Aurelia Butler

The start-up raised $400 million in a funding round with investments from the likes of Jeff Bezos, Thrive Capital and OpenAI.Physical Intelligence, an artificial intelligence start-up seeking to create brains for a wide variety of robots, plans to announce on Monday that it had raised $400 million in financing from major investors.The round was led by Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s executive chairman, and the venture capital firms Thrive Capital and Lux Capital. Other investors include OpenAI, Redpoint Ventures and Bond.The fund-raising valued the company at about $2 billion, not including the new investments. That’s significantly more than the $70 million that the start-up, which was founded this year, had raised in seed financing.The company wants to make foundational software that would work for any robot, instead of the traditional approach of creating software for specific machines and specific tasks.“What we’re doing is not just a brain for any particular robot,” said Karol Hausman, the company’s co-founder and chief executive. “It’s a single generalist brain that can control any robot.”It’s a tricky task: Building such a model requires a huge amount of data on how to operate in the real world. Those information sets largely do not exist, compelling the company to compile its own. Its work has been aided by big leaps in A.I. models that can interpret visual data.Among the company’s co-founders are Mr. Hausman, a former robotics scientist at Google; Sergey Levine, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley; and Lachy Groom, an investor and former executive at the payments giant Stripe.In a paper published last week, Physical Intelligence showed how its software — called π0, or pi-zero — enabled robots to fold laundry, clear a table, flatten a box and more.“It’s a true generalist,” Mr. Hausman said. Physical Intelligence executives said that its software was closer to GPT-1, the first model published for chatbots by OpenAI, than to the more advanced brains that power ChatGPT.Mr. Groom said that it was hard to predict the rate of progress: A ChatGPT-style breakthrough “could be far sooner than we expect, or it could definitely be far out.”The field of robotics A.I. is getting crowded, with players including Skild, which is also working on general-purpose robot A.I.; Figure AI, whose backers include OpenAI and Mr. Bezos; and Covariant, which focuses on industrial applications.Amazon has a vested interest in the industry, and has been adding more robots in its operations as it seeks to drive down costs and get orders to customers faster. Tesla also has major A.I. ambitions, with Elon Musk recently saying that the company’s humanoid robot would be “the biggest product ever of any kind.” More

As Kamala Harris visited a church in Detroit on the last Sunday of the campaign, Donald J. Trump told supporters that he “shouldn’t have left” the White House after the 2020 election.It was the final Sunday of the campaign for president, and Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald J. Trump were continuing to race across battleground states in their search for support. But in message and demeanor, Ms. Harris, the Democrat, and Mr. Trump, the Republican, could not have been more different.Ms. Harris began her day at a Black church in Detroit where she told congregants that the nation was “ready to bend the arc of history toward justice,” invoking the words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Mr. Trump began his at an outdoor rally at an airport in Pennsylvania where, his shoulders slumped and his voice subdued, he threw out his prepared remarks to tell supporters that he “shouldn’t have left” the White House after his loss to President Biden in 2020.The dueling scenes offered a contrast that captured just how differently these two candidates were using the final days of a campaign that a last round of polls suggested remained as tight as it was when their contest began in August.Mr. Trump went to Lititz, Pa., where, after announcing he was discarding his prepared speech so the “truth” could come out, he proceeded to deliver dark, rambling and at times angry remarks in which he attacked polls, assailed Democrats as “demonic,” and suggested he would not mind if reporters were shot.“To get to me, somebody would have to shoot through fake news, and I don’t mind that much, ’cause, I don’t mind. I don’t mind,” he said as he called attention to the bulletproof glass barriers that have surrounded him at outdoor rallies since he was shot in July in an assassination attempt in Butler, Pa.Vice President Kamala Harris stopped at a Black-owned barbershop in Pontiac, Mich., on Sunday.Emily Elconin for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

El entorno político nacional no es tan propicio para una victoria de Harris como muchos podrían imaginar.Desde 2008, los demócratas han ocupado la Casa Blanca durante 12 de los 16 años. Vanessa Vick para The New York TimesPase lo que pase el martes, es justo decir que esta campaña no ha ido tan bien como esperaban los demócratas.Tras las elecciones intermedias, Donald Trump parecía estar acabado. Todavía puede perder, por supuesto, pero está claro que no ha quedado “descalificado” —como muchos esperaban— por el 6 de enero, por varias acusaciones penales o por la anulación de Roe contra Wade hecha por sus nombramientos para la Corte Suprema. Si los votantes descalificaron a algún candidato en 2024, fue al presidente en funciones, no al convicto que intentó anular las últimas elecciones.¿Cómo es que Trump sigue siendo tan competitivo? La respuesta más sencilla es que el entorno político nacional no es tan propicio para una victoria demócrata como muchos podrían imaginar.Los demócratas claramente se enfrentan a vientos en contra en estas elecciones. En la última encuesta del New York Times/Siena College, solo el 40 por ciento de los votantes aprobaba el desempeño del presidente Joe Biden, y solo el 28 por ciento decía que el país iba en la dirección correcta. Ningún partido ha conservado el control de la Casa Blanca cuando tantos estadounidenses estaban descontentos con el país o con el presidente.Las encuestas sugieren que el reto para los demócratas es aún más profundo. Por primera vez en décadas, los republicanos han igualado o superado la identificación partidista a nivel nacional. Las encuestas también muestran que los republicanos tienen ventaja en la mayoría de los temas clave, con la democracia y el aborto como excepciones significativas.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Vice President Kamala Harris made her final appeal to Michigan voters at an energetic rally on a college campus on Sunday, sounding notes of unity while drawing implicit contrasts with her opponent.The event at Michigan State University was her first rally since becoming a candidate in which she did not say former President Donald J. Trump’s name.Instead, in the final hours of the race, she argued that her candidacy was focused on the future.“Our campaign has not been about being against something, it is about being for something,” she said. “A fight for a future with freedom and opportunity and dignity for all Americans.”In substance and tone, the appearance marked an even sharper-than-usual contrast with Mr. Trump, who began his day declaring that he “shouldn’t have left” the White House at the end of his term, intensified his unfounded claims of voter fraud and said “I don’t mind” if reporters are shot at.Their appearances came as polls show a close race across the battleground states, including in Michigan.The state is home to many Arab American and Muslim voters who are angered by the Biden-Harris administration’s support for Israel in the war in Gaza. Some have said they plan to vote third-party — and in some cases, for Mr. Trump — in response, a significant political risk for Ms. Harris in a closely divided state.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

The president of Moldova, Maia Sandu, won re-election on Sunday against a rival candidate she had denounced as “Moscow’s man.”The pro-Western president of Moldova, Maia Sandu, won re-election on Sunday in a high-stakes runoff vote in the former Soviet republic against a rival candidate she had denounced as “Moscow’s man.”The vote — held a week after a contested election in Georgia, another former Soviet territory, handed victory to the Moscow-leaning governing party — has been closely watched by the United States, the European Union and Russia as a critical test of Moldova’s direction.With more than 98 percent of ballots counted, official results gave Ms. Sandu 54.9 percent of the vote, an unassailable lead on her Moscow-friendly rival, who had 45.3 percent.In a televised address early Monday, she thanked Moldovans living abroad, whose vote tipped the result in her favor, but said the election was a victory for the whole country. “Today you saved Moldova,” she said. “In our choice for a dignified future, no one lost.”In an apparent reference to Russia, Ms. Sandu assailed “hostile forces from outside the country and criminal groups” for mounting a campaign to sway the result, which she said, citing “dirty money and illegal vote buying,” had been an “attack unprecedented in the whole of Europe’s history.”European leaders celebrated the election as a victory against what Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, described as “Russia’s aggressive and massive interference.” He expressed hope “that this trend will continue in the coming days and months in other countries as well.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

On Tuesday, voters in Nebraska will be presented with dueling measures on abortion. While abortion is on the ballot in nearly a dozen states, and recent polling data appears to show support for measures that protect abortion rights, in Nebraska having two measures to choose from means many voters are simply confused.Referendum 434 would enshrine the existing 12-week abortion ban in the state constitution, banning abortion in the second and third trimesters, with exceptions for sexual assault, incest or medical emergencies. The constitutional protections would make it more difficult for these restrictions to be rolled back in the future.Referendum 439 would effectively allow abortions into the second trimester by creating a right to abortion “until fetal viability.”Many voters are having trouble parsing the wording on ballots as well as mixing up which measure aligns with their views. Local news outlets have offered lengthy explainers, and billboards and ads have tried to demystify the measures.But some advertising has offered such misleading information about Nebraska’s current abortion restrictions that last week the State Department of Health and Human Services issued an alert clarifying the current law, which passed in 2023 and limits most abortions after 12 weeks. The state’s chief medical officer did not specify which ads were misleading.A new ad featuring six female University of Nebraska athletes supporting abortion restrictions set off controversy; university officials told media outlets the athletes were exercising their First Amendment rights.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Blake Lively, Kaia Gerber and Kim Kardashian took pictures under the lights, posing against a backdrop of more than 200 restored street lamps from “Urban Light,” an installation by the artist Chris Burden that served as a stand-in for a red carpet.It was the 13th annual Art+Film gala, held Saturday night, which raised more than $6.4 million for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the largest art museum in the Western United States.On one side, a sage green carpet contrasted with striking red and glass galleries designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano. On the other, there was a concrete wall of the much-anticipated new LACMA building by the architect Peter Zumthor.And the guest list for the gala, sponsored by Gucci, felt as eclectic as the museum it benefited, as Hollywood fixtures rubbed shoulders with luminaries from the art world, who gathered to honor the filmmaker Baz Luhrmann and the artist Simone Leigh. (LACMA is currently co-presenting an exhibit of Ms. Leigh’s work with the California African American Museum.)This starry mix of creative worlds aligns with the museum director Michael Govan’s vision for LACMA. “The idea was to design it as a place of inspiration for creative people,” Mr. Govan said.The filmmaker Baz Luhrmann.Michelle Groskopf for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Over the last four months, these voters have struggled with their decision. Now, with time short, they explain who’s getting, or not getting, their vote.Over the last four months, The New York Times has been speaking with undecided voters after some of the most dramatic moments of the presidential campaign, to learn how those events were shaping their choice.The people we talked with live in states where the polling is tight, and voters like them will play an outsize role in determining the outcome. They are concerned about the cost of living, former President Donald J. Trump’s volatility and Vice President Kamala Harris’s vision for the country.They are sporadic voters, disaffected former partisans, Republicans and Democrats. Some of them shifted their decisions over the course of the campaign. Others will decide when they step into the booth.While a lot has happened over the last few months, poll numbers have remained largely stable. The vast majority of American voters have made up their minds, adding even more weight to what persuadable voters ultimately decide.Kristen Morris voted for Ms. Harris.In the spring, Kristen Morris, 60, a former Republican, was feeling deeply pessimistic about her two choices for president. She felt troubled by Mr. Biden, whom she had voted for in 2020: She worried about his cognitive abilities and was unhappy with his handling of the country’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. And she was stunned that Mr. Trump continued to express no remorse over the Jan. 6 riot.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More