In its early days, the AI initiative known as Project Maven had its fair share of skeptics at the Pentagon. Today, many of them are true believers. The rise of AI warfare speaks to the biggest moral and practical question there is: Who--or what--gets to decide to take a human life? And who bears that cost? In 2018, more than 3,000 Google workers protested the company's involvement in "the business of war" after finding out the company was part of Project Maven, then a nascent Pentagon effort to use computer vision to rifle through copious video footage taken in America's overseas drone wars. They feared Project Maven's AI could one day be used for lethal targeting. In my yearslong effort to uncover the full story of Project Maven for my book,, I learned that is exactly what happened, and that the undertaking was just as controversial inside the Pentagon. Today, the tool known as Maven Smart System is being used in US operations against Iran . How the US military's top brass moved from skepticism about the use of AI in war to true believers has a lot to do with a Marine colonel named Drew Cukor. In early September 2024, during the cocktail hour at a private retreat for tech investors and defense leaders, Vice Admiral Frank "Trey" Whitworth found his way to Drew Cukor. Now Project Maven's founding leader and his skeptical successor were standing face-to-face. Three years earlier, Whitworth had been the Pentagon's top military official for intelligence, advising the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and running one of the most sensitive and potentially lethal parts of any military process: targeting.

The AI Race Is Pressuring Utilities to Squeeze More From Europe's Power Grids As data center developers queue up to connect to power grids across Europe, network operators are experimenting with novel ways of clearing room for them. European countries are racing to bring new data centers online as AI labs across the globe continue to demand more compute. The primary limiting factor is energy--and specifically, the ability to move it. Though Europe is on track to generate enough energy, utilities experts say, grid operators broadly lack the infrastructure needed to transport it to where it needs to go. That's throttling grid capacity and, by extension, the number of new power-hungry data centers that can connect without risking blackouts.

PCWorld reports that AI is evolving beyond simple chatbots to become autonomous agents that directly control PC functions and applications. Major tech companies are developing agentic AI systems, including Anthropic's Claude tools, OpenAI's upcoming superapp, and Google's Gemini Mac app with desktop intelligence features. This shift toward AI agents managing tasks like software development and data analysis represents a fundamental change in how users will interact with their computers. Remember when ChatGPT was just an AI chatbox that sat on your desktop? That was, like, so December.

OpenAI is developing a unified desktop superapp that will integrate ChatGPT, Codex, and Atlas into a single application, according to PCWorld's coverage of The Wall Street Journal report. This consolidation aims to reduce service fragmentation and improve overall quality for users accessing OpenAI's various AI tools. The superapp represents a significant shift toward streamlined AI services, potentially making OpenAI's offerings more accessible and efficient for desktop users. It seems you'll soon be able to access most of OpenAI's services in one place on your computer.

At Palantir's Developer Conference, AI Is Built to Win Wars As business soars, Palantir is doubling down on a vision of AI built for battlefield advantage--and attracting customers who agree. The defense contractors, military officers, and corporate executives in attendance are unprepared for the weather; they'd assumed the previous day's mid-70s temperatures would hold. A cold rain turns to steady snowfall, and Palantir passes out heavy blankets. As people move between open-air pavilions, it looks like they were pulled from shipwrecks. To this self-selecting crowd, Palantir is delivering on its promises.

OpenAI is refocusing its research efforts and throwing its resources into a new grand challenge. The San Francisco firm has set its sights on building what it calls an AI researcher, a fully automated agent-based system that will be able to go off and tackle large, complex problems by itself. OpenAI says that this new research goal will be its "North Star" for the next few years, pulling together multiple research strands, including work on reasoning models, agents, and interpretability .

The company is reportedly making a unified app to streamline the user experience. OpenAI is developing a "super app" for desktop that unifies ChatGPT, its browser and its Codex app, according to the and . A company spokesperson told the publications that OpenAI Chief of Applications Fidji Simo will lead the application revamp with assistance from OpenAI President Greg Brockman. Simo will also help the marketing team advertise the app when it comes out. OpenAI's leadership is apparently hoping that combining several products can help it streamline user experience and dedicate its resources to one project.

A feature called Desktop Intelligence would let the AI pull context from open apps and your desktop. Google is testing a version of its Gemini app for macOS, reports . The app would bring the AI assistant to uncharted territory, and in more direct competition with OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude, both of which offer standalone Mac apps. Gemini remains accessible through the web, and it sounds like the macOS app offers the same set of features, with the ability to respond to prompts, search the web and generate text, images and code. The major differentiator of the Mac app could be a feature called Desktop Intelligence, which gives Gemini a new source of information and context for its responses.

The app reads your email inbox and your meeting calendar, then gives you a short audio summary. It can help you spend less time scrolling, but of course, there are privacy drawbacks to consider.

Instant to reduce annoying "if you want" and teaser-style phrasing that users found intrusive. This change addresses widespread user complaints about persistent, clickbait-like follow-up prompts that negatively impacted the AI interaction experience. The update aims to create more natural, direct conversations by making ChatGPT less chatty and eliminating the bothersome response teasers. It wasn't all that long ago that ChatGPT was a constant nag, persistently dropping "Would you like me to?"-style questions at the end of its responses. OpenAI eventually tweaked the phrasing, dropping the question marks and going for "if you want"-style teasers that invited users to extend their chat sessions. Now, OpenAI has acknowledged that it went too far with the clickbaity follow-ups, noting in a recent update for one of its newest models that it's now cutting back on the teasers. "We're rolling out an update to GPT-5.3 Instant that improves follow-up tone and reduces teaser-style phrasing," reads a recent ChatGPT release note, which adds that users should soon see fewer follow-ups like "if you want," "you'll never believe," and "I can tell you three things that " Those teasers are, of course, a way for ChatGPT to keep subscribers chatting, but users have been complaining that the persistent follow-ups are more annoying than they are intriguing. "I hated it with a passion and hope it's completely gone," wrote one user on Reddit .