TikTok is one of the tech companies that could be most impacted by the outcome of the US elections. But as the election result looms, employees there found themselves surprisingly disengaged from the high-level political drama that could decide the app’s fate. A San Jose-based product manager, who requested anonymity because he is not authorized
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Four years ago, one of Vice President Kamala Harris’ top donors—the billionaire cofounder of LinkedIn Reid Hoffman—celebrated the IPO of Airbnb, a company he was heavily invested in, by fashioning Monopoly boards where the game’s “jail” space is replaced by “government regulation.” Since Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee, many billionaire tech investors have come
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Michal Kosinski is a Stanford research psychologist with a nose for timely subjects. He sees his work as not only advancing knowledge, but alerting the world to potential dangers ignited by the consequences of computer systems. His best-known projects involved analyzing the ways in which Facebook (now Meta) gained a shockingly deep understanding of its
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Despite stunning AI progress in recent years, robots remain stubbornly dumb and limited. The ones found in factories and warehouses typically go through precisely choreographed routines without much ability to perceive their surroundings or adapt on the fly. The few industrial robots that can see and grasp objects can only do a limited number of
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Silicon Valley has been an epicenter of global innovation for decades. But the Valley, and its associated personalities, companies, and trends, has never been home to more undiluted power than it is today. Think about it: Elon Musk, among the world’s richest people, is essentially underwriting US presidential candidates while subsidiaries of his interstellar-centric company
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Michael Calore: Only 54 percent? Lauren Goode: Yeah, no, 38 percent said fair, which did surprise me. Michael Calore: That is very surprising. Zoë Schiffer: No love for their fellow employees. Lauren Goode: And then 12.6 percent, I was like, are these people trolling? Said they hope to see more. Zoë Schiffer: Oh my God.
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Some Medium writers and editors do applaud the platform’s approach to AI. Eric Pierce, who founded Medium’s largest pop culture publication Fanfare, says that he doesn’t have to fend off many AI-generated submissions and that he believes that the human curators of Medium’s boost program help highlight the best of the platform’s human writing. “I
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Eric Lander is a Big Science heavyweight. A geneticist, molecular biologist, and mathematician, he led the International Human Genome Project and is founding director of the powerful Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. His countless accolades include a MacArthur “genius” grant and 14 honorary doctorates. When Joe Biden became president, he tapped Lander to be
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Artificial intelligence might now be solving advanced math, performing complex reasoning, and even using personal computers, but today’s algorithms could still learn a thing or two from microscopic worms. Liquid AI, a startup spun out of MIT, will today reveal several new AI models based on a novel type of “liquid” neural network that has
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T-Mobile and AT&T say US regulators should drop a plan to require unlocking of phones within 60 days of activation, claiming that locking phones to a carrier’s network makes it possible to provide cheaper handsets to consumers. “If the Commission mandates a uniform unlocking policy, it is consumers—not providers—who stand to lose the most,” T-Mobile
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Demos of AI agents can seem stunning, but getting the technology to perform reliably and without annoying (or costly) errors in real life can be a challenge. Current models can answer questions and converse with almost humanlike skill, and are the backbone of chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. They can also perform
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Perplexity did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement emailed to WIRED, News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson compared Perplexity unfavorably to OpenAI. “We applaud principled companies like OpenAI, which understands that integrity and creativity are essential if we are to realize the potential of Artificial Intelligence,” the statement says. “Perplexity is not
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A TikTok video of actor Brian Baumgartner, from the American version of The Office, calling for the overthrow of the president of a small European country was an early sign that this would be no ordinary election. Late last year, Baumgartner appeared among a lineup of American celebrities addressing Maia Sandu, the current, pro-European president
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John Graham-Cumming doesn’t ping me often, but when he does I pay attention. His day job is the CTO of the security giant Cloudflare, but he is also a lay historian of technology, guided by a righteous compass. He might be best known for successfully leading a campaign to force the UK government to apologize
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While the biometric-scanning Orb and the World network have their roots in crypto tokens, “crypto” wasn’t an oft-mentioned word during the event. Instead, Altman and Blania emphasized World’s blockchain service, digital asset management, and virtual communication tools. Blania claimed during the press briefing that, in the future, World hopes to build the “largest finance network”
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SpaceX is seeking approval for changes to Starlink that the company says will enable gigabit-per-second broadband service. In an application submitted to the US Federal Communications Commission on October 11, SpaceX claims the requested “modification and its companion amendment will enable the Gen2 system to deliver gigabit-speed, truly low-latency broadband and ubiquitous mobile connectivity to
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