Artificial Intelligence

This ‘College Protester’ Isn’t Real. It’s an AI-Powered Undercover Bot for Cops

On June 5, a Pinal County Board of Supervisors meeting was asked to approve a $500,000 contract between the county and Massive Blue in order to license Overwatch. “I was looking at the website for Massive Blue, and it’s a one-pager with no additional information and no links,” Kevin Cavanaugh, the then-supervisor for District 1,…

There’s AI Inside Windows Paint and Notepad Now. Here’s How to Use It

Note that while Generative Erase and Remove Background can be used for free, Image Creator uses up AI credits associated with your Microsoft account. You can’t buy these separately, they come as part of a subscription to Microsoft 365 or Copilot Pro subscriptions, so use them wisely. You can read more about AI credits and…

Small Language Models Are the New Rage, Researchers Say

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Large language models work well because they’re so large. The latest models from OpenAI, Meta, and DeepSeek use hundreds of billions of “parameters”—the adjustable knobs that determine connections among data and get tweaked during the training process. With more parameters, the models are better able…

Palantir Is Helping DOGE With a Massive IRS Data Project

Palantir, the software company cofounded by Peter Thiel, is part of an effort by Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to build a new “mega API” for accessing Internal Revenue Service records, IRS sources tell WIRED. For the past three days, DOGE and a handful of Palantir representatives, along with dozens of career…

Trump’s Tariffs Are Threatening the US Semiconductor Revival

Silicon Valley let out a sigh of relief on Wednesday when it learned that President Donald Trump’s tariff bonanza included an exemption for semiconductors, which, at least for now, won’t be subject to higher import duties. But just three days later, some US tech companies may be finding that the loophole actually creates more problems…

Yuval Noah Harari: ‘How Do We Share the Planet With This New Superintelligence?’

Libertarians often take these mechanisms for granted and refuse to consider where they come from. For example, you have electricity and drinking water in your home. When you go to the bathroom and flush the water, the sewage goes into a huge sewage system. That system is created and maintained by the state. But in…