THE ATLANTIC – Technology | Internet & Technology

In a small room in San Diego last week, a man in a black leather jacket explained to me how to save the world from destruction by AI. Max Tegmark, a notable figure in the AI-safety movement, believes that “artificial general intelligence,” or AGI, could precipitate the end of human life. I was in town for NeurIPS, one of the largest AI-research conferences, and Tegmark had invited me, along with five other journalists, to a briefing on an AI-safety index that he would release the next day. No company scored better than a C+.The threat of technological superintelligence is the stuff of science fiction, yet it has become a topic of serious discussion in the past few years. Despite the lack of clear definition—even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has called AGI a “weakly defined term”—the idea that powerful AI contains an inherent threat to humanity has gained acceptance among respected… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

Before each episode of America First With Nicholas J. Fuentes begins, a surreal mix of images and video clips runs, like a screen saver, for an unpredictable and seemingly eternal amount of time. Gentle plains of swaying grass, trickling streams, and the show’s logo flash across the screen. EDM kicks in. Psychedelic depictions of Christian imagery, including Jesus’s crucifixion, come and go. So do snippets of Fuentes talking about, among other things, borders, drag queens, and his faith. “We want this century to be the most Christian century in the history of planet Earth,” he says.I’ve become intimately familiar with these clips. Recently, I spent five days as a regular Fuentes viewer. Across five episodes of the nightly broadcast, I watched the 27-year-old white-supremacist influencer speak into a microphone for just shy of 12 hours total. The show is scheduled to air live on Rumble at 9 p.m. central time,… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

OpenAI turned 10 yesterday, and President Donald Trump incidentally gave the company a very special birthday gift: a sweeping executive order aiming to dismantle and preempt many state-level regulations of artificial intelligence. “There’s only going to be one winner here, and it’s probably going to be the U.S. or China,” Trump said in a press conference announcing the order. And for the United States to win, “we have to be unified. China is unified.”Almost all of the AI industry’s biggest players have been pushing for this move. OpenAI has been asking all year for the Trump administration to preempt state-level AI regulations, which the company believes would be burdensome in various ways; Microsoft, Google, Meta, Nvidia, and the major venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz have made similar requests. These firms and Trump have the same argument: Having to comply with dozens or hundreds of state regulations would be onerous, slowing the… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

It goes like this: When six and seven appear together in print, or in speech, or on television, or in a YouTube video, or even just when you write them down on loose-leaf paper, that’s “six-seven.” “Six-seven!” you say, you probably being a middle-school-age child. Such is the youth phenomenon known by this name. Now you know, but chances are you already did, especially if a preteen has lived in your house anytime since this spring.Six-seven-ing seems to have peaked around Halloween, and now, as the holidays descend, its days are numbered. My own 11-year-old never liked it (a culture of contrarianism pervades the Bogost residence), but now she actively scorns it. “The memes will reset on New Year’s Day,” she recently announced. I hear the same from other parents of kids her age. Worse, parents are now saying “six-seven” (as are sports leagues and fast-food chains), which is of… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

It’s rude to boast, but here in 2025, you’ve got to take the wins where you can get them. This morning, Time magazine announced its Person of the Year, and it’s me. It’s you, too.If you want to get all technical about it, Time’s Person of the Year is actually not a person at all but a collection of people: the architects of AI. One of the two covers Time released is a re-creation of the “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper” photograph from 1932, which depicted blue-collar ironworkers suspended hundreds of feet in the air during the construction of 30 Rockefeller Plaza. In its image, Time replaces these laborers with tech personalities such as Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and Jensen Huang. That editorial decision alone is, shall we say, a rich text.Perhaps you are wondering: Where do you, Charlie, fit in? And what of myself? I’m glad you asked.… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.