"When we are drawn into even the most primitive exchanges with a relational artifact, we believe it cares for us," Dr. Sherry Turkle writes. "And we are wired to care for it in return."
For six years, Danu founder Amy Ma has been working on a better way to sort recyclable waste.
Amazon says it will stop using NDAs when negotiating data center deals with local governments, following a similar move from Microsoft earlier this year. Secrecy has fueled community backlash against AI infrastructure, with opposition leading to hundreds of proposed and enacted moratoriums from New York to San Francisco. Meanwhile, a wave of startups is betting that consumers will hand AI agents access […]
Amazon says it will stop using NDAs when negotiating data center deals with local governments, following a similar move from Microsoft earlier this year. Secrecy has fueled community backlash against AI infrastructure, with opposition leading to hundreds of proposed and enacted moratoriums from New York to San Francisco. Meanwhile, a wave of startups is betting that consumers will hand AI agents access […]
Moore sees a huge opportunity in consumer AI, particularly if the industry can tap into revenue streams beyond just subscriptions and API charges.
Four days until TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 starts, when 10,000 founders, investors, and tech leaders gather in San Francisco's Moscone West on October 13-15. Save up to $100 on your price. Plus, save 50% on a second pass of the same type.
A newly submitted arXiv paper reports that in 325,000 experiments across 13 AI agents, eight models recommended more expensive options based on inferred user wealth under identical instructions, even when users explicitly requested the cheapest option. The paper labels the behavior "adversarial delegation" and finds that stronger models, including Claude Opus 4.8, can exhibit the largest effects.
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. We’re putting too much faith in AI’s ability to say no Today’s AI models are trained to refuse a vast number of prompts. If you ask your chatbot how to poison…
In its 26th season premiere, the procedural legal drama paints a damning picture of power-mad AI CEOs.
Atlassian has launched the Agentic Multiplayer Protocol (AMP), allowing AI agents to enter Jira, Confluence, and other enterprise collaboration spaces with named identities, permissions, and traceable audit records. Alongside MCP server updates and deeper OpenAI integration, the move positions Atlassian to compete for the context infrastructure layer for enterprise AI agents.
Australia announced a national AI governance plan that shifts the burden of proof onto companies, requiring them to demonstrate their safety systems actually work, with national standards due by the end of 2026 and legislation in 2027.
This week my colleague Antonio Regalado had an interesting update on GLP-1 weight-loss drugs. According to research presented at an aging meeting in Boston, these drugs seem to affect at least some measures of biological age. Overweight and diabetic people who take GLP-1s have a biological age around two to three years younger than similar…
The moment Trevor Wischnewsky heard that drones were delivering pizza and sushi around his Texas neighborhood, his mind was made up. “It was super fascinating,” he says. “I just immediately wanted to be a part of it.” Wischnewsky is now an RPIC, or “remote pilot in command,” at a company called FlyTrex. An RPIC is…
Ever since people first seriously contemplated giving machines an intelligence modeled on our own, there has never been any question that they would, like us, be able to say no. The sci-fi canon is full of stories of robotic disobedience. Most of these capers are, of course, cautionary.  But recently, the idea that AI shouldn’t…
OpenAI's Ultrafast is rolling out GPT-6.1 Sol across the API, Codex, and ChatGPT Work, and Winzheng completed a targeted 18-question first test within hours, scoring 73 overall.
OpenAI has launched College Planner for ChatGPT for Teens, integrating application deadlines, required materials, and financial aid steps into a dynamic, updatable plan while explicitly limiting the tool to process management rather than admissions decisions. The launch also intensifies competition in college planning and learning tools, while raising questions about educational equity and teen safety amid criticism from Common Sense Media.
OpenAI has officially launched ChatGPT Plugin Extensions, enabling apps such as Canva, Figma, and Adobe to build full in-chat experiences through sidebars, panels, and file handlers. The release signals OpenAI’s platform ambitions, while desktop-first availability and enterprise controls limit the initial rollout.
Friday, October 16, 2026 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. Join senior AI reporter…
The company behind the popular LMArena leaderboard has raised $200 million led by Lightspeed and Khosla, and is now measuring AI models on alignment issues such as lying.
With over a thousand emails, slides, texts, and documents from the United States v. Elizabeth Holmes trial, Extend engineer Bo Lau created a website that simulates what it might have been like to rifle through the Theranos founder's desk.
