While companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and others had been upfront about their efforts in AI, for years Apple had been silent. Now, finally, its executives were talking. I got an advance look one day. Eager to shed the the
Author: Steven Levy
If Ray Kurzweil Is Right (Again), You’ll Meet His Immortal Soul in the Cloud
Ray Kurzweil rejects death. The 76-year-old scientist and engineer has spent much of his time on earth arguing that humans can not only take advantage of yet-to-be-invented medical advances to live longer, but also ultimately merge with machines, become hyperintelligent,
Don’t Let Mistrust of Tech Companies Blind You to the Power of AI
It seems evident to me that almost 70 years after the first conference on artificial intelligence—where the nascent field’s leaders suggested the task would be completed within a decade—the field is now poised to make a transformational impact on our
AI Is a Black Box. Anthropic Figured Out a Way to Look Inside
For the past decade, AI researcher Chris Olah has been obsessed with artificial neural networks. One question in particular engaged him, and has been the center of his work, first at Google Brain, then OpenAI, and today at AI startup
It’s Time to Believe the AI Hype
Tech pundits are fond of using the term “inflection points” to describe those rare moments when new technology wipes the board clean, opening up new threats and opportunities. But one might argue that in the past few years what used
Meet the Woman Who Showed President Biden ChatGPT—and Helped Set the Course for AI
one day in March 2023, Arati Prabhakar brought a laptop into the Oval Office and showed the future to Joe Biden. Six months later, the president issued a sweeping executive order that set a regulatory course for AI. This all
A Wave of AI Tools Is Set to Transform Work Meetings
Dan Siroker knows how to pivot. He once had an education startup that morphed into a successful online analytics company called Optimizely. More recently he created an AI company called Scribe.ai, dedicated to capturing data from apps like Zoom, then
Tech Leaders Once Cried for AI Regulation. Now the Message Is ‘Slow Down’
The other night I attended a press dinner hosted by an enterprise company called Box. Other guests included the leaders of two data-oriented companies, Datadog and MongoDB. Usually the executives at these soirees are on their best behavior, especially when
This AI Startup Wants You to Talk to Houses, Cars, and Factories
We’ve all been astonished at how chatbots seem to understand the world. But what if they were truly connect to the real world? What if the dataset behind the chat interface was physical reality itself, captured in real time by
Here’s Proof the AI Boom Is Real: More People Are Tapping ChatGPT at Work
Ever since the rollout of ChatGPT in November 2022, many people in science, business, and media have been obsessed with AI. A cursory look at my own published work during that period fingers me as among the guilty. My defense