Category: Wired

  • ACLU Warns DOGEs Unchecked Access Could Violate Federal Law

    ACLU Warns DOGEs Unchecked Access Could Violate Federal Law

    The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) told federal lawmakers on Friday that Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have seized control of a number of federal computer systems that house data tightly restricted under federal statutes. In some cases, any deviations in the manner in which the data is being used may

  • 2025: The Year of the AI App

    2025: The Year of the AI App

    What a great idea I had for the first Plaintext of 2025. After following the frantic competition between OpenAI, Google, Meta, and Anthropic to churn out brainier and deeper “frontier” foundation models, I settled on a thesis about what’s ahead: In the new year, those mighty trailblazers will consume billions of dollars, countless gigawatts, and

  • Elon Musks DOGE Is Working on a Custom Chatbot Called GSAi

    Elon Musks DOGE Is Working on a Custom Chatbot Called GSAi

    Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is pushing to rapidly develop “GSAi,” a custom generative AI chatbot for the US General Services Administration, according to two people familiar with the project. The plan is part of President Donald Trump’s AI-first agenda to modernize the federal government with advanced technology. One goal of the initiative

  • LinkedIn Is Testing an AI Tool That Could Transform How People Search for Jobs

    LinkedIn Is Testing an AI Tool That Could Transform How People Search for Jobs

    LinkedIn is testing a new job-hunting tool that uses a custom large language model to comb through huge quantities of data to help people find prospective roles. The company believes that artificial intelligence will help users unearth new roles they might have missed in the typical search process. “The reality is, you don’t find your

  • Google Lifts a Ban on Using Its AI for Weapons and Surveillance

    Google Lifts a Ban on Using Its AI for Weapons and Surveillance

    Google announced Tuesday that it is overhauling the principles governing how it uses artificial intelligence and other advanced technology. The company removed language promising not to pursue “technologies that cause or are likely to cause overall harm,” “weapons or other technologies whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people,”

  • Elon Musk Ally Tells Staff ‘AI-First Is the Future of Key Government Agency

    Elon Musk Ally Tells Staff ‘AI-First Is the Future of Key Government Agency

    In a Monday morning meeting, Thomas Shedd, the recently appointed Technology Transformation Services director and Elon Musk ally, told General Services Administration workers that the agency’s new administrator is pursuing an “AI-first strategy,” sources tell WIRED. Throughout the meeting, Shedd shared his vision for a GSA that operates like a “startup software company,” automating different

  • These Robots Are Recovering Dumped Explosives From the Baltic Sea

    These Robots Are Recovering Dumped Explosives From the Baltic Sea

    In a charming corner of the Bay of Lübeck, within sight of northern Germany’s windswept beaches, specialized clearance teams have been trawling the seafloor for the kind of catch that fishermen in these parts usually avoid—discarded naval mines, torpedoes, stacks of artillery shells, and heavy aerial bombs, all of which have been rusting away for

  • Heres How DeepSeek Censorship Actually Worksand How to Get Around It

    Heres How DeepSeek Censorship Actually Worksand How to Get Around It

    Less than two weeks after DeepSeek launched its open-source AI model, the Chinese startup is still dominating the public conversation about the future of artificial intelligence. While the firm seems to have an edge on US rivals in terms of math and reasoning, it also aggressively censors its own replies. Ask DeepSeek R1 about Taiwan

  • OpenAIs o3-Mini Is a Leaner AI Model That Keeps Pace With DeepSeek

    OpenAIs o3-Mini Is a Leaner AI Model That Keeps Pace With DeepSeek

    OpenAI is making a smaller, more efficient version of its cleverest artificial intelligence model available for free as it seeks to answer the hype and enthusiasm swirling around a new open source offering from Chinese AI startup DeepSeek. WIRED previously reported that OpenAI was prepping the new model, called o3-mini, for release on January 31.

  • DeepSeeks Safety Guardrails Failed Every Test Researchers Threw at Its AI Chatbot

    DeepSeeks Safety Guardrails Failed Every Test Researchers Threw at Its AI Chatbot

    Ever since OpenAI released ChatGPT at the end of 2022, hackers and security researchers have tried to find holes in large language models (LLMs) to get around their guardrails and trick them into spewing out hate speech, bomb-making instructions, propaganda, and other harmful content. In response, OpenAI and other generative AI developers have refined their