Even as some feared the war would be the first in history to be flooded with machine-made fake images, that hasn’t happened. The technology’s impact on the conflict is far more subtle.
President Joe Biden issued a wide-ranging executive order on artificial intelligence with measures to boost US tech talent and prevent AI being used to threaten national security.
Stefanos Kasselakis is the darling of the country’s media, with a celebrity status forged on social media. But how much of his carefully crafted image is real?
More than 220 people are believed to have been kidnapped and taken to Gaza by Hamas. Their loved ones are trying to trace them using every grain of information they can find.
Civilians in Israel can get mobile alerts of incoming rockets from apps that relay data from the Israel Defense Forces. Gaza has no early warning system, or internet access.
Two days after safety fears led regulators to suspend Cruise’s self-driving permit for San Francisco, the company says its fleet in Austin and other US cities will now operate with human supervision.
Inauthentic accounts on X flocked to its owner’s post about Ukrainian president Vlodymr Zelensky, hailing “Comrade Musk” and boosting pro-Russia propaganda.
Though often viewed as the “crown jewel” of the US intelligence community, fresh reports of abuse by NSA employees and chaos in the US Congress put the tool's future in jeopardy.
Stefan Thomas lost the password to an encrypted USB drive holding 7,002 bitcoins. One team of hackers believes they can unlock it—if they can get Thomas to let them.
A Himalayan lake fed by melting ice just released a devastating flood in northern India. Thousands of other unstable lakes are getting bigger every year.
UK prime minister Rishi Sunak’s global summit on AI governance will focus on extreme scenarios of algorithms causing harm. Many British AI experts would rather he focus on near-term problems.
A new history of the Luddites, Blood in the Machine, argues that 19th century fears about technology are still relevant today. It's the latest in a long line of attempts to reclaim the label.
Hamas has long touted its military drones, but little is known about the true scale of the threat. The answer may have consequences for people on both sides of the Israel-Gaza border.
Alleged censorship of social media and disruptions to electricity and internet access have meant people under fire in Gaza can’t get the information they need to survive.
These mics can be made to sound just like their highly coveted, expensive counterparts. For musicians, it’s the next best thing to having professional studio equipment at home.
With a new emphasis on the Hamas attacks on Israel, the US Treasury has proposed designating foreign cryptocurrency “mixer” services as money launderers and national security threats.
Amazon sold bottles of urine marketed as an energy drink, a new documentary reveals. The company also makes it alarmingly easy to sell dangerous items to children.
From online voting to frictionless taxes, Estonia’s government services can sound like sci-fi to outsiders. Its chief information officer talks about how it works—and what other countries might learn.
When disturbing online profiles appeared in her name, Melissa Trixie Watt was sure she knew who was behind the harassment. But she had to fight to get help from the police—and prove it in court.
Myanmar’s military junta is increasing surveillance and violating basic human rights. The combination of physical and digital surveillance is reaching dangerous new levels.
Yoshua Bengio’s pioneering research helped bring about ChatGPT and the current AI boom. Now he’s worried AI could harm civilization, and says the future needs a humanity defense organization.
Berlin-based Ecosia carved out a niche as a carbon-negative search engine. To adapt to the ChatGPT era, it’s moving closer to Google and exploring how AI could help users cut carbon emissions.
A billion acres of old farmland—an area half the size of Australia—has fallen out of use. Ecologists say the lands and degraded forests are neglected resources for rewilding and for capturing carbon.
Nikola Tesla once dreamed of transferring electrical energy through the air. Now, a company called Wi-Charge is beta-testing a prototype technology, and I’m testing it in my bathroom.
The annular solar eclipse will render more than a third of US solar energy capacity unavailable at some point tomorrow—enough to power about 20 million homes. Grid operators have backup plans.
The seminal DIY catalogs, journals, and magazines printed by the techno-hippie Whole Earth publishing house are finally available online in digital form, all for free.
European commissioner Thierry Breton warned X it could be fined for failing to control disinformation and illegal content. But critics say his threats lack teeth.
A video posted by Donald Trump Jr. showing Hamas militants attacking Israelis was falsely flagged in a Community Note as being years old, thus making X's disinformation problem worse, not better.
Scientists finally opened the rock sample from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu. NASA’s OSIRIS-REx captured a treasure trove of material from the solar system’s earliest days.
Human donor kidneys are in short supply. A new experiment that tested gene-edited organ transplants in monkeys showed that pig kidneys may one day be viable substitutes.
Meta’s Oversight Board is reviewing Facebook’s decision not to remove a manipulated video posted during the US midterms, in an attempt to get it to clarify its policies on election deepfakes.
Google is analyzing data from its Maps app to suggest how cities can adjust traffic light timing to cut wait times and emissions. The company says it’s already cutting stops for millions of drivers.
Harmony Korine's Aggro Dr1ft aspires to be a new kind of post-movie non-film, but for something featuring a neon-orange Travis Scott on a speedboat full of mercenaries in demon masks, it's just boring.
The British chipmaker wanted to challenge the dominance of Nvidia, but having been left out of government AI projects, is urgently looking to raise money.
From the astrology software of the 1970s to the Co-Star app, spirituality has proliferated online. Now, large language models can find overlooked ways to connect with a higher plane.
Kyiv enlisted a Silicon Valley insider to rush consumer-grade tech onto the battlefield. He’s giving a demo of the future of war: the military-retail complex.
This week, we recap all the hardware and GenAI announcements from Google, and square them with the company’s ongoing antitrust woes over its search products.
Foam rubber—like the filling inside your couch—produces an enormous amount of CO2. A Norwegian company called Agoprene thinks seaweed could be the solution.
Do fruit flies remember their larval lives? To find out, scientists made the neurons inside larvae glow, then tracked how they reshuffled as they formed adult brains.
As the United Auto Workers strike against Detroit’s Big Three drags on, a classic behavioral theory provides a way to figure out how long they may continue.
Do-everything workplace managers like Asana and Trello promise organizational utopias. But they reveal limitations that date all the way back to the factory floors of the 1900s.