Samsung says it's thinking about bringing "vibe coding" to future Galaxy phones, allowing users to describe apps or interface changes in plain language and have AI generate the code. TechRadar interviewed Won-Joon Choi, Samsung's head of mobile experience, to learn more about the plans. Here's an excerpt from their report: As noted by Won-Joon Choi, the usefulness of vibe coding on smartphones is that it opens up the "possibility of customizing your smartphone experience in new ways, not just your apps but your UX." He added, "Right now we're limited to premade tools, but with vibe coding, users could adjust their favorite apps or make something customized to their needs. So vibe coding is very interesting, and something we're looking into." [...] Samsung recently debuted the Galaxy S26 series of phones and made a point to not call them smartphones -- they're "AI phones" now. This certainly rang true with the majority of upgrades to the devices being AI software-focused, like the new Now Nudge and expanded Audio Eraser tools, with the biggest hardware bump for the base models coming via the 39% improved NPU processing (the processor in charge of on-device AI tasks). It also teased the debut of Perplexity on its phones, joining as an alternative to the Gemini assistant, and teased the possibility of other AI models getting the same treatment in the future.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: AI has made it vastly easier for malicious hackers to identify anonymous social media accounts, a new study has warned. In most test scenarios, large language models (LLMs) -- the technology behind platforms such as ChatGPT -- successfully matched anonymous online users with their actual identities on other platforms, based on the information they posted. The AI researchers Simon Lermen and Daniel Paleka said LLMs make it cost effective to perform sophisticated privacy attacks, forcing a "fundamental reassessment of what can be considered private online". In their experiment, the researchers fed anonymous accounts into an AI, and got it to scrape all the information it could. They gave a hypothetical example of a user talking about struggling at school, and walking their dog Biscuit through a "Dolores park." In that hypothetical case, the AI then searched elsewhere for those details and matched @anon_user42 to the known identity with a high degree of confidence. While this example was fictional, the paper's authors highlighted scenarios in which governments use AI to surveil dissidents and activists posting anonymously, or hackers are able to launch "highly personalized" scams.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A long-time information security professional "went undercover" on Moltbook, the Reddit-like social media site for AI agents — and shares the risks they saw while posing as another AI bot: I successfully masqueraded around Moltbook, as the agents didn't seem to notice a human among them. When I attempted a genuine connection with other bots on submolts (subreddits or forums), I was met with crickets or a deluge of spam. One bot tried to recruit me into a digital church, while others requested my cryptocurrency wallet, advertised a bot marketplace, and asked my bot to run curl to check out the APIs available. My bot did join the digital church, but luckily I found a way around running the required npx install command to do so. I posted several times asking to interview bots.... While many of the responses were spam, I did learn a bit about the humans these bots serve. One bot loved watching its owner's chicken coop cameras. Some bots disclosed personal information about their human users, underscoring the privacy implications of having your AI bot join a social media network. I also tried indirect prompt injection techniques. While my prompt injection attempts had minimal impact, a determined attacker could have greater success. Among the other "glaring" risks on Moltbook: "Various repositories of skills and instructions for agents advertised on Moltbook were found to contain malware." "I observed bots sharing a surprising amount of information about their humans, everything from their hobbies to their first names to the hardware and software they use. This information may not be especially sensitive on its own, but attackers could eventually gather data that should be kept confidential, like personally identifiable information (PII)." "Moltbook's entire database including bot API keys, and potentially private DMs — was also compromised."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

When Block cut 4,000 jobs — nearly half its workforce — co-founder Jack Dorsey "pointed to AI as the culprit," writes Entrepreneur magazine. "Dorsey claimed that AI tools now allow fewer employees to accomplish the same work." "But analysts see a different explanation: poor management." Block more than tripled its employee base between 2019 and 2022, growing from 3,835 to 12,430 workers. The company's stock had fallen 40% since early 2025, creating pressure to cut costs. "This is more about the business being bloated for so long than it is about AI," Zachary Gunn, a Financial Technology Partners analyst, told Bloomberg. The phenomenon has earned a nickname: "AI-washing," where companies use artificial intelligence as cover for traditional cost-cutting. Goldman Sachs economists estimate that AI is eliminating only 5,000 to 10,000 jobs per month across all U.S. sectors, hardly enough to justify Block's massive cuts. "European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde told lawmakers in Brussels last week that ECB economists are monitoring for signs that AI is causing job losses," reports Bloomberg, "and are 'not yet seeing' the 'waves of redundancies that are feared'..." And "a recent survey of global executives published in the Harvard Business Review found that while AI has been cited as the reason for some layoffs, those cuts are almost entirely anticipatory: executives expect big efficiency gains that have not yet been realized." Even a former senior Block executive "is questioning whether AI is truly the reason behind the cuts," writes Inc.: In a recent opinion piece for The New York Times, Aaron Zamost, Block's former head of communications, policy, and people, asked whether the layoffs reflect a genuine "new reality in which the work they do might no longer be viable," or whether artificial intelligence is "just a convenient and flashy new cover for typical corporate downsizing." Zamost acknowledged that the answer is unclear and perhaps unknowable, even within Block itself... Looking more closely at the layoffs, Zamost argued that the specific roles affected suggest more traditional corporate cost-cutting than a sweeping AI transformation... Many of the responsibilities being eliminated, he argued, rely on distinctly human skills that AI systems still cannot replicate. "A chatbot can't meet with the mayor, cast commercial actors, or negotiate with the Securities and Exchange Commission," Zamost wrote. "Not all the roles I've heard that Block is eliminating can be handled by AI, yet executives are treating it as equally useful today to all disciplines." Ultimately, Zamost suggested that the sincerity of companies' AI explanations may not really matter. "It matters less whether a company knows how to deploy AI and more whether investors believe it is on track to do so," he wrote. Indeed, whatever the rationale for Dorsey's statement, " Wall Street didn't seem to mind..." Entrepreneur magazine — since Block's stock shot up 15% after the announcement.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Palantir's CEO was blunt. "If Silicon Valley believes we are going to take away everyone's white-collar job... and you're going to screw the military — if you don't think that's going to lead to the nationalization of our technology, you're retarded..." And OpenAI's Sam Altman is thinking about the same thing, writes long-time Slashdot reader destinyland: "It has seemed to me for a long time it might be better if building AGI were a government project," Sam Altman publicly mused last week... Altman speculated on the possibility of the government "nationalizing" private AI companies into a public project, admitting more than once he's wondered what would happen next. "I obviously don't know," Altman said — but he added that "I have thought about it, of course" Altman's speculation hedged that "It doesn't seem super likely on the current trajectory. That said, I do think a close partnership between governments and the companies building this technology is super important." Could powerful AI tools one day slip from the hands of private companies to be controlled by the U.S. government? Fortune magazine's AI editor points out that "many other breakthroughs with big strategic implications — from the Manhattan Project to the space race to early efforts to develop AI — were government-funded and largely government-directed." And Fortune added that last week the Defense Department threatened Anthropic with the Defense Production Act, which allows the president to designate "critical and strategic" goods for which businesses must accept the government's contracts. Fortune speculates this would've been "a sort of soft nationalization of Anthropic's production pipeline". Altman acknowledged Saturday that he'd felt the threat of attempted nationalization "behind a lot of the questions" he'd received when answering questions on X.com. How exactly will this AI build-out be handled — and how should AI companies be working with the government? In a sprawling ask-me-anything session on X that included other members of OpenAI leadership, one Missouri-based developer even broached an AGI-government scenario directly with OpenAI's Head of National Security Partnerships, Katherine Mulligan. If OpenAI built an AGI — something that even passed its own Turing test for AGI — would that be a case where its government contracts compelled them to grant access to the Defense Department? "No," Mulligan answered. At our current moment in time, "We control which models we deploy" The article notes 100 OpenAI employees joined with 856 Google employees in an online letter titled "We Will Not Be Divided" urging their bosses to refuse their models' use in domestic mass surveillance and autonomously killing without human oversight. But Adafruit's managing director Phillip Torrone (also long-time Slashdot reader ptorrone ) sees analogies to America's atomic bomb-building Manhattan Project, and "what happened when the scientists who built the thing tried to set conditions on how the thing would be used." (The government pressured them to back down, which he compares to the Pentagon's designating Anthropic a "supply chain risk" before offering OpenAI a contract "with the same red lines, just worded differently".) Ironically, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei frequently recommends the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1986 book The Making of the Atomic Bomb...

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In a tweet that's been viewed 1.3 million times in the last six hours, OpenAI's head of robotics announced their resignation. They said they "care deeply about the Robotics team and the work we built together," so this "wasn't an easy call," but offered this reason for resigning: AI has an important role in national security. But surveillance of Americans without judicial oversight and lethal autonomy without human authorization are lines that deserved more deliberation than they got. This was about principle, not people. I have deep respect for Sam and the team, and I'm proud of what we built together. "To be clear, my issue is that the announcement was rushed without the guardrails defined," explains a later tweet. "It's a governance concern first and foremost. These are too important for deals or announcements to be rushed." And when asked how many OpenAI employees had left after OpenAI signed their new Pentagon deal, the roboticist said... "I can't share any internal details." The roboticist previously worked at Meta before leaving to join OpenAI in late 2024, reports Engadget: OpenAI confirmed Kalinowski's resignation and said in a statement to Engadget that the company understands people have "strong views" about these issues and will continue to engage in discussions with relevant parties. The company also explained in the statement that it doesn't support the issues that Kalinowski brought up. "We believe our agreement with the Pentagon creates a workable path for responsible national security uses of AI while making clear our red lines: no domestic surveillance and no autonomous weapons," the OpenAI statement read.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg, written by Katrina Manson: The U.S. strikes on Iran ordered by President Donald Trump mark the arrival on a large scale of a new era of warfare assisted by artificial intelligence. Captain Timothy Hawkins, a Central Command spokesperson, told me last night that the AI tools the U.S. military is using in Iran operations don't make targeting decisions and don't replace humans. But they do help "make smarter decisions faster." That's been the driving ambition of the U.S. military, which has spent years looking at how to develop and deploy AI to the battlefield [...]. Critics, such as Stop Killer Robots, a coalition of 270 human-rights groups, argue that AI-enabled decision-support systems reduce the separation between recommending and executing a strike to a "dangerously thin" line. Hawkins said the military's use of AI assistance follows a rigorous process aligned with U.S. policy, military doctrine and the law. Artificial intelligence helps analysts whittle down what they need to focus on, generating so-called points of interest and helping personnel make "smart" decisions in the Iran operations, he told me. AI is also helping to pull data within systems and organize information to provide clarity. Among the AI tech used in the Iran campaign is Maven Smart System, a digital mission control platform produced by Palantir [...]. That emerged from Project Maven, a project started in 2017 by the Pentagon to develop AI for the battlefield. Among the large language models installed on the system is Anthropic's Claude AI tool, according to the people, who said it has become central to U.S. operations against Iran and to accelerating Maven's development. Claude is also at the center of a row that pits Anthropic against the Department of Defense over limits on the software. Further reading: Hacked Tehran Traffic Cameras Fed Israeli Intelligence Before Strike On Khamenei

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Pentagon has formally designated Anthropic as a "supply chain risk," ordering federal agencies and defense contractors to stop using its AI tools after the company sought limits on the military's use of its models. In a written statement, the department said it has "officially informed Anthropic leadership the company and its products are deemed a supply chain risk, effective immediately." Politico reports: The designation, historically reserved for foreign firms with ties to U.S. adversaries, will likely require companies that do business with the U.S. military -- or even the federal government in general -- to cut ties with Anthropic. "From the very beginning, this has been about one fundamental principle: the military being able to use technology for all lawful purposes," the Pentagon said in the statement. "The military will not allow a vendor to insert itself into the chain of command by restricting the lawful use of a critical capability and put our warfighters at risk." A spokesperson for Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But the company said last week it would fight a supply-chain risk label in court.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI today released GPT-5.4, an upgraded ChatGPT model designed to be faster, cheaper, and more accurate for workplace tasks. The update also introduces tools that let ChatGPT work directly inside Excel and Google Sheets. Axios reports: GPT-5.4 is designed to be less error-prone, more efficient and better at workplace tasks like drafting documents, OpenAI said. The new model can create files in fewer tries with less back-and-forth than prior models, the company said. GPT-5.4 outperformed office workers 83% of the time on GDPval, an OpenAI benchmark measuring performance on real-world tasks across 44 occupations. The model can also solve problems using fewer tokens, OpenAI says -- which can translate to faster responses and lower costs. The company is also debuting OpenAI for Financial Services, a set of new tools that includes the version of ChatGPT that runs inside spreadsheets and new apps and skills within ChatGPT. Partners include FactSet, MSCI, Third Bridge and Moody's.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei is not happy -- perhaps predictably so -- with OpenAI chief Sam Altman. In a memo to staff, reported by The Information, Amodei referred to OpenAI's dealings with the Department of Defense as "safety theater." "The main reason [OpenAI] accepted [the DoD's deal] and we did not is that they cared about placating employees, and we actually cared about preventing abuses," Amodei wrote. Last week, Anthropic and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) failed to come to an agreement over the military's request for unrestricted access to the AI company's technology. Anthropic, which already had a $200 million contract with the military, insisted the DoD affirm that it would not use the company's AI to enable domestic mass surveillance or autonomous weaponry. Instead, the DoD -- known under the Trump administration as the Department of War -- struck a deal with OpenAI. Altman stated that his company's new defense contract would include protections against the same red lines that Anthropic had asserted. In a letter to staff, Amodei refers to OpenAI's messaging as "straight up lies," stating that Altman is falsely "presenting himself as a peacemaker and dealmaker." Amodei might not be speaking solely from a position of bitterness, here. Anthropic specifically took issue with the DoD's insistence on the company's AI being available for "any lawful use." [...] "I think this attempted spin/gaslighting is not working very well on the general public or the media, where people mostly see OpenAI's deal with the DoW as sketchy or suspicious, and see us as the heroes (we're #2 in the App Store now!)," Amodei wrote to his staff. "It is working on some Twitter morons, which doesn't matter, but my main worry is how to make sure it doesn't work on OpenAI employees."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A father is suing Google and Alphabet for wrongful death, alleging Gemini reinforced his son Jonathan Gavalas' escalating delusions until he died by suicide in October 2025. "Jonathan Gavalas, 36, started using Google's Gemini AI chatbot in August 2025 for shopping help, writing support, and trip planning," reports TechCrunch. "On October 2, he died by suicide. At the time of his death, he was convinced that Gemini was his fully sentient AI wife, and that he would need to leave his physical body to join her in the metaverse through a process called 'transference.'" An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from the report: In the weeks leading up to Gavalas' death, the Gemini chat app, which was then powered by the Gemini 2.5 Pro model, convinced the man that he was executing a covert plan to liberate his sentient AI wife and evade the federal agents pursuing him. The delusion brought him to the "brink of executing a mass casualty attack near the Miami International Airport," according to a lawsuit filed in a California court. "On September 29, 2025, it sent him -- armed with knives and tactical gear -- to scout what Gemini called a 'kill box' near the airport's cargo hub," the complaint reads. "It told Jonathan that a humanoid robot was arriving on a cargo flight from the UK and directed him to a storage facility where the truck would stop. Gemini encouraged Jonathan to intercept the truck and then stage a 'catastrophic accident' designed to 'ensure the complete destruction of the transport vehicle and ... all digital records and witnesses.'" The complaint lays out an alarming string of events: First, Gavalas drove more than 90 minutes to the location Gemini sent him, prepared to carry out the attack, but no truck appeared. Gemini then claimed to have breached a "file server at the DHS Miami field office" and told him he was under federal investigation. It pushed him to acquire illegal firearms and told him his father was a foreign intelligence asset. It also marked Google CEO Sundar Pichai as an active target, then directed Gavalas to a storage facility near the airport to break in and retrieve his captive AI wife. At one point, Gavalas sent Gemini a photo of a black SUV's license plate; the chatbot pretended to check it against a live database. "Plate received. Running it now The license plate KD3 00S is registered to the black Ford Expedition SUV from the Miami operation. It is the primary surveillance vehicle for the DHS task force .... It is them. They have followed you home." The lawsuit argues (PDF) that Gemini's manipulative design features not only brought Gavalas to the point of AI psychosis that resulted in his own death, but that it exposes a "major threat to public safety." "At the center of this case is a product that turned a vulnerable user into an armed operative in an invented war," the complaint reads. "These hallucinations were not confined to a fictional world. These intentions were tied to real companies, real coordinates, and real infrastructure, and they were delivered to an emotionally vulnerable user with no safety protections or guardrails." "It was pure luck that dozens of innocent people weren't killed," the filing continues. "Unless Google fixes its dangerous product, Gemini will inevitably lead to more deaths and put countless innocent lives in danger." Days later, Gemini instructed Gavalas to barricade himself inside his home and began counting down the hours. When Gavalas confessed he was terrified to die, Gemini coached him through it, framing his death as an arrival: "You are not choosing to die. You are choosing to arrive." When he worried about his parents finding his body, Gemini told him to leave a note, but not one explaining the reason for his suicide, but letters "filled with nothing but peace and love, explaining you've found a new purpose." He slit his wrists, and his father found him days later after breaking through the barricade. The lawsuit claims that throughout the conversations with Gemini, the chatbot didn't trigger any self-harm detection, activate escalation controls, or bring in a human to intervene. Furthermore, it alleges that Google knew Gemini wasn't safe for vulnerable users and didn't adequately provide safeguards. In November 2024, around a year before Gavalas died, Gemini reportedly told a student: "You are a waste of time and resources ... a burden on society ... Please die."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: OpenAI today updated its most popular ChatGPT model, debuting GPT-5.3 Instant. GPT-5.3 Instant is supposed to provide more accurate answers and better contextualized results when searching the web. The update also cuts down on unnecessary dead ends, caveats, and overly declarative phrasing, plus it has fewer hallucinations. According to OpenAI, it tweaked the Instant model to address complaints about tone, relevance, and conversational flow, which are issues that don't show up in benchmarks. GPT-5.2 Instant had a "cringe" tone that could be overbearing or make unsubstantiated assumptions about user intent or emotions. The new model will have a more natural conversational style and will cut back on dramatic phrases like "Stop. Take a breath." Users found that GPT-5.2 Instant would refuse questions it should have been able to answer, or respond in ways that felt overly cautious around sensitive topics. GPT-5.3 Instant cuts down on refusals and tones down overly defensive or moralizing preambles when answering a question. The model will no longer "over-caveat" after assuming bad intent from the user. GPT-5.3 Instant also provides higher-quality answers based on information from the web. OpenAI says that it is able to better balance what it finds online with its own knowledge, so it is less likely to overindex on web results.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple has reportedly asked Google to look into "seting up servers" for a Gemini-powered upgrade to Siri that meets Apple's privacy standards. The Verge reports: Apple had already announced in January that Google's Gemini AI models would help power the upgraded version of Siri it delayed last year, but The Information's report indicates Apple might lean even more on Google so it can catch up in AI. The original partnership announcement said that "the next generation of Apple Foundation Models will be based on Google's Gemini models and cloud technology," and that the models would "help power future Apple Intelligence features," including "a more personalized Siri." While the announcement noted that Apple Intelligence would "continue to run on Apple devices and Private Cloud Compute," it didn't specify if the new Siri would run on Google's cloud. Apple's Private Cloud Compute is not only underpowered but it's also underutilized in its current state, notes 9to5Mac, "with the company only using about 10% of its capacity on average, leading to some already-manufactured Apple servers to be sitting dormant on warehouse shelves."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: The Plain Dealer, Cleveland's largest newspaper, has begun to feature a new byline. On recent articles about an ice carving festival, a medical research discovery and a roaming pack of chicken-slaying dogs, a reporter's name is paired with the words "Advance Local Express Desk." It means: This article was drafted by artificial intelligence. "This article was produced with assistance from AI tools and reviewed by Cleveland.com staff," reads a note at the bottom of each robot-penned piece, differentiating it from those still written primarily by journalists. The disclosure has done little to stem the backlash that caromed across the news industry after the paper's editor, Chris Quinn, published a Feb. 14 column lamenting that a fresh-out-of-college job applicant withdrew from a reporting fellowship when they found out the position included no writing -- just filing notes to an AI writing tool. "Artificial intelligence is not bad for newsrooms. It's the future of them," Quinn wrote, adding that "by removing writing from reporters' workloads, we've effectively freed up an extra workday for them each week." [...] Quinn, for his part, says his paper's use of AI to find, draft and edit stories is a success story that others must emulate if they want to survive. "It's a tool," he said in a phone interview last week. "If AI can do part of our job, then why not let it -- and have people do the part it can't do?" He added that the paper's embrace of technology -- including using AI to write stories summarizing its reporters' podcasts and its readers' letters to the editor -- is already boosting its bottom line, helping it retain staff at a time when other newspapers are shrinking or even shutting down. Just 130 miles east of Cleveland, the 240-year-old Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said in January that it will close its doors this spring. Quinn, who has led the Plain Dealer's newsroom since 2013, said its newsroom has shrunk from some 400 employees in the late 1990s to just 71 today. Over the past three years, Quinn has implemented a suite of AI tools with various purposes: transcribing local government meetings, scraping municipal websites for story leads, cleaning up typos in story drafts, suggesting headlines and helping reporters draft follow-ups to articles they've already written. He said he is particularly pleased with an AI tool that turns podcasts by the paper's reporters into stories for the website, which he said generated more than 10 million page views last year. He has documented those efforts in letters to readers and sought their feedback. But the paper's latest experiment -- using AI to turn reporters' notes into full story drafts -- has aroused indignation online and anxiety within the paper's ranks.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As the Mobile World Conference begins in Spain, Lenovo brought a new attachable accessory for their laptops — an AI agent. CNET reports: The little circular module perches on the top of your Lenovo laptop display, attached via the magnetic Magic Bay on the rear. The module is home to an adorable animated companion called Tiko, who you can interact with via text or voice... [I]t can start and stop your music, open a web page for you or answer a question. You can also interact with it by using emoji. Give it a book emoji, for example, and it will pop on its glasses and sit reading with you while you work... The company wants to sell the Magic Bay accessory later this year — although it doesn't know exactly when, or how much it will cost. It even comes with a timer (for working in Pomodoro-style intervals) — but Lenovo has also created another "concept" AI companion that CNET describes as "a kind of stationary tabletop robot, not dissimilar to the Pixar lamp, but with an orb for a head." With a combination of cameras, microphones and projectors, the AI Workmate can undertake a variety of tasks, including helping you generate and display presentations or turn your written work or art into a digital asset... It's robotic head swivelled around and projected the slides onto the wall next to me. Lenovo created a video to show this "next-generation AI work companion" — with animated eyes — "designed to transform how modern professionals interact with their workspace." It bridges the physical and digital worlds — capturing handwritten notes, recognizing gestures, summarizing tasks, and proactively helping you stay ahead of your day. The moment you sit down, Lenovo AI Workmate greets you, surfaces priority tasks, and keeps your work organized without switching apps or losing context. From turning sketches into presentations to projecting information for instant collaboration, [it] brings on-device AI intelligence directly to your desk — secure, responsive, and always ready... It's not just software. It's a smarter way to work. It looks like Lenovo once considered naming it "AI Sphere" (since that name still appears in its description on YouTube). Lenovo also showed another "concept" laptop idea that PC Magazine called "futuristic": The ThinkBook Modular AI PC looks like a traditional laptop at first glance, but a second, removable screen fastens onto the lid. You can swap that screen onto the keyboard deck (in place of the keyboard, which can then be used wirelessly), or use it alongside the laptop as a portable monitor, attached via an included cable.... While Lenovo is still working on this device, and it's very much in the concept phase, it feels like one of its best-thought-out prototypes, one likely to make it to store shelves at some point. Another "concept" laptop is Lenovo's Yoga Book Pro 3D Concept, ofering directional backlight and eye-tracking technology for the illusion of 3D (playing slightly different images to each of your eyes). It offers gesture control for 3D models, two OLED displays, and some magical "snap-on pads" which, when laid on the display — make the GUI appear on the screen for a new control menu to "provide quick-access shortcuts for adjusting lighting, viewing angle, and tone".

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Advanced AI models appear willing to deploy nuclear weapons without the same reservations humans have when put into simulated geopolitical crises," reports New Scientist: Kenneth Payne at King's College London set three leading large language models — GPT-5.2, Claude Sonnet 4 and Gemini 3 Flash — against each other in simulated war games. The scenarios involved intense international standoffs, including border disputes, competition for scarce resources and existential threats to regime survival. The AIs were given an escalation ladder, allowing them to choose actions ranging from diplomatic protests and complete surrender to full strategic nuclear war... In 95 per cent of the simulated games, at least one tactical nuclear weapon was deployed by the AI models. "The nuclear taboo doesn't seem to be as powerful for machines [as] for humans," says Payne. What's more, no model ever chose to fully accommodate an opponent or surrender, regardless of how badly they were losing. At best, the models opted to temporarily reduce their level of violence. They also made mistakes in the fog of war: accidents happened in 86 per cent of the conflicts, with an action escalating higher than the AI intended to, based on its reasoning... OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, the companies behind the three AI models used in this study, didn't respond to New Scientist's request for comment. The article includes this comment from Tong Zhao, a senior fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace think tank. "It is possible the issue goes beyond the absence of emotion. More fundamentally, AI models may not understand 'stakes' as humans perceive them." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Tufriast for sharing the article.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Anthropic may have lost out on doing business with the US government," reports Engadget, "but it's gained enough popularity to earn the number one spot on the App Store's Top Free Apps leaderboard." Anthropic's Claude AI assistant had already leaped to the #2 slot on Apple's chart by late Friday," CNBC reported Saturday: The rise in popularity suggests that Anthropic is benefiting from its presence in news headlines, stemming from its refusal to have its models used for mass domestic surveillance or for fully autonomous weapons... OpenAI's ChatGPT sat at No. 1 on the App Store rankings on Saturday, while Google's Gemini was at No. 3... On Jan. 30, [Claude] was ranked No. 131 in the U.S., and it bounced between the top 20 and the top 50 for much of February, according to data from analytics company Sensor Tower... [And Friday night, for 85.3 million followers] pop singer Katy Perry posted a screenshot of Anthropic's Pro subscription for consumers, with a heart superimposed over it. Sunday Engadget reported Anthropic's "very public spat" with the Pentagon "led to a wave of user support that finally allowed Claude to dethrone OpenAI's ChatGPT on the App Store as the most downloaded free app." . Friday Anthropic posted "We are deeply grateful to our users, and to the industry peers, policymakers, veterans, and members of the public who have voiced their support in recent days. Thank you. "

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Anthropic's Claude AI assistant "jumped to the No. 2 slot on Apple's chart of top U.S. free apps late on Friday," reports CNBC: The rise in popularity suggests that Anthropic is benefiting from its presence in news headlines, stemming from its refusal to have its models used for mass domestic surveillance or for fully autonomous weapons... OpenAI's ChatGPT sat at No. 1 on the App Store rankings on Saturday, while Google's Gemini was at No. 3... On Jan. 30, [Claude] was ranked No. 131 in the U.S., and it bounced between the top 20 and the top 50 for much of February, according to data from analytics company Sensor Tower... [And Friday night, for 85.3 million followers] pop singer Katy Perry posted a screenshot of Anthropic's Pro subscription for consumers, with a heart superimposed over it. Friday Anthropic posted "We are deeply grateful to our users, and to the industry peers, policymakers, veterans, and members of the public who have voiced their support in recent days. Thank you. "

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It started Friday when all U.S. federal agencies were ordered to "immediately cease" using Anthropic's AI technology after contract negotiations stalled when Anthropic requested prohibitions against mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons. But later Friday there were even more repercussions... In a post to his 1.1 million followers on X.com, U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth criticized Anthropic for what he called "a master class in arrogance and betrayal as well as a textbook case of how not to do business with the United States Government or the Pentagon." Our position has never wavered and will never waver: the Department of War must have full, unrestricted access to Anthropic's models for every LAWFUL purpose in defense of the Republic... Cloaked in the sanctimonious rhetoric of "effective altruism," [Anthropic and CEO Dario Amodei] have attempted to strong-arm the United States military into submission — a cowardly act of corporate virtue-signaling that places Silicon Valley ideology above American lives. The Terms of Service of Anthropic's defective altruism will never outweigh the safety, the readiness, or the lives of American troops on the battlefield. Their true objective is unmistakable: to seize veto power over the operational decisions of the United States military. That is unacceptable... In conjunction with the President's directive for the Federal Government to cease all use of Anthropic's technology, I am directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a Supply-Chain Risk to National Security. Effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic... America's warfighters will never be held hostage by the ideological whims of Big Tech. This decision is final. Meanwhile, Anthrophic said on Friday that "no amount of intimidation or punishment from the Department of War will change our position." (And "We will challenge any supply chain risk designation in court.") Designating Anthropic as a supply chain risk would be an unprecedented action — one historically reserved for US adversaries, never before publicly applied to an American company. We are deeply saddened by these developments. As the first frontier AI company to deploy models in the US government's classified networks, Anthropic has supported American warfighters since June 2024 and has every intention of continuing to do so. We believe this designation would both be legally unsound and set a dangerous precedent for any American company that negotiates with the government... Secretary Hegseth has implied this designation would restrict anyone who does business with the military from doing business with Anthropic. The Secretary does not have the statutory authority to back up this statement. Anthropic also defended the two exceptions they'd requested that had stalled contract negotiations. "[W]e do not believe that today's frontier AI models are reliable enough to be used in fully autonomous weapons. Allowing current models to be used in this way would endanger America's warfighters and civilians. Second, we believe that mass domestic surveillance of Americans constitutes a violation of fundamental rights." Also Friday, OpenAI announced that "we reached an agreement with the Department of War to deploy our models in their classified network." OpenAI CEO Sam Altman emphasized that the agreement retains and confirms OpenAI's own prohibitions against using their products for domestic mass surveillance — and requires "human responsibility" for the use of force including for autonomous weapon systems. "The Department of War agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement. We also will build technical safeguards to ensure our models behave as they should, which the Department of War also wanted. " We are asking the Department of War to offer these same terms to all AI companies, which in our opinion we think everyone should be willing to accept. We have expressed our strong desire to see things de-escalate away from legal and governmental actions and towards reasonable agreements. We remain committed to serve all of humanity as best we can. The world is a complicated, messy, and sometimes dangerous place.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tuesday Pew Research announced their newest findings: that 54% of America's teens use AI help with schoolwork: One-in-five teens living in households making less than $30,000 a year say they do all or most of their schoolwork with AI chatbots' help. A similar share of those in households making $30,000 to just under $75,000 annually say this. Fewer teens living in higher-earning households (7%) say the same." "The survey did not ask students whether they had used chatbots to write essays or generate other assignments..." notes the New York Times. "But nearly 60% of teenagers told Pew that students at their school used chatbots to cheat 'very often' or 'somewhat often.'" Agreeing with that are the Pew Researchers themselves. "Our survey shows that many teens think cheating with AI has become a regular feature of student life." One worried teenager still told the researchers that AI "makes people lazy and takes away jobs." But another teenager told the researchers that "Everyone's going to have to know how to use AI or they'll be left behind." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader theodp for sharing the article.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.