June 19, 2025

It’s pretty easy to get DeepSeek to talk dirty

AI companions like Replika are designed to engage in intimate exchanges, but people use general-purpose chatbots for sex talk too, despite their stricter content moderation policies. Now new research shows that not all chatbots are equally willing to talk dirty: DeepSeek is the easiest to convince. But other AI chatbots can be enticed too, if…

Netflix aims to be a trillion-dollar company, says co-CEO

April 23, 2025
At Semafor’s 2025 Word Economy Summit on Wednesday, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said he believes Netflix’s long-term goal to achieve a $1 trillion market capitalization is possible if the streaming giant continues to perform well.  Sarandos said, “In the previous five years, we’ve doubled our revenue, we grew profits 10 times, and we grew our […]

19 US fintech startups have raised over $50M in 2025 so far

April 23, 2025
After a sluggish couple of years, fintech appears to be making a comeback. In the first quarter of 2025, fintech startups globally raised a combined $10.3 billion — marking the highest level of funding since the first quarter of 2023, according to CB Insights research. The average deal size of $17.7 million also marked the […]

Roundtables: Brain-Computer Interfaces: From Promise to Product

April 23, 2025
Recorded on April 23, 2025 Brain-Computer Interfaces: From Promise to Product Speakers: David Rotman, editor at large, and Antonio Regalado, senior editor for biomedicine. Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) have been crowned the 11th Breakthrough Technology of 2025 by MIT Technology Review‘s readers. BCIs are electrodes implanted into the brain to send neural commands to computers, primarily to assist…

Discord appoints former Activision Blizzard exec Humam Sakhnini as CEO

April 23, 2025
Amid rumors that the company is eyeing an IPO, Discord appointed former Activision Blizzard Vice Chairman Humam Sakhnini as CEO. Discord co-founder Jason Citron will leave his CEO role after thirteen years at the company. Discord straddles the gaming and social media spaces — despite its initial emergence as a platform for online multiplayer gamers […]

OpenAI’s GPT-4.1 may be less aligned than the company’s previous AI models

April 23, 2025
In mid-April, OpenAI launched a powerful new AI model, GPT-4.1, that the company claimed “excelled” at following instructions. But the results of several independent tests suggest the model is less aligned — that is to say, less reliable — than previous OpenAI releases. When OpenAI launches a new model, it typically publishes a detailed technical […]