Stay Ahead with Daily AI & Machine Learning Insights
- by Rhiannon WilliamsThis is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Meet the Vitalists: the hardcore longevity enthusiasts who believe death is “wrong” Last April, an excited crowd gathered at a compound in Berkeley, California, for a three-day event called the Vitalist Bay Summit.…
- by Casey CrownhartThe eastern half of the US saw a monster snowstorm over the weekend. The good news is the grid has largely been able to keep up with the freezing temperatures and increased demand. But there were some signs of strain, particularly for fossil-fuel plants. One analysis found that PJM, the nation’s largest grid operator, saw…
- by Jessica Hamzelou“Who here believes involuntary death is a good thing?” Nathan Cheng has been delivering similar versions of this speech over the last couple of years, so I knew what was coming. He was about to try to convince the 80 or so people in the audience that death is bad. And that defeating it should…
- by MIT Technology ReviewAI is driving unprecedented investment for massive data centers and an energy supply that can support its huge computational appetite. One potential source of electricity for these facilities is next-generation nuclear power plants, which could be cheaper to construct and safer to operate than their predecessors. Watch a discussion with our editors and reporters on…
- by Miranda Bogen, Ruchika JoshiThe ability to remember you and your preferences is rapidly becoming a big selling point for AI chatbots and agents. Earlier this month, Google announced Personal Intelligence, a new way for people to interact with the company’s Gemini chatbot that draws on their Gmail, photos, search, and YouTube histories to make Gemini “more personal, proactive,…
- by Jessica HammondFrom the Gemini Calendar prompt-injection attack of 2026 to the September 2025 state-sponsored hack using Anthropic’s Claude code as an automated intrusion engine, the coercion of human-in-the-loop agentic actions and fully autonomous agentic workflows are the new attack vector for hackers. In the Anthropic case, roughly 30 organizations across tech, finance, manufacturing, and government were…
- by Rhiannon WilliamsThis is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. The first human test of a rejuvenation method will begin “shortly” Life Biosciences, a small Boston startup founded by Harvard professor and life-extension evangelist David Sinclair, has won FDA approval to proceed with…
- by Antonio RegaladoWhen Elon Musk was at Davos last week, an interviewer asked him if he thought aging could be reversed. Musk said he hasn’t put much time into the problem but suspects it is “very solvable” and that when scientists discover why we age, it’s going to be something “obvious.” Not long after, the Harvard professor…
- by Will Douglas HeavenOpenAI just revealed what its new in-house team, OpenAI for Science, has been up to. The firm has released a free LLM-powered tool for scientists called Prism, which embeds ChatGPT in a text editor for writing scientific papers. The idea is to put ChatGPT front and center inside software that scientists use to write up…
- by Tereza PultarovaToday, an estimated 2.2 billion people still have either limited or no access to the internet, largely because they live in remote places. But that number could drop this year, thanks to tests of stratospheric airships, uncrewed aircraft, and other high-altitude platforms for internet delivery. Even with nearly 10,000 active Starlink satellites in orbit and…
- by Russell BrandomASML’s record orders show chipmakers are still betting big on AI data centers.
- by Dominic-Madori DavisAnthropic looks to raise $20 billion at more than $300 billion valuation, according to reports.
- by Sarah PerezGemini 3 Pro and other AI tools are now available globally through the Google AI Plus plan, which is $7.99 per month in the United States.
- by Sarah PerezThe YouTubers claim Snap, like others, used AI datasets meant for research and academic use to train its AI models.
- by Sarah PerezThe addition is meant to just be a fun way to explore your photos and experiment with Google's Gemini AI technology, and specifically Nano Banana.
- by Sarah PerezGoogle DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis says the tech giant isn't pressuring him to insert ads into the AI chatbot experience.
- by Sarah PerezNow available in the US and Canada, Spotify's AI-powered Prompted Playlists let users describe what they want to hear using natural language commands.
- by Lucas RopekShould this wearable materialize, it could be released as early as 2027, according to a report on the device.
- by Sarah PerezThe feature, now public, lets you create to-do's and action items by speaking naturally to the app's AI.
- by Aisha MalikYouTube Shorts viewers might soon see AI versions of their favorite creators when scrolling through their feeds.
- by Russell BrandomConfer is designed to look and feel like ChatGPT or Claude, but your conversations can't be used for training or advertising.
- by Dominic-Madori DavisVoiceRun, a startup that creates voice agents, raised $5.5 million in a round led by Flybridge.
- by Sarah PerezAI is ushering in Ring’s next chapter, as the Amazon-owned video doorbell maker shifts toward becoming an “intelligent assistant.”
- by Sarah PerezAmazon is counting on its Alexa footprint to help it gain traction in the consumer AI race.
- by Theresa LoconsoloAfter years of chatbots and image generators, AI is finally leaving the screen. At CES 2026, that shift became impossible to ignore. The annual tech showcase in Las Vegas was dominated by “physical AI” and robotics, from Boston Dynamic’s newly redesigned Atlas humanoid robot to AI-powered ice makers (yes, really). The companies in attendance clearly want consumers […]
- by Aisha MalikGmail is also bringing several AI features that were previously available only to paid users to all users.
- by Rebecca SzkutakAMD announced the latest version of its AI-powered PC chips designed for a variety of tasks, from gaming to content creation and multitasking.
- by Sarah PerezGoogle TV will let you ask Gemini to find and edit your photos, adjust your TV settings, and more.
- by Connie LoizosThe bloodletting will hit hardest in back-office operations, risk management, and compliance.
- by Lucas RopekData centers are no longer the boring tech issue they once were.
- Railway, a San Francisco-based cloud platform that has quietly amassed two million developers without spending a dollar on marketing, announced Thursday that it raised $100 million in a Series B funding round, as surging demand for artificial intelligence applications exposes the limitations of legacy cloud infrastructure.TQ Ventures led the round, with participation from FPV Ventures, Redpoint, and Unusual Ventures. The investment values Railway as one of the most significant infrastructure startups to emerge during the AI boom, capitalizing on developer frustration with the complexity and cost of traditional platforms like Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud."As AI models get better […]
- The artificial intelligence coding revolution comes with a catch: it's expensive.Claude Code, Anthropic's terminal-based AI agent that can write, debug, and deploy code autonomously, has captured the imagination of software developers worldwide. But its pricing — ranging from $20 to $200 per month depending on usage — has sparked a growing rebellion among the very programmers it aims to serve.Now, a free alternative is gaining traction. Goose, an open-source AI agent developed by Block (the financial technology company formerly known as Square), offers nearly identical functionality to Claude Code but runs entirely on a user's local machine. No subscription fees. […]
- Alfred Wahlforss was running out of options. His startup, Listen Labs, needed to hire over 100 engineers, but competing against Mark Zuckerberg's $100 million offers seemed impossible. So he spent $5,000 — a fifth of his marketing budget — on a billboard in San Francisco displaying what looked like gibberish: five strings of random numbers.The numbers were actually AI tokens. Decoded, they led to a coding challenge: build an algorithm to act as a digital bouncer at Berghain, the Berlin nightclub famous for rejecting nearly everyone at the door. Within days, thousands attempted the puzzle. 430 cracked it. Some got […]
- Salesforce on Tuesday launched an entirely rebuilt version of Slackbot, the company's workplace assistant, transforming it from a simple notification tool into what executives describe as a fully powered AI agent capable of searching enterprise data, drafting documents, and taking action on behalf of employees.The new Slackbot, now generally available to Business+ and Enterprise+ customers, is Salesforce's most aggressive move yet to position Slack at the center of the emerging "agentic AI" movement — where software agents work alongside humans to complete complex tasks. The launch comes as Salesforce attempts to convince investors that artificial intelligence will bolster its products […]
- Anthropic released Cowork on Monday, a new AI agent capability that extends the power of its wildly successful Claude Code tool to non-technical users — and according to company insiders, the team built the entire feature in approximately a week and a half, largely using Claude Code itself.The launch marks a major inflection point in the race to deliver practical AI agents to mainstream users, positioning Anthropic to compete not just with OpenAI and Google in conversational AI, but with Microsoft's Copilot in the burgeoning market for AI-powered productivity tools."Cowork lets you complete non-technical tasks much like how developers use […]
- Nous Research's NousCoder-14B is an open-source coding model landing right in the Claude Code momentNous Research, the open-source artificial intelligence startup backed by crypto venture firm Paradigm, released a new competitive programming model on Monday that it says matches or exceeds several larger proprietary systems — trained in just four days using 48 of Nvidia's latest B200 graphics processors.The model, called NousCoder-14B, is another entry in a crowded field of AI coding assistants, but arrives at a particularly charged moment: Claude Code, the agentic programming tool from rival Anthropic, has dominated social media discussion since New Year's Day, with developers posting breathless testimonials about its capabilities. The simultaneous developments underscore how quickly AI-assisted software […]
- When the creator of the world's most advanced coding agent speaks, Silicon Valley doesn't just listen — it takes notes.For the past week, the engineering community has been dissecting a thread on X from Boris Cherny, the creator and head of Claude Code at Anthropic. What began as a casual sharing of his personal terminal setup has spiraled into a viral manifesto on the future of software development, with industry insiders calling it a watershed moment for the startup."If you're not reading the Claude Code best practices straight from its creator, you're behind as a programmer," wrote Jeff Tang, a […]
