What a weird time to be Elon Musk.This year opened with the businessman turned political operator throwing what appeared, to Nazis at least, to be a Sieg heil.This spring, activists frequently congregated outside the showrooms of his automaker, Tesla, to protest his foray into the US federal government and cozy relationship with President Trump. They argued that his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, a cost-slashing operation named after a more than decade-old internet meme, didn’t slash much beyond foreign aid. They cheered as Tesla missed Wall Street’s financial expectations.In May, Musk blew up his relationship with the most powerful man…
OpenAI has quietly reversed a major change to how hundreds of millions of people use ChatGPT.On a low-profile blog that tracks product changes, the company said that it rolled back ChatGPT’s model router—an automated system that sends complicated user questions to more advanced “reasoning” models—for users on its Free and…
South Korean crypto entrepreneur and prosecuted fraudster Do Kwon was sentenced to 15 years in prison by a US federal judge in the Southern District of New York on Thursday.Kwon cut a solemn figure as he was escorted into the courtroom by US Marshals, his head bowed, his cheeks sunken…
SpaceX is planning to raise tens of billions of dollars through an initial public offering next year, multiple outlets have reported, and Ars can confirm. This represents a major change in thinking from the world’s leading space company and its founder, Elon Musk.The Wall Street Journal and The Information first…
President Donald Trump signed a highly anticipated executive order on Thursday that sets in motion a plan to establish a national regulatory framework for artificial intelligence while undercutting states’ abilities to enact their own rules.The order, titled “Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence,” creates an AI litigation task…
A Virginia startup calling itself Operation Bluebird announced this week that it has filed a formal petition with the US Patent and Trademark Office, asking the federal agency to cancel X Corporation’s trademarks of the words “Twitter” and “tweet” since X has allegedly abandoned them.“The TWITTER and TWEET brands have…
Julie Bornstein thought it would be a cinch to implement her idea for an AI startup. Her résumé in digital commerce is impeccable: VP of ecommerce at Nordstrom, COO of the startup Stitch Fix, and founder of a personalized shopping platform acquired by Pinterest. Fashion has been her obsession since…
OpenAI has introduced GPT-5.2, its smartest artificial intelligence model yet, with performance gains across writing, coding, and reasoning benchmarks. The launch comes just days after CEO Sam Altman internally declared a “code red,” a company-wide push to improve ChatGPT amid intense competition from rivals.“We announced this code red to really…
Putting a plant into a planter, placing snacks in containers, and sorting laundry successfully doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to have a humanoid robot in your home next year. But the dream of offloading home cleaning, maintenance and maybe even cooking is getting a little more real as Google DeepMind…
Alex Komoroske has always been at odds with Big Tech’s darker side. Though he cut his product-management teeth at Google and Stripe, he was never comfortable with the industry’s increasing prioritization of profits over people. Once during his time at Google, he extolled the societal benefits of a project only…
Looking for Tuesday’s Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here:If you’re ready to feel bad about yourself, here’s a Strands about a lot of achievements you’ll never have. How To Play StrandsThe New York Times’ Strands puzzle is a play on the classic word search. It’s in…
The Trump administration may think regulation is crippling the AI industry, but one of the industry’s biggest players doesn’t agree.At WIRED’s Big Interview event on Thursday, Anthropic president and cofounder Daniela Amodei told WIRED editor at large Steven Levy that even though Trump’s AI and crypto czar, David Sacks, may…
A few short months ago, almost every robot made by the hundreds of companies working on humanoid robots could charitably be described as slow, topping out at around three mph. Walking was on the edge of plodding, and arm movements bordered on sluggish and awkward. But just this weekend, we…
My little theory is that the concept of “imprinting” in psychology can just as easily be applied to programming: Much as a baby goose decides that the first moving life-form it encounters is its parent, embryonic programmers form ineradicable attachments to the patterns and quiddities of their first formative language.For…
A company with $20 billion in annual revenue can’t commit $1.4 trillion to capital infrastructure. It’s simple math: by the end of 2026, market pressure is likely to push OpenAI toward scaling back its record-setting AI data center buildout.OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is “looking at commitments of about $1.4 trillion…
Spotlight
Black Friday isn’t the only “holiday” we’re celebrating today, because it’s also…
Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, visited the White House this week…
A few days ago, I watched a man at a retail counter…
Memo may not be the world’s fastest barista, but it is impressive—for…
