Wed 26 Aug 2026 08.00 EDTLast modified on Wed 26 Aug 2026 16.37 EDT On a winding road tucked away behind forests in the Appalachian foothills of southern Ohio is where OpenAI, Nvidia and Japanese investors are set to spend $500bn on one of the largest artificial intelligence datacenters on the planet. Last March, the energy secretary, Chris Wright, the commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick and a host of Japanese and other dignitaries briefly descended on Piketon to enthusiastically break ground on a project to build 8GW worth of AI computing power. But locally, there's a different feeling: a mix of hope but also concern. "Personally, my emotions range between positive and skeptical," says Billy Spencer, who has been mayor of Piketon for the past 23 years, of the project. "There's not an organized opposition to it around here. There hasn't been that much talk. No one's come to council - I don't know that there's been one citizen who lives within the village of Piketon who has come and said: 'Mayor, what do you think about it?'"

Follow this section to personalize your feed and get instant alerts. Follow Go to your personalized feed WHY FOLLOW? Smart Alerts: Get notified about major news as it happens. Follow this tag to personalize your feed and get instant alerts. Follow Go to your personalized feed WHY FOLLOW? Smart Alerts: Get notified about major news as it happens. Follow this author to personalize your feed and get instant alerts. Follow Go to your personalized feed WHY FOLLOW? Smart Alerts: Get notified about major news as it happens. The protesters were waiting outside OpenAI's offices when I arrived one morning in early August.

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That's a major factor in how well models do on the most famous puzzle-based benchmark, ARC-AGI. These problems require you to infer abstract, general rules from a set of examples. Models do better on ARC puzzles when they receive each grid not as an image but as a string of numbers that encodes the color of each cell. Research suggests that even when models answer ARC-AGI questions correctly, they often do so using byzantine and non-generalizable rules, whereas humans draw on simple visual concepts. Despite these disadvantages, models have gotten quite good at ARC-AGI over the past year, but some puzzles--such as the one printed here--still stump them.

Bill Gates says we've passed AI's danger thresholds. In a new interview, the billionaire philanthropist sounds an alarm on the urgency of getting our AI policies in order. The temperature is in the mid-80s, and the sky is incapable of being any more blue. The view from the Gates Ventures conference room overlooks the Carillon Point Marina, where a flotilla of expensive boats bob in the water, and across the lake to the Olympic Mountains that define the horizon. Because if the scene is placid, the messenger is not. Seated across from me at a conference room table, Bill Gates is rocking back and forth in his chair, totally animated. And the more he has to say--about the threats of terror or economic collapse or just losing control of our AI systems--the more agitated I find myself becoming, too. The philanthropist and former Microsoft CEO says he has been growing increasingly alarmed by the rate of change at which AI technology is advancing, especially since guardrails are not keeping pace. In a new essay published today, Gates argues that we have passed the points where multiple potential dangers should have been checked. "We've crossed the threshold in terms of [AI's] bio-capabilities, cyber-capabilities, psychosocial capabilities, job-market-destruction capabilities, and even the lack of control," he said in an interview with about his new memo "I'm just stunned at the lack of concern and discussion outside of the industry." In an effort to wake the world up to what he sees as a rapidly growing societal disrupter, the 70-year-old tech titan has begun sounding the alarm as a "shrill voice," both publicly with his new essay (the first of multiple he plans on the topic) and in meetings with the press, and privately in conversations with industry, government, and civil society leaders. And while Gates is calling attention to a number of issues, his warnings about the bio-capabilities of the current frontier models are especially chilling. "Any model that can make novel molecules should be monitored," he says.

Back in June, OpenAI added a dedicated section within ChatGPT's sidebar to highlight the fact could you schedule prompts through its chatbot. The company also introduced enhancements to ChatGPT's ability to complete tasks in the future, making it easier to track and edit those requests. At the time, the new hub, alongside the expanded scheduling features that came with it, was only available to Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise customers. Now, even those with free accounts can access the scheduling menu. At the same time, OpenAI has made it possible to share scheduled tasks with other users, so that if you think of a clever use of the feature, others can benefit from it for their own workflows.

Mashable Voices Look Up Trending Now Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Say More Mashable Selects Safety Net Versus Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Switch Off In My Bag VidCon with Mashable All Series AI mental healthcare is here. Can it help people -- or cause more problems? Talkspace now offers AI therapy. We connected with the company's Chief Medical Officer on the new offering. Neal joined Mashable's Social Good team in 2024, editing and writing stories about digital culture and its effects on the environment and marginalized communities.

I wore the world's first HDR10 smart glasses TCL's new E Ink tablet beats the Remarkable and Kindle Anker's new charger is one of the most unique I've ever seen I wore the world's first HDR10 smart glasses TCL's new E Ink tablet beats the Remarkable and Kindle Anker's new charger is one of the most unique I've ever seen Anthropic's Claude and Cowork will share memories about you now - unless you opt out Anthropic is merging Claude chat and Cowork memory, raising privacy questions about what AI remembers and if it's worth the tradeoff. Claude chat and Cowork now share one memory system. Memory updates as you chat, with sensitive-data controls. The productivity boost comes with serious privacy tradeoffs. Today, Anthropic announced the merger of the memory systems for Claude chat and Claude Cowork.

Plus: No one really knows how to safely test frontier AI models. Chatbots took schools by surprise. Suddenly, students carried an app in their phones that could magically answer almost any homework question or spin up an essay in seconds. Organizations ranging from OpenAI to UNESCO encourage AI use in the classroom, but many teachers aren't sure how to handle it. Yet some promising approaches are emerging. At Cheshire Academy, for example, teachers are trained on general techniques for using AI rather than prescribed tools.