Is there anything about this upcoming World Cup — which will be taking place across the entire continent of North America — that isn’t shaping up to be a total disaster? FIFA seems to be… Read more: Nike’s AI Designed World Cup Jerseys Are a Disaster

In both Republican and Democratic states, scepticism and hostility towards an unregulated construction boom is growing When blue-collar Trump voters and Maga-friendly midwest states join the same cause as Bernie Sanders and liberal California teachers,… Read more: The Guardian view on AI politics: US datacentre protests are a warning to big tech | Editorial

A new survey from Epoch AI and Ipsos has found that one in five full-time American workers say AI has already taken over parts of their job, in the latest piece of data adding fuel… Read more: Research Finds That AI Has Already Replaced Work for 20 Percent of Jobs

On Thursday, Florida’s attorney general James Uthmeier announced his office was investigating OpenAI over a deadly school shooting last year that victims claim was at least partially inspired by conversations with ChatGPT. The shooting, which… Read more: OpenAI Backing Law That Protects It When AI Causes Mass Deaths and Other Mayhem

OpenAI leaders horrified staffers after proposing an “insane” plan to enrich the company by pitting world governments against each other. This anecdote of near comic-book-villainry comes from The New Yorker’s sweeping new investigation into CEO… Read more: OpenAI Staffers Horrified When Senior Leadership Hatched “Insane” Plan to Pit World Governments Against Each Other

A new nanodisc-based platform lets scientists study viral proteins in a form that closely mimics real viruses, revealing how antibodies truly recognize them. This approach uncovered hidden interactions in viruses like HIV and Ebola that… Read more: Hidden weak spots in HIV and Ebola revealed with breakthrough nanodisc technology

Researchers are launching a new project to crack the mystery of aggressive breast cancer, where predicting disease progression remains a major hurdle. By studying how tumors interact with and suppress the immune system, scientists aim… Read more: How aggressive breast cancer turns off the immune system

The first-ever published research on Tinshemet Cave reveals that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens in the mid-Middle Paleolithic Levant not only coexisted but actively interacted, sharing technology, lifestyles, and burial customs. These interactions fostered cultural exchange,… Read more: 110,000-year-old discovery rewrites human history: Neanderthals and Homo sapiens worked together

A cave in Belgium has revealed unsettling evidence that Neandertals selectively cannibalized outsiders, focusing on women and children. The victims weren’t from the local group and appear to have been treated like prey, with bones… Read more: Neandertals may have hunted and eaten outsiders, chilling cannibalism study finds

A new study reveals that popular diabetes and weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy may not work as effectively for about 10% of people due to specific genetic variants. These individuals appear to have a… Read more: Why Ozempic doesn’t work for everyone: Scientists just found a hidden reason

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts This week’s question: what would the world look like if people… Read more: Readers reply: Should we be polite to voice assistants and AIs?

What’s it like to have a diary that talks back to you, offering comments and advice on your hopes, fears and lunch plans? I spent two months finding out Ever since I was a teenager,… Read more: ‘It feels as if I’ve made a new best friend’: my experiment with AI journalling

In President Donald Trump’s telling, the United States has fuel enough to hover above the chaos that his attack on Iran has triggered in global energy markets. “We’re in great shape for the future,” Trump… Read more: Shock from Iran war has Trump’s vision for US energy dominance flailing

Despite promising to allocate hundreds of billions of dollars for the build out of enormous data centers, the AI industry has struggled to keep up with its lofty ambitions. According to recent reporting by Bloomberg… Read more: OpenAI’s Latest Thing It’s Bragging About Is Actually Kind of Sad

Is artificial intelligence taking our jobs in a sweeping overhaul of the productive economy as we know it? It’s a burning question with no definitive answers, but some workers aren’t waiting around to find out… Read more: Gen Z Sabotaging AI at Work So It Won’t Take Their Job

New technologies of reproduction are plundering the art world – and getting away with it In 2026, its easy to see why generative AI is bad. The internet has nicknamed its excretions “slop”. The CEOs… Read more: Is AI the greatest art heist in history?

OpenAI is gearing up for a potential IPO later this year at a staggering valuation of up to $1 trillion — a meteoric rise from a mere $29 billion in January 2023, months after launching… Read more: Why Does It Suddenly Feel Like OpenAI Is Melting Down Into Disaster?

The aggressive effort by major players aims to reshape the narrative as polls show increasing public disapproval of AI OpenAI made a surprise announcement this week – not an update to ChatGPT or another multibillion-dollar… Read more: AI companies know they have an image problem. Will funding policy papers and thinktanks dig them out?

The firm says it withheld an AI model on cybersecurity grounds but sceptics say this was hype to lure investment This week, the AI company Anthropic said it had created an AI model so powerful… Read more: ‘Too powerful for the public’: Inside Anthropic’s bid to win the AI publicity war

A major international effort has produced an ultra-precise measurement of the Universe’s expansion rate, confirming it’s faster than early-Universe models predict. By linking multiple distance-measuring techniques, scientists ruled out simple errors as the cause of… Read more: The Universe is expanding too fast and scientists still can’t explain it

Mars may be hostile, but it might not be entirely unlivable. In lab experiments, yeast cells survived simulated Martian shock waves and toxic perchlorate salts—two major environmental threats on the Red Planet. Their secret weapon… Read more: Life on Mars? Tiny cells just survived shock waves and toxic soil

The physicist, BBC presenter and author on snowflakes, art v science and the time Paul McCartney quizzed him about one of Saturn’s moons What is the inspiration behind your latest live show, Emergence? It came… Read more: Brian Cox: ‘We don’t know how powerful AI is going to become – it’s both exciting and potentially a problem’

Google DeepMind released Gemma 4 on Easter weekend, and the local AI community responded like it was Christmas. The family spans four sizes – E2B, E4B, 26B A4B (MoE), and 31B dense – with the… Read more: Google’s Best Open Model Yet Has a Memory Problem

Corporations are rapidly embracing AI to churn out mountains of code.  Outwardly, this is presented as a revolution in productivity. But a behind the scenes look in The New York Times paints a slightly different,… Read more: The Effects of AI-Generated Code Tearing Through Corporations Is Actually Kind of Funny

Researchers have uncovered why a rare blood clotting disorder can occur after certain COVID-19 vaccines or adenovirus infections. The immune system can mistakenly target a normal blood protein (PF4) after confusing it with a viral… Read more: Scientists finally crack mystery of rare COVID vaccine blood clots

Losing your sense of smell might signal Alzheimer’s far earlier than expected. Scientists found that immune cells in the brain actively destroy smell-related nerve fibers after detecting abnormal signals on their surfaces. This damage begins… Read more: Your nose could detect Alzheimer’s years before symptoms begin

Scientists have achieved the unthinkable by stabilizing a highly reactive molecule in water, confirming a decades-old theory about vitamin B1’s role in the body. The breakthrough not only solves a scientific mystery but could revolutionize… Read more: A 67-year-old “crazy” theory about vitamin B1 has finally been proven

Scientists searching for air pollution clues stumbled onto something unexpected: toxic MCCPs drifting through the air for the first time in the Western Hemisphere. The likely source—fertilizer made from sewage sludge—points to a hidden route… Read more: Unusual airborne toxin detected in the U.S. for the first time

A major study suggests that when you eat could play a key role in staying lean. People who fast longer overnight and start their day with an early breakfast were more likely to have a… Read more: Two simple eating habits linked to lower weight, study finds

Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the studies this week that were ritually sacrificed, kicked out of the galaxy, taxonomically revised, and wore many hats. First, scientists shed light on human sacrifice and cousin… Read more: The Oldest Octopus Fossil Ever Isn’t An Octopus At All, Scientists Discover

Last month, Axios was forced to issue a bizarre correction for a blog post about a growing maternal health crisis in the United States. The story quoted new poll findings by a company called Aaru,… Read more: Foolish Pollsters Are Now Just Asking AI What Voters Would Say in Response to Questions and Publishing It at Face Value

Fraudulent music streams have long been a scourge for the industry, but experts say generative AI has supercharged it Jason Moran, a renowned jazz composer and pianist, got a strange call from a friend last… Read more: ‘It has your name on it, but I don’t think it’s you’: how AI is impersonating musicians on Spotify

Huzzah! A mass psychosis inducing machine is making money out the wazoo by bombarding users with highly-targeted corporate messages. According to a new Axios scoop, OpenAI has already generated $100 million in annual recurring revenue… Read more: OpenAI Says It’s Already Made $100 Million by Stuffing ChatGPT With Ads

AI models from Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic lost money betting on soccer matches over a Premier League season, in a new study suggesting even the most advanced systems struggle to analyze the real world over… Read more: AI models are terrible at betting on soccer—especially xAI Grok

Since the onset of the AI chatbot boom, tech companies, insurance industry mouthpieces, and healthcare administrators have spun a yarn that introducing AI to healthcare is a surefire way to lower costs for patients. Mario… Read more: AI Is Causing Healthcare Costs to Surge

Plus: Iran’s internet blackout hits the 1,000-hour mark, cryptocurrency scams result in a record amount of money stolen from Americans, and more.

With consumers roundly panning generative AI slop wherever it’s found, tech companies have set their sights on a more captive audience as a source of revenue: the world’s boardrooms and cubicle farms. But the office,… Read more: There’s a Mass Rebellion Against AI in the Workplace

A new study by economists at Goldman Sachs has discovered something that should come as no surprise to most workers: losing your job to new technology can seriously mess up your life in ways that… Read more: People Who Lose Their Job to AI Are in for a World of Pain, Goldman Sachs Report Finds

From AI-generated images to restricted satellite data, the systems used to verify what’s real online are struggling to keep up.

The Artemis era well and truly began Friday evening when a shiny spacecraft that had traveled 700,000 miles around the Moon, carrying four astronauts, splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California.… Read more: The Artemis II mission has ended. Where does NASA go from here?

Slamming into the atmosphere at more than 30 times the speed of sound, NASA’s Orion spacecraft blazed a trail over the Pacific Ocean on Friday, returning home with four astronauts and safely capping humanity’s first… Read more: Four astronauts are back home after a daring ride around the Moon

Several Californians sued Sutter Health and MemorialCare this week over allegations that an AI transcription tool was used to record them without their consent, in violation of state and federal law. The proposed class-action lawsuit,… Read more: Californians sue over AI tool that records doctor visits

North America wouldn’t look much like it currently does without a tectonic plate that has largely been lost to the Earth’s geological history. The Farallon plate, which has since largely vanished underneath North America, helped… Read more: New paper argues history, not mantle plume, powers Yellowstone

Samsung is reportedly considering a $4 billion chip packaging and testing project in Vietnam, deepening the country’s role in the global semiconductor supply chain. The post Samsung Eyes Vietnam for $4B Semiconductor Packaging Project appeared… Read more: Samsung Eyes Vietnam for $4B Semiconductor Packaging Project

As AI companies warn of mass automation and the end of work as we know it, ChatGPT maker OpenAI has published a sweeping policy paper outlining its vision of who should call the shots once… Read more: OpenAI Says Not to Worry About UBI, Because It Has Another Idea

The Trump administration has stepped up an effort to unmask a Reddit user who criticized Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). After failing to obtain information through a summons issued to Reddit, the government reportedly issued… Read more: Report: US demands Reddit unmask ICE critic, summons firm to grand jury

Formula 1 is enjoying something of an unexpected break right now. The war in the Middle East saw the cancellation of F1 races that were due to be held this month in Bahrain and Saudi… Read more: F1 moves a step closer to fixing its 2026 hybrid problem

Alibaba launches a new AI data center powered by 10,000 homegrown chips, signaling a major push toward self-reliance amid US export restrictions. The post Alibaba Launches AI Data Center Powered by 10,000 Homegrown Chips appeared… Read more: Alibaba Launches AI Data Center Powered by 10,000 Homegrown Chips

These days, it seems like every tech company and their corporate parent is looking to squeeze AI tools and features into their products, whether they’re wanted or not. So when files with names and functions… Read more: What leaked “SteamGPT” files could mean for the PC gaming platform’s use of AI

Pohlsepia mazonensis, a visually underwhelming fossil from Illinois, fundamentally broke our understanding of cephalopod evolution. Described in 2000 and hailed as the oldest known octopus in the fossil record, the specimen dated back to the… Read more: Oldest octopus fossil found to not be an octopus 

Over the years, YouTube has evolved from a source of Rickrolls and cat videos to a platform for some of the Internet’s most popular streaming content. Today, it costs more than ever to see that… Read more: YouTube increases Premium price again, says 90-second unskippable ads are a bug

Mixing corn starch and water in appropriate amounts produces a slurry that is liquid when stirred slowly but hardens when you punch it—a substance colorfully dubbed “oobleck.” (The name derives from a 1949 Dr. Seuss… Read more: “Oobleck” still holds some surprises

San Francisco police say they’ve arrested a suspect who allegedly attacked the home of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and then made threats outside the company’s headquarters. At around 3:43 am on Friday, officers responded to… Read more: Someone Just Threw a Molotov Cocktail At Sam Altman’s House

Microsoft says it hears the complaints people have about the current state of Windows, and it wants to fix them. One of those fixes is another overhaul for its Windows Insider Program, the public beta… Read more: Microsoft’s “commitment to Windows quality” starts with overhaul of beta program

The new AI model is being heralded—and feared—as a hacker’s superweapon. Experts say its arrival is a wake-up call for developers who have long made security an afterthought.

Suspect arrested but not identified and has allegedly made similar threats to OpenAI’s San Francisco headquarters A person tossed a molotov cocktail at the home of Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, before the sun rose on… Read more: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s home targeted with molotov cocktail

Last week, the New York Times published a laudatory profile of a startup called Medvi, which is basically an AI-powered marketing wrapper for telehealth providers and compounding pharmacies that sells GLP-1 weight loss drugs. The… Read more: New York Times Makes Substantial Changes to Article That Glazed a Sleazy AI Startup: “Our Piece Should Have Included That Information”

An attacker allegedly threw a molotov cocktail at the OpenAI CEO’s residence before making threats outside of the startup’s headquarters.

Onix is launching a “Substack of bots,” where digital twins of health and wellness influencers dispense advice 24/7. And maybe hawk their products.

This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss gun violence and chatbots and acceptance of… Read more: Behind the Blog: Smoking the Whole Carton

Claude Mythos’s apparent superhuman hacking abilities are alarming experts as the Trump administration remains blinded by hostility In June 2024, a cyber-attack on a pathology services company caused chaos across London’s hospitals. More than 10,000… Read more: Anthropic’s new AI tool has implications for us all – whether we want it or not

Google is rolling out notebooks in Gemini, giving users a new way to organize chats, files, and instructions into AI-powered project hubs. The post Google Brings NotebookLM to Gemini for Easy Project Organization appeared first… Read more: Google Brings NotebookLM to Gemini for Easy Project Organization

Minutes after President Donald Trump announced that he would not wipe out “a whole civilization” on Tuesday evening, a team of self-described young Iranian activists jumped into action. Members of the group known as Explosive… Read more: Pro-Iran Explosive Media trolls Trump with AI-generated Lego cartoons

Death, taxes, and the gravitationally bound return of the Artemis II mission on Friday evening. These are the only certainties in life. Even if the four astronauts on board the Orion spacecraft discovered a serious… Read more: Here’s what to expect from the fiery, 14-minute return of Artemis II

I’ve been dreaming about the future of software development for a while now. And I’ll admit, my vision might sound like a nightmare to some of you. But hear me out. Picture this: You write… Read more: Rapid prototyping with GenAI: From idea to interactive PoC in days

A mysterious glow of gamma rays at the center of the Milky Way has long hinted at dark matter, but the lack of similar signals in smaller dwarf galaxies has cast doubt on that idea.… Read more: Scientists think dark matter might come in two forms

A new chip design from UC San Diego could make data centers far more energy-efficient by rethinking how power is converted for GPUs. By combining vibrating piezoelectric components with a clever circuit layout, the system… Read more: This new chip could slash data center energy waste

Perovskite solar cells shouldn’t work as well as they do—but they do. Scientists have now discovered that defects inside the material actually help, creating networks that separate and guide electric charges efficiently. Using a novel… Read more: These cheap solar cells work better because they’re flawed

A strange new kind of superconductivity has been uncovered in uranium ditelluride (UTe2), where electricity flows with zero resistance—but only under extremely strong magnetic fields that should normally destroy it. Even more surprising, the superconductivity… Read more: This superconductivity dies then comes back to life

Scientists have proposed a surprising new way to detect gravitational waves—by observing how they change the light emitted by atoms. These waves can subtly shift photon frequencies in different directions, leaving behind a detectable signature.… Read more: Gravitational waves may be hidden in the light atoms emit

A common eye-health nutrient, zeaxanthin, may also help the body fight cancer more effectively. Scientists discovered it strengthens T cells and enhances the impact of immunotherapy treatments. Found in everyday vegetables and supplements, it’s safe,… Read more: A common nutrient could supercharge cancer treatment

Alzheimer’s isn’t just one problem—it’s a tangled mix of biology, aging, and overall health. That’s why drugs targeting a single factor have fallen short, even as new treatments show modest benefits. Scientists are now pushing… Read more: Scientists say we’ve been treating Alzheimer’s all wrong

Will artificial intelligence save us or destroy us? According to a growing band of thriller scriptwriters, we should be very afraid indeed Maybe the “H” in Line Of Duty will turn out to stand for… Read more: ‘There’s no shortage of terrifying technology’: how AI became TV drama’s new go-to villain

Two developments recently have quietly revealed a deeper shift in AI. One model exists behind closed doors, deployed to a small group tasked with securing critical systems. Another arrives openly, building software over hours-long sessions… Read more: Is AI splitting into two worlds?

To protect enterprise margins, business leaders must invest in robust AI governance to securely manage AI infrastructure. When evaluating enterprise software adoption, a recurring pattern dictates how technology matures across industries. As Rob Thomas, SVP… Read more: IBM: How robust AI governance protects enterprise margins

Late last year, news emerged that Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta would be shedding its open source roots to instead work on a closed model like the vast majority of its competitors. Now we’ve finally gotten a… Read more: First AI Model From Zuckerberg’s Wildly Expensive Superintelligence Lab Flops Compared to Virtually All Rivals

For the most part, economists have been one of the few groups of professionals who’ve roundly rejected the AI Kool-Aid. Consensus of the worst-case scenario seemed to center on the idea that AI could upend… Read more: Economists Starting to Admit They May Have Been Wrong About AI Never Replacing Human Jobs

Welcome to Edition 8.36 of the Rocket Report! Thank you for your indulgence of our missing the report last week, as we focused on the launch and progress of the Artemis II mission. And we… Read more: Rocket Report: Chinese version of Falcon 9 fails; Artemis depends on rapid heavy lift

Brady Frey did not realize that his daughter lied about her age when she set up her Discord account. He only found out after her account got hacked and he got trapped in a spiraling… Read more: Dad stuck in support nightmare after teen lied about age on Discord

New AI-powered recommendations enable enterprises to train fraud scoring on their own data for more accurate detection Fingerprint, a leader in device intelligence for fraud prevention, today announced the addition of AI-powered recommendations to its… Read more: Fingerprint Unveils AI-Enhanced Suspect Score

For something called machine learning, we spend surprisingly little time asking whether machines actually learn. That isn’t a throwaway line. It’s the central tension behind a recent paper, and it cuts closer to home than… Read more: AI doesn’t actually learn. Here’s the problem

Videos of fake relationship guru podcasters are reinforcing gender tropes and racking up millions of views, all the while driving sales to AI influencer schools.

Meta’s Muse Spark model offers to analyze users’ health data, including lab results. Beyond the obvious privacy risks, it’s not a capable stand-in for a real doctor.

Next-generation AI assistants being developed in the Apple ecosystem and by chipmakers like Qualcomm, but early reports suggest they are being designed with limits in place. Tom’s Guide has described early versions of these assistants… Read more: Why companies like Apple are building AI agents with limits

New platform provides systems-of-systems infrastructure, enabling organizations to understand what’s happening inside their AI deployments Secure, turnkey infrastructure built for data sovereignty, keeping mid-size organizations’ data fully in their control while avoiding vendor lock-in Data… Read more: UltiSim announced the launch of Data Fusion Plane

The open-source AI movement has never lacked for options. Mistral, Falcon, and a growing field of open-weight models have been available to developers for years. But when Meta threw its weight behind Llama, something shifted.… Read more: Meta has a competitive AI model but loses its open-source identity

Reports say Fed chair Jerome Powell among attenders at meeting in Washington The US Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, summoned major American bank chiefs to a meeting in Washington this week amid concerns over the cyber… Read more: US summoned bank bosses to discuss cyber risks posed by Anthropic’s latest AI model

Every organisation needs guardrails that channel them away from human fallibility and collectively minimise the harm they can do Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email, free app… Read more: AI products are reaching further into our lives. Does it matter who controls the companies behind them? | Van Badham

Self-help hacks such as ‘cooking from scratch’ or ‘meeting your friends’ may seem ridiculous. But there’s something deeply human at the heart of this trend Does life, of late, feel just too easy? Are you… Read more: I baulked at the idea of ‘friction-maxxing’. But there’s more to it than meets the eye | Gaby Hinsliff

Apart from pesky issues with the spacecraft’s toilet and waste disposal system, most of the Artemis II mission has proceeded like clockwork. NASA has made few changes to the flight plan since the launch of… Read more: Orion helium leak no threat to Artemis II reentry, but will require redesign

The ChatGPT-maker testified in favor of an Illinois bill that would limit when AI labs can be held liable—even in cases where their products cause “critical harm.”

Company claims law regulating AI systems, set to go into effect in June, infringes on its first amendment rights Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, has filed a lawsuit against the state of Colorado over… Read more: Elon Musk’s xAI sues Colorado over new rules for artificial intelligence

As expected, anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has significantly rewritten the charter for a federal vaccine advisory panel. The edits give him more power to appoint his like-minded allies as federal advisors, shift… Read more: RFK Jr. rewrites CDC panel’s charter, opening door to anti-vaccine quacks

The AI company Anthropic released a 244-page “system card” (PDF) this week describing its newest model, Claude Mythos. The model is “our most capable frontier model to date,” the company says, and supposedly is so… Read more: AI on the couch: Anthropic gives Claude 20 hours of psychiatry

Last week, the New York Times published a rapturous profile of a drug marketing company called Medvi, which the paper declared to be the first one-ish man venture on track to surpass one billion dollars… Read more: AI-Powered Drug Marketer Medvi Responds After Allegations About Fake Doctors and Patients

In the 1970s, the late Jane Goodall observed a community of chimpanzees in Gombe, Tanzania, breaking into two factions; the males in one group ended up killing all the males in the rival group over… Read more: Ugandan chimps split into two factions, then killed rivals

Amid customer dissatisfaction around Broadcom’s VMware takeover, rivals have been trying to lure customers from the leading virtualization firm. One of VMware’s biggest competitors, Nutanix, claims to have swiped tens of thousands of VMware customers.… Read more: “Negative” views of Broadcom driving thousands of VMware migrations, rival says

Almost as soon as researchers started exploring the capabilities of the CRISPR/Cas9 system, they recognized its potential use in targeted gene editing. But the intervening decades have seen slow progress as people worked to determine… Read more: Clinical trial shows gene editing works for β-Thalassaemia, too

Expert said federal law bars officials from taking actions in their jobs that benefit their own financial interests A high-profile US defense department official who oversees the agency’s artificial intelligence efforts made a profit of… Read more: US defense official overseeing AI reaped millions selling xAI stock after Pentagon entered agreement with company

What makes work valuable? Michal Masny, the NC Ethics of Technology Postdoctoral Fellow in the MIT Department of Philosophy, investigates the role work plays in our lives and its impact on our well-being.  Masny sees numerous… Read more: A philosophy of work