
Teaching machines in the way that animal trainers mold the behavior of dogs or horses has been an important method for developing artificial intelligence and one that was recognized Wednesday with the top computer scie

Hello! Thank you, as always, for reading Plugged In. A quick scheduling note: Starting next week, this newsletter will land in your inbox on Fridays instead of Wednesdays. See you then.
Back in December, a Meta executive catalyzed a doozy of a kerfuffle by saying the company expected AI-gene

For cryptocurrency investors, Donald Trump represents a great hope. In the libertarian paradise where tokens on blockchains pave the future of the financial system instead of banks, lenders, and brokerages, Trump could even be a prophet.
Trump has cleared the way for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and coins with names you’ve never heard of to go to the metaphorical moon. He has promised to kneecap the U.S. Securi

A federal judge has denied Elon Musk’s request for a court order blocking OpenAI from converting itself to a for-profit company but said she could expedite a trial to consider Musk’s claims against the

Online child abuse is a pernicious problem that’s rife in digital life. In 2023, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) received more than 36 million reports of suspected child sexual exploitation—and a 300% increase in reports around online enticement of youngsters, including sextortion.
And a new report by social m

President Donald Trump’s bowling-ball attitude to international relations and business was in evidence again this week as he announced a landmark $100 billion deal with Taiwanese computer chip manufacturer TSMC to bring more production capacity to the United States.
The agreement with TSMC plans for five new factories to be built in the U.S., signed alongside TSMC CEO C.C. We

Ever miss the thrill of the 2016 Pokémon Go craze? A new anti-swiping dating app has come to fill that void, but instead of cute Pokémon you can catch yourself a hot date.
These days, trying to find a partner IRL, whether at a bar or reluctantly joining a singles running club, is no easy task. Dating apps are still one of the most common pl

The internet posts and side projects of Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) worker Jordan Wick could give some clues for how Musk’s efficiency group might attempt to use AI to downsize and retool the government.
During the last half of February, Wick, who has a DOGE email account associated with the Executive Office of the President and now is embedded in the Gene

More than a decade after Casey Anthony was accused of murdering her daughter in one of the country’s most notorious murder cases, this weekend she emerged on TikTok to reintroduce herself.
“This is my first of probably many recordings on a series that I’m starting,” Anthony says in the three-minute-long video recorded from her car. “I am a legal advocate. I am a researcher. I’ve been in the

If what you don’t know can’t hurt you, Elon Musk may be in luck. With a series of candid posts on X, the White House’s resident broligarch has lately been divulging which aspects of civics and data science he appears to know little about.
Fortunately for anyone following along, a scattered battalion of experts and reporters has received each bumbling post on X like a social media bat signal. Every time Musk posts about, say, the dire need for