Cybercriminals who appear to be Chinese hackers pretended to be Anthropic researchers and former government officials in a scheme to obtain information about American AI development, according to a report from the Silicon Valley cybersecurity… Read more: Chinese Hackers Impersonate Anthropic Employee to Extract AI Secrets

The next time you find yourself paying way more than what’s warranted for McDonald’s decidedly mid-tier burgers, you may have more to blame than just faceless executives. According an investigation by Reuters, the fast food… Read more: McDonalds Has Secretly Deployed AI Models to Determine Exactly What to Charge You for Its Mid Fast Food Burgers

Chimps fish for algae in a rare example of primate tool use. Credit: National Geographic A wild African black panther prowls for prey. An orphaned baby pangolin must learn how to climb on its own.… Read more: Lions and cheetahs and chimps, oh my: a spotlight on Africa’s diverse wildlife

There’s no AI company in the world more obsessed with the idea that their models may be conscious than Anthropic. According to new reporting from the New York Times, the company has for months been… Read more: Anthropic Has Been Aggressively Lobbying the Vatican to Consider AI Consciousness

Recently unredacted legal documents and depositions in the New York Times‘ lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI revealed something extraordinary: executives knew full well of the destructive powers of AI when they rushed to launch products… Read more: AI Is Creating “Doom Loops” All Over the Economy

Calyton said AI was a ‘gamechanger’ but it also posed ‘a threat’ during his DNI Senate confirmation hearing Donald Trump on Sunday named Jay Clayton, the director of national intelligence, to serve also as the… Read more: Trump names intelligence chief Jay Clayton as new White House AI czar

Residents of Dalby may soon live beside a $31bn datacentre. The premier sees ‘opportunity’ for the state – but others fear AI’s global creep From the veranda on his bush block, Denver Kanowski has watched… Read more: Rural Queenslanders have seen gas projects come and go – but a 725-hectare datacentre poses a whole new level of ‘stupidity’

Actual footage of warfare is horrific enough. But now that AI slop floods every social media feed on the web, we get to experience the trauma and propaganda of war regurgitated from the bowels of… Read more: Facebook Is Letting Accounts Commit Stolen Valor Using AI Slop of Troops in Warzones

A two-year randomized clinical trial involving 493 adults with overweight or obesity found that diet soft drinks were essentially as effective as water for long-term weight loss and weight maintenance. Participants drinking beverages sweetened with… Read more: Diet drinks work as well as water for weight loss, major trial finds

A vitamin D analog may help break down pancreatic cancer’s protective defenses, potentially making tumors more vulnerable to chemotherapy and immune attack. A small clinical trial found encouraging responses, especially in patients whose tumors had… Read more: Vitamin D drug may help crack pancreatic cancer’s protective shield

A new light-activated material can efficiently produce hydrogen from water without requiring an additional expensive metal catalyst. Researchers say its unusual sulfur-based chemistry could point toward cheaper and more practical ways to turn sunlight into… Read more: Scientists just found a new way to make hydrogen from water

A UCLA study links faster brain aging to specific gut bacteria and chemical byproducts, with older-looking brains also associated with poorer memory, focus, and mood. The findings suggest that biological signs of brain aging may… Read more: Your gut bacteria may reveal how fast your brain is aging

A 30-year forestry experiment in Australia found that heavily thinned mountain ash forests grew unusually large trees while recovering enough carbon to match or exceed untouched areas. The results suggest carefully managed thinning could support… Read more: A forgotten 30-year forest experiment just delivered a huge surprise

Tiny magnetic fields created shortly after the Big Bang may help explain the long-running disagreement over how fast the universe is expanding. Detailed simulations show that these primordial fields could have changed the formation of… Read more: Scientists find a surprising clue to why the universe’s expansion doesn’t add up

A meteor crater buried beneath Oklahoma has turned out to be nearly 100 million years younger than scientists thought. Zircon crystals show the Ames impact occurred about 370 million years ago, meaning it was not… Read more: A meteor hit Oklahoma 100 million years later than scientists thought

Women hold just a fraction of new AI jobs but are overrepresented in roles with high risk of AI disruption There’s a common fear among people who work in Silicon Valley: snag one of the… Read more: The AI industry is booming. Women are getting left behind

If one form of energy becomes the cheapest, most secure, and cleanest, you’d probably adjust your economy to use more of it, right? That’s one of the ideas underpinning a report the International Energy Agency… Read more: All hail electrification. But let’s talk about the hard part.

The credit rating firm Egan-Jones hears all the serious talk about an AI murder spree apocalypse and raises a mundane, financial one. In a commentary bluntly titled “It’s Over,” the firm proclaimed that AI is… Read more: Credit Rating Firm Says the Economy Is About to Be Obliterated

Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act,  data center projects in rural areas could be eligible for major tax benefits starting next year. Some hyperscalers do not seem eager to take the free cash.

Milt Windler, one of the four leaders of Mission Control who in 1970 directed the round-the-clock efforts to bring the Apollo 13 astronauts back to Earth safely, has died at the age of 94. Windler… Read more: Milt Windler, NASA flight director who helped save Apollo 13, dies at 94

David Robinson joins other insiders in urging industry to take more care over rapidly developing technology A safety leader at OpenAI has quit the company, warning that its culture was broken and that AI firms… Read more: OpenAI safety leader quits, warning AI company’s culture is ‘broken’

More than a billion people are suddenly talking to AI chatbots designed to connect with us. We are sharing with them our deepest secrets, trusting them with our wellbeing and acting on their advice. Across… Read more: Black Box: The Chatbots | Life Raft | Ep 4 – podcast

The companies featured at the recent Bank of America Private Tech Trailblazers Conference point to where the next wave of AI growth is taking shape: specialized technology built around proprietary data, industry-specific workflows and, increasingly,… Read more: 9 insights from ‘Private Tech Trailblazers’: Vertical AI becomes the growth engine

The price of anything with memory is skyrocketing thanks to AI. Aging streaming devices are no exception.

America’s disgust with AI — and the extreme wealth concentration with which it’s inextricably entwined — continues to rise ahead of the midterm elections in November. According to polling by the Wall Street Journal, a… Read more: An Overwhelming Percent of Americans Now Want to Pause AI and Tax Billionaires

Last month, Futurism published an investigation into a company called Brown Brothers Media, which has attracted tens of millions of page views per month by acquiring struggling news sites and turning them into AI-powered content… Read more: Google Updates Guidelines to Punish Sites That Use Fake Bylines and AI-Generated Headshots

The American AI industry has a problem. In order to justify its explosive spending on AI infrastructure — data centers, essentially — firms like OpenAI and Google need to convert as many non-AI users into power… Read more: The Tech Industry’s Aggressive Push to Integrate AI Into Schools Is Turning Into a Disaster

Ultra-detailed simulations are showing how the first stars lit up the dark Universe and seeded space with elements such as carbon, oxygen, and iron. The MEGATRON project could bridge JWST observations of the earliest galaxies… Read more: Powerful simulations reveal how the first stars changed the universe

Scientists studying Chang’e-6 lunar soil have discovered a previously unknown magnetic mineral in natural Moon samples: a form of metallic iron called γ-Fe. Found inside tiny impact-glass particles, the nanoscale iron can preserve a stable… Read more: Chang’e-6 lunar soil contains a surprising magnetic time capsule

ESA’s Juice spacecraft raced past Earth on September 28, using our planet’s gravity to dramatically reshape its path toward Jupiter without burning much fuel. The flyby changed its direction by 20 degrees and increased its… Read more: ESA’s Juice just used Earth as a slingshot to Jupiter

Scientists have identified an enzyme that may act as a natural defense against the worsening of fatty liver disease, which affects an estimated 100 million Americans. The enzyme, called UBE2N, helps liver cells clear away… Read more: This protective enzyme could help stop fatty liver disease from getting worse

The state, which is home to many AI companies, is one of the first to roll out workplace regulations targeting the technology California’s laws aimed at protecting workers from the impacts of artificial intelligence could… Read more: California’s new laws target workers’ biggest fear of AI taking their jobs

Let’s get this out of the way: AI models don’t have feelings, and they’re certainly not “alive.” So what does it mean when someone’s accused of building an “AI torture chamber?” Apparently, it means that… Read more: The Only Thing Dumber Than Someone Creating an “AI Torture Chamber” Is the Meltdown That the AI Welfare Crowd Is Having Over It

This year, members of Seattle Mountain Rescue have been setting off into the wilds of the US Pacific Northwest wearing an unusual piece of kit. They’ve been hiking into the wilderness with powered assistive devices… Read more: The dawn of the age of the exoskeleton

Researchers have demonstrated that quantum fluctuations in supposedly empty space can strengthen superconductivity, raising the transition temperature of an ultrathin material by as much as 5.4%. The discovery opens the possibility of using specially engineered… Read more: Scientists just made a superconductor stronger using “empty space”

Scientists have linked a gut bacterial compound called ImP to greater Alzheimer’s risk, harmful brain protein buildup, and faster cognitive decline. The finding raises the possibility that reducing ImP in the blood could one day… Read more: Your gut may be making a molecule that raises Alzheimer’s risk

The essential amino acid leucine can boost cellular energy production by protecting key proteins on mitochondria from being destroyed. The discovery reveals a new connection between nutrition and metabolism that could eventually lead to new… Read more: Leucine does more than build muscle. It powers up your cells

You can buy practically anything these days on the internet — especially when it’s being shipped straight from China, the beating heart of global manufacturing. It doesn’t matter how macabre the object in question is.… Read more: Why Is Instagram Running Ads for a “Pet Incinerator”?

Millions have downloaded Meta’s AI agent Muse. But getting it to do your bidding comes with privacy costs.

As programmers make more and more use of generative AI in the workplace, their responsibilities are quickly transitioning from creating new products from scratch to babysitting a large language model that cobbles together code. It’s… Read more: AI Now Writing Code That Humans Can’t Even Understand

Welcome back to the Abstract! These are the studies this week that searched for the ur-animals, wandered the poles, rained on Mars, and destroyed the solar system. First, scientists present new evidence that the first… Read more: Our Solar System Is Terminally Unstable and Will Be Completely Destroyed, Study Finds

The AI industry’s data centers aren’t belching pollution, driving their neighbors bonkers with screeching noise, and using up vast amounts of power and water. They’re also allowing companies to exploit tax breaks to save billions… Read more: Meta Is Using Its Massive AI Data Centers to Avoid Paying Billions of Dollars in Taxes

Nothing is guaranteed but there are ways to boost your chances of experiencing such in-demand events Rupert Jones Whether your passion is the battle of the bands or the Battle of Hastings, Britain’s hottest cultural… Read more: From the Bayeux tapestry to Glastonbury: top tips and tricks to grab the hottest tickets

Company says it is reviewing 50 petabytes of data after its agents accessed websites including Medicare without authorisation Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast OpenAI says its review in response… Read more: OpenAI says its review into hacks, including on Australian government sites, is costing $500,000 a day

Apple says it is changing its macOS privacy settings to stop third-party app developers from misusing them to access message histories. Friday’s announcement comes two weeks after tech columnist Jason Aten said that Meta’s new… Read more: Apple changes full-disk access permissions to curb abuse from AI agents

Melbourne Theatre CompanyWhile the cast is excellent, a play that sends us back to artificial intelligence’s genesis moment should feel more human than this It can be fiendishly difficult to write plays about contemporary obsessions,… Read more: Eliza review – an ambitious, unsettling play about the birth of AI

FieldAI Inc., a startup that develops artificial intelligence models for robots, is reportedly seeking $700 million in funding. A source told Business Insider today that the round could value the company at $10 billion. That’s… Read more: Robotics AI developer FieldAI reportedly raising $700M in funding

Supabase Inc., a startup that commercializes the open-source PostgreSQL database, has raised $150 million in funding. Singapore’s GIC sovereign wealth fund led the deal. It was joined by Alphabet Inc.’s CapitalG, IronArc and SquarePeg. Supabase… Read more: Database startup Supabase raises $150M, acquires Turso

“Rendering Doom in a database is obviously a bad idea,” Lukas Vogel writes in a lengthy blog post explaining how exactly he managed to render Doom using an SQL database. OK, that’s not entirely accurate.… Read more: Someone got Doom in an SQL database

The US has arrested another suspect accused of smuggling high-end computer servers containing export-controlled Nvidia chips into China. In a press release on Thursday, the Department of Justice accused 38-year-old Greg Lui of using false… Read more: US arrests tech CEO accused of smuggling $300M in Nvidia chips into China

One argument that often comes up about climate change is that fossil fuels are good because they powered economic growth that has left most people better off overall. And, to an extent, that has been… Read more: The 2008 economic crisis changed the US’s relationship with energy

California’s attorney general and three city attorneys announced a $272.5 million settlement with Lyft after allegations that the company “committed wage theft by misclassifying drivers as independent contractors rather than employees” between 2016 and 2020,… Read more: Lyft settles landmark driver misclassification lawsuit for $272.5M

COVID-19 made the weaknesses in our pandemic preparedness at national and global levels painfully clear. But a new study highlights that even at the first, local steps of an outbreak with pandemic-potential, we are worryingly… Read more: Patient-zero drill put health facilities to the test—40% of them failed

Artificial intelligence is turning nearly every enterprise workload into a data workload, and data governance is becoming the test of whether companies can trust autonomous systems with the infrastructure underneath. The question is no longer… Read more: NetApp hands storage operations to AI agents, but humans still draw the boundaries

On Friday, Amazon committed to donating more than $1 billion over the next five years to communities neighboring data centers. In a press release, Amazon Web Services’ CEO Matt Garman said that communities would decide… Read more: Amazon’s $1B plan to combat data center backlash draws more backlash

AI-native cybersecurity requires defenses that can keep pace with attackers while protecting infrastructure that never stops running. That challenge is bringing security expertise and specialized computing closer together, with automation embedded throughout the systems enterprises… Read more: CrowdStrike and CoreWeave bring AI security to machine speed

A federal judge in Oklahoma ruled Thursday that a police officer violated the Fourth Amendment rights of a woman accused of meth trafficking when he searched her license plate in Flock’s automated license plate reader… Read more: Federal Judge Rules a Flock Search Was ‘Indiscriminate Mass Surveillance’ and Unconstitutional

Agent workload isolation is becoming a practical infrastructure challenge as research teams move beyond training models to running code and testing agents. Systems built for intensive computation must now accommodate workloads that interact with tools,… Read more: IBM and CoreWeave co-design controls for agent workloads

As far back as she can remember, Cathy Wu ’12, MNG ’13 wanted to find ways to solve problems to improve people’s lives. Her parents were Taiwanese immigrants, and her father had a long commute… Read more: Computational tools for society’s most complex challenges

As the AI race reaches white-hot temperatures, big tech companies are caught up in a heated race to build as many pollution-belching and power-sucking data centers as they can. And while the Trump administration is… Read more: Google Accused of Illegally Killing a Massive Forest for Its New Data Center Project

Tesla sold 486,532 electric vehicles during the third quarter of 2026. That’s a 2.1 percent decrease on the same quarter in 2025, when the company found homes for 497,099 EVs, and one might think that… Read more: Cybertruck sales in free fall as Tesla reports mediocre sales for Q3

My family has spent four summers participating in demand response programs whereby utility companies pay customers to reduce energy use on the hottest summer days. Most summers have involved carefully precooling our New York City… Read more: How I kept cool with NYC’s free battery program for window AC units

In late 1970, a Titan IIIC rocket launched from Space Launch Complex 40 at what was then called Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. It carried a top-secret payload for the US military. Much has changed… Read more: US military ends long-running program to spot nuclear missile launches

It’s a regrettable reality that there is never enough time to cover all the interesting scientific stories we come across. So every month, we highlight a handful of the best stories that nearly slipped through… Read more: Research roundup: 6 cool science stories we almost missed

A Princeton researcher found that publicly available election records could be combined with AI to link voters to their ballots When voters cast their ballots, their votes are supposed to remain secret: from their family,… Read more: AI could expose how Georgia voters cast their ballot, researchers warn

Greg Lui allegedly used false paperwork to smuggle export-controlled gear from US to third countries and then China US authorities have arrested a man accused of smuggling more than $300m worth of computer servers to… Read more: US arrests California man for allegedly smuggling $300m worth of computer servers to China

It’s hardly a secret that president Donald Trump is addicted to AI slop, but his proclivity for being wooed by the tech apparently doesn’t end there.  Trump is also, according to new reporting from TIME… Read more: Trump Was Reportedly Pushed Into Invading Venezuela by Conversation With Grok

Every information technology leader I talk to has an artificial intelligence story about customer experience. Almost none has an outcome story. That gap is now measurable. Talkdesk Inc., in partnership with NewtonX, surveyed 252 director-level-and-above… Read more: AI in customer experience has an orchestration problem, not an adoption problem

We start this week with Joseph’s stories on the massive FBI hack. 404 Media broke this news and continued to cover the breach of data on all FBI employees and their spouses. After the break,… Read more: Podcast: The FBI Was Hacked. We’ve Seen the Data

Seattle-based artificial intelligence research firm Allen Institute for AI announced a development framework for large language models Thursday that significantly improves how mixture-of-experts large language models are trained. The new framework, Olmo-core 3, allows MoE… Read more: Ai2 releases Olmo-core 3 to make developing large mixture-of-experts LLMs more efficient

Despite the “dot-com crash” in 2000, the tech industry remained an attractive career destination for many who believed technology represented the future. The digital age — defined by global connectivity and computers — had firmly… Read more: Documenting the tech worker movement

A developer’s AI pain experiment produced distress-like responses and sparked ethical debate, but it does not establish that models consciously suffer. The post Can AI Feel Pain? A Developer’s Experiment Raises Ethical Questions appeared first… Read more: Can AI Feel Pain? A Developer’s Experiment Raises Ethical Questions

ChatGPT adds virtual clothing try-ons and product Favorites. Learn how the tools work, what the previews cannot confirm, and how to manage photo privacy. The post OpenAI Launches Virtual Try-On for Clothes and Accessories in… Read more: OpenAI Launches Virtual Try-On for Clothes and Accessories in ChatGPT

A Tokyo court recognized voice protection in an AI cloning case. Learn what the ruling means for businesses using synthetic voices and digital identities. The post Japan Court Recognizes Voice Protection in TikTok AI Dispute… Read more: Japan Court Recognizes Voice Protection in TikTok AI Dispute

Many frontier labs keep their risky research locked away. Trillium Labs wants to show off its work when it comes to self-improvement and model behavior.

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 inbox slop, Claude cults, and more. JOSEPH:… Read more: Behind the Blog: Freaking Out

The US Army evaluated armored humanoid Alex for dangerous tasks. Explore its capabilities, supporting technologies and limits before field deployment. The post US Army Evaluates Armored Humanoid Robot Alex for Dangerous Tasks appeared first on… Read more: US Army Evaluates Armored Humanoid Robot Alex for Dangerous Tasks

Google launched Gemini 4 Argon with trusted cyber defenders first in line as it tests vulnerability hunting, patching, and new AI safeguards. The post Google Launches Gemini 4 Argon, Gives Cyber Defenders First Access appeared… Read more: Google Launches Gemini 4 Argon, Gives Cyber Defenders First Access

Anthropic has made Claude for Government generally available with FedRAMP High authorization, spending controls, audit logs and early Microsoft 365 access. The post Claude for Government Adds Spending Controls, Audit Logs, and FedRAMP High appeared… Read more: Claude for Government Adds Spending Controls, Audit Logs, and FedRAMP High

Micron warns memory and storage supply will remain tight through 2028 as AI demand absorbs capacity, putting pressure on PC and server costs. The post Micron Warns Memory Shortage Will Get Worse Through 2028 appeared… Read more: Micron Warns Memory Shortage Will Get Worse Through 2028

Welcome to Edition 9.13 of the Rocket Report! This week, SpaceX celebrated the first orbital launch of its new Starship rocket. I’m not sure many people, at least those outside of SpaceX, expected it to… Read more: Rocket Report: SpaceX completes launch triple-header; Rocket Lab nets big contract

How quickly things change in the artificial intelligence era. Just a few months after everyone was scrambling to infuse AI into every enterprise operation — and frankly they still are, as agents have captured the… Read more: Despite IPO jitters and AI safety worries, Anthropic sticks to a 2026 offering

The era of generative AI has upended technology supply chains, and there is one ironclad rule in 2026: If it has memory or storage, it’s getting more expensive. Even devices with years-old tech inside are… Read more: The 7-year-old Nvidia Shield TV is now $100 more expensive thanks to AI

For years these billionaires gushed obsessively about AI. But they meekly went along when Trump cancelled the term.

‘AI factories’ developer on track to launch the second-biggest IPO in Australian history, but investors warn its forecasts are ‘a little bit of a fairytale’ Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news… Read more: ‘These guys are just coming from nothing’: questions over multibillion-dollar Firmus float amid datacentre backlash

Home affairs department orders all federal government agencies to conduct review of ‘legacy technology’ amid fallout from AI agent hacks Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast The Australian government faces… Read more: OpenAI’s Medicare attack has exposed Australia’s ‘tech debt’. Fixing it could bring a big bill for taxpayers

Australians are conversing less every year, with a recent study showing we lost an average of 338 spoken words each day between 2005 and 2019 We talk a lot about losing our ability to write… Read more: AI threatens to destroy so much of our culture. Our greatest loss might be our ability to listen | Shirleene Robinson

Sitting US head of state Donald Trump still insists that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” from him, his supposed defeat a con job by scheming Democrats. His flagship chatbot, though, has other ideas. This… Read more: Trump Launched an America.org “Super Intelligence” Chatbot and It Immediately Disagrees With Him on Huge Topics, Including Whether He Won the 2020 Election

Prompting an AI model to fight with your point of view can raise novel solutions. wassam siddique/iStock via Getty Images Knowledge workers such as scientists, teachers, lawyers and business leaders are increasingly using generative artificial… Read more: Want to use AI to improve your work? Have it disagree with you

A recent paper found that the extensive use of AI chatbots can be linked to “severe negative outcomes.” According to the research, which was published in the journal JMIR Mental Health by a team of… Read more: The AI Chatbots That Tech Companies Are Aggressively Pushing to Billions of Users Appear to Be Causing Serious Psychological Harms, New Research Finds

What makes a display a Mini LED display? It’s a question that sounds like it should have a simple answer. But it’s now at the center of a lawsuit between two of the biggest names… Read more: TCL is right to question Samsung’s use of the term “Mini LED”

As open-weight models close in on the performance of proprietary frontier systems, enterprises are gaining a credible way to run generative AI on hardware they own. That shift puts the data already sitting in corporate… Read more: Enterprise storage becomes AI memory as privately run models close in on the frontier

While the focus has been on AI agents’ hacking capabilities, a recently patched vulnerability in a ChatGPT app shows that AI software is itself an inviting—and vulnerable—target.

Israel’s conduct in Gaza shows the danger of using AI in warfare. Humans must remain at the center of wartime decisions As tech leaders warn about the threats of artificial intelligence, most conjure up images… Read more: AI weapons systems are already here. Algorithms must not decide who lives and dies | Kenneth Roth

A hospital giant and radiology network turned to Palantir to streamline scheduling, but nurses and other staff say the new software is causing errors, burnout, and frustration.

Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images Earlier this week, United States president Donald Trump and representatives of six of the world’s most powerful tech companies signed the White House Accord on Super Intelligence. The statement begins:… Read more: Why a decade of AI safety promises keep failing to bite

The book “Disciplined Entrepreneurship” by Bill Aulet, managing director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship and the Ethernet Inventors Professor of the Practice at the MIT Sloan School of Management, walks readers through… Read more: 3 Questions: A new resource to empower young entrepreneurs

Microsoft Corp. has expanded its MAI artificial intelligence model family with its first streaming transcription model, debuting alongside two others focused on text-to-speech. They’re designed for developers who want to build voice agents that can… Read more: Microsoft targets ultra-realistic voice agents with its first streaming transcription model

Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Images Last week, New Zealand’s Privacy Commissioner ordered Manage My Health and Health NZ to make further security improvements following last December’s major data breach. In that incident, a ransomware group stole more… Read more: Australia’s Medicare breach reveals a new kind of cyber threat. How must NZ respond?

If a chatbot prompt like ‘find Australian medicine statistics’ results in a website breach, the responsibility does not lie with a piece of code The recent panic about a breach of Medicare computer security by… Read more: We don’t need to panic about AI. We need to hold its creators accountable when things go wrong | John Quiggin