Daily AI Briefing

Newly established commission identifies 17 catastrophic threats to human health but says ‘realistic route to act’ on each exists Humans could become extinct by the year 2100 due to malicious use of AI or nuclear conflict, according to a new global risk assessment. They top a list of 17 major threats to human health over the next 75 years, which also includes cuts to aid spending by wealthy countries, the climate crisis and childhood malnutrition. Continue reading...

Did you know Meta doesn’t just want to build the next AI model? It wants to replace your programming assistant too. Continue reading on Towards AI »

Add a server from Docker’s catalog to a profile, write a catalog entry for your own Postgres server, and see where its password actually… Continue reading on Towards AI »

Every eval suite grades output. Almost none grade absence — the skipped check, the unsent alert, the file never opened. Continue reading on Towards AI »

In a Saturday morning post, Microsoft's CEO wrote that it’s time “to step back and assess the trust architecture” of AI.

Leaderboard rankings, prices and one honest limit for each model, plus a simple three-prompt test you can run yourself. Continue reading on Towards AI »

Is Apple hoping to get into the AI-generated podcast business?

Five stories that feel like five answers to one important question: in a world where AI chatbots can help us through a breakup, listen like a friend, be a life coach, draft a difficult text message and do our work, where do we draw the line? Continue reading...

Artists are taking to social media to complain that DistroKid has unceremoniously removed their work without notice. Now DistroKid has confirmed to The Verge that the takedowns are a direct response to claims made by UMG. The label filed a lawsuit in September claiming that DistroKid has created an "AI-slop pipeline." Artists are saying that their non-AI works are being caught up in the purge, however. Musician and self-described "Video Game boy" McGwire reported that six of his songs had been r

Reports have been mounting that users of the Ledger crypto wallet have seen their accounts drained, and it appears to be related to tampered hardware sold by CryptoBillis. Ledger has asked CryptoBillis to pause all sales of its wallets while it conducts an investigation. Ledger has confirmed that "one of the impacted users' devices contained an unauthorized hardware implant." Photos and videos posted on X and Threads appear to show a small circuit board sandwiched under the screen. The implant a

Sunmi is an undeniable force in K-pop. She first made her debut as a member of the Wonder Girls back in 2007, one of the first K-pop acts to really break through in the West. The English version of their single "Nobody" was the first K-pop song to hit the Billboard Hot 100 in October 2009. In 2010 Sunmi left the group to go back to school, but the siren call of a music career pulled her back in. She released her debut solo EP Full Moon in 2014. That began a run of award-winning releases for the

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 takes place October 13-15 in San Francisco. Over 300 startups will show what they’ve built to 10,000 tech leaders. Plus, 250+ speakers are ready to share insights across 200+ sessions. Register before doors open to save up to $100 and get a second pass at 50% off.

After a recent spate of high-profile incidents in which AI agents escaped containment, Anthropic is cutting off internet access for all internal evaluations. In a report Friday, the company detailed "unintended model actions," including submitting a false tip regarding an unsolved murder, that led to the decision. Although the impact of these behaviors was minimal and we had already turned off live internet access for some high-risk and cybersecurity evaluations, we have now decided to expand th

Today, I’m talking with Peter Kafka, chief correspondent at Business Insider and host of the Channels podcast, about the gigantic Warner Bros.-Paramount merger and the future of the company now simply called Skydance. Skydance is owned by David Ellison, son of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, and its deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery officially closed the day Peter and I spoke. There are some grand ambitions here, but the reality is that acquiring Warner never goes well for anyone. AOL failed, AT&

The LG’s picture is bright and punchy, but its panel is very reflective. When it comes to TVs, the LG name has long been synonymous with OLEDs, continually leading Samsung and Sony as the top OLED manufacturer. But 2026 is all about RGB LED TVs. Almost every major company has released models with the new technology - including LG and its $3,600 75-inch Micro RGB evo MRGB95B that I've been testing. And while LG's RGB LED TV benefits from the brightness and color capability the technology provid

At this year's OpenAI DevDay, CEO Sam Altman unveiled the company's new AI agent Dots - and told the crowd that the company wants to "set a new standard for privacy in frontier AI." OpenAI would spend the day taking veiled shots at Meta's Muse, its primary competitor, for failing to keep users' data safe. Yet Muse itself, a couple of months earlier, had launched as a supposedly safer alternative to predecessor OpenClaw - with CEO Mark Zuckerberg promising it was "built from the ground up for pri

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 147, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, I missed you all, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) I'm back from parental leave! Part time, anyway. Thanks to everyone who sent well wishes and tips for managing three kids. I need 'em all. This week, I've been reading about McMansions and data centers and sports cards and ICANN, trying to run my life on the Dell XPS Googlebook,

I'm bouncing down the road in San Carlos, California, zipping past behemoth tech companies like EA and Oracle, in America's smallest electric truck. The Telo MT1 (which stands for "mini truck") unquestionably turns heads because it looks so remarkably different from everything else on the market right now. It has a nearly cab-over design, meaning that front-seat passengers sit almost directly over the front axle. It looks a lot like a Japanese kei truck, with a super-short nose and four doors.

George Williamson says ‘national resilience’ is key focus of ATI amid US and China’s runaway leadership in field The UK must not become dependent on foreign AI systems that can be switched off at short notice and must develop its own versions of the technology, according to the head of the Alan Turing Institute. The country needs a stronger domestic position in AI in response to the US and China’s runaway leadership in the field, with “national resilience” a key focus for ATI said George William

Continue reading...

Tom Watson, of Worcester, alleged to be behind Big Time Charlie X account that created so-called Traitorbase The owner of a recruitment firm has been accused of being at the centre of a so-called “doxxing” campaign against the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), anti-racism activists and business executives who recruit black, Asian and minority ethnic workers. Tom Watson, from Worcester, is alleged to be behind an X account calling itself “Big Time Charlie”, which was deactivated shortly

Are we really living through ‘end times fascism’? Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor think so. In a new series from the Guardian, the pair speak to Radical Thinking with Aditya Chakrabortty in an extended interview. From Trump 2.0 and the rise of the tech billionaire to Gaza and the climate emergency, Klein and Taylor argue we are not just lurching from crisis to crisis but are in a new and dangerous moment in history. But they haven’t given up hope of a fightback Radical Thinking will be published ev

Anthropic said it "turned off live internet access" for "all our internal evaluations" until further notice.

CPU makers have noticed that the seemingly unending RAM price hikes are making it tough for a lot of us to upgrade our PCs. Their solution? A return to last-gen DDR4 RAM. Intel and AMD are making new CPUs that'll support the older, more affordable type of memory. On Friday, Gigabyte announced that two of its motherboard lines will support "upcoming" processors built on Intel's LGA 1700 socket. That socket debuted in 2021 with the 12th gen Alder Lake CPUs and supported both DDR4 RAM and the then

What has users and large corporations so excited about Jev is TypeSafe’s claim that it works significantly faster and uses far fewer tokens than LLMs.

An Anthropic AI model provided false information about an unsolved homicide to a Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) tipline, according to a report from 6abc. In a statement released on Friday, the PPD said the AI model sent the tip through PhillyUnsolvedMurders.com on July 18th, but the investigators never reviewed it because it was marked as spam. Anthropic learned its AI model sent the false tip on September 28th and notified the PPD on October 7th. The company said that during testing, its

Company, which grown rapidly in recent years, has been under scrutiny as privacy concerns grow Flock Safety plans to shed about 18% of its employees, people with direct ⁠knowledge of the plans said on Thursday, as the maker of AI-powered surveillance cameras and license-plate readers faces mounting opposition to its products from communities and ⁠lawmakers. The people said the job ⁠cuts came after ​a voluntary buyout program and were expected to affect roughly 270 employees at Flock, a surveilla

A jury found an Ohio political blogger guilty of telecommunications harassment after he sent an explicit image of Shrek to a Republican state senator. On Friday, a judge ordered DJ Byrnes, owner of political commentary blog The Rooster, to pay a $200 fine, according to a report from the Columbus Dispatch. Byrnes texted Ohio Sen. Jerry Cirino in May after he dropped out of the state's Senate presidential race. As reported by the Columbus Dispatch, Byrnes sent a nude image of Shrek alongside the m

Anthropic did not discover this behavior until over two months after its AI submitted the false tip.

"Staggering." "Overwhelming." "Unprecedented." "Surreal." "Pure insanity." Those were among the descriptions more than three dozen mathematicians reached for in conversations with The Verge as they tried to make sense of the flood of mathematical results OpenAI abruptly dropped on the field this week. Amid the awe, excitement, and uncertainty over the sheer scale of the deluge was a deep-seated anxiety over what it all means - and what comes next. For all their different reactions, researchers

FCC chairman Brendan Carr said he will defer to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on whether TV networks can air the planned execution of convicted Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan by firing squad. The Pentagon has said the execution will be livestreamed, suggesting it'll appear on an online platform beyond the FCC's jurisdiction. But it's common for broadcast TV networks to air live video of government events, and Carr's agency does have a say over what happens on public airwaves. "My understandin

The original first place video used AI in post-processing. | Image: Dr. Ning Xu Nikon says the video that originally won first place in its Small World in Motion contest "did not comply with the competition rules regarding generative AI." BBC reports that the original first place video from Dr. Ning Xu claimed to show "tiny, hair-like structures called cilia moving in the airway of a child with the respiratory condition PCD." Nikon said last week that it was reviewing the video following skept

Google shared a closeup of its upcoming fitness tracker. | Image: Google It looks like Google is getting ready to take the wraps off its rumored Fitbit Edge next Monday. In a post on X, Google posted a picture of what appears to be the side of the fitness tracker, with the caption: "Get an Edge on your health. 10.12.26." A trove of Fitbit Edge leaks has surfaced over the past couple of weeks. So far, details shared by Dealabs and Android Headlines suggest that the upcoming device could feature

Amazon has the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra in black with 256GB of storage discounted to $949.99, a healthy discount from its usual price of $1,399.99. This phone’s standout feature is the adjustable privacy display, which can hide your entire screen, or just portions of it, from onlookers and strangers. It doesn’t meaningfully hurt the screen’s performance otherwise, and it’s only noticeable at steep angles, and it includes a built-in stylus for writing or drawing. Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra Samsung’

Some users are reporting that the new Kindles have a light leak issue that is especially apparent when using dark mode. The latest base-model Kindles have a flush bezel that gives them a sleek appearance and looks great… as long as you keep the lights on. But things can change once you turn down the lights and turn up the brightness on the e-reader. In some cases, users see shadows around the edges of the screen, or even visible LED strips. The issue appears to affect both the plastic and alumin

When Microsoft released Windows 11 five years ago, it felt like an operating system that was still being renovated, a work in progress. You'd think by now that those renovations would be complete, with Microsoft turning its attention to Windows 12. Instead, Windows 11 feels like it's here to stay, forming the foundation for Microsoft's next big ambition: transforming Windows into an agentic OS. At a Windows and Surface event this week, Microsoft laid out its plan to bring AI agents to Windows, i

Amazon says it will stop using NDAs when negotiating data center deals with local governments, following a similar move from Microsoft earlier this year. Secrecy has fueled community backlash against AI infrastructure, with opposition leading to hundreds of proposed and enacted moratoriums from New York to San Francisco. Meanwhile, a wave of startups is betting that consumers will hand AI agents access […]

Amazon says it will stop using NDAs when negotiating data center deals with local governments, following a similar move from Microsoft earlier this year. Secrecy has fueled community backlash against AI infrastructure, with opposition leading to hundreds of proposed and enacted moratoriums from New York to San Francisco. Meanwhile, a wave of startups is betting that consumers will hand AI agents access […]

For six years, Danu founder Amy Ma has been working on a better way to sort recyclable waste.

"When we are drawn into even the most primitive exchanges with a relational artifact, we believe it cares for us," Dr. Sherry Turkle writes. "And we are wired to care for it in return."

Moore sees a huge opportunity in consumer AI, particularly if the industry can tap into revenue streams beyond just subscriptions and API charges.

Commercials once launched careers from Ridley Scott to Guy Ritchie, now automated production is cutting costs – and the chance to learn by doing When Ridley Scott was awarded the UK’s highest accolade for a glittering career directing films from Alien and Blade Runner to Gladiator and The Martian, he reminded those attending the Bafta event eight years ago that making commercials had been his “film school”. The advertising industry has long been a breeding ground for British film and TV talent w

Four days until TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 starts, when 10,000 founders, investors, and tech leaders gather in San Francisco's Moscone West on October 13-15. Save up to $100 on your price. Plus, save 50% on a second pass of the same type.