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Meta’s Muse is creepy, but maybe not for the reasons you think

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Meta's Muse is apparently an effective AI assistant , but one that's a little creepy. Part of that is because of its new Mac app , which can access Messages, Calendar, and Notes. But for all its smarts, Muse doesn't actually know how to describe itself. Jason Aten, a contributing editor at Inc Magazine , posted on Threads screenshots of an interaction he had with Muse in which the assistant asks him some questions about a conversation he was having in Messages. The problem is that Aten says he didn't give Muse access to his messages. When asked how it knew about the contents of his messages, Muse replied, "I saw the notification previews, not … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/vSTm0o1

The AI regulation smackdown isn’t over

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At the start of this week, the who's-who of AI seemed - at least tentatively - on the side of AI regulation. Over the weekend, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei had proposed a three-step plan for slowing AI development, including by embedding third-party evaluators in labs, coordinating across the domestic industry, and forging international agreements potentially with government assistance. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Google DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis, and even SpaceX CEO Elon Musk publicly seemed to agree on aspects of all three things. Anthropic and OpenAI had already been dropping hints that they and other labs were working on some kind of … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/VOITd30

OpenAI and Microsoft knew they were starting a ‘doom loop’ for the web

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Recently unsealed court documents in the New York Times ' case against OpenAI and Microsoft are pretty damning. The companies' own documentation warned that it was starting a "doom loop" that would damage the web, characterized its scraping of data to train its models as the "largest theft of labor in human history," and that it made a "complete mockery of the idea of fair use." Many of the most eye-catching quotes from the document come from Microsoft's Director of Applied Science, Brent Hecht. Though, the company has tried to distance itself from Hecht's assertions. Microsoft spokesperson Alex Haurek told The Verge that "These comments ref … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/L9Z2SIN

Disney’s first CTO is Character.AI’s former CEO

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You would think that a multimedia conglomerate as large as Disney would have a few chief technology officers by now, but the company has just appointed someone to the position for the very first time. Today, Disney announced that Karandeep Anand is joining the company as its new CTO. Anand will report directly to recently appointed CEO Josh D'Amaro , and he will head up the company's infrastructure, product, engineering, and data / AI platforms teams. Anand comes to Disney from chatbot startup Character.AI , where he served as CEO for just over a year and oversaw the company's push into microdramas . Anand jumping ship to Disney comes as a … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/oISRqiA

Flash floods can strike without warning — this new technology could change that

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On the morning of June 9th, Laura Lin was working from her home in Lanesville, a rural southern Indiana town about 15 miles from the Kentucky border. She was on a Zoom call, unaware that the heavy rain outside was beginning to flood her yard. "I look over to where the barn is over there, and I see pieces of my wood floating, and I was like, 'What?' And I immediately was like, 'I have to go.' Close my laptop, and I get my kids up, and I'm like, 'Something's wrong,'" Lin recalls. Lin and her family got out safely and sheltered at a neighbor's house, but Lanesville got over 8 inches of rain within just a few hours that day , way over the thre … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/YTr9iFK

Waymo says Singapore will be its next international robotaxi city

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Waymo Ojai fully autonomous ride-hailing vehicle travels along a city street, San Francisco, California, August 20, 2026. (Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images) | Gado via Getty Images Waymo says it will launch a robotaxi service in Singapore in 2028, as the Alphabet-owned company continues to eye overseas markets for expansion. Waymo's vehicles will begin arriving in Singapore in "the coming months," the company says, in preparation of mapping and autonomous testing with human safety drivers behind the wheel in 2027. Waymo says it is "working toward offering fully autonomous ride-hailing to the public" by 2028. Waymo will need approval from Singapore's Land Transport Authority (LTA) before it can begin accepting passengers. The city-state requires all autonomous vehicles to undergo a safety assessment conducted at the … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/pNe6TZM

The AI Superintelligence Slowdown

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Remember when tech leaders would tell their employees to “move fast and break things”? It seemed that would be the way of AI too. But after a summer where rogue AI agents became reality, and researchers warned that AI could kill us all , a number of leading US AI companies are publicly suggesting it’s time to pump the brakes and “pace the frontier” of bleeding-edge AI development. Their motivations are suspect , but leaders at major AI companies — including Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and X — are at least paying lip service to the idea of a superintelligence slowdown. Will these AI companies actually slow down? Will anyone step in to regulate these companies like they claim to have wanted for years ? Will they manage to convince world leaders that the US must “beat China” to superintelligence and go even faster? Read on below for the latest updates in this AI saga. King Charles says AI needs “sufficient means of control bef...