Business

Made in China

Chinese Companies Are Selling Vapes With Chemicals Potentially More Potent Than Nicotine

Big Tobacco studied nicotine analogs like 6-methyl-nicotine for decades but never marketed them. Now, Chinese vape makers are using them to sidestep US regulations.

Louise Matsakis

Uncanny Valley

China-US AI Race Escalates, OpenAI Models Break Free, and Why You Should Check Your Car Alarm

Brian Barrett, Zoë Schiffer, and Leah Feiger

Backchannel

Silicon Valley Is Completely Divided Over Chinese AI

Lauren Goode

Backchannel

Lyft’s CEO Says, ‘We’re the Good Uber’

David Risher insists that Lyft has lowered its prices and that customers who only check his competitor’s app are “leaving money on the table.”

Steven Levy

Meta’s Pursuit of the Careless People Author Is Relentless and Self-Defeating

Yes, Sarah Wynn-Williams violated her deal to stay silent. But the power disparity bolsters the view that Meta is a heartless bully.

Steven Levy

Europe Is Fed Up and Wants Its Own AI

It's a stretch to think that the continent can build a top-tier model, but it has an advantage: Donald Trump.

Steven Levy

Silicon Valley’s Elite Financial Advisers Say This Era of Wealth Is Different

The rich are getting richer. Here’s what wealth advisers are telling their tech clients right now.

Lauren Goode

AI Lab

AI Isn’t Smarter Than a Baby—Yet

Babies are tremendous learning machines, and key advances for AI may soon be found in the architecture of their little brains.

Will Knight

I Built a Self-Improving AI, and So Can You

Experiments in using AI to build AI show that the future doesn’t just belong to the frontier labs.

Will Knight

You Can Now Sound the Alarm on AI Behaving Badly

Are you worried your AI chatbot is trying to build a bomb or leak personal information about you? There’s a website for that.

Will Knight

I Met With China’s Top AI Experts. They’re Freaking Out, Too

The AI arms race between China and the US has researchers on both sides worried about a “Chernobyl moment.”

Will Knight

Model Behavior

Here’s Why Anthropic Is Pushing States to Regulate AI Faster

The company endorsed landmark AI transparency laws in California and New York last year, but its head of US state and local policy says they may already be outdated.

Maxwell Zeff

Anthropic Wants You to Pay Up for Claude Fable 5

Claude subscribers must soon pay usage-based fees to access Anthropic’s best consumer AI model—a sign that the golden era of AI subscriptions is ending.

Maxwell Zeff

Can Cursor Remain a Platform for OpenAI and Anthropic’s Models Inside SpaceX?

Cursor hopes to continue offering third-party AI models after it's acquired by SpaceX, testing the relationships between frontier AI labs.

Maxwell Zeff

Anthropic Thinks Its Own Success Is Key to Making AI Safe

Anthropic's critics argue it's rapidly accumulating power. The company says that's what responsible AI development looks like.

Maxwell Zeff

Made in China

Meet the Battery Startup Taking on China’s Giants

Solid-state batteries are safer and more capable—but harder to mass-produce. They also represent an opportunity for non-Chinese companies to get back in the game.

Zeyi Yang

How People in China Keep Outsmarting Anthropic’s Geolocation Restrictions

As Anthropic tightens restrictions on access to Claude in China, users keep finding new workarounds, from proxy services to fake identities sourced on Telegram.

Zeyi Yang and Matt Burgess

Chinese Drivers Are Using Tiny Plastic Heads to Fool Tesla’s Autopilot Safeguards

A cottage industry of celebrity figurines, blinking screens, and other DIY gadgets is helping drivers bypass Tesla's distracted-driving controls.

Zeyi Yang

The TikTok Ban Was Never About TikTok

A new documentary chronicles how the app became a stand-in for American anxieties about social media, China, and political power.

Zeyi Yang

Artificial Intelligence

Some Kids Will Never Think AI Is Cool

“I think it should stand for artificial idiot,” one 9-year-old says. Here’s why kids of all ages are calling AI “disgusting” and “creepy.”

Elana Klein

China’s Open AI Models Are Challenging Silicon Valley’s Playbook

As access to Anthropic’s and OpenAI’s frontier models becomes more restricted, Chinese labs are pitching their open-source alternatives as stable, accessible, and increasingly capable.

Zeyi Yang

This Former Intel CEO Wants to Jumpstart Moore’s Law With Light

Pat Gelsinger wants to pave the way to ever more powerful artificial intelligence using tiny beams of light.

Joel Khalili

Nvidia Wants to Own Every Chip Inside AI Data Centers

Nvidia’s Vera Rubin platform combines CPUs and GPUs into a single system, reflecting the company’s growing ambition to power every layer of AI infrastructure.

Lauren Goode

Big Tech

Meta’s New Feel-Good AI Ad Uses a Song About the World Ending

The clip features the David Bowie track “Five Years,” which includes lyrics such as “Earth was really dying (dying).”

Caroline Haskins

‘It’s a Modern-Day Draft’: Why Stanford Students Walked Out on Sundar Pichai’s Commencement Speech

Last month, more than a hundred Stanford students left their own graduation to protest Google’s military contracts and deals with ICE. Two organizers, Amanda Campos and Eva Jones, tell us why.

Katie Drummond

Use AWS? Thanks to a Billing Glitch, That’ll Be $3 Billion

An error with the cloud computing giant’s billing operation caused some customers’ monthly bills to rise from a few cents to billions of dollars.

Caroline Haskins

A Majority of European Lawmakers Voted Against Letting Big Tech Read Our Messages. They’re Going to Anyway

Companies will once again be allowed to scan citizens’ personal texts, emails, and social media messages via the “Chat Control” bill to find child abuse material online.

Isabella Ward