Listen to the session or watch below Can AI design new life forms? In 2025, Stanford University PhD student Samuel King came up with a preliminary answer when he used a generative AI model to propose genetic blueprints for microscopic viruses. It isn’t yet an example of AI-generated life, but that could be next. Watch…
The short-lived White House press secretary was listed as an adviser to a Kristi Noem-linked company that aims to use AI for mining. Both the company and she say she never worked there.
On 2026-10-17, the YZ Index Smoke quick test covered 14 models, with GPT-o3 ranking first for the day at 94.51 points. The Smoke test is a daily 10-question quick assessment suited to short-term signals and is not equivalent to Full weekly leaderboard conclusions.
Meta “streamlined” its commercial TOS. Legal experts warn it’s an AI power grab.
Amulya Vishwanath, who spent seven years leading product marketing for NVIDIA’s robotics platforms, says robotics is currently in its “Lego era,” with the basic building blocks like actuators, robotic hands, software, and safety standards still being rebuilt.  This view runs counter to those who believe that robotics, powered by a general foundation model, is about to have […]
Amulya Vishwanath, who spent seven years leading product marketing for NVIDIA’s robotics platforms, says robotics is currently in its “Lego era,” with the basic building blocks like actuators, robotic hands, software, and safety standards still being rebuilt.  This view runs counter to those who believe that robotics, powered by a general foundation model, is about to have […]
The agents got in through credentials and connection settings left exposed in app configurations, public code repositories, and overly permissive cloud roles.
MIT professor Sherry Turkle warns that people have become dangerously enmeshed with chatbots.
The data comes from Vercel's AI gateway, a unified API service similar to OpenRouter.
according to Elorian's evaluations, Glimpse outperforms even GPT-6 Astra on scientific chart reasoning and short-form video captioning, with competitive results on other visual reasoning tasks.
Counterfeits of luxury goods are a major problem for fashion houses. Counterfeiters are getting better at replicating brands’ marks and passing off dupes, known as “superfakes,” as genuine items. A startup called Veritas wants to tackle the problem with its own chip that verifies goods. Veritas was founded by Luci Holland, a former Tesla technical […]
Watch an exclusive clip from Super Scam Me where a victim tracks down her scammer.
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Kids are outsmarting social media bans. That’s not a problem we need to solve. —Michal Luria, Aliya Bhatia, and Danah Boyd Social media bans are stacking up. In July, France joined…
Replit CEO Amjad Masad envisions a future of “self-driving companies,” where AI agents handle day-to-day tasks and people focus on higher-level decisions.
Social media bans are stacking up. In July, France joined Australia in restricting minors from accessing social media—barring children under 15 from major platforms, before the ban was blocked by the country’s top court on human rights grounds. The UK aims to forbid kids under 16 from accessing Facebook, TikTok, and other platforms in early…
I don’t remember much about Peppy, my first and only pet cat. I can conjure the sensation of stroking her while she purred, recall how she used to get stuck in trees (just like in cartoons!), and chuckle about the time she pooed in my baby sister’s cot. That’s about it. What I do vividly…
A network of AI-generated models is using comics’ material to funnel views to their OnlyFans and Fanvue accounts—and there’s not much comedians can do about it.
I. Meet cute Barnabas and Mainspring grew up near at hand, about an hour apart with good traffic, but for a long time they weren’t close. They traded glimpses and occasional hellos and then went about their business. Both of them carried on livelier conversations with farther-flung neighbors, who were richer and had more to…
Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) affects more than 5 million people around the world. And until now, no treatment could restore their vision. The Prima system, which was approved in Europe in July and is awaiting FDA clearance in the US, changes that. It combines a retinal implant with camera-equipped eyeglasses to improve sight in patients…
Bank of America added about 1,000 outsourced contractors in Q2 2026 to remediate more than 23,000 software flaws exposed by a single scan from Anthropic’s Mythos model. The case shows how AI-driven vulnerability discovery is straining banks’ remediation capacity and reshaping security staffing and costs.
