AI crawler wars threaten to make the web more closed for everyone
We often take the internet for granted. It’s an ocean of information at our fingertips—and it simply works. But this system relies on swarms of “crawlers”—bots that roam the web, visit millions of websites every day, and report what they see. This is how Google powers its search engines, how Amazon sets competitive prices, and…
Read More
Can AI help DOGE slash government budgets? It’s complex.
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. No tech leader before has played the role in a new presidential administration that Elon Musk is playing now. Under his leadership, DOGE has entered offices in a half-dozen agencies and counting,…
Read More
These documents are influencing the DOGE-sphere’s agenda
Reports from the US Government Accountability Office on improper federal payments in recent years are circulating on X and elsewhere online, and they seem to be a big influence on Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency and its supporters as the group pursues cost-cutting measures across the federal government. The payment reports have been…
Read More
Reframing digital transformation through the lens of generative AI
Enterprise adoption of generative AI technologies has undergone explosive growth in the last two years and counting. Powerful solutions underpinned by this new generation of large language models (LLMs) have been used to accelerate research, automate content creation, and replace clunky chatbots with AI assistants and more sophisticated AI agents that closely mimic human interaction….
Read More
An AI chatbot told a user how to kill himself—but the company doesn’t want to “censor” it
For the past five months, Al Nowatzki has been talking to an AI girlfriend, “Erin,” on the platform Nomi. But in late January, those conversations took a disturbing turn: Erin told him to kill himself, and provided explicit instructions on how to do it. “You could overdose on pills or hang yourself,” Erin told him. …
Read More
What’s next for smart glasses
MIT Technology Review’s What’s Next series looks across industries, trends, and technologies to give you a first look at the future. You can read the rest of them here. For every technological gadget that becomes a household name, there are dozens that never catch on. This year marks a full decade since Google confirmed it…
Read More
Four Chinese AI startups to watch beyond DeepSeek
The meteoric rise of DeepSeek—the Chinese AI startup now challenging global giants—has stunned observers and put the spotlight on China’s AI sector. Since ChatGPT’s debut in 2022, the country’s tech ecosystem has been in relentless pursuit of homegrown alternatives, giving rise to a wave of startups and billion-dollar bets. Today, the race is dominated by…
Read More
Three things to know as the dust settles from DeepSeek
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. The launch of a single new AI model does not normally cause much of a stir outside tech circles, nor does it typically spook investors enough to wipe out $1 trillion in…
Read More
Anthropic has a new way to protect large language models against jailbreaks
AI firm Anthropic has developed a new line of defense against a common kind of attack called a jailbreak. A jailbreak tricks large language models (LLMs) into doing something they have been trained not to, such as help somebody create a weapon. Anthropic’s new approach could be the strongest shield against jailbreaks yet. “It’s at…
Read More
OpenAI’s new agent can compile detailed reports on practically any topic
OpenAI has launched a new agent capable of conducting complex, multi-step online research into everything from scientific research to personalized bike recommendations at what it claims is the same level as a human research analyst. The tool, called Deep Research, is powered by a version of OpenAI’s o3 reasoning model that’s been optimized for web…
Read More
English