It all began, as many things do, with Elon Musk. In the early 2010s he realized that AI was on a track to become perhaps the most powerful technology of all time. But he had deep suspicion that if it were to fall under the control of powerful profit-driven forces, humanity would suffer. Musk had been an early investor in DeepMind, the UK-based lab that was ahead of the pack in pursuing artificial general intelligence. After Google bought DeepMind in 2014, Musk cut ties with the research organization. He felt it was essential to create a counterforce incentivized by human…
Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, visited the White House this week to announce with an initiative with Donald Trump that would give priority to World Cup ticket holders next year to process a US visa. This initiative is called “FIFA Pass.”“FIFA Pass is a prioritized appointment scheduling system,” Infantino…
A few days ago, I watched a man at a retail counter lean forward, straining to hear the person helping him. The store was loud, the layout was confusing, and the conversation became harder than it needed to be. The employee did their best, but the moment still faltered, not…
Memo may not be the world’s fastest barista, but it is impressive—for a robot.I recently watched as Memo, a new home robot from a company called Sunday Robotics, made coffee in an open-plan kitchen in Mountain View, California.Memo looks like something out of Wall-E, with a gleaming white body, two…
Evan Kirstel, a mega-influencer in the technology space, has been doing some very cute things with AI lately, planting himself in the midst of historical and current event videos on his Facebook posts. (For example, in one post: Evan introduces Apple’s technology in 1946.) Highly creative indeed, but Evan has…
If you read any of WIRED’s recent AI edition, you know that lots of people are spending lots of time talking about how the technology is revolutionizing pretty much everything—from coding to writing to accounting. You’ve also probably heard by now, from us or somebody else, that we might very…
We’re back to numbers again in today’s NYT Pips Hard tier puzzle. Numbers, numbers, numbers and the occasional letter for good measure. They skipped quite a few numbers to get to today’s, however. That number is 100 and I thought maybe it was a celebration of the 100th Pips puzzle,…
It turns out that when an AI-friendly super PAC with $100 million in backing from Silicon Valley bigwigs identifies you as its first target, it ends up generating a lot of attention.“I want to thank [the PAC] for their partnership in raising up the issue of how we regulate an…
Update, Sunday Nov. 23: This article has been updated with details on the Pixel 9a Black Friday deals in the UK:In the run-up to Black Friday, companies are launching offers, previewing deals, and preparing bonuses to bring in consumers over the US holiday weekend, and the rest of the world…
A glorious, wintry Sunday is upon us. Snow, rain, snow again. Ice, ice baby. It’s a perfect day for solving a Wordle, or perhaps a Pips or even a Strands! I have guides for all three of this Sunday’s here on my blog. Today’s Wordle gave me a really hard…
As Kent Halliburton stood in a bathroom at the Rosewood Hotel in central Amsterdam, thousands of miles from home, running his fingers through an envelope filled with €10,000 in crisp banknotes, he started to wonder what he had gotten himself into.Halliburton is the cofounder and CEO of Sazmining, a company…
The weekend is finally here and it’s a rather chilly one. The ski hill has opened up here in the mountains of Arizona thanks to some serious snowfall, with more to come over the weekend. I mean, just look at this:I bet that’s not what you picture when you think…
Joe Kiniry, a security expert specializing in elections, was attending an annual conference on voting technology in Washington, DC, when a woman approached him with an unusual offer. She said she represented a wealthy client interested in funding voting systems that would encourage bigger turnouts. Did he have any ideas?…
Some of artist David Hockney’s most famous paintings hung in midair last week when hundreds of drones recreated them as luminous compositions over the artist’s English hometown. Over 600 illuminated drones flew in choreographed formations to recreate airborne versions of works spanning Hockney’s career. Among them were “A Bigger Splash,”…
When the history of AI is written, Steven Adler may just end up being its Paul Revere—or at least, one of them—when it comes to safety.Last month Adler, who spent four years in various safety roles at OpenAI, wrote a piece for The New York Times with a rather alarming…
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Changpeng Zhao, the multibillionaire founder of crypto exchange Binance, spent four months…
Key TakeawaysTwo top leakers now disagree on the S26 Ultra’s 3x telephoto…
Eventually, they claimed that they came to believe that they were “responsible…
I’m not much of a basketball fan, but I love technology. So…
