Latest news with #crowdsourcing
Motor 1
a day ago
- Motor 1
Audi Driver Hits Woman's Car On the Highway and Flees. Now Her Realtor Friend Is Offering a Discount to Anyone Who Finds Them
A New York woman went viral on TikTok after publicly defending her friend, who she said was recently involved in a hit-and-run with an Audi driver. Kaitlyn Chen (@chenkaitlyn), who's been documenting her 'realty journey' in New York and Long Island, shared footage of what appeared to be her friend just moments after a car accident. The clip quickly took off online. The incident happened at 12:43pm ET on May 30 on the Belt Parkway before Exit 7, on the Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn. In the short video, Chen's friend begins recording right after being hit. Instead of pulling over to exchange info, the other driver appears to flee the scene. 'This dude just hit my car,' she said in the video. 'He's trying to run away.' Dashcam footage shows the car—a dark green Audi RS5 with no license plates and tinted front windows—driving off. Chen said her friend was never able to identify the driver, but she's now crowdsourcing help. 'Help my homegirl identify this car,' she wrote in the caption. 'Lots of good karma coming your way.' Chen even offered a reward: A discount on buying or selling a home through her services. But as of Thursday, no leads. The culprit is still unknown. Meanwhile, Chen's video has racked up more than 9.8 million views. Hit-and-Run Drivers Can Be Hard to Find Tracking down a hit-and-run driver isn't easy, especially when the car has no front or back plates and the dashcam footage doesn't clearly show the driver's face, like in the case of Chen's friend. Still, there are ways to strengthen your case beyond just asking TikTok for help. According to Houston-based law firm Gibson Hill Personal Injury , the first step is always to file a police report. From there, gather any available witness statements and surveillance footage, if applicable. Chen's friend was on the highway, so that wasn't an option—but those steps can still be crucial in other situations. The firm also recommends checking the scene for car debris, which could help identify the vehicle. And if you have the resources, hiring a personal injury attorney could make a real difference, as they can investigate on your behalf and help push an insurance claim forward. Even if the driver can't be identified, insurance companies will often cover injuries and damages under uninsured motorist policies. And in rare cases, someone might come forward—an eyewitness who recognizes the car or even the driver. So, it looks like Chen's friend did everything right. But given how notoriously tough these cases are to crack, it's still unclear if even a viral TikTok will be enough to track down the culprit. Viewers Think It's a Lost Cause Most commenters on Chen's video pointed out the obvious: The driver had clearly gotten away, and the chances of tracking them down seemed slim. 'He didn't try running away, he got away,' one viewer said. 'No plate, too? Y'all not finding bro,' another wrote. 'Yeah, you'll never get them,' a third commenter added. Others flagged a bigger issue: The car appeared to be wrapped—a vinyl film covering the original paint. That might look sleek, but it also makes the car harder to identify, complicating any efforts to track it down. 'I would unwrap it as soon as I got home,' one TikToker quipped. A second viewer echoed this sentiment, writing, 'Car is going back to the wrap shop tomorrow!' 'A wrapped RS5 in New York [with] no plates,' a third viewer noted. 'You 100-percent might as well just take the car to a shop because you aren't finding him and insurance is just gonna raise ya rates, so just take the loss and pay out of pocket.' On Tuesday, Chen replied to a commenter to say that the person TikTok sleuths had flagged wasn't the culprit. But she hasn't posted a broader update on whether her friend has found the driver. Motor1 has reached out to Chen via a TikTok comment. More Crashes Watch In Agony as a BMW M5 Safety Car Crashes Mustang vs. Porsche 911 GT3 Drag Race: Guess Which Car Crashes Get the best news, reviews, columns, and more delivered straight to your inbox, daily. back Sign up For more information, read our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use . Share this Story Facebook X LinkedIn Flipboard Reddit WhatsApp E-Mail Got a tip for us? Email: tips@ Join the conversation ( )
Forbes
2 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Brilliance Is Everywhere, But We're Still Wasting It
The future of work is borderless, where talent, not titles, leads the way. In a world brimming with talent, why does it feel like only a select few ever get a shot? Throughout my career, I've felt like an outsider, uninvited to the exclusive clubs, quietly questioning the hierarchy of who gets to "create" and who doesn't. I've sat in rooms where the loudest voices won by default, not by merit. I've seen genius quietly sidelined because it didn't come wrapped in the right resume or accompanied by the right zip code. And I've always been drawn to the underdogs, the ones underestimated, overlooked, and underleveraged. They are often the ones who create the most powerful work. They just need a crack in the system to show what they can do. One of my favorite underdog stories is that of Whit Hiler, a hungry, self-taught creative in Lexington, Kentucky. At the time, Whit was working as the general manager of a Vespa dealership. He wasn't a Cannes darling. He wasn't a portfolio school graduate. He didn't live in Brooklyn or Venice Beach. But he was bursting with ideas. He applied to agencies across the country, from New York to L.A., but because he wasn't in "the scene," he got the cold shoulder. He was ignored. Meanwhile, I had just founded Victors & Spoils, the first advertising agency built on crowdsourcing principles. Our mission was simple: open up the creative process to a global talent pool, not just the insiders, but anyone with brilliance, hustle, and heart. Whit joined our crowd. And he changed everything. We were pursuing Harley-Davidson, a brand rich with story and grit. But instead of playing the traditional pitch game, we did something a little reckless. We sent out a tweet to Harley's CMO, Mark-Hans Richer, letting him know that we weren't pitching, but we were working on his business anyway. If he was curious, he could just give us a call. Mark-Hans did. We flew to Milwaukee. And we won the account. But let's be clear: it wasn't the stunt that sealed the deal. It was the brilliant creative from our global crowd, especially Whit's. He came up with world-class ideas that not only resonated with the Harley-Davidson brand but redefined what scrappy, outsider talent could do when given the chance. (You can read about it here.) That experience solidified something I had always believed: brilliance is abundant. Opportunity is not. What we witnessed at Victors & Spoils was the early signal of something bigger, the democratization of expertise. For decades, traditional systems relied on closed networks, degrees, and gatekeepers. But platforms, and now technologies, are shifting power from the few to the many. What once required ten years of industry experience can now be prototyped in a weekend. What once required access to an elite institution can now be learned online. The next major stop on this train? Generative AI. We're entering a new era where talent and tools converge. Generative AI is leveling the playing field, allowing people with less traditional training or access to legacy institutions to contribute meaningfully and competitively in the global economy. A young designer in Nairobi can use Midjourney and ChatGPT to build a pitch deck that rivals Madison Avenue's best. A product thinker in Bogotá can use AI to prototype solutions faster than most Silicon Valley teams. Of course, AI isn't a replacement for human creativity or insight. It's an amplifier. And when you pair it with global platforms built to surface and support talent, like Andela, the possibilities explode. Andela is doing something powerful, unlocking access for brilliant minds, many in underserved regions, and surrounding them with the infrastructure of a talent community: mentorship, feedback, learning, and ongoing development. It's not just about discovery. It's about sustained enablement. We're already seeing this model gain traction across the enterprise world. Fortune 500 companies are increasingly using platforms to tap pre-vetted, globally distributed talent, often filling high-skill roles in days, not months. These are no longer experiments. They're becoming strategy. This is the future of work. Open. Distributed. Networked. Inclusive. A world where the best idea wins, not the best pedigree. But this future isn't automatic. It takes intention. It takes new models. And it takes leaders willing to question how we find, value, and reward talent. So here's my challenge to every founder, executive, and creative leader: stop hiring only from your own reflection. Start opening the gates. Use the platforms. Embrace the tools. Give the Whit Hilers of the world a shot. Because when you do, you'll discover what I've known all along. Brilliance is everywhere. All we have to do is stop getting in its way.
Forbes
3 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
What Video Games Can Teach Us About Global Connectivity
Could a common gaming challenge lead to more web connectivity for all? California drivers are a different breed. Especially if they've ever lived in Los Angeles. Maneuvering through L.A.'s congested streets is not for the faint of heart. It requires eternal vigilance and a willingness to be aggressive. When that light switches to yellow, you don't slow down. You go, hopefully making it through before it flashes red. Yet even the most strident of California motorists knows that white-knuckling it through endless stop and go mayhem will only take you so far. You need a layup from technology if you want to combat bumper-to-bumper traffic and actually get to your destination on time. Personally, I like Maps for its simple interface. It's my go-to when nothing's on the line and I can take my sweet time to get to my destination. But when the chips are down, when I need to say, get from south O.C. to Century City for a 7 AM meeting, I bring in the big guns: Waze. The navigation app leverages machine learning and crowdsourced intelligence, specifically other drivers' GPS data, to plot the fastest route in real-time. When a hazard or accident forces cars to slow down, Waze takes note. It then reroutes you through side streets, back alleys, maybe even a mysterious cobblestone bridge through the Shire to reach your destination. Now, unless you're some directional wizard, you would've never dreamed of trying these detours on your own. That's the magic of dynamic routing, a boon that's gotten me out of more traffic pickles than I can count. But imagine if you had a different, yet related problem. Due to where you live, an underserved/emerging market, your WIFI is slow. We're talking interminably slow. Web pages take ages to load. Zoom calls keep dropping or freezing. All this endless lagging hurts your business. After all, time is money. What if you could use a similar solution to solve this second challenge: real-time rerouting. Only this time, instead of moving your car, you're moving data, millions of packets of it, through a clogged internet highway. This is what a company called ExitLag set out to do. How? By combining AI technology pioneered through … video gaming. 'Honestly, we didn't set out to solve the world's internet inequality problem,' said Lucas Stolze, ExitLag's CEO when I sat down with him. 'Our business model initially began with a simple yet urgent issue: gamers hate lag.' He's onto something. In fast-paced online games, milliseconds matter. A poor connection can cost you the winning shot in a multi-person sports match. These virtual nailbiter games mirror the competitive flavor of the physical variety. Often spread out across the world, players rely on split-second timing to make shots or passes. Even a minor latency spike can result in 'input delay,' meaning a command is executed too late, disrupting synchronization between devices, players, and ultimately, outcomes. 'We built a solution to address this common gaming challenge,' said Stolze. 'Our platform uses real-time traffic optimization and AI-powered predictive routing to secure the most optimal path through the web—just like Waze finds the quickest route through city traffic.' Core to ExitLag's model is one central difference: Rather than relying on default internet routing, which can be chaotic and outdated, ExitLag acts autonomously. Using intelligence at scale, AI charts its own connectivity course, capitalizing on a network of local servers and cloud integrations to move data based on dynamic conditions as they develop. 'Though we initially created this to help gamers, it now has much wider societal implications,' said Stolze. To grok the underlying technology, it's helpful to imagine the internet as a vast freeway system, not unlike the 405. At any given moment, billions of devices are trying to move data across it. This leads to bottlenecks, especially if and when network disruptions and server outages exacerbate flow. ExitLag employs AI to seek out the best route to counter such obstacles. If one path is blocked, AI doesn't have to idle like a Prius stuck in the carpool lane at 5 PM. It can resort to multipath routing, algorithms capable of transporting data to several routes at once. Whenever one path isn't viable, yet another might be, slashing lag time. Again, this is all automatic, the function of computers talking to each other with little to no direct human intervention. As discussed, a slow internet connection is frustrating for gamers. But connectivity stakes can be more drastic for underserved communities. They might even be life or death. Many suffer from unstable internet connections in developing countries like Vietnam or the Philippines, even in rural parts of America. The usual culprits behind connectivity hindrance tend to be outdated infrastructure and limited fiber cables. Knowing this, imagine you're the head of a Sub-Saharan Africa hospital. One day an 8-year-old girl is rushed to your operating room suffering from a ruptured appendix. Without immediate surgery she may go septic and die. Unfortunately, your facility lacks a specialist surgeon at this precise moment. In the past you've relied on remote surgery, connecting you to a world-class pediatric medical center in Philadelphia. In order to successfully accomplish robot-assisted laparoscopic surgery via high-precision instruments controlled over the internet you need an ultra-low-latency connection. This is because every micro-adjustment of a robotic arm must translate in real time. Without such consistent transmission, your young patient could very well die. Smart multipath routing systems can save the child by tapping into cloud networks from the likes of Amazon and pairing it with local infrastructure. It all comes together by building a kind of internet scaffolding to patch connectivity gaps. ExitLag isn't alone in using AI to mitigate connectivity challenges, especially in the remote medical care space. Proximie, a cloud-based software platform, also utilizes AI and video compression to enable real-time telepresence, even in limited bandwidth environments. Access to fast, lag-free connectivity is no longer some nicety. Increasingly, it's becoming a must-have in our complex society. Being locked out of the internet, even for nanoseconds at a time, can set back people and businesses. By applying machine learning to a real, daily frustration it's clear to see how AI can boost more than productivity. It can serve as a bridge, offering the underserved unprecedented web access, and in the process, enable greater equality. A true game changer, it speaks to technology's real promise: imagining a brighter future for everyone to move through.
CBS News
4 days ago
- Politics
- CBS News
New crowdsourcing app could complicate law enforcement efforts, officials say
A new crowdsourcing app will soon be available to people in western Pennsylvania. Developers say it's designed to help empower people to keep their communities safe, but some in law enforcement believe it could make their job more difficult. The app has been around for a decade and is running in several cities across the United States. The app, called Citizen, acts as an online crowdsourced clearing house for local information regarding everything from police calls, video of local news events, scanner traffic, as well as suspected criminal activity reported by subscribers, developers say. "I think it would be cool if the app used the data the police use to track it, like they do in other cities," one resident told KDKA-TV. But the app and its information aren't necessarily verified by emergency officials, which can lead to people taking the law into their own hands. "They're responding to incidents that are unverified or untrue, and they're taking action on their own behalf, and that could create an even more dangerous situation," according to Deputy Chief Brian Kohlhepp of the Ross Township Police Department. The app has led to problems in the past where subscribers publish wanted posters online for people who have done nothing wrong, like taking a walk and checking out their new neighborhood. Deputy Chief Kohlhepp says these scenarios can waste police assets and worse. "It could be someone from the app responded, and now we're dealing with an adversarial situation, and we [have to] untangle that," Deputy Chief Kohlhepp added. "If you don't have the facts and the information yourself, don't speak on it, and I would say don't act on it," said Joe Allen of Dormont. That's exactly what law enforcement says is the best course. If you see something, say something to the police, not the app. "If you see something suspicious, call 911. Remember, these apps are not monitored by any law enforcement agencies," Deputy Chief Kohlhepp said. KDKA-TV reached out to the developers of the Citizen app and is awaiting a response to address concerns law enforcement and residents have with the app. The western Pennsylvania version of the Citizen app is expected to become available on June 20.
TechCrunch
21-05-2025
- Business
- TechCrunch
LM Arena, the organization behind popular AI leaderboards, lands $100M
In Brief LM Arena, a crowdsourced benchmarking project that major AI labs rely on to test and market their AI models, has raised $100 million in a seed funding round that values the organization at $600 million, according to Bloomberg. Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and UC Investments, which manages an investment portfolio for the University of California, led the fundraising. Lightspeed Venture Partners, Felicis Ventures, and Kleiner Perkins also participated. 📢We're excited to share that we've raised $100M in seed funding to support LMArena and continue our research on reliable AI. Led by @a16z and UC Investments (@UofCalifornia), we're proud to have the support of those that believe in both the science and the mission. We're… — (formerly (@lmarena_ai) May 21, 2025 Founded in 2023, LM Arena has become something of an AI industry obsession. Primarily run by UC Berkeley-affiliated researchers, LM Arena has partnered with companies such as OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic to make flagship models available for its community to evaluate. LM Arena was previously funded through a combination of grants and donations, including from Google's Kaggle data science platform, a16z, and Together AI. Recently, it's been accused by some researchers of helping top AI labs game its leaderboard — accusations that LM Arena has vehemently denied.
