Kevin Roose / New York Times: An interview with Eliezer Yudkowsky, one of the first people to warn of AI risks, on AI benefits, using violence to stop AI, Rationalism, his new book, and more — Eliezer Yudkowsky has spent the past 20 years warning A.I. insiders of danger. Now, he's making his case to the public.
Stuart A. Thompson / New York Times: Watchdogs say fraudsters are extorting small businesses for hundreds of dollars each by posting or threatening to post phony one-star reviews on Google Maps — Movers, roofing companies and others are being bombarded with phony one-star reviews on Google Maps. Then they're asked to pay up.
Pranav Baskar / New York Times: Over 100K Nepali citizens gathered on Discord to help nominate an interim leader after protests sparked by a social media ban led to the government's collapse — “The Parliament of Nepal right now is Discord,” a user said of the platform popular with video gamers, where tens of thousands are debating the nation's future.
New York Times: Graphic videos of Charlie Kirk's shooting, first posted to X, also spread to Instagram, Threads, YouTube, and Telegram within hours, amassing millions of views — First posted to X, they amassed millions of views on Instagram, Threads, YouTube and Telegram within hours.
Cade Metz / New York Times: The UAE's Institute of Foundation Models open sources its K2 Think model, trained with only ~2,000 AI chips and designed for math, coding, and science research — The Persian Gulf nation has “open sourced” technology meant to compete with OpenAI and China's DeepSeek.
New York Times: Nvidia is attacking GOP-led proposals to limit AI chip sales to China, an unconventional lobbying blitz over what it calls left-wing paranoia from “AI doomers” — Rankling national security experts, the chipmaker has stepped up attacks on lawmakers who are pushing restrictions.
Steve Lohr / New York Times: The US v. Google ruling signals a cautious antitrust approach by courts and a reluctance to intervene too deeply, ahead of other Big Tech antitrust rulings — A federal judge ordered steps in the search monopoly case that will restrain Google but not break it up, signaling a cautious antitrust approach by courts.
Adam Leventhal / The Athletic: Anti-piracy organization ACE says a joint operation with Egyptian law enforcement shut down Streameast, the world's largest illegal sports streaming platform — Streameast — the world's largest illegal sports streaming platform — has been shut down after a year long investigation …
New York Times: An analysis of Grok's responses to 41 political questions in May and July shows it shifted to the right on 50%+ of them, often aligning with Elon Musk's views — Mr. Musk said he wanted xAI's chatbot to be “politically neutral.” His actions say otherwise.
Choe Sang-Hun / New York Times: South Korean lawmakers pass a bill to ban using mobile phones and other smart devices during classes at elementary and middle schools nationwide, starting 2026 — It becomes the latest country to restrict phone use in schools, with a law that will go into effect in 2026.
Ephrat Livni / New York Times: An interview with Alex Kachkine, who shook the art world in June with a research paper in Nature on restoring paintings using AI, as he works to refine the tech — Alex Kachkine spends his days working on microchip research — a skill set surprisingly similar to that needed for restoration.
Yan Zhuang / New York Times: Humanoid Robot Games highlighted robotics advancements but also limitations, with robots tripping over each other; one robot ran faster than many amateur humans — The Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing — featuring running, kickboxing and soccer — highlighted advancements in robotics. Limitations, too.
Jordyn Holman / New York Times: As boards and executives mandate using AI to make their businesses more efficient and competitive, many have yet to fully integrate it into their own workdays — Some are being nudged to learn how to use the nascent technology. Coming to the C-suite retreat: mandatory website-building exercises using A.I. tools.
Michael S. Rosenwald / New York Times: Cognitive scientist Margaret Boden, whose books helped shape the philosophical conversation about human intelligence and AI, passed away on July 18 at age 88 — A cognitive scientist, she used the language of computers to explore the nature of human thought and creativity, offering prescient insights about A.I.
Amanda Hess / New York Times: A look at AI-powered stuffed animals like Grem, Grok, and Gabbo, which are being promoted as an alternative to screen time for children as young as 3 — Curio is a company that describes itself as “a magical workshop where toys come to life.” When I recently visited its cheery headquarters …
New York Times: A look at AI-powered stuffed animals like Grem, Grok, and Gabbo, which are being promoted as an alternative to screen time for children as young as 3 — Curio is a company that describes itself as “a magical workshop where toys come to life.” When I recently visited its cheery headquarters …
New York Times: A deep dive on Big Tech's AI energy boom as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google become major players, leading to fears that individuals' and SMBs' rates may rise — A transmission line running near data centers in Ashburn, Va. As the electricity demands of the structures rapidly escalate …
Rob Copeland / New York Times: How Wall Street is embracing crypto, spurred in part by political opportunism, as some executives fear the rush may risk the safety of personal bank accounts — The reversal risks declawing a century of consumer financial protections and replacing the backbone of bank accounts.
New York Times: How Larry Ellison is focusing his philanthropic efforts on the Ellison Institute of Technology, an Oxford-based, for-profit entity set to spend £1B by 2027 — Oracle's co-founder and the world's second-richest person pledges to concentrate his vast resources on his own research institute …
Kevin Roose / New York Times: Hands-on with Alexa+: fun to talk to and good at handling multistep requests, but it is buggy, unreliable, and worse at some basic tasks than the original Alexa — Alexa+ processes language in a more fluid way. Users can speak to it as they would to a human.Graham Dickie/The New York Times
New York Times: A look at Changpeng Zhao's efforts to get a pardon from Trump for his money-laundering charges, including via lobbying and a business deal with the Trump family — A sophisticated operation is pushing President Trump to forgive Changpeng Zhao, which would boost the chances for his company, Binance, to break into the U.S. market.
New York Times: An analysis of over 1M words of conversation between a ChatGPT user and ChatGPT shows how chatbots can lead ordinarily rational people to spiral into delusion — Over 21 days of talking with ChatGPT, an otherwise perfectly sane man became convinced that he was a real-life superhero.
Emily Steel / New York Times: Court records: from 2017 to 2022, 400,181 US Uber trips had sexual assault and sexual misconduct reports, far exceeding its public disclosure of 12,522 reports — Uber received a report of sexual assault or sexual misconduct in the United States almost every eight minutes on average between 2017 and 2022 …
Michael J. de la Merced / New York Times: New York-based sales tool startup Clay raised $100M led by CapitalG at a $3.1B valuation, up from $1.25B in January 2025, and expects $100M in revenue in 2025 — Investors valued the company, which describes its core user as a kind of marketing engineer, at $3.1 billion.
Mike Isaac / New York Times: Silicon Valley has shifted from Web 2.0 to a new “hard tech”, AI-dominated era with fewer perks and a more serious mood, as startups use San Francisco as a base — In a scene in HBO's “Silicon Valley” in 2014, a character who had just sold his idea to a fictional tech company …
Nicole Sperling / New York Times: A profile of Netflix VP Brandon Riegg, who oversees unscripted series, sports, documentary series, and gaming, as the streamer pushes into live shows and sports — Netflix's head of nonfiction series and sports, Brandon Riegg. Early in his Netflix career he had a memorable flop.
Natallie Rocha / New York Times: How 20-something CEOs like Cognition AI's Scott Wu, Cursor's Michael Truell, Cluely's Roy Lee, and Scale AI's Alexandr Wang are swarming San Francisco's AI boom — Some dropped out of M.I.T., Georgetown and Stanford. Others decided not to go to college. They all say they could not afford …
Sheera Frenkel / New York Times: Google, OpenAI, Meta, and VCs are increasingly embracing the US military industrial complex, a major Silicon Valley cultural shift supported by President Trump — In a major shift, Google, OpenAI, Meta and venture capitalists — many of whom had once forsworn involvement in war — have embraced the military industrial complex.
New York Times: Source: OpenAI raised $8.3B led by Dragoneer at a $300B valuation, months ahead of schedule and part of a $40B goal for 2025; 5M business users pay for ChatGPT — The venture capital round values the ChatGPT maker at $300 billion, and underscores the fierceness of the A.I. money race.
Zachary Small / New York Times: How the video game industry, which has used AI since the 1980s, is embracing AI-enhanced gameplay, worrying some developers as major studios cut employees — Game designers have used artificial intelligence since the 1980s. But digital characters demonstrating self-awareness is a far cry from the ghosts chasing Pac-Man.
Alyson Krueger / New York Times: People are increasingly using generative AI to create digital vision boards, such as videos depicting their ideal futures, to help them achieve their goals — For some believers in manifestation, vision boards have become a little like movie trailers, as brought to you by A.I.
Joseph Bernstein / New York Times: A look at the video podcasting surge; a study shows ~75% of podcast consumers play video episodes and ~30% play video episodes minimized or in background mode — An audio-only medium spawned a giant industry that is now largely focused on video. — The following are the runtimes …
Stuart A. Thompson / New York Times: A look at the Dor Brothers, a video production studio that has gained over 100M views across platforms by creating viral subversive videos using only AI tools — President Trump leans forward in a limousine, takes a long puff from a cigarette and flashes a wide grin.
New York Times: Substack raised $100M from the Chernin Group, a16z, and others, sources say at a $1.1B valuation, as it builds a social network and focuses on advertising — Substack, originally a newsletter service, says its app now has millions of users interacting with its creators.
Tripp Mickle / New York Times: Sources: in a Trump meeting last week, Jensen Huang argued US chips should be the global standard and was backed by David Sacks, who disliked Biden's chip rules — With help from a longtime Silicon Valley investor turned White House insider, Mr. Huang got the administration to reverse course on restrictions.
Meaghan Tobin / New York Times: China, which pledged $8.5B for young AI startups in April, is taking an industrial policy approach to help its AI companies close the gap with those in the US — Beijing is taking an industrial policy approach to help its A.I. companies close the gap with those in the United States.
New York Times: Researchers: during the 12-day Iran-Israel war, both sides engaged in unprecedented psychological warfare using AI content and social media to spread propaganda — The 12-day conflict was marked by a flurry of propaganda, disinformation and covert operations aided by artificial intelligence and spread by social media.
Farah Stockman / New York Times: A four-day US military drone exercise in Alaska exposed significant technological and operational gaps compared to Chinese and Russian drone capabilities — A drone made by Neros, a start-up in El Segundo, Calif., took off during a military exercise in the Yukon Training Area in Alaska.Video by Ash Adams
Tim Fernholz / New York Times: A look at WindBorne, which uses weather balloons and AI to improve forecasting, as potential budget cuts to NOAA threaten its access to public weather data — Weather forecasts, believe it or not, have come a long way. A five-day forecast today is as accurate as a three-day forecast four decades ago.
Tripp Mickle / New York Times: Nvidia's rise after ChatGPT's release is reminiscent of dot-com era titans like Cisco and Juniper; Cisco's share price grew over 1000x between 1990 and 2000 — The A.I. chip maker reached the landmark before Apple and Microsoft, as its value rose more than tenfold after ChatGPT's release in late 2022.
Cecilia Kang / New York Times: The Internet Watch Foundation identified 1,286 AI-generated videos of child sexual abuse in H1 2025 globally, up from just two in H1 2024 — Organizations that track the material are reporting a surge in A.I. images and videos, which are threatening to overwhelm law enforcement.
New York Times: How crypto executives, lobbyists, campaign operatives, and Trump business partners turned President Trump from an outspoken bitcoin skeptic into a supporter — Just over a year ago, while sitting around a table in an ornate meeting room at Mar-a-Lago, David Bailey and a group of top Bitcoin executives made a pitch to Donald J. Trump.
Natasha Singer / New York Times: The American Federation of Teachers, the second-largest US teachers' union, says it will open an AI training hub with $23M from Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic — The American Federation of Teachers said it would use the $23 million, including $500,000 from the A.I. start-up Anthropic, to create a national training center.
Meaghan Tobin / New York Times: Hangzhou, home to DeepSeek and Alibaba, has become a Chinese AI startup hub, and the suburb Liangzhu has emerged as a hot spot for coders in their 20s and 30s — As China vies with Silicon Valley for primacy, Hangzhou, home to DeepSeek and Alibaba, is where its aspiring tech titans mingle and share ideas.
Charlie Savage / New York Times: FOIA docs: the Trump administration claimed broad authority to nullify laws in letters to tech firms releasing them of legal liability related to the TikTok ban — In purporting to license otherwise illegal conduct by tech firms, President Trump set a precedent expanding executive power, legal experts warned.
Carl Zimmer / New York Times: Researchers detail Centaur, a modified version of Llama trained on 10M+ responses from 160 psychological experiments, in an attempt to mimic human cognition — To better understand human cognition, scientists trained a large language model on 10 million psychology experiment questions.
Gina Kolata / New York Times: An analysis of 15M+ biomedical abstracts from 2010 to 2024 finds researchers using AI to write abstracts use certain words far more often than those who don't — Scientists show that the frequency of a set of words seems to have increased in published study abstracts since ChatGPT was released into the world.
New York Times: How India is carving out space for high-end manufacturing, including a $2.5B Foxconn iPhone factory in Devanahalli, near Bengaluru, aiming to create 40K jobs — India is carving out a new space for Foxconn and other high-end manufacturers, just as President Trump demands American companies do at home.
Cade Metz / New York Times: PitchBook: US VC investment in AI startups rose 33% QoQ to $65B in Q1, up 550% from the quarter prior to ChatGPT's 2022 release — Companies like OpenAI, Amazon and Meta have supersized their spending on artificial intelligence, with no signs of slowing down.
New York Times: Sources: Mark Zuckerberg and his lieutenants have discussed “de-investing” in Llama in favor of AI models from competitors like OpenAI and Anthropic — Unhappy with his company's artificial intelligence efforts, Meta's C.E.O. is on a spending spree as he reconsiders his strategy …