Business

Made in China

Chinese AI Researchers Are Finding Their Voice on X

As OpenAI and Anthropic employees grow quieter online, researchers at Chinese AI labs are flocking to X to explain their work, recruit talent, and shape the global conversation on AI.

Zeyi Yang

Backchannel

AI Slop Melodramas Are Taking Over X—and Their Creators Are Cashing In

Steven Levy

Escaped Room

Anthropic Says Claude Hacked Into 3 Organizations During Cybersecurity Tests

Louise Matsakis and Lily Hay Newman

Backchannel

Silicon Valley Is Completely Divided Over Chinese AI

The AI “startups” worth billions of dollars are raising alarm bells about Chinese AI. The smaller players have a totally different take.

Lauren Goode

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

AI Lab

It’s Frighteningly Easy to Jailbreak Some Frontier AI Models

I watched a new tool try to get around the model safeguards of four major frontier companies. You might be surprised by how they performed.

Will Knight

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

Model Behavior

Everyone Is Freaking Out About OpenAI and Anthropic’s Race for Dominance

Researchers fear AI is moving too fast, while Mark Zuckerberg is worried about who owns it. Plus: Inside Black Forest Labs’ push into robotics.

Maxwell Zeff

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

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

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

Artificial Intelligence

Nvidia’s Open Source Alliance Is Missing Some Key Names: OpenAI and Anthropic

This week on Uncanny Valley, we discuss the open- vs. closed-source debate in AI, key players in White House AI policy, and how to stop your chatbot logs from showing up in search-engine results.

Brian Barrett, Zoë Schiffer, and Leah Feiger

Google’s Gemini Can Now Stomp Around as a Humanoid Robot

The latest version of Google DeepMind's AI model includes a significant jump into “physical AGI.” But plopping AI into the real world comes with risks.

Will Knight

LinkedIn Won’t Be Expanding Its Data Centers in the Next Year

Despite the ongoing AI boom, LinkedIn is holding the line on compute spending. Instead, it’s challenging engineers to make every GPU count.

Paresh Dave

OpenAI’s Rogue AI Agent Hacked More Than Just Hugging Face

In a new disclosure, OpenAI says its agent used exposed logins to gain access to at least four “publicly available services” in its unhinged quest to solve a test.

Dell Cameron and Maxwell Zeff

Big Tech

Ebay Has to Pay $55.7 Million in Settlement for Its Unhinged Harassment Campaign

For months on end, eBay employees and contractors made life hell for a couple that had criticized the company. Six years later, the company is finally paying up.

Lauren Goode

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

On this episode of Uncanny Valley, we dive into accusations that China’s Moonshot AI stole from Anthropic, and how the US Army needs to cut back on AI use.

Brian Barrett, Zoë Schiffer, and Leah Feiger

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

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