Articles

Amazon's delivery box: a symbol of instant gratification and convenience

NEW YORK — By late afternoon, dozens of brown boxes in assorted sizes begin piling up in the lobby of my apartment building. Each bears the familiar smile — a cheerful curve stretching from “A” to “Z”— signaling a company that sells everything and promises satisfaction.

AI & Tech Brief: The 6G Showdown

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California is trying to shut down robot vs. human cage matches

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Today’s Vergecast: The many pluses and minuses of Alexa Plus.

Amazon is determined to turn Alexa Plus into a do-everything AI assistant that can compete with Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, and the rest. But after a year of testing, The Verge’s Jen Tuohy has mixed feelings on how it’s all going. And on whether a new tablet is the right way to fix it.

Former OpenAI safety researchers ask for more transparency about their firings.

In a letter to OpenAI, Tomek Korbak, Jasmine Wang, and Mikita Balesni push back on OpenAI’s claims that they shared confidential information with an outside AI safety group.

Claude can now turn data into animated explainers.

You can ask Anthropic’s AI chatbot to incorporate motion into its output, allowing it to create a 30-second video explainer, add animation to a chart, or make a product walkthrough. The animation will play like a short video, which you can download as an MP4 file.

Trump’s attempt to rename AI is still going strong.

The Verge considers anyone that uses the term, “Cool,” as opposed to the highly accepted new and more accurate term, “Fetch,” THE ENEMY.

Ben Affleck is an AI nerd, and the internet is impressed

Ben Affleck is going viral for his deep knowledge of AI, from neural networks and transformers to open weights. The actor, who sold his AI filmmaking startup to Netflix earlier this year, is proving he's more than just a Hollywood star.

Popular AI leaderboard Arena nearly doubles valuation to $3.1B valuation in 10 months

The company behind the popular LMArena leaderboard has raised $200 million led by Lightspeed and Khosla, and is now measuring AI models on alignment issues such as lying.

OpenAI's revenue is reportedly $20 billion less than previously projected

It had previously been reported that the AI lab's annualized revenue was some $70 billion, but a new report claims it's a whole lot less than that.

Google brings agentic AI to Gemini, starting with businesses

Google is turning Gemini into an AI agent that can plan, execute tasks, and work across business apps and systems. The agent can delegate work to subagents, use multiple AI models, and even gets its own workplace identity, complete with an email address.

Anthropic changes usage policy to ban model abuse and election interference

Anthropic's updated usage policy explicitly prohibits users from repeatedly abusing Claude in extreme cases, though ordinary frustration and criticism are still allowed. The new rules also address election interference, deceptive campaigns, weapons software, and surveillance.