Spotify introduces a Premium Platinum plan with lossless access in five markets
Spotify is debuting a new tiered premium plans in five markets with the costliest tier gaining access to lossless streaming.
Debates over AI consciousness are a trap
“Runaway” AI, “rogue” agents, and “autonomous” actors—the current rhetoric would have you believe that AI agents are not only awake and aware, but angry at their creators. Prominent tech leaders such as Demis Hassabis, Dario Amodei, and Sam Altman push for regulation of these seemingly “superhuman” systems, while a separate faction, led by policy organizations…
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Google augments AI shopping with conversational search, agentic checkout and an AI that calls stores for you
Google is expanding AI shopping with conversational search, agentic checkout and an AI that calls stores for you about local inventory.
Coding assistant Cursor raises $2.3bn five months after its previous round
Cursor plans to use the capital to continue developing Composer, the AI model the vibe coding startup released in October.
The Download: AI to measure pain, and how to deal with conspiracy theorists
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. AI is changing how we quantify pain Researchers around the world are racing to turn pain—medicine’s most subjective vital sign—into something a camera or sensor can score as reliably as blood pressure. The…
Spotify adds a new, less repetitive shuffle, plus audiobook recaps
Spotify’s new default shuffle option will queue up fewer songs from your recent listening history
Microsoft’s plan to fix its chip problem is, partly, to let OpenAI do the heavy lifting
Microsoft is taking a page from OpenAI’s playbook, literally.
Milestone raises $10M to make sure AI rhymes with ROI
Israeli startup Milestone raised a $10 million seed funding round to correlate AI tool usage with engineering metrics, including code quality.
Google is still aiming for its “moonshot” 2030 energy goals
Last week, we hosted EmTech MIT, MIT Technology Review’s annual flagship conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Over the course of three days of main-stage sessions, I learned about innovations in AI, biotech, and robotics. But as you might imagine, some of this climate reporter’s favorite moments came in the climate sessions. I was listening especially closely…
Cash App debuts a new AI assistant that answers questions about your finances
Cash App is adding a map to its app to let users discover places that accept bitcoin