When bizarre and misleading answers to search queries generated by Google’s new AI Overview feature went viral on social media last week, the company issued statements that generally downplayed the notion the technology had problems. Late Thursday, the company’s head of search, Liz Reid, admitted that the flubs had highlighted …
Read More »AI Agents Are Coming for Mundane—but Valuable—Office Tasks
For all the bluster about generative artificial intelligence upending the world, the technology has yet to meaningfully transform white-collar work. Workers are dabbling with chatbots for tasks such as drafting emails, and companies are launching countless experiments, but office work hasn’t undergone a major AI reboot. Perhaps that’s only because …
Read More »WeWork Survived Bankruptcy. Now It Has to Make Coworking Pay Off
WeWork is set to become a smaller—and potentially rightsized—company. Following a final hearing on its bankruptcy plan Thursday morning, the coworking pioneer will have fewer locations, a new influx of capital, and $4 billion in debt wiped from its books. In a packed courtroom in Newark, New Jersey, Judge John …
Read More »A Nonprofit Tried to Fix Tech Culture—but Lost Control of Its Own
In a couple of short years, the Integrity Institute, a think tank founded by former Facebook employees, has become an influential voice on how to make social media safer. Its research on issues like election misinformation and online bullying have influenced European Union regulators and US lawmakers, and have become …
Read More »Anduril Is Building Out the Pentagon’s Dream of Deadly Drone Swarms
When Palmer Luckey cofounded the defense startup Anduril in 2017, three years after selling his virtual reality startup Oculus to Facebook, the idea of a twentysomething from the tech industry challenging the giant contractors that build fighter jets, tanks, and warships for the US military seemed somewhat far-fetched. Seven years …
Read More »How Researchers Cracked an 11-Year-Old Password to a $3 Million Crypto Wallet
Two years ago when “Michael,” an owner of cryptocurrency, contacted Joe Grand to help recover access to about $2 million worth of bitcoin he stored in encrypted format on his computer, Grand turned him down. Michael, who is based in Europe and asked to remain anonymous, stored the cryptocurrency in …
Read More »WTF Is With the Pink Pineapples at the Grocery Store?!
On a recent trip to Giant Eagle, my local grocery store in Pittsburgh, I noticed something new in the fruit section: a single pineapple packaged in a pink and forest-green box. A picture on the front showed the pineapple cut open, revealing rose-colored flesh. Touted as the “jewel of the …
Read More »Pocket-Sized AI Models Could Unlock a New Era of Computing
When ChatGPT was released in November 2023, it could only be accessed through the cloud because the model behind it was downright enormous. Today I am running a similarly capable AI program on a Macbook Air, and it isn’t even warm. The shrinkage shows how rapidly researchers are refining AI …
Read More »Judge Hints at Plans to Rein In Google’s Illegal Play Store Monopoly
A jury in December found that Google broke US antitrust laws through deals and billing rules that gave an unfair boost to its Google Play app store. On Thursday, a judge began laying out how Google could be forced to change its business as a penalty. The remedies under consideration …
Read More »Most US TikTok Creators Don’t Think a Ban Will Happen
A majority of US TikTok creators don’t believe the platform will be banned within a year, and most haven’t seen brands they work for shift their marketing budgets away from the app, according to a new survey of people who earn money from posting content on TikTok shared exclusively with …
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