Perplexity looking to fundraise at an $8B valuation, Lyft is working on a ‘service animal opt-in feature’, DJI sues Department of Defense, and Can AI sandbag safety checks?

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AI search engine Perplexity is in fundraising talks and hopes to raise around $500 million at an $8 billion valuation, according to the Wall Street Journal. If a deal happens with those terms, it would more than double Perplexity’s valuation from its $3 billion valuation when it raised from SoftBank over the summer; Uber and Lyft need to do more to support disabled passengers, especially those who are blind or visually impaired, according to protesters who gathered outside the companies’ headquarters on October 15; Drone-maker DJI filed a lawsuit Friday against the US Department of Defense over its inclusion on a DoD list of “Chinese military companies.” A DJI spokesperson said the company filed the suit after “attempting to engage with the DoD for more than sixteen months” and deciding “it had no alternative other than to seek relief; AI companies claim to have robust safety checks in place that ensure that models don’t say or do weird, illegal, or unsafe stuff. But what if the models were capable of evading those checks and, for some reason, trying to sabotage or mislead users? Turns out they can do this, according to Anthropic researchers.

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