The Federal Communications Commission this week voted to raise its internet speed benchmark for the first time since January 2015, concluding that modern broadband service should provide at least 100 Mbps download speeds and 20 Mbps upload speeds. An FCC press release after Thursday’s 3-2 vote said the 100 Mbps/20 Mbps benchmark “is based on
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Reddit said ahead of its IPO next week that licensing user posts to Google and others for AI projects could bring in $203 million of revenue over the next few years. The community-driven platform was forced to disclose Friday that US regulators already have questions about that new line of business. In a regulatory filing,
When Michael Seibel lost his position at the startup incubator Y Combinator, he didn’t find out in typical tech industry fashion, which might entail an email calling him to a Zoom meeting where the bad news would be delivered. He did it to himself. Today Seibel is announcing that he’s stepping down as YC’s managing
This week a startup called Cognition AI caused a bit of a stir by releasing a demo showing an artificial intelligence program called Devin performing work usually done by well-paid software engineers. Chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini can generate code, but Devin went further, planning how to solve a problem, writing the code, and then
A judge in the UK High Court has declared that Australian computer scientist Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, marking the end of a years-long debate. “The evidence is overwhelming,” said Justice James Mellor, delivering a surprise ruling at the close of the trial. “First, that Dr. Wright is not the
ChatGPT caught regulators by surprise when it set off a new AI race. As companies have rushed to develop and release ever more powerful models, lawmakers and regulators around the world have sought to catch up and rein in development. As governments spin up new AI programs, regulators around the world are urgently trying to
Alyssa Videlock was 11 years old when she started searching for people like her on the internet. What she found, back in the early 2000s, was not at all what she’d hoped for. “Being trans online was not really a thing,” she says. “There was fetish stuff for it, and there were stories about transformation.
“SIMA takes one step further and shows stronger generalization to new games,” he says. “The number of environments is still very small, but I think SIMA is on the right track. A New Way to Play SIMA shows DeepMind putting a new twist on game playing agents, an AI technology the company has pioneered in
At some point after his release in March 2020, Almeida moved to a relative’s apartment in Queens, New York. His social media posts on Instagram and Facebook from that era show a young man enamored with firearms, drugs, threats of violence, the Order of Nine Angles, and child abuse. In several posts, he poses shirtless
The US economy is showing remarkable health, but in the tech industry, layoffs keep coming. For those out of work, finding a new position can become a full-time job. And in tech—a sector notoriously always looking for the next hot, new thing—some people whose days as fresh-faced coders are long gone say that having decades
I experienced the City NGP function under XNGP in a P7i in Shanghai, and later in a G6 in Guangzhou. With my second experience I soon realized it was a tale of two cities. In Shanghai it was quite smooth, and at least one of the interventions made was due to me being disoriented rather
The latest surge in the price of bitcoin is increasing the clamor around it, says Dal Bianco, drawing in yet more speculators and creating a “self-reinforcing cycle.” Likewise, when collective confidence in the prospect of further price growth falters, she says, the resultant downturn can be equally sudden. Under these conditions, demand can vanish as
Arkady Volozh, the billionaire cofounder of Russia’s biggest internet company, was removed from the EU sanctions list today, clearing the way for his return to the world of international tech. On Tuesday a spokesperson for the European Council confirmed to WIRED that the Yandex cofounder was among three people whose sanctions were lifted this week.
In his years as a US federal agent, Tigran Gambaryan helped to lead landmark investigations that took down cryptocurrency thieves and money launderers, dark-web drug dealers, and even crypto-funded child exploitation networks. Now, in his post-government role at the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, he has become the target himself of a very different sort of federal
After suing OpenAI this month, alleging the company has become too closed, Elon Musk says he will release his “truth-seeking” answer to ChatGPT, the chatbot Grok, for anyone to download and use. “This week, @xAI will open source Grok,” Musk wrote on his social media platform X today. That suggests his AI company, xAI, will
Airbnb will soon ban hosts from watching their guests with indoor security cameras, as the company is reversing course on its surveillance policies. As of April 30, hosts around the world must remove indoor cameras and disclose other outdoor monitoring tech to guests before they book. Airbnb previously allowed hosts to install security cameras in
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. A team of computer scientists has created a nimbler, more flexible type of machine learning model. The trick: It must periodically forget what it knows. And while this new approach won’t displace the huge models that undergird the biggest apps, it could reveal more about
In December, Pandabuy announced on its official Discord server that more than 15,000 influencers joined its affiliate marketing program last year, thanking them for their “dedicated efforts” with two emojis of Pepe the Frog clutching a red heart. That’s a small number compared to Amazon’s roughly 900,000 affiliates, but trading in counterfeits is illegal. If
Sam Altman is back—again. The entrepreneur who was suddenly fired as OpenAI CEO and from the ChatGPT developer’s board last November, before regaining his CEO position days later, is now getting his director seat back, too. Altman and three veteran business executives, all women, were named to OpenAI’s board on Friday, OpenAI announced in a
Two teenage boys from Miami, Florida, were arrested in December for allegedly creating and sharing AI-generated nude images of male and female classmates without consent, according to police reports obtained by WIRED via public record request. The arrest reports say the boys, aged 13 and 14, created the images of the students who were “between
In January, the CEOs of X, TikTok, Meta, Snap, and Discord testified in front of a congressional committee about child exploitation on their platforms. “Mr. Zuckerberg, you and the companies before us, I know you don’t mean it to be so, but you have blood on your hands,” Senator Lindsey Graham said at the time.
Europe changed the rules of the internet this week when the Digital Markets Act took effect, holding the biggest tech companies to tough new standards. Now the world is waiting to see which giant will be first to fall foul of the law. One of the architects of the DMA says Apple is a strong
Elon Musk last week sued two of his OpenAI cofounders, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, accusing them of “flagrant breaches” of the trio’s original agreement that the company would develop artificial intelligence openly and without chasing profits. Late on Tuesday, OpenAI released partially redacted emails between Musk, Altman, Brockman, and others that provide a counternarrative.
Hall says when she has access to an interpreter, they are rotated throughout the week, forcing her to repeatedly explain some technical concepts. “Google is going the cheap route,” Hall claims, saying her interpreters in university were more literate in tech jargon. Kathy Kaufman, director of coordinating services at DSPA, says it pays above market
San Francisco made history in 2019 when its Board of Supervisors voted to ban city agencies including the police department from using face recognition. About two dozen other US cities have since followed suit. But on Tuesday, San Francisco voters appeared to turn against the idea of restricting police technology, backing a ballot proposition that
Citizens of the European Union live in an internet built and ruled by foreign powers. Most people in the EU use an American search engine, shop on an American ecommerce site, thumb American phones, and scroll through American social media feeds. That fact has triggered increasing alarm in the corridors of Brussels, as the EU
Forty-one state attorneys general penned a letter to Meta’s top attorney on Wednesday saying complaints are skyrocketing across the United States about Facebook and Instagram user accounts being stolen, and declaring “immediate action” necessary to mitigate the rolling threat. The coalition of top law enforcement officials, spearheaded by New York attorney general Letitia James, says
Others argue the state’s strategy of paying bitcoin miners not to mine when the grid is under heavy load is nonsensical. “The most important thing a regulator can do is match assets and liabilities—match supply and demand,” says Ed Hirs, an energy fellow at the University of Houston. With the deterioration of the state’s fleet
Whether through the frowning high-definition face of a chimpanzee or a psychedelic, pink-and-red-hued doppelganger of himself, Reuven Cohen uses AI-generated images to catch people’s attention. “I’ve always been interested in art and design and video and enjoy pushing boundaries,” he says—but the Toronto-based consultant, who helps companies develop AI tools, also hopes to raise awareness
Google is taking action against algorithmically generated spam. The search engine giant just announced upcoming changes, including a revamped spam policy, designed in part to keep AI clickbait out of its search results. “It sounds like it’s going to be one of the biggest updates in the history of Google,” says Lily Ray, senior director