Technology

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Dramatic advances in artificial intelligence over the past decade (for narrow-purpose AI) and the last several years (for general-purpose AI) have transformed AI from a niche academic field to the core business strategy of many of the world’s largest companies, with hundreds of billions of dollars in annual investment in the techniques and technologies for advancing AI’s capabilities.

We now come to a critical juncture. As the capabilities of new AI systems begin to match and exceed those of humans across many cognitive domains, humanity must decide: how far do we go, and in what direction?

AI, like every technology, started with the goal of improving things for its creator. But our current trajectory, and implicit choice, is an unchecked race toward ever-more powerful systems, driven by economic incentives of a few huge technology companies seeking to automate large swathes of current economic activity and human labor. If this race continues much longer, there is an inevitable winner: AI itself – a faster, smarter, cheaper alternative to people in our economy, our thinking, our decisions, and eventually in control of our civilization.

But we can make another choice: via our governments, we can take control of the AI development process to impose clear limits, lines we won’t cross, and things we simply won’t do – as we have for nuclear technologies, weapons of mass destruction, space weapons, environmentally destructive processes, the bioengineering of humans, and eugenics. Most importantly, we can ensure that AI remains a tool to empower humans, rather than a new species that replaces and eventually supplants us.

This essay argues that we should keep the future human by closing the “gates” to smarter-than-human, autonomous, general-purpose AI – sometimes called “AGI” – and especially to the highly-superhuman version sometimes called “superintelligence.” Instead, we should focus on powerful, trustworthy AI tools that can empower individuals and transformatively improve human societies’ abilities to do what they do best. The structure of this argument follows in brief.

Imagine you are planning the funeral music for a loved one who has died. You can’t remember their favourite song, so you try to login to their Spotify account. Then you realise the account login is inaccessible, and with it has gone their personal history of Spotify playlists, annual “wrapped” analytics, and liked songs curated to reflect their taste, memories, and identity.

We tend to think about inheritance in physical terms: money, property, personal belongings. But the vast volume of digital stuff we accumulate in life and leave behind in death is now just as important – and this “digital legacy” is probably more meaningful.

Digital legacies are increasingly complex and evolving. They include now-familiar items such as social media and banking accounts, along with our stored photos, videos and messages. But they also encompass virtual currencies, behavioural tracking data, and even AI-generated avatars.

This digital data is not only fundamental to our online identities in life, but to our inheritance in death. So how can we properly plan for what happens to it?

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A wave of newly homebound people got the itch to knit during the COVID-19 pandemic, and in response, scores of knitters recorded how-to videos and posted them on YouTube.

"But videos don't give you feedback," said Dina El-Zanfaly, an assistant professor in Carnegie Mellon University's School of Design. She and Kris Kitani, associate research professor in the School of Computer Science's Robotics Institute, think artificial intelligence offers a better way.

Months after Elon Musk purchased Twitter in 2022, a landlord in Boulder, Colorado, said the social media company stopped paying rent in a 64,557-square-foot building custom-designed to house the tech tenant for a decade.

"The NYT portrayed the Marubo people as a community unable to handle basic exposure to the internet, highlighting allegations that their youth had become consumed by pornography shortly after receiving access," the plaintiffs say.

The world's first combat tournament featuring full-sized humanoid robots is to be held in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong Province in December, according to organizers on Friday.

The EngineAI Robot Free Combat Tournament: "Mecha King" marks a significant milestone in the robotics industry. It aims to push the boundaries of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics technology, driving industrial upgrades and large-scale applications, industry insiders noted.

According to the organizers, the event is designed to test robots' physical limits and intelligence levels through highly competitive and visually engaging combat scenarios. The competition will also introduce pioneering rules for humanoid robot combat, requiring robots to simulate human movement patterns and make real-time intelligent decisions in complex environments.

EngineAI, a robotics company based in Shenzhen, will supply several models of humanoid robots for the competition. The company plans to open-source the robot codes, allowing participating teams to customize and train the machines.

Downdetector is currently reporting that user reports indicate problems at X/Twitter

X/Twitter developer platform site’s incident history log.

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Vietnam’s government has instructed telecommunications companies to block the Telegram messaging app after the Ministry of Public Security concluded it was being used to disseminate “anti-state” contents, state media reported Friday.

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Business Insider wants more of its employees to use ChatGPT, and to use it more often in their everyday work. That was the message from an all-hands meeting at the end of April, during which several employees presented on how they have folded ChatGPT into their workflow, and leadership encouraged experimentation among holdouts on staff.

Robert Kevin Rose (born 1977) is an American Internet entrepreneur who co-founded Revision3, Digg, Pownce, and Milk. He also served as production assistant and co-host at TechTV's The Screen Savers. From 2012 to 2015, he was a venture partner at GV.

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• Over 90 000 employees have been laid off from the global technology industry in 2025 so far.
• Over 73 percent of all layoffs are taking place in American companies as they embrace AI-powered efficiency.
• Intel will likely be the biggest firer this year, with an expected over 40 000 positions being cut by the end of the year.

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• Anthropic’s new Claude 4 features an aspect that may be cause for concern.
• The company’s latest safety report says the AI model attempted to “blackmail” developers.
• It resorted to such tactics in a bid of self-preservation.

At one call center in the Philippines, workers help Americans with diabetes or neurological conditions troubleshoot devices that monitor their health. Sometimes they get pressing calls: elderly patients who are alone and experiencing a medical emergency.

Ever wonder how government documents, once locked away on tiny sheets of microfiche, become searchable and accessible online? Now you can see it happen in real time.

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In March, officials at the US State Department revealed that they would use artificial intelligence to revoke the visas of “foreign nationals who appear to support Hamas or other designated terror groups.” The new program, known as “Catch and Revoke,” will scan social media accounts and is part of a broader uptick in the US government’s use of AI-powered surveillance, with the goal of combating antisemitism, terrorism, and illegal immigration. And the word “uptick” may be a significant understatement. According to the Brennan Center of Justice, the Trump administration is planning to gather social media identifiers of more than 33 million people, “including those applying for permanent residence or adjustment of their immigration status.”

Social media monitoring is not new, nor are US immigration policies necessarily an outlier when compared to other democracies. However, the US changes, which are in keeping with a global trend of increasing state surveillance of noncitizens, have implications for the free expression and due process rights of the population as a whole.

Social media surveillance differs legally and technically from other forms of surveillance. Because it is based on publicly available information, law enforcement agencies generally do not need to follow the robust legal safeguards that are associated with wiretaps and other covert types of monitoring. Autocratic leaders have used monitoring tools to silence political opponents and repress minority populations. In democracies, courts have found that security and law enforcement agencies have sometimes overstepped their authority and even abused antiterrorism policies to target protected speech. As monitoring has increasingly been outsourced to the private sector, a new industry of data brokers can collect, analyze, and share with law enforcement agencies people’s personal data without their knowledge, undermining privacy and due process. Ubiquitous monitoring of speech, even public speech, has a chilling effect on free expression.Further, the automated tools officials use during investigations can produce costly errors, such as misinterpreting speech or context to arrest the wrong individual.

Laws and technologies first launched to combat the threat of terrorism and foreign invasion have now been repurposed to curtail migration. All governments have a responsibility to secure their borders from potential threats and enforce immigration policy in line with the rule of law. Without appropriate oversight, however, the growing use of AI surveillance technologies could exacerbate errors and injustices. Recent moves by the Trump administration to sidestep due process for undocumented immigrants and even legal residents have generated legal scrutiny around the rights of noncitizens in a democracy. Across the Atlantic, European governments have taken this further by expanding powers to revoke the citizenship of naturalized citizens.

Police in France have uncovered a vast child abuse network operating through encrypted chats on Telegram, leading to the arrest of 55 men across 42 departments.

Microsoft fires Joe Lopez for disrupting Genocide-profiteer Satya Nadella during Microsoft Build Keynote speech and bans words like "Palestine", "Gaza" and "Genocide" in all company emails!!! Yet another chapter in a long tale of Microsoft's intimidation, retaliation, repression, and censorship culture.

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