Way back in January 2021, just before the Biden administration was taking office, the Air Force announced that the U.S. Space Command, the home base for the military’s space operations, would be relocated. The headquarters has been based in Colorado Springs for decades, but the military decided to move the site across the country to Huntsville, Alabama.
“I single-handedly said ‘let’s go to Alabama,” President Donald Trump said of the decision a few
We can all use a little help every now and then, both at work and at home—that’s why the rich and famous have armies of personal assistants to help them out. We can’t all afford that, but artificial intelligence is coming to the rescue with a new wave of AI assistants to help get get things done, handling the tedious details of making things happen.
It’s a huge growth area, with billions of dollars invested in hundreds of companies creating AI assistants
Halfway through the Epic Games presentation at the 2023 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, a German actor named Melina Juergen scowled, sending ripples through the assembled crowd of developers in the Blue Shield of California Theater at Yerba Buena Center—and across the internet, as millions of people encountered the clip in their social media feeds.
The fascination with her expression had everything to do with the technology that made it possible. Juergen, known f
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If you say that a human being is creative, the odds are pretty good that you mean it as praise. But in the burgeoning generative AI-infused chatbot wars, “creative” is a convenient code word for “playing fast and loose with the
Clinical trials to test the safety and efficacy of new drugs have a well-known diversity problem. For decades, drug trials have leaned heavily on white male participants, leaving much unknown about how the drugs would work across a wider population. The demographics of clinical trials have changed in recent years—today, according to a 2021 study in journal Digital Health, clinical trial participants tend to be older, female, non-Hispanic White, and highly educated—leaving broad
Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, and more than 1,200 other founders and top research scientists have signed an open letter calling for a six-month pause on all giant AI experiments to get a better handle on the risks and benefits of the technology and its impact on the world.
The letter notes that powerful AI systems should be developed only after we’re confident that the effects will be positive and the risks manageable.
“Contemporary AI systems are now becoming hu
As state and federal regulators turn up the heat on Google’s massive advertising business, the search giant is moving toward greater transparency about who runs ads on its various platforms.
In a blog post Wednesday, Google explained that its “Ads Transparency Center”—the actual, unambiguous name of a new feature—will offer “a searchable hub of all ads served from verified advertisers.” It will contain an archive of the last 30 days o
Disney has a long history of creating fantastical worlds, but even the Mouse House now seems to be pulling back from the metaverse.
The entertainment giant’s metaverse team has reportedly been eliminated as part of the ongoing round of job cuts at Disney. The Wall Street Journal reports all 50 team members who were developing the company’s metaverse strategies have been let go.
The metaverse was a pet project of former CEO Bob Chapek, who called it “th
In The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Shoshana Zuboff presents what is probably the most comprehensive theory of how the tech giants have maximized their profits at the expense of our freedom. By collecting vast amounts of personal data through our online activity, these companies are able to predict and eventually control our behaviors, manipulating our choices in ways that serve their bottom line. This business model, known as “surveillance capitalism,” has been the subject o
Elon Musk has announced plans to make Twitter into an even more insufferable platform for users who refuse to pay for it—this time, by limiting who can have their voices heard.
Musk has announced that the following changes will be enacted on April 15:
- Only people who are subscribed to Twitter Blue will be eligible to appear as recommended tweets in users’ For You feeds.
- Only people who are subscribed to Twitter Blue will be able to vote in polls.