NASA astronaut Sunita Williams just turned 59 in space on Thursday. She celebrated her milestone birthday aboard the International Space Station (ISS), which is around 400 kilometres above Earth, for the second time. 

Earlier her birthday celebration took place during a 2012 mission. 

Since June 6, Sunita Williams along with NASA astronaut Barry ‘Butch’ Wilmore has been aboard the ISS as part of the Boeing Crew Flight Test mission. Due to technical issues with the Boeing Starliner spacecraft, their stay has been unexpectedly extended. 

They are expected to return in February 2025. 

On her special day, Williams took up the task of maintaining the space laboratory. 

Reportedly, Williams celebrated her birthday by replacing filters in the waste and hygiene compartment. She also performed the essential task with the help of NASA astronaut Don Pettit to ensure safe and healthy living conditions on the ISS. 

Williams participated in a conference with Mission Control in Houston, Texas. Williams also engaged in discussions with flight directors in Houston, collaborating with astronauts Wilmore and Frank Rubio to outline mission objectives and upcoming tasks. 

Sunita Williams also received birthday wishes from Bollywood stars along with loved ones and family. 

Saregama Official shared a heartwarming video on Instagram that featured a compilation video of famous Indian stars singing Happy Birthday in Hindi to the astronaut. 

The video began with filmmaker Karan Johar sending birthday wishes to Williams, followed by singers, Hariharan, Sonu Nigam, Neeti Mohan and Shaan Mukherji.

In 1998, after joining NASA’s astronaut program, Williams launched into space for the first time on December 9, 2006, during the STS-116 mission. 

As a flight engineer for Expeditions 14 and 15, Williams set multiple records, including over 29 hours of spacewalks and more than 195 days in orbit.

By piloting Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner’s first crewed test flight, Williams made history by successfully docking with the ISS despite facing technical challenges. 

It’s been four years since the robot wizards at Boston Dynamics declared its dog-like Spot robot ready for the workplace.

In that time, the quadruped robot has been trialed in various roles at a number of firms, including for factory mapping at Ford, safety inspections at a Kia auto plant, and radiation surveys for Dominion Energy.

Its latest gig is at a Michelin facility in Lexington, South Carolina, which manufactures tires and light trucks. A video (top) released by Boston Dynamics on Wednesday shows Spot making its way around the site, carrying out various tasks as part of a pilot program.

“We were like kids at Christmas when we first got Spot,” said Wayne Pender, a reliability manager at Michelin whose job it is to ensure that all of the facility’s equipment is running at optimal efficiency.

Ryan Burns, also a reliability manager, said it’s important to get ahead of equipment failures in order to avoid a plant shutdown. Spot helps out by scanning 350 locations with a thermal camera to see if any parts are overheating or performing differently in some other way. Using specially designed software called Orbit, Spot then processes the data and sends it to to its operators for final analysis. If an anomaly is spotted, a human technician is sent out to review the situation before a final decision is made on how to respond.

“From a technician standpoint, Spot going out and doing these routes eliminates a mundane task that humans are doing,” Burns said. “By Spot finding these anomalies and these issues, it gives the technician more time to go out and plan and schedule how they’re going to fix the problem versus going out, identifying, then trying to plan and schedule everything.”

Burns added that it would be ideal to have more Spots at the facility so that the company can improve its inspection procedures, leading to enhanced efficiency and greater output.

Boston Dynamics is continuing to develop Spot and refine its capabilities through various pilot programs and partnerships in the U.S. and beyond.

It’s getting harder to tell what’s been AI-generated on the internet, and that goes especially for AI-generated text. It’s much easier for AI to fake text than it is for audio, images, or videos. As such, watermarking said content seems like an impossible task. However, it seems that Google has a solution in the form of the SynthID Text tool.

Since AI is so convincing, it’s important to have tools to help people identify if a research paper was spat out by ChatGPT. While cheating on your college report is bad, it’s far from the most harmful thing you can do with AI-generated text. A major issue is the spread of misinformation and other harmful content.

This is where Google SynthID Text comes in

The companies giving us the most powerful AI chatbots are also trying to give us tools to help us identify when something was created by those chatbots. OpenAI developed and tested tools to help identify when something was created by ChatGPT, but the company hasn’t seen fit to release it.

Google, on the other hand, has blessed us with a watermarking tool. As the name suggests, this is a tool that people will be able to use to identify if a section of text is AI-generated. SynthID Text is freely available to developers and businesses starting today. We’re not sure if Google is going to release a user-facing tool for casual people to check if text is AI-generated.

Watermarking text?

This seems like something that should be pretty impossible to do. It’s easier to understand watermarking AI-generated images. However, text is much easier to edit. You can easily edit or paraphrase what text a chatbot produces. Google managed to find a way, but it’s not perfect.

This method has to do with what are called Tokens. If you’ve been around AI tools, then you’ve probably seen this term tossed around. When you use an AI tool, you’re inputting data and getting data as an output. For example, typing a prompt “write a story about a rabbit” into a chatbot and getting a 100-word story as a response.

Well, the text in your prompt is divided into what are called tokens. These are sections of words or entire words that you enter into a model to be broken down and analyzed. Your response is also made up of tokens.

Well, according to Google, when a model generates text, it gives each token a score based on how likely it is that it’ll be used in the response. What SynthID Text does is insert additional information into each token by “modulating the likelihood of tokens being generated.” Then, Google compares the score from the original model’s output to the adjusted score. The final pattern of these scores is then “compared with the expected pattern of scores for watermarked and unwatermarked text, helping SynthID detect if an AI tool generated the text or if it might come from other sources,” says Google.

Limitations

It’s a lot to take in, but the important thing to note is that it’s a pretty effective tool. The only thing is that this isn’t a watertight solution. SynthID Text isn’t as accurate when it comes to shorter bits of text. So, you’ll have more luck if someone wants to generate a novel or a college report, however, you’ll have trouble if it’s a piece of advertising copy.

Also, this tool will struggle with text that was translated from another language or rewritten. This makes sense, as this would basically change all of the tokens of the original text.

Along with that, responses to factual questions are also an issue for SynthID Text. This is because it’s hard to adjust the token scores without changing the actual factual information in the response. If you’re talking about the natural habitat of a certain bird, there’s very little that you can change in your response before you start changing actual facts.

In a bit of a surprising announcement, Google stated that this tool was integrated into Gemini months ago, and most of us didn’t even know. Hopefully, this tool will lead the way for other tools that will help us detect AI-generated content.

Arm has taken its feud with Qualcomm to the next level, two years after filing a lawsuit against its former close partner. According to Bloomberg, the British semiconductor company has canceled the architecture license allowing Qualcomm to use its intellectual property and standards for chip design. As the news organization notes, Qualcomm, like many other chipmakers, uses Arm’s computer code that chips need to run software, such as operating systems. Arm has reportedly sent Qualcomm a 60-day notice of cancelation — if they don’t get to an agreement by then, it could have a huge impact on both companies’ finances and on Qualcomm’s operations.

The SoftBank-backed chipmaker sued Qualcomm in 2022 after the latter purchased a company called Nuvia, which is one of its other licensees. Arm argued that the US company didn’t obtain the necessary permits to transfer Nuvia’s licenses. As such, Nuvia breached their contract and it had terminated its licenses, Arm explained in its lawsuit. Qualcomm has been using Nuvia-developed technology in the chips designed for AI PCs, such as those from Microsoft and HP. But Arm wants the company to stop using Nuvia-developed tech and to destroy any Arm-based technology developed prior to the acquisition.

Qualcomm will have to stop selling most of the chips that account for its $39 billion in revenue, Bloomberg says, if the companies don’t resolve the issue within the next 60 days. It seems the US chipmaker believes this is a tactic by Arm to threaten its business and to get higher royalties, because its spokesperson told Bloomberg and the Financial Times: “This is more of the same from Arm — more unfounded threats designed to strong-arm a longtime partner, interfere with our performance-leading CPUs, and increase royalty rates regardless of the broad rights under our architecture license.” Qualcomm also accused Arm of attempting to disrupt the legal process, called its grounds for licensing termination “completely baseless” and said that it’s confident its “rights under its agreement with Arm will be affirmed.”

Meanwhile, an Arm spokesperson told us: “Following Qualcomm’s repeated material breaches of Arm’s license agreement, Arm is left with no choice but to take formal action requiring Qualcomm to remedy its breach or face termination of the agreement. This is necessary to protect the unparalleled ecosystem that Arm and its highly valued partners have built over more than 30 years. Arm is fully prepared for the trial in December and remains confident that the Court will find in Arm’s favor.”

Update, October 23, 2024, 11:33PM ET: This story has been updated to add Arm’s statement.

Model merging is a fundamental AI process that enables organizations to reuse and combine existing trained models to achieve specific goals.

There are various ways that enterprises can use model merging today, but many approaches are complex. A new approach known as Differentiable Adaptive Merging (DAM) could be the answer, providing a solution to the current challenges of model merging. DAM offers an innovative solution to combining AI models while potentially reducing computational costs.

Arcee AI, a company focusing on efficient, specialized small language models, is leading the charge on DAM research. The company, which raised funding in May 2024, has evolved from providing model training tools to becoming a full-fledged model delivery platform with both open-source and commercial offerings.

How DAM creates a new path forward for model merging

Merging can help companies combine models specialized in different areas to create a new model capable in both areas.

The basic concept of merging data is very well understood with structured data and databases. However, merging models is more abstract than merging structured data, as the internal representations of the models are not as interpretable.

Thomas Gauthier-Caron, research engineer at Arcee AI and one of the authors of the DAM research explained to VentureBeat that traditional model merging has often relied on evolutionary algorithms. That approach can potentially be slow and unpredictable. DAM takes a different approach by leveraging established machine learning (ML) optimization techniques.

Gauthier-Caron explained that DAM aims to solve the problem of complexity in the model merging process. The company’s existing library, MergeKit, is useful for merging different models, but it is complex due to the various methods and parameters involved.

“We were wondering, can we make this easier, can we get the machine to optimize this for us, instead of us being in the weeds tweaking all of these parameters?” Gauthier-Caron said.

Instead of just mixing the models directly, DAM adjusts based on how much each model contributes. DAM uses scaling coefficients for each column in the models’ weight matrices. It automatically learns the best settings for these coefficients by testing how well the combined model performs, comparing the output with the original models and then adjusting the coefficients to get better results.

According to the research, DAM performs competitively with or better than existing methods like evolutionary merging, DARE-TIES and Model Soups. The technology represents a significant departure from existing approaches, according to Gauthier-Caron. He described evolutionary merging as a slow process, where it’s not entirely clear up front how good the result will be or how long the merge process should run.

Merging is not an Mixture of Experts approach

Data scientists combine models in many different ways. Among the increasingly popular approaches is the Mixture of Experts (MoE).

Gauthier-Caron emphasized model merging with DAM is something very different from MoE. He explained that MoE is a specific architecture that can be used to train language models. 

The basic concept behind model merging is that it starts from the point where the organization already has trained models. Training these models usually costs a lot of money, so engineers aim to reuse existing trained models.

Practical applications and benefits of DAM for enterprise AI

One of DAM’s key advantages is its ability to combine specialized models efficiently. 

One such example provided by Gauthier-Caron is if an organization wanted to combine a Japanese model with a math model. The goal of that combination is to make a model that’s good at math in Japanese, without the need to retrain. That’s one area where DAM can potentially excel.

The technology is particularly relevant for enterprise adoption of generative AI, where efficiency and cost considerations are paramount. Helping to create more efficient ways of operating at reduced cost is a key goal for Arcee overall. That’s why DAM research is important to both the company and ultimately its users too.

“Enterprise adoption of gen AI boils down to efficiency, availability, scalability and cost,” Mark McQuade, co-founder and CEO of Arcee AI told VentureBeat.

With TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 just days away, we’re gearing up for an incredible three-day event packed with interactive sessions! From October 28-30 at Moscone West in San Francisco, dive into Q&A conversations with a panel of industry experts around the most pressing issues and cutting-edge tech trends to help empower your growth.

Don’t miss your chance to save and engage in these first come, first served Breakouts! Register now to lock in up to $400 in savings on select tickets before door prices increase. Want to bring a friend? Take advantage of the Expo+ 2-for-1 Pass and bring a plus-one at half the cost of a single Expo+ Pass. These offers are valid through October 27.

Discover the complete roster of Breakout Sessions below, spread across two stages at Disrupt.

Breakout Session Agenda

The Future of High-Growth Tech: Beyond the Apple App Store

Led by Sofia Dolfe, Index Ventures; James Ding, DraftWise; Jordan Taylor, Vizcom

As the tech landscape evolves, the next wave of high-growth, high-impact companies may not emerge from the Apple App Store, but rather from the Microsoft app store. This shift signals a broader transformation in historically slow-moving industries like legal tech, where innovative solutions are challenging the status quo. Buyers in these sectors are increasingly open to embracing change, paving the way for a new era of technological advancement. Join our panel of experts as we explore how AI and other emerging technologies are driving this evolution, and what it means for the future of knowledge work in industries traditionally resistant to rapid change.

How AI Is Supercharging Tools for Knowledge Workers

Led by Harpinder Singh, Innovation Endeavors; Tanguy Chau, Paxton AI; Luke McGartland, Sequence; Dion Almaer, Augment Code

Advancements in AI are enabling new tooling that will 10x the productivity of knowledge workers by reducing monotonous, repetitive tasks. These advances have also unlocked opportunities for more creativity and experimentation. This panel explores the latest in professional services tooling and explores how companies can maximize performance and productivity. We will also explore the future of tooling for knowledge workers and how emerging breakthroughs might be applied. Let’s explore the future of work.

Generative AI: Beyond the Hype — Building Real-World Applications

Led by Priyanka Vergadia, Microsoft

Join this interactive session to explore the practical applications of generative AI. We’ll break down the different types of generative models, discuss their strengths and limitations, and showcase inspiring use cases across various industries.

Beyond Snowflake and Databricks: Insights from the Frontlines of Data Transformation Disruption

Led by Colin Zima, Omni; Toby Mao, Tobiko Data; Jordan Tigani, MotherDuck; Daniel Svonava, Superlinked; Tomasz Tunguz, Theory Ventures

By 2025, our global data volume will reach 175 zetabytes, a figure that is 50% more than 2023. But while the wealth of data grows, it remains unwieldy to use. Poor data quality costs organizations an average of $12.9 million annually. As organizations grapple with the exponential growth of data, they need better data transformation solutions to process it. The worldwide spending on such digital transformation solutions is forecasted to reach $3.9 trillion by 2027. In other words, the market is ripe for challenging the status quo, even despite the continued growth of data darlings Snowflake and Databricks. Tomasz can speak to the future of data in the context of SF and DB’s direct competition, and how startups are tackling these challenges head-on amidst the acceleration of two industry giants.

Navigating the Funding Landscape for Women

Led by Natalie Pan, Mariane Bekker, and Jeni Chang, Women Founders Bay; Aury Cifuentes, How Women Invest

Join us for an exciting panel discussion featuring three leading female venture capitalists from Progressive Ventures and How Women Invest. This session will provide you with essential insights into the funding world, focusing on the latest trends, what investors look for, and effective strategies for women founders to stand out.

Powering Ahead: The Future of Energy & Infrastructure

Led by Rachel Payne and Troy Helming, EarthGrid; Nicholas Larson, Silicon Zombies

Join us for “Powering Ahead: The Future of Energy & Infrastructure” featuring Troy Helming, a visionary leader in renewable energy and successful entrepreneur. In our breakout session, we’ll dive into the latest innovations shaping the energy sector, including advancements in renewable technologies, grid modernization, and sustainable infrastructure development. We’ll also share best practices for building a startup, offering practical advice drawn from Troy’s experiences. Attendees will gain insights into how these trends are transforming the way we produce, distribute, and consume energy, and how to capitalize on emerging opportunities. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from an industry expert about the challenges and prospects that lie ahead in the quest for a cleaner, more efficient energy future.

IPO or Bust? Tactical Approaches for Late-Stage Success

Led by Jai Das, Sapphire Ventures; Karthik Subramanian, Goldman Sachs

With rising interest rates and stricter regulatory scrutiny on acquisitions, many growth and late-stage companies that once secured billions in funding are struggling to achieve a successful outcome. In this session, two experienced investors will debate the state of late-stage venture, what they’re seeing in terms of deal activity, if this market is actually coming back as significantly as some are reporting, and where they see the landscape headed in 2025. As part of this, they will dig into what’s going on with IPO markets, whether/when they will open back up, and how this is impacting exit strategies for founders.

The Future of Go-to-Market in the AI Era

Led by Jane Alexander, CapitalG; Chris Klayko, Databricks; Kareem Amin, Clay; Austin Hughes, Unify

From auto-generated outbound messages to AI-written blog posts, AI is fundamentally changing the way that companies go to market. Come discuss the tension between AI-powered automation and human creativity with the founders building these products and the leading practitioners who use them.

Secrets to Actually Being Good at Startup PR in 2024

Led by Turner Novak, Banana Capital; Kira McCroden, Forerunner; Emilie Gerber, Six Eastern; Jack Randall, Aetherflux

The communications and PR landscape has dramatically shifted in recent years: new mediums (Substack, podcasts) have spiked in influence and popularity, fueling new strategies (“going direct”) for shaping and amplifying public perceptions — all while an increasingly critical media landscape continues to hold all types of industry stakeholders accountable. How can early and growing companies responsibly navigate these changes and be successful in building an inspiring brand? This roundtable will dissect the growing breadth and importance of different comms functions: the under-appreciated, consequential nature of internal comms, the increasingly indispensable need for owned channels, the pros and cons of political takes amidst an election year, and how to actually get meaningful press coverage for a company. The tech communications industry has arguably never been more dynamic.

Beyond the Wrapper: Building and Raising Organically with AI

Led by Alessandra Andrenacci, Dropbox

Many startups today fundraise on the promise of being an “AI-first company.” But how do investors distinguish between companies that organically have AI at their core and those that are “GPT wrappers”? How can founders demonstrate that AI is intrinsic to their business and not an add-on intended to ride the wave of AI interest? This session addresses these and related questions by focusing on meaningfully incorporating AI into your startup and getting funded by investors. We use cutting-edge fundraising stats from DocSend to frame the conversation and ask founders and VCs how AI is changing fundraising expectations and how startups can organically incorporate AI into their businesses while staying ahead of increasingly sophisticated investor interest.

Smaller, Faster, Smarter: How Tiny AI Is Democratizing AI Technology Starting with the Smart Home Camera

Led by Roeland Nusselder and Tony Fadell, Plumerai

Nest founder, former SVP of Apple’s iPhone and iPod teams, and principal at Build Collective, Tony Fadell joins Plumerai’s co-founder and CEO Roeland Nusselder to discuss how Tiny AI is democratizing AI. By making AI smaller, efficient, and cost-effective, Tiny AI is paving the way for widespread adoption across industries, fostering innovation, and putting the power of AI into the hands of many. Tiny AI is shaping a future where intelligence is embedded all around us, enhancing our daily lives in ways we’ve only dreamed of. The future is here, and it’s smaller than you think!

Webby Talks: “It’s Giving Brainrot”

Led by Nick Borenstein, Webby Awards; Margaret Johnson, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners; Monica Khan, Bay Area Creator Economy; David Mogensen, Uber

In the Webby Awards’ annual thought leadership series focused on the trends and consumer insights shaping the internet, this year the leading award for internet excellence will explore how brands, marketers, digital creatives, and technologists are embracing chronically online culture to forge more creative and sustainable connections with audiences. The presentation, titled “It’s giving brainrot: How chronically online culture is taking us from the niche to the nonsensical—and why that can be a good thing,” will be led by the Webby Awards general manager Nick Borenstein and will feature insights and social listening data from Meltwater, along with trends from over 13,000 submissions to the 28th Annual Webby Awards. Following the presentation, Margaret Johnson (chief creative officer, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners), David Mogensen (VP of Global Marketing, Uber), and Monica Khan (co-founder, Bay Area Creator Economy) will join for a fireside chat to share their insights into this cultural moment.

Is Your AI Deployment an Advantage or an Embarrassment? Here’s How to Know

Led by Dane Sherrets and Marten Mickos, HackerOne

Rushed AI deployments can translate to embarrassing incidents, reputational damage, and financial loss. Brands like Adobe, Snap, and Anthropic have joined a growing list of companies embracing AI red teaming to deploy AI responsibly and find emerging threats before bad actors. HackerOne will share tales from the front lines of AI safety and security, so you know how to avoid AI embarrassments — from the circumvention of AI guardrails to harmful content generation. You’ll learn how top companies use AI red teaming and actionable ways to reduce AI risk that extend your AI advantage.

Scaling Technical Startups: Navigating Growth, Positioning, and Competitive Pressure

Led by Kevin Hu, Metaplane; Tobi Coker, Felicis

It’s a challenging time to scale a technical or data-focused startup — competition for customers, fundraising, and top talent continues to increase. This session will break down unique, timely challenges for technical founders and teams, and provide actionable advice to thrive in this highly competitive market. Attendees will take away best practices in product development, open source vs. closed source strategies, and how to position and message effectively —especially in pre-revenue stages for investor appeal. Technical founders will learn how to navigate the complexities of fundraising, with a focus on raising Series A for data-driven businesses, and why scaling technical or infrastructure companies requires a different playbook compared to traditional SaaS startups.

Deep Tech in Winter: How to Win Investors in 2024

Led by Po Bronson, Pae Wu, and Duncan Turner, SOSV

Venture’s deep chill has been extra frigid for deep tech startups due to their reputation for long timelines and big capital needs. But investors are still game for deep tech startups that are smart about balancing product scope and time to market. Vertical integration and industrial scale-ups are out; selling innovation into existing supply chains, now that’s smart. SOSV general partners Duncan Turner, Dr. Pae Wu, and Po Bronson help oversee the launch of about 75 deep tech startups a year and work with hundreds of deep tech co-investors. They will discuss what’s getting investors to “yes” to deep tech investments now, and take questions from the audience.

Bringing the Outside In: Connecting Startups with Large Banks to Power the Future of Finance

Led by Arvind Purushotham, Citi Ventures; Ari Tuchman, Quantifind; Kartik Mani, Citi

Arvind, along with Citi partners and portfolio company Quantifind, will discuss Citi Ventures’ approach to working with startups and how governance and risk management are essential to responsible innovation. He will also discuss how attendees can peer through their own crystal ball to predict the next big thing in tech and finance, from AI to the fintech revolution and beyond.

The Age of Technical Engineering Founders: How They Are Driving AI Innovation

Led by Christine Yen, Honeycomb; Anand Babu, MinIO; Prukalpa Sankar, Atlan; Karthik Ranganathan, Yugabyte

In the evolving AI landscape, innovation is being powered by solutions to deeply technical problems that require leaders to take on a much more hands-on, technical approach. We have moved away from the business founder/CEOs of the past and into a new age where engineering founders are increasingly more common. This panel, composed of leaders from Honeycomb, MinIO, Atlan, and Yugabyte will discuss why engineering skills are critical for the modern leader’s role. They will share specific examples of important skill sets, and how founders can position themselves for long-term success as technology leaders in the future.

Founder Mode: AI Startups in Learning, Health, and Autonomous Agents

Led by Amy Kelly, Miri AI; Shronit Ladhani, LearnTube; Div Garg, MultiOn; Jeremiah Owyang, Blitzscaling Ventures

Learn how today’s top founders are using AI to solve real-world problems. The panel experts will include MultiOn, which creates AI agents on the web to solve a variety of problems such as booking flights, shopping, and internet research; Miri.ai, which offers health and wellness AI coaches; and LearnTube, which uses generative AI to create instant learning courses, curriculum, quizzes, and certifications. Panel discussion and Q&A on how to launch, build, grow, and fund an AI startup.

How to Stand Out Amongst the AI Wave: Strategies for Success in Enterprise Sales

Led by Rudina Seseri, Glasswing Ventures; Marc Boroditsky, Cloudflare

Companies worldwide are actively investing in AI deployments across a wide range of use cases, and thousands of startups have emerged to fill these needs. This breakout session features Rudina Seseri, founder and managing partner of Glasswing Ventures, and Marc Boroditsky, president of Revenue at Cloudflare. They explore how AI has created a new paradigm shift in selling to enterprises, what the largest companies are using as criteria when considering their purchases, and how to avoid false indications of interest. Attendees will learn how to optimize scarce time and resources to build a truly valuable and viable product.

Building AI Agents — for Product Leaders & Founders

Led by Marily Nika, Meta

This is a live, hands-on workshop tailored for product leaders, aimed at providing a practical introduction to agentic products. You’ll gain a clear understanding of what AI agents are, how they function, and where they fit into product strategies. The workshop will guide you step by step through the process of building two AI agents from scratch, giving you a strong grasp of how to apply these tools to solve business problems, automate processes, and enhance user experiences.​ Bring your laptops to this interactive workshop!

Safety, Trust, and Profit: Anticipating Misuse to Build Safer Products and Attract Investment

Led by Megs Shah, The Parasol Cooperative; Chad Sniffen, National Network to End Domestic Violence; Sahab Aslam, Sukan Ventures

In today’s startup world, one data breach or safety failure can destroy your reputation and growth. For founders, the challenge is how to scale while ensuring user safety, privacy, and security, all within budget. VCs are focusing on startups with strong ESG practices, prioritizing those that address safety early. Failing to comply with data laws, such as COPPA, can result in penalties up to $170 million.

This session covers how to build safeguards to prevent tech misuse, like Apple AirTag’s misuse for stalking. With one in three women globally experiencing violence and 32 million child exploitation reports submitted to NCMEC in one year, tech’s role in abuse is a rising threat. We will also explore how open source security tools can cut costs by 55% and how addressing safety and security early prevents legal risks and attracts ethical investors, and most importantly protects the vulnerable.

Stablecoins: The Future of Fintech

Led by Nik Milanović, This Week in Fintech; Cuy Sheffield; Ben Milne

Why are stablecoins beginning to take off as a payments product? What are the most interesting examples and use cases? What technology will they replace — and where do they go from here?

Don’t miss these insightful Breakout Sessions

The only way to join these first come, first served Breakout Sessions is by registering for Disrupt 2024. Any pass grants you full access to these sessions. Register today and save up to $400 before prices rise at the door or get the Expo+ 2-for-1 Pass. Lock in your discounted ticket here.