For the last year and a half, two hacked white Tesla Model 3 sedans each loaded with five extra cameras and one palm-sized supercomputer have quietly cruised around San Francisco. In a city and era swarming with questions about the capabilities and limits of artificial intelligence, the startup behind the modified Teslas is trying to…
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Among the myriad abilities that humans possess, which ones are uniquely human? Language has been a top candidate at least since Aristotle, who wrote that humanity was “the animal that has language.” Even as large language models such as ChatGPT superficially replicate ordinary speech, researchers…
Michael Calore: Recording works. Lauren Goode: Recording. Yeah. Michael Calore: Yeah. It’s like when people say, let me film that. You’re not actually filming anything. You’re shooting a digital video. Lauren Goode: So then if you have a video podcast, are you shooting the podcast? What do you say? Do you say taping, then? Michael…
President Donald Trump signed a highly anticipated executive order on Thursday that sets in motion a plan to establish a national regulatory framework for artificial intelligence while undercutting states’ abilities to enact their own rules. The order, titled “Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence,” creates an AI litigation task force within the Justice…
A Virginia startup calling itself Operation Bluebird announced this week that it has filed a formal petition with the US Patent and Trademark Office, asking the federal agency to cancel X Corporation’s trademarks of the words “Twitter” and “tweet” since X has allegedly abandoned them. “The TWITTER and TWEET brands have been eradicated from X…
Intel has signed a term sheet to acquire the AI chip startup SambaNova Systems, two sources with direct knowledge of the agreement tell WIRED. The details of the term sheet are unknown. The agreement is nonbinding, meaning the deal is not yet finalized and could be dissolved without penalty. It could take weeks or even…
I first met Daniel Lurie, San Francisco’s newly minted mayor, about five minutes before we walked onstage at WIRED’s Big Interview event, held in his city last week. Lurie’s team let me know ahead of time that his window for this conversation was tight: He’d just come from announcing a new city police chief, and…
All of this works seamlessly on Android, but the experience might look different on iOS and require some additional permissions. “To get battery stats on iOS is a bit of a dance, because Apple doesn’t make it available via any APIs,” Wiens wrote in an email. “There actually are APIs, but they won’t approve your…
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Here’s a test for infants: Show them a glass of water on a desk. Hide it behind a wooden board. Now move the board toward the glass. If the board keeps going past the glass, as if it weren’t there, are they surprised? Many 6-month-olds…
Julie Bornstein thought it would be a cinch to implement her idea for an AI startup. Her résumé in digital commerce is impeccable: VP of ecommerce at Nordstrom, COO of the startup Stitch Fix, and founder of a personalized shopping platform acquired by Pinterest. Fashion has been her obsession since she was a Syracuse high…