Technology

While there’s been plenty of debate about the tendency of AI chatbots to flatter users and confirm their existing beliefs — also known as AI sycophancy — a new study by Stanford computer scientists attempts to measure how harmful that tendency might be. The study, titled “Sycophantic AI decreases prosocial intentions and promotes dependence” and…

The team from Bluesky has built another app — and this time, it’s not a social network, but an AI assistant that allows you to design your own algorithm, create custom feeds, and, one day, vibe-code your own app. At the Atmosphere conference over the weekend, Bluesky’s former CEO, Jay Graber, now chief innovation officer,…

While the relationship between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg was once thorny enough that Musk challenged Zuckerberg to a cagefight, things had warmed up by the early days of the second Trump administration — at least according to court documents published Friday. As reported by Engadget, these texts between Zuckerberg and Musk were released as…

Earlier this month, it looked like all but two of Elon Musk’s 11 co-founders at his AI startup xAI had departed the company. Now, according to Business Insider, the remaining two co-founders, Manuel Kroiss and Ross Nordeen, have left as well. BI said on Wednesday that Kroiss had told people that he’s leaving xAI, then…

SoftBank has taken on a new $40 billion loan to help it cover its $30 billion commitment to invest in OpenAI as part of the AI model maker’s record-breaking $110 billion raise last month, the Japanese conglomerate said on Friday. Most striking is that the loan is unsecured and has a 12-month term, meaning it…

For the better part of a decade, Whoop sold itself as a secret weapon for serious athletes. LeBron James was convinced to slap on the company’s fitness band in Whoop’s first year. Michael Phelps came soon after. Other Whoop wearers include Cristiano Ronaldo, Patrick Mahomes, and Rory McIlroy. The message to the public? The world’s…

Physical Intelligence, the two-year-old San Francisco robotics startup, is in discussions to raise about $1 billion in new funding at a valuation exceeding $11 billion, according to Bloomberg. The deal would effectively double the company’s $5.6 billion valuation in just four months. Founders Fund is set to participate with Lightspeed Venture Partners also in talks…

The European Union’s top executive body has confirmed a cyberattack after hackers reportedly stole reams of data from its cloud storage. European Commission spokesperson Nika Blazevic confirmed to TechCrunch on Friday that the Commission “discovered a cyber-attack, which affected part of our cloud infrastructure.” “We have taken immediate steps and contained the attack. Risk mitigation…

When it comes to AI chatbots, there’s currently a war on for consumer attention. All the big chatbot providers are looking to increase their user count and, in a minor coup for itself, Google just made it significantly easier for users of those other chatbots to defect to Gemini. On Thursday, the company announced what…

A federal judge has sided with Anthropic in its twisty legal battle with the Trump administration, awarding the tech company an injunction against the government’s recent order that labeled it a “supply chain risk,” the Wall Street Journal reports. On Thursday, Judge Rita F. Lin of the Northern District of California ordered the Trump administration…