The Internal Revenue The service paid Palantir $1.8 million last year to improve a custom tool designed to help the tax agency identify the “highest-value” cases for audits, collection of unpaid taxes, and potential criminal investigations, according to documents WIRED obtained via public records request. When the contract was signed, the IRS said it was … Read more
The world’s top AI research conference, the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems—better known as NeuroIPS—became the latest organization this week to become embroiled in a growing clash between geopolitics and global scientific collaboration. The conference’s organizers announced and then quickly reversed controversial new restrictions for international participants after Chinese AI researchers threatened to boycott … Read more
Apple is allergic to nostalgia. In 2008, when the Macintosh was about to turn 25, I mentioned it to Steve Jobs and he instantly shut down the discussion. “If you look backward in this business, you’ll be crushed,” he told me immediately. “You have to look forward.” Now that Apple’s 50th anniversary looms, however, the … Read more
OpenAI is starting to stuff the free version of ChatGPT with ads. So, I spent this week asking ChatGPT 500 questions on the mobile app to get a sense of how these new ads look as they roll out to more users in the US. My questions were loosely based on how OpenAI says people … Read more
It’s not easy to get an interview with Sam Altman—just ask Adam Bhala Lough, the filmmaker behind the recent documentary Deepfaking Sam Altman. Lough originally planned a feature exploring the potential and perils of AI that would center on a conversation with the OpenAI CEO. But, after having his inquiries ignored for months, he opted … Read more
When technology reporter Alex Heath has a scoop, he sits down at his computer and speaks into a microphone. He’s not talking to a human colleague—Heath went independent on Substack last year—he’s talking to Claude. Using the AI-powered voice-to-text service Wispr Flow, Heath transmits his ideas to an AI agent, then lets it write his … Read more
Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren and Republican senator Josh Hawley are urging the US’s central energy information agency to provide better information on how much electricity data centers actually use. In a joint letter sent to the Energy Information Administration Thursday morning, seen by WIRED, Hawley and Warren press the agency to publicly collect “comprehensive, annual … Read more
Lisa Ann technically quit the porn business in 2019, but for $30 a month you can now dream up any X-rated scenario of her on your computer. Ann, 53, was an adult performer for three decades starting in the mid 1990s and retired because she had reached her savings goal. But last year she had … Read more
“I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the comment sections on these videos actually, and it does not seem like bots. I clicked on people’s profiles; these are real profiles, thousands of followers, no signs of inorganic activity,” Maddox says. “People just like it.” But even if the views and engagement are real, that … Read more
Last month, researchers at Northeastern University invited a bunch of OpenClaw agents to join their lab. The result? Complete chaos. The viral AI assistant has been widely heralded as a transformative technology—as well as a potential security risk. Experts note that tools like OpenClaw, which work by giving AI models liberal access to a computer, … Read more