating to a head count reduction of around 1,100 people, according to CNBC. Google, has suspended an AI engineer, Blake Lemoine, for claiming that an artificial intelligence he helped to develop had become sentient, The Washington Post reports. “If I didn’t know exactly what it was, which is this computer program we built recently, I’d think it was a seven-year-old, eight-year-old kid,” Lemoine told the Post. Lemoine himself released transcripts of conversations with the AI, called LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications), in which it appears to express fears of being switched off, talks about how it feels happy and sad and attempts to form bonds with humans by mentioning situations that it could never have actually experienced, The New Scientist reports. Meanwhile, more than 400 AI researchers, including several from Google, have proposed an update to the famous Turing Test. British Mathematician Alan Turing first proposed a test for machine intelligence in 1950. Now researchers at Google and their partners have created a suite of 204 tests to replace it, covering subjects such as mathematics, linguistics and chess. HDFC Bank yesterday announced the signing a memorandum of understanding with 100X.VC, an early-stage venture capital firm, to engage more deeply with startups in India. With this MoU, 100X.VC will recommend HDFC Bank as the primary Bank to all its portfolio companies. HDFC Bank and the Mumbai VC firm will conduct joint programmes for startups such as Master Classes. The bank will also evaluate startups referred to it by 100X.VC for investment and extending loans. Groyyo, a Mumbai startup in the B2B Manufacturing and Supply Chain Enablement space, has raised $40 million in a combination of equity and debt in its Series A round, the company said in a press release. The round of funding was led by Tiger Global with participation from early investors Alpha Wave Global. Terra.do, a Silicon Valley startup that offers an immersive programme to equip anyone interested in climate action with the tools to pursue that interest, has launched a mobile app. People can use the app to find jobs, or recruits, in the climate economy, network with like-minded professionals through multiple communities and learn more. The app is available on both iOS and Android. Theme music courtesy Free Music & Sounds: https://soundcloud.com/freemusicandsounds