Sunday, June 23, 2024

Image Credits: Fisker

Electric vehicle startup Fisker filed for bankruptcy this week, following financial issues that go at least as far back as August of last year.

Following the filing, Sean O’Kane (who previously provided an in-depth report on the company’s problems) argued that Fisker wasn’t ready to be a car company. In other words, it was focused on building a car but wasn’t prepared for the challenges businesses face once they’ve put that car on the road. (That said, the car had issues, too.)

What happens next? Well, the fight over its assets is heating up, with a lawyer representing a group of Fisker’s creditors claiming the company has been liquidating assets “outside the courts’ supervision.”

Keep reading to catch up on what else TechCrunch has been covering this weekend.

Weekend news and opinion

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin

Silicon Valley’s wrongheaded attacks on DEI: Dominic-Madori Davis examines recent pushback against diversity, equity, and inclusion, specifically Scale AI’s declaration that its hiring will focus on “merit, excellence, and intelligence” instead. The company isn’t alone — the data industry has seen the number of new women recruits fall by two-thirds, while DEI-related job listings appear to be falling out of favor. Read more

The real meaning of “open source AI”: As different AI companies are praised or criticized over being “open” or “closed,” Paul Sawers talks to the Open Source Initiative about how we judge whether AI is truly open source — which can be troublesome, because the parameters that a neural network uses to learn aren’t really comparable to software code. Read more

Taking your brain to the Dark Side of the Moon: Anna Heim checks out a new interactive experience in London, where visitors can have their brain activity recorded while they listen to the classic Pink Floyd album “The Dark Side of the Moon,” then later watch it displayed as a cloud. Read more

Meet more women shaping AI: TechCrunch’s interview series with leading women in the field continues, with Dominic-Madori Davis talking to Amini’s Charlette N’Guessan about data scarcity in Africa.

What else we’re reading

Image Credits: Getty Images / PM Images

Following a controversy in which Perplexity AI was accused of plagiarizing Forbes’ content, Wired took a closer look at the startup’s practices, finding that it ignores a commonly accepted web standard (one that Perplexity claims to respect) and is also “a bullshit machine.” To top things off, Perplexity then appears to have plagiarized Wired’s story. Read more

Meanwhile, The Washington Post reported that leaked documents show One Medical’s call center failed to seek immediate attention for callers who reported urgent symptoms on “more than a dozen occasions.” (One Medical has been acquired by Amazon, while The Washington Post is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.) Read more