Clearview's controversial facial recognition technology is getting closer to being patented by the US Patent and Trademark Office. The USPTO has given Clearview a "notice of allowance", a sign that the startup's patent application will be approved once it pays administrative costs, Politico reported. Clearview said it has scraped ten billion photos from public social media accounts. Although companies like Instagram and Twitter disapprove, Clearview has continued to download these images without permission. Now, its methods and software are may be officially patented. Clearview's application describes a "downloading by a web crawler facial images of individuals and personal information associated therewith; and storing the downloaded facial images and associated personal information in the database."

Harvard University on Tuesday launched the Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence, a new University-wide initiative standing at the intersection of neuroscience and artificial intelligence, seeking fundamental principles that underlie both human and machine intelligence. The fruits of discoveries will flow in both directions, enhancing understanding of how humans think, perceive the world around them, make decisions, and learn, thereby advancing the rapidly evolving field of AI. The institute will be funded by a $500 million gift from Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, which was announced Tuesday by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The gift will support 10 new faculty appointments, significant new computing infrastructure, and resources to allow students to flow between labs in pursuit of ideas and knowledge. Chan and Zuckerberg have given generously to Harvard in the past, supporting students, faculty, and researchers in a range of areas, including around public service, literacy, and cures.

Chan Zuckerberg Initiative co-founders and co-CEOs Mark Zuckerberg '06, L.L.D. '17 and Priscilla Chan '07, announced today a gift to establish the Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence at Harvard. The new institute, which will have dedicated space in the recently completed Science and Engineering Complex in Allston (see "A 500-Year Building"), is named after Karen Kempner Zuckerberg, the mother of the Meta CEO and founder (Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp are Meta Platforms Inc.'s best-known apps) and her parents. According to Jeff MacGregor, vice president of science communications for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), the Kempner Institute will receive $500 million in funding during the next 15 years. The gift will support 10 new faculty appointments, new computing infrastructure, and resources for students--from undergraduates to post-doctoral fellows--that will allow them to pursue knowledge in an uninhibited way across labs and disciplines. Zuckerberg and Chan, a pediatrician, will donate an additional $2.9 billion to support biomedical research focused on improving human health, with the aim of ultimately ending all human disease.