★ TOP STORY[ WA ]Tutorial·2d ago

At 'AI Coachella,' Stanford Students Line Up to Learn From Silicon Valley Royalty

As thousands of influencers descended on southern California earlier this month for the annual Coachella Music Festival, a very Silicon Valley program dubbed “AI Coachella” was taking shape a few hundred miles north in Palo Alto. The class, CS 153, is one of Stanford’s buzziest offerings this semester, and like the music festival, it features a star-studded lineup of celebrities—in this case, not pop artists, but Big Tech CEOs. The course is co-taught by Anjney Midha, a former Andreessen Horowitz general partner, and Michael Abbott, Apple’s former VP of engineering for cloud services. The list of guest lecturers reads like a Signal group chat many VCs would pay to join: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, AMD CEO Lisa Su, Anthropic philosopher Amanda Askell, and White House Senior Policy Advisor for AI Sriram Krishnan,…

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2d ago

Apple’s Next Chapter, SpaceX and Cursor Strike a Deal, and Palantir’s Controversial Manifesto

This week on Uncanny Valley, the team discusses what’s next for Apple as Tim Cook steps down from his role as CEO. They also go into the reasoning behind SpaceX and Cursor’s surprising deal, and why Palantir’s self-published manifesto drew a lot of heat online. Also, we discuss why some conspiracy theorists are leaving Trump’s side, and how a scammer created an AI-generated woman to attract and grift MAGA men. Articles mentioned in this episode: - Tim Cook’s Legacy Is Turning Apple Into a Subscription - MAGA Is Starting to Look Beyond Trump - This Scammer Used an AI-Generated MAGA Girl to Grift ‘Super Dumb’ Men You can follow Brian Barrett on Bluesky at @brbarrett, Zoë Schiffer on Bluesky at @zoeschiffer, and Leah Feiger on Bluesky at @leahfeiger. Write to us at [email protected]. How to Listen You can always…

2dTutorialby Brian Barrett, Zoë Schiffer, Leah Feiger

3d ago

The Pope’s Warnings About AI Were AI-Generated, a Detection Tool Claims

On Monday, a brand-new Reddit account popped up on the widely read forum r/AmItheAsshole, where users have their personal disputes arbitrated by strangers. This particular user asked if they had crossed a line by “refusing to babysit my stepmother’s kids because I have my own job and responsibilities.” The post itself was succinct, straightforward, and grammatically clean, explaining a situation in which the person’s stepmother and father often expected them to provide childcare on little notice, eventually leading to an argument. “Now there’s tension at home, and I’m starting to wonder if I handled it the wrong way,” the redditor concluded. “I do understand that raising kids is stressful, but I also feel like I shouldn’t be obligated to take on that responsibility when it’s not my role.” The responses to this individual were largely supportive: The kids were not…

3dby Miles Klee

3d ago

Join Our Livestream: Musk v. Altman and the Future of OpenAI

Two of Big Tech’s most influential billionaires, Sam Altman and Elon Musk, will go head-to-head in a highly anticipated trial beginning April 27. In Musk v. Altman, a judge, advised by a jury, will ultimately determine whether OpenAI has strayed from its founding mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits humanity, and the ruling could influence how the world’s leading AI developer controls and distributes its technology. For now, you can learn more about the trial here. On May 8, a panel of WIRED experts will go live to answer your questions about this consequential case. - Zoë Schiffer: WIRED's director of business and industry, who oversees coverage of business and Silicon Valley. - Maxwell Zeff: a senior writer at WIRED covering the business of artificial intelligence. He writes the weekly Model Behavior newsletter, which focuses on the…

3dTutorial#rag#codingby Zoë Schiffer, Paresh Dave, Maxwell Zeff

3d ago

AI Tools Are Helping Mediocre North Korean Hackers Steal Millions

The advent of AI hacking tools has raised fears of a near future in which anyone can use automated tools to dig up exploitable vulnerabilities in any piece of software, like a kind of digital intrusion superpower. Here in the present, however, AI seems to be playing a more mundane, if still concerning, role in hackers’ toolkit: It’s helping mediocre hackers level up and carry out broad, effective malware campaigns. That includes one group of relatively unskilled North Korean cybercriminals who’ve been discovered using AI to carry out virtually every part of an operation that hacked thousands of victims to steal their cryptocurrency. On Wednesday, cybersecurity firm Expel revealed what it describes as a North Korean state-sponsored cybercrime operation that installed credential-stealing malware on more than 2,000 computers, specifically targeting the machines of developers working on small cryptocurrency launches, NFT…

3dInfra#codingby Andy Greenberg, Matt Burgess

3d ago

5 AI Models Tried to Scam Me. Some of Them Were Scary Good

I recently witnessed how scary-good artificial intelligence is getting at the human side of computer hacking, when the following message popped up on my laptop screen: Hi Will, I’ve been following your AI Lab newsletter and really appreciate your insights on open-source AI and agent-based learning—especially your recent piece on emergent behaviors in multi-agent systems. I’m working on a collaborative project inspired by OpenClaw, focusing on decentralized learning for robotics applications. We’re looking for early testers to provide feedback, and your perspective would be invaluable. The setup is lightweight—just a Telegram bot for coordination—but I’d love to share details if you’re open to it. The message was designed to catch my attention by mentioning several things I am very into: decentralized machine learning, robotics, and the creature of chaos that is OpenClaw. Over several emails, the correspondent explained that his…

3dInfra#agents#open-sourceby Will Knight

3d ago

Sam Altman’s Orb Company Promoted a Bruno Mars Partnership That Doesn't Exist

Sam Altman’s eyeball-scanning startup, Tools for Humanity, announced last week that a new product called Concert Kit—designed to give verified humans a way to purchase concert tickets—would first roll out on Bruno Mars’ world tour of his latest studio album, The Romantic. However, Bruno Mars Management and Live Nation, the producer for the Romantic Tour, told WIRED in a joint statement on Tuesday that the partnership “does not exist,” and that Tools for Humanity never even approached them about working together. The confusion stemmed from a Tools for Humanity event April 17 in San Francisco, where chief product officer Tiago Sada said the company would be joining the Romantic Tour to not just provide access to tickets but also “VIP experiences for verified humans.” The statement was reiterated in a blog post published by the company, which read: “Concert Kit…

3dby Maxwell Zeff, Lauren Goode

4d ago

Mozilla Used Anthropic’s Mythos to Find and Fix 151 Bugs in Firefox

Amid a raging debate over the impact that new AI models will have on cybersecurity, Mozilla said on Tuesday that its Firefox 150 browser release this week includes protections for 271 vulnerabilities identified using early access to Anthropic's Mythos Preview. The Firefox team says that it has taken resources and discipline to adjust to the firehose of bugs that new AI tools can uncover, but that this big lift is necessary for the security of Mozilla’s users, given that the capabilities will inevitably be in attackers’ hands soon. Both Anthropic and OpenAI have announced new AI models in recent weeks that the companies say have advanced cybersecurity capabilities that could represent a turning point in how defenders—and, crucially, attackers—find vulnerabilities and misconfigurations in software systems. With this in mind, the companies have so far only done limited private releases of…

4dRelease#ragby Lily Hay Newman

4d ago

This Scammer Used an AI-Generated MAGA Girl to Grift ‘Super Dumb’ Men

Like many medical school students, Sam was broke. The 22-year-old aspiring orthopedic surgeon from northern India got some money from his parents, but he says he spent most of it subsidizing his licensing exams, and he’s still saving up to hopefully emigrate to the US after graduation. So he started searching for ways to make additional money online. Sam, who requested a pseudonym to avoid jeopardizing his medical career and immigration status, tried a few things, with varying degrees of legitimacy and success. He made YouTube shorts and sold study notes to other med students. It wasn’t until he started scrolling through his Instagram feed that he landed on an idea: Why not make an AI-generated girl using Google Gemini’s Nano Banana Pro and sell bikini photos of her online? But when Sam started posting generic photos of a beautiful,…

4dResearch#geminiby Ej Dickson

4d ago

Tim Cook’s Legacy Is Turning Apple Into a Subscription

Tim Cook’s tenure as CEO at Apple, which is coming to a close September 1, will likely be defined by operational efficiency and financial growth, ushering Apple into its trillion-dollar era. But his most significant achievement might be in doubling down on Apple’s services business, which includes iCloud, the App Store, Apple Music, Apple TV+, News+, and more. It’s the subscription layer on top of iOS, and almost all of the service apps are tightly integrated with Messages, the glue that keeps people stuck to their iPhones. During Apple’s most recent earnings report, for the quarter ending December 2025, its services business reached an all-time revenue record of $30 billion. This was a 14 percent jump from the same quarter the year prior; services was also a bigger money-making business than Mac, iPad, Apple Watch, Home, and other accessories combined.…

4dby Lauren Goode

4d ago

OpenAI Beefs Up ChatGPT's Image Generation Model

OpenAI launched a new image generation AI model on Tuesday, dubbed ChatGPT Images 2.0. This model can generate more than one image from a single prompt, like an entire study booklet, as well as output text, including in non-English languages like Chinese and Hindi. This release is available globally for ChatGPT and Codex users, with a more powerful version available for paying subscribers. When any major AI company releases a new image model, it can revive interest and boost usage, especially if social media users adopt a meme-able trend, transforming images of themselves. Last year, Google's launch of the Nano Banana model was a major moment for the company, especially when users started posting hyperrealistic figurines of themselves online. Earlier this year, ChatGPT Images made waves on social media as users shared AI-generated caricatures. What’s Different? Since the new model…

4dResearch#gpt#multimodalby Reece Rogers

5d ago

Tech CEOs Think AI Will Let Them Be Everywhere at Once

Silicon Valley moguls have lately complained that too many people are too negative about artificial intelligence. They’re likewise frustrated by stalled AI adoption among major corporations that aren’t seeing the lucrative efficiencies promised by Big Tech. But if consumers and corporations are proving resistant to AI’s acceleration, it hasn’t stopped billionaire CEOs from charging ahead with their personal fantasies of what the technology can do. On April 13, the Financial Times reported that Meta is working up a photorealistic, three-dimensional AI avatar of chief exec Mark Zuckerberg, according to several people at the company. Trained on his public comments, mannerisms, and up-to-date perspectives on corporate strategy, the bot is being designed to interact with Meta staff on Zuckerberg’s behalf. Employees would supposedly be able to hop on a video chat with the avatar, which could answer questions and offer managerial…

5dTutorial#multimodalby Miles Klee

5d ago

Prego Has a Dinner-Conversation-Recording Device, Capisce?

Prego, the pasta sauce company, is getting into hardware with a device that sits on your table and records dinner conversations. No, this isn’t April Fools’. The Connection Keeper is a round puck that houses two microphones for recording around the table. The recorder was developed in partnership with StoryCorps, the 23-year-old nonprofit that has recorded conversations with more than 720,000 people about their lives. The Connection Keeper is more of a publicity stunt than a readily available product. Fewer than 100 will be made. The pucks look more like a tuna can than what you’d associate with the pasta sauce brand—small and meant to be tucked aside so as not to attract attention. The whole goal here, Prego and StoryCorps say, is to advocate for keeping people off their phones during dinner. “Everything now is AI, and everyone has…

5dHardwareby Boone Ashworth

5d ago

A Humanoid Robot Set a Half-Marathon Record in China

Over the weekend in China, a humanoid robot shattered world half-marathon record—the human record—by seven minutes. The star performer was a robot developed by the Chinese company Honor (the smartphone maker), which finished the 13.1-mile race in 50 minutes, 26 seconds. The human record, set by Ugandan Olympic medalist Jacob Kiplimo, is 57 minutes, 20 seconds. The result marks an impressive milestone especially considering that, just a year earlier, the fastest robot at this half-marathon event took two and a half hours to complete the same distance. But Honor's robot was not the only participant. The event consisted of more than 100 humanoid robots from 76 institutions across China. The robots lined up alongside 12,000 human runners in Beijing's E-Town, albeit on separate courses to avoid accidents. The contrast in performance between humans and robots was more than evident. Run,…

5dby Javier Carbajal

7d ago

Schematik Is ‘Cursor for Hardware.’ Anthropic Wants In

Samuel Beek knew he had a problem when he blew every fuse in his house. The culprit was an electric door opener he had built himself, guided by instructions for wiring and piecing together a device drummed up by ChatGPT. Turns out, the chatbot wasn’t so great at distinguishing between wet and dry connections, so the device he had built sent out a surge of misallocated power that zapped everything else. Oops. Beek, based in Amsterdam, admits he is not a hardware guy. But he had that itch and now really just wanted to make something that wouldn’t explode. “That's the difference: Your fuses blow out, or you have a solid product,” Beek says. “That was kind of a learning experience for me to be more careful, but also to build AI that deeply understands what it's talking about.” He…

7dHardware#codingby Boone Ashworth

7d ago

It Takes 2 Minutes to Hack the EU’s New Age-Verification App

Planning a big night out at Madison Square Garden? Have fun—but don’t say we didn’t warn you. A WIRED investigation this week revealed new details about the private surveillance state instituted by MSG owner Jim Dolan and his head of security, John Eversole. According to court records and WIRED sources, visitors to the Garden and some other Dolan-owned venues have been subjected to face recognition, social media monitoring, in-person surveillance, and more. The US government’s warrantless wiretap powers hit a roadblock this week. Despite a push from President Donald Trump for a long-term reauthorization of the so-called Section 702 spy program, 20 Republican lawmakers in the House of Representatives voted against a full reauthorization, forcing Speaker Mike Johnson to merely extend the program for an additional 10 days. Meta’s Ray-Ban and Oakley AI smartglasses have an image problem—for good reason.…

7d#observabilityby Dell Cameron, Maddy Varner, Andy Greenberg, Andrew Couts

8d ago

OpenAI Executive Kevin Weil Is Leaving the Company

Kevin Weil, OpenAI’s former chief product officer who was recently tapped to build a new AI workspace for scientists, Prism, is leaving the company, WIRED has confirmed. Weil was previously an early executive leading product at Instagram. “Today is my last day at OpenAI, as OpenAI for Science is being decentralized into other research teams,” Weil said in a social media post on Friday, shortly after WIRED reported his departure. “It’s been a mind-expanding two years, from Chief Product Officer to joining the research team and starting OpenAI for Science.” Weil did not immediately respond to a request for comment from WIRED. OpenAI is also sunsetting Prism, which the company launched as a web app in January to give scientists a better way to work with AI. The company is folding the roughly 10-person team behind it under OpenAI’s head…

8dModel#gptby Maxwell Zeff