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The VP of a humanoid robotics company was in for a surprise after finding that a Wired article pointed out something extremely unsettling about the company’s robot fingers.Last week, Wired published a piece on Norwegian-American startup 1X and its Neo humanoid robot with an otherwise uncontroversial thesis: Though the marketing around Neo is decidedly carnal, its hands are impressive, matching and in some ways exceeding the dexterity of a human’s.During the latter half of the article, Wired‘s Boone Ashworth noted a distinctly sensual pattern emerging in the company’s marketing materials: “smooth jazz plays in the background of a soft, warmly…

Last February, Alice Gilman, the cofounder and chief operating officer of a secretive Silicon Valley longevity startup called R3 Bio, sat for an interview with podcast Skyline Drive. In the interview, she discussed R3 Bio’s aspirations to grow nonsentient humanoid life-forms — from which, in theory, they can grow and harvest organs for implantation into human bodies, or to test future drugs and other treatments without the need for live animal testing.“It’s just pretty much a heart, lungs, and everything that you would find in a body,” Gilman tells host and journalist Mangesh Hattikudur. “But it’s not technically alive because it’s…

Europeans are being crushed by deadly temperatures.Record-breaking heatwaves across much of the continent have claimed thousands of lives and created a perfect storm for destructive wildfires, as The New York Times reports.A staggering number of these deaths, experts urge, are linked to climate change. Britain’s national weather agency, Met Office, said that of the 2,700 deaths in England and Wales believed to be the result of extreme heat so far this season — and we’re barely halfway through summer — around 42 percent were likely the result of the “human-caused” climate change.“However, it is clear that human-caused climate change is leading to…

To say Americans are divided on AI would be an understatement.Polls have shown that more people than ever have a negative view of the tech, and you can take your pick on the reasons why. AI could displace jobs, destroy the environment, and drive up energy bills. It’s trained on stolen writing and artwork, and chatbots are driving people into mental health spirals.But what does the public think should be done about this? A new national survey from Versasight suggests that the majority of Americans are down for taking a drastic course of action.According to the survey of 1,700 adults,…

Whenever big data center developers roll into town, their pitch ends up sounding something like this: hand over your land and your resources, throw in a decade of government subsidies, and we’ll give your ailing little burg some jobs, tax revenue, and a shiny new facility to boost the local economy.Sounds like a no-brainer, right? Not so fast, cowboy. In theory, more tax revenue means money for schools, roads, and first responders. In practice, states and counties are waving those taxes in order to entice tech companies to set up shop — while existing campuses put major strain on local…

As corporate AI bills spiral out of control, many companies are beginning to ask themselves a simple question: why pay a pretty penny for the US’s leading AI models when Chinese ones are far cheaper?Major companies like DoorDash, Airbnb, and Siemens are adopting Chinese AI tools, the Financial Times reports, attracted not only by their lower costs but their “open-weight” approach that allows them to be molded to each company’s particular needs. According to data from OpenRouter, a platform that provides all-in-one access to major AI models and tracks their usage, leading Chinese models from DeepSeek and Z.ai have overtaken US…

Rarely has the Los Angeles Police Department found a police toy it doesn’t love. The third-largest police force in the US has major Palantir contracts in place, uses sketchy apps to track minority communities, and routinely sends drones to spy on peaceful protestors.So when the LAPD ends a contract with a surveillance company because it thinks the technology is too dangerous, you know there’s a problem.Over the weekend, the police department announced it was abandoning its contract with Flock Safety, the controversial company blanketing the United States in AI-integrated license plate cameras (ALPRs). Though its three-year contract with Flock is…

Shares of Elon Musk’s SpaceX took another beating when trading resumed on Monday, sliding to an all-time low of just under $139, well below its IPO opening price of $150.It’s now over 38 percent down from its all-time high of $225 three weeks ago, illustrating how rapidly the hype has inverted into widespread skepticism over Musk’s vision.Following a blockbuster Wall Street debut, the space company has struggled to maintain any degree of momentum as investors continue to ask some very hard questions, including over its major pivot to orbital data centers and its near-term profitability. Despite being valued at almost…

Classes are going to look a little different for the University of Chicago’s first year law students.On Thursday, the law school said it was banning the use of phones, tablets, and even laptops in class for freshman-level courses, as it rejigs its curriculum to be more “AI-resilient” and encourage more deliberate use of the tech.An announcement from the school didn’t explicitly mention AI cheating. But the changes come amid a backdrop of significant public concern over generative AI’s impact on education, and plunging literacy and numeracy skills among students. “With AI disrupting higher education, our commitment to rigorous legal education also…

Meta’s camera-equipped “AI Glasses” are so divisive that some adopters are now leaving their expensive smart glasses at home, as Engadget reports.Influencers, mostly men, have been using the glasses to inconspicuously — and non-consensually — capture footage of themselves approaching women and attempting to hit on them, interactions they’ve then posted online for content. Some wearers have even attempted to extort victims of covert recordings for cash. That’s on top of serious allegations of alleged privacy breaches by Meta itself.And then, of course, there’s the simple fact that a lot of people just really don’t like the idea of the world’s…