Business

AI Lab

I Trained a Fly’s Brain to Generate WIRED Story Ideas

I used an open-source map of a fruit fly’s brain to vibe code a website called PitchFly. Its headline suggestions were delightfully bananas.

Will Knight

Watch What You Eat

Chipotle Is Working With Palantir to Track Food Safety Risks

Kate Taylor

Download

Backchannel

One of AI’s Fiercest Critics Says All the Doom Talk Is ‘Meant to Distract Us’

Timnit Gebru argues that AI companies are stoking fears of extinction to avoid discussing actual harms, like autonomous weapons.

Lauren Goode

Who Cares if AI Is Conscious—It’s Basically Alive

While philosophers ponder AI consciousness, the models have ideas of their own.

Steven Levy

AI Has Human Doctors Asking: What’s Left for Us?

A recent paper argues that AI is often better at doctoring than doctors. Guess who isn't thrilled.

Steven Levy

Meta’s Big Reckoning Is Here

Meta is in court again over child safety, and this time it’s a landmark case that could force significant changes to core features of Facebook and Instagram.

Lauren Goode

After I removed the safety guardrails from a powerful open-source model, it found vulnerabilities in my household devices and hacked into a PC. But it also told me how to make everything a lot more secure.

Will Knight

These Russian Mathematicians Taught AI Models How to Talk to Each Other Without Using Words

A startup called Mostik has a wild new approach to combining the capabilities of AI models.

Will Knight

The Humanoids at China’s Robot Games Were Faster Than Usain Bolt—but I’m More Impressed by Their Tweezer Mastery

Beijing’s endlessly delightful Robot Games featured tons of impressive stunts. But the most mind-blowing tricks challenged the humanoid’s brain, not its brawn.

Will Knight

I Saw the Future of AI in a Robot That Can Learn on the Spot

During a recent visit to Generalist AI, I watched a robotic arm improvise and use a banana as a tool.

Will Knight

Model Behavior

OpenAI Wants to Know if an AI Industry Slowdown Would Even Be Legal

AI leaders worry antitrust law could stand in the way of what they view as an increasingly urgent push to coordinate a slowdown in AI development.

Maxwell Zeff

OpenAI Cut Off a Billion-Dollar Customer to Avoid Elon Musk

OpenAI recently estimated its Cursor partnership would make more than $1 billion in revenue a year, WIRED has learned. It still walked away after Elon Musk’s SpaceX acquired the AI coding startup.

Maxwell Zeff

OpenAI Is Developing a ‘Persistent’ AI Agent

Code reviewed by WIRED reveals the company is developing a feature that enables Codex to continue working proactively until it is “put to sleep.”

Maxwell Zeff

Silicon Valley Doesn't Get Why You Hate AI

Technology leaders don’t seem to understand society’s gripes about AI, but boy, are they posting through it.

Maxwell Zeff

Made in China

Microsoft Teams Has Become a Haven for Scammers in China

Fraudsters are exploiting enterprise chat apps like Teams and Webex to trick Chinese victims into transferring large sums of money, fueling a wave of complaints.

Zeyi Yang

The Unlikely Place at the Center of China’s AI Boom

Cheap energy, abundant land, and proximity to Beijing have turned a city in Inner Mongolia into a crucial hub for data centers.

Zeyi Yang

The Next Big Influencer Is This 4-Foot-Tall Robot From China

The Unitree G1 has found online fame as a relatively affordable robot that can charm a crowd. But can it ever hold down a real job?

Zeyi Yang

The Chinese Philosopher Americans Can’t Stop Fighting About

Yiyang Zhuge was already an intellectual celebrity in China. Her viral interview with Christopher Nolan made her famous in the US—and quickly turned her into a political Rorschach test.

Zeyi Yang

Artificial Intelligence

China Isn’t Buying Silicon Valley’s Call for an AI Slowdown

The US and China agree that advanced AI poses serious risks. But Beijing is deeply skeptical of a deal that prioritizes keeping US companies ahead.

Louise Matsakis

AI Leaders Are Calling for a Slowdown. Trump’s Team Says It’s on Them

Sam Altman and Elon Musk backed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s weekend plea for regulation. The White House seems unlikely to oblige.

Isabella Ward

‘I Like My Big Rat Wife’: Meet the People Using Chatbots to Write Custom Fiction

While the publishing industry frets over how authors are using AI, many readers are taking things into their own hands.

Joel Khalili

Why So Many AI Researchers Think the Machines Could Kill Everyone

A combination of rapid advances, recursive self-improvement, and agentic swarms are genuinely “spooking people” inside big labs.

Will Knight

Big Tech

UK Lawmakers Are Freaking Out Over AI’s Summer of Chaos

As AI agents go rogue and fears of superintelligence grow, politicians are raising the alarm over its potential harm to human existence.

Isabella Ward

Apple and Google Miss Deadline to Block Child Nudity on Their Phones in the UK

Now the UK government plans to introduce new legislation that would see companies face fines and potential criminal liability, and signaled similar plans could extend to Snapchat and Instagram.

Isabella Ward

Meta Pushes Its New AI Agent on Employees—but Eases Off on Tokenmaxxing

The company is reducing pressure on workers to use artificial intelligence tools while encouraging them to experiment with Hatch, its most advanced AI project yet.

Paresh Dave and Maxwell Zeff

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Took a Call From Donald Trump in the Middle of an All-Hands

The unexpected interruption came hours before the president wrote a congratulatory post on Truth Social about the company’s most recent earnings report.

Lauren Goode and Paresh Dave