In a $30 million mansion perched on a cliff overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge, a group of AI researchers, philosophers, and technologists gathered to discuss the end of humanity. The Sunday afternoon symposium, called “Worthy Successor,” revolved around a provocative idea from entrepreneur Daniel Faggella: The “moral aim” of advanced AI should be to create…
As traditional media shrinks, storm streamers are growing; Schuster recently hired his first full-time employee—Reilly Dibble, who used to work for Hall. Unlike a traditional broadcast, YouTube allows Schuster to go live before there’s a tornado warning, so he can warn viewers if a storm is likely to produce a tornado. When Hurricane Milton hit…
A data broker owned by the country’s major airlines, including Delta, American Airlines, and United, collected US travelers’ domestic flight records, sold access to them to Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and then as part of the contract told CBP to not reveal where the data came from, according to internal CBP documents obtained by…
Apple continued its slow-and-steady approach to integrating artificial intelligence into devices like the iPhone, Mac, and Apple Watch on Monday, announcing a raft of new features and upgrades at WWDC. The company also premiered the Foundation Models framework, a way for developers to write code that taps into Apple’s AI models. Among the buzzier AI…
However, it’s fair to say that Apple and even Amazon’s Alexa have had a cultural cachet that Google Assistant never enjoyed. It wasn’t unusual to hear Siri or Alexa’s name in a movie or TV show; they were much more recognizable than Google’s generic-named voice assistant. This may be why Amazon decided to keep the…
My first meeting with Bill Atkinson was unforgettable. It was November 1983, and reporting for Rolling Stone, I had gained access to the team building the Macintosh computer, scheduled to launch early the next year. Everyone kept telling me, “Wait till you meet Bill and Andy,” referring to Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld, two key writers…
This story originally appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Every few years, a Silicon Valley gig-economy company announces a “disruptive” innovation that looks a whole lot like a bus. Uber rolled out Smart Routes a decade ago, followed a short time later by the Lyft Shuttle of its biggest competitor….
Of all the egomaniacal lions who ruled Hollywood during the 20th century gatekeeper era, very few made a brilliant pivot to the internet. The exception is Barry Diller. After leading programming at ABC, running Paramount, and supercharging Fox by launching its broadcast network in the late 1980s, Diller no longer wanted to work for anyone…
Palantir, facing mounting public scrutiny for its work with the Trump administration, took an increasingly defensive stance toward journalists and perceived critics this week, both at a defense conference in Washington, DC, and on social media. On Tuesday, a Palantir employee threatened to call the police on a WIRED journalist who was watching software demonstrations…
Now that Trump is in office, launching his own crypto ventures and asking for legislation establishing (light) digital asset regulations to appear on his desk by August, his supporters’ voices drown out those of the bitcoiners who warn how abandoning crypto’s principles could endanger their community. “Trying to [politicize bitcoin] is really dangerous for everybody,…