AI News

Shutterstock / Futurism New research gives us a grim portrait of how rampant AI usage is affecting young students’ academic performance and learning. In a study that tracked nearly 27,000 students in China between the ages of 12 and 18 (grades 7-12), around 80 percent reported using AI models like DeepSeek and ByteDance’s Doubao. The remaining 20 percent, who abstained from using AI, formed the control group. What the researchers from Stockholm University

NostromoCore Elon Musk spent months crusading against Christopher Nolan’s “woke” adaptation of “The Odyssey” before it came out, anticipating that it would bomb at the box office. When that didn’t work and the movie made over a billion dollars, he vowed that his Grok AI — best known for calling itself “MechaHitler” and generating loads of CSAM — would create a full-length version of the ancient Greek saga that would be “historically accurate and true to th

Some patients in the UK are skipping going to the doctor because their office’s AI “receptionist” can’t understand what they’re saying. The health and social watchdog Healthwatch Rotherham said that the troublesome AI receptionist in question, called “Emma,” is being used at a number of clinics in South Yorkshire — and is struggling with locals’ distinct way of speaking. “One of the issues is this system can’t always understand what people’s inquiry is abo

Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News via Getty Images Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that pending home sales in the US had dropped to their lowest level in three years. That coincided with a sharp drop in construction of new homes, which plummeted to the lowest level in over three and a half years in July — two signs that things are not so sunny for the country’s housing market. While complicated factors like unchecked inflation and stagnant wages are su

Shutterstock / Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images / Futurism Derek Chadwick, the cofounder of the new gay dating app Goose, has suddenly quit the company after the platform was exposed for tricking men into signing up using fake, AI generated influencers, the magazine Out reports. Chadwick, who is also a model and influencer with millions of followers, made the cryptic announcement on Tuesday in an Instagram post. “Some personal news. As of last week, I’ve step

Joe Raedle/Getty Images As the bipartisan hate for data centers continues to grow, Texas governor Greg Abbott is suddenly singing a dramatically different tune. During a Sunday interview with ABC, Abbott said that AI companies have “basically dug their own grave for the problem that’s been caused for them, and that’s why they got the backlash they deserve.” His comments indicate that it’s not just blue states growing wary of data centers. It’s a particular

Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images/Futurism The tech industry’s standing in the eyes of the US public has undergone a dramatic transformation over the last few years. Where Americans were once excited for new tech products and industry ideas, they’re now exhausted by the sector’s intrusions into their lives, whether with AI-generated slop or the data centers that power it. Pretty much everyone has received that message loud and clear: political strate

Win McNamee/Getty Images President Donald Trump has a message for Americans who scorn data centers: you’re making a foolish mistake. In a bizarre interview with his former personal attorney Michael Cohen, flagged by Forbes, the president went out of his way to defend the AI industry’s data center frenzy, in opposition to the vast majority of American voters. “Frankly, communities that don’t take a data center are making a mistake,” Trump hectored. There ar

Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images One thing that could put a dent in the hype around Anthropic’s upcoming, multitrillion dollar IPO? People preferring cheapo models over its flagship AI products. Recent spending data from 70,000 US companies collected by the payments group Ramp shows that spending on Fable 5, Anthropic’s priciest and most powerful model, has plateaued at only 11 percent of the overall outlay, or money spent, on its AI tools, the Financial T

Shutterstock Compared to the lofty benchmark of human-level intelligence, AI chatbots still have a long way to go. Sure the industry has made remarkable progress in beefing them up to generate seemingly human-level sentences, but in measures of reasoning and productivity, AI has its work cut out. But how do today’s large language models stack up against humans when it comes to learning to speak? Not any better, it turns out. In a breakdown of the AI teachi

Shutterstock / Futurism Companies continue to pour untold sums into adopting AI tools, in a generational industry capital allocation that has yet to meaningfully pay off. Despite being sold as a way to supercharge productivity, theoretically allowing business leaders to boost earnings while cutting expenses, reality is telling a dramatically different story. Analysts continue to find that AI is failing to boost productivity much at all, rendering the tools

We’re racing towards a future where AI enables the “factory farming of humans,” a Harvard professor warns — if tech elites get their way, at least. In a new episode of The New York Time’s “Hard Fork” podcast, the historian Jill Lepore discusses her idea of an “artificial state” that’s supplanting the traditional nation state, and particular constitutional democracy, with one that erases human autonomy. In this emerging world order, government is conducted

No one expects Elon Musk to coherently speak on any topic at length these days, busy as he is rotting out his neurons on his personal echo chamber and culture warzone X. Still, even we’re surprised at just how nonsensical this latest take from him is. During his first all-hands meeting at Cursor after SpaceX acquired the company for $60 billion, Musk shared some of his profound reasoning on why he needs to accelerate AI development. According to a new scoo

Shutterstock / Futurism Last year, netizens coined a new term to reflect our growing disdain for AI bots slowly usurping our human agency. The word “clanker” — later described as a “derogatory slur” by Google’s AI Overview — set the stage for growing disillusionment and anger aimed at tech that’s cluttering our minds and feeds, while driving us crazy at work. And now we have the perfect accompanying pejorative to describe certain coworkers who are getting

Bennett Raglin/Getty Images for The New York Times Bill Gates can’t believe that no one is worried about AI as much as he is. In a new blog post — and accompanying media blitz — the billionaire suddenly sounded alarmed about how the technology is shaping our future after being blindly optimistic about it for years, warning that it’ll annihilate jobs and desolate the economy. “AI will either be the greatest equalizer ever invented, or the worst source of in

STAN HONDA/AFP via Getty Images/Futurism The Wall Street Journal is giving opinion authors the go-ahead to use AI in the writing process without requiring AI disclosures — a move by a top newspaper that feels like an inflection point for the media industry. On Monday, the billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller, a former hedge fund manager and founder of Duquesne Capital, published an article in the Wall Street Journal’s Opinion section titled “Let the Bond Mark

Meta has officially ended a landmark legal standoff over social media addiction among children, agreeing to pay some $18 billion over the next ten years and make sweeping changes to how it approaches child safety. The lawsuit, organized by the attorneys general of 29 US states, alleged that Meta executives like Mark Zuckerberg created a system that abused data collected from minors, while feigning ignorance about the harms their platforms caused. Though $1

Basement Basement, arguably New York City’s best-known contemporary nightclub, has always had a tight, Berghain-esque door policy. That’s part of its allure. You stand before the bouncer and await to receive their vibe check, and you either get let into its dark, crimson-lit halls, or get turned away, feeling the stigma of being uncool. That’s just the way it is. But it’s not being mysterious about its newest criteria for entry. On social media Thursday, B

Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images In May, Meta laid off roughly ten percent of its global workforce, affecting almost 8,000 people. The vast culling came amidst repeated promises of an AI-led technological revolution that would make human labor a thing of the past. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in particular, was clearly infatuated by the idea. As Reuters reports, Meta execs developed a radical plan under his leadership, codenamed Project Organization Transformation,

Valeriia Yemets/Suspilne Ukraine/JSC "UA:PBC"/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images In a joint statement earlier this week, United Nations chief António Guterres and Red Cross president Mirjana Spoljaric Egger sent out an urgent message. “We are now dangerously close to crossing a moral red line: the autonomous targeting of humans by machines,” they said. But while international humanitarian law strictly forbids targeting civilians and civilian infrastruc