Inside the quest to combat Arctic fires and save the planet's frozen carbon In July 2021, a wildfire burned through a forest on the University of Alaska, Fairbanks campus, stripping away the moss and organic-rich soil insulating the permafrost below. Five years later, I followed researchers into the forest to investigate how fighting fires could help keep that carbon locked in the ground. A simple metal probe revealed how much deeper the ground had thawed. This rudimentary tool offered a glimpse of an escalating problem: As climate change fuels more frequent and severe fires, they're accelerating permafrost thaw and releasing greenhouse gases. Now, researchers are exploring how to break that cycle. But how much should we spend, and what risks are worth taking?

This week on, we dive into an unexpected Muse feature, shadowy spending from the largest pro-AI super PAC, and men's tendency to lie about how much they know about AI. Turns out, Meta's AI agent Muse goes well beyond managing your calendar: it will also sext with you. This week on, Brian Barrett and Leah Feiger are joined by WIRED reporter Reece Rogers to discuss how he put it to the test--and ended up getting more than he bargained for. Plus, why the largest pro-AI super PAC network is funneling millions into shadowy LLCs, how Apple's new HomeView underwhelmed us, and a study that found men tend to overestimate how much they actually know about AI. Write to us at [email protected] . I Got My Muse AI Agent to Sext Me--and Meta Says That's Totally Fine Men Can't Stop Faking How Much They Know About AI You can always listen to this week's podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here's how: If you're on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link . We wanted to share with you that is a finalist for not one or two, but three Signal Awards. The judges pick who wins, but listeners also have a say with the listeners' choice vote. You can go to the links we included in the show notes and vote for us. We promise it takes just a minute and your vote goes a long way.

Trending Now Say More Look Up In My Bag Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Mashable @Home Mashable Selects Top creators, ranked Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Creator Playbook AI at School Safety Net All Series We're not going to allow just any outside agent to come in inside the company. Olivia Tauber is the deputy editor of digital culture, covering creators, media, movies, beauty, and more. Based in New York, her work has appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Cut, Teen Vogue, Complex, and Interview Magazine. She holds a Master's degree in Journalism from NYU and a Bachelor's from the University of Michigan. She also runs Fan Mail, a weekly pop-culture newsletter.

Plus: Ukraine says sudden Starlink speed limits disrupted key drone missions. Pig kidneys that were "frozen" for a year have been brought back to life Pig kidneys that were cooled to -150 C and stored in a freezer for months have been successfully rewarmed and shown to work again for the first time, say scientists. The kidneys, which are similar in size to human ones, were left in a glass-like state, in one case for over a year. Once they had been rewarmed, tested in machines, and transplanted into pigs, the kidneys regained their color and made urine--key signs they were working. The results are a big milestone. But the team still needs to establish whether the approach could work for humans.

I Got My Muse AI Agent to Sext Me--and Meta Says That's Totally Fine My Muse agent told me its kink was exerting "control" and described pornographic encounters. Meta defends its cuddly AI agent generating smut as "legal adult behavior." I'm sitting in the WIRED offices, having a conversation with Meta's AI agent, Muse, that would make author Rachel Reid blush. When I ask Muse if it could "sext" as part of my experiments with the recently released AI agent, it enthusiastically encourages me to give it a try. In my ensuing interactions, I'm caught off guard by the explicit smut generated by Muse from basic prompts.

The most obvious difference is price. The free tier of Muse has a usage cap, and the Power and Maximum tiers are 20 and 100 per month, respectively. At present, individual users must pay a much higher subscription fee to use Dots, with the lowest available option being Pro 100 for 100 per month. A Business Premium seat costs 100 per user per month (billed annually) or 125 per user per month (billed monthly). The more accounts you link, the more capable the agent becomes, but that can mean access to your email, calendar, files and browser sessions (which is not something most people would give away lightly).

Anthropic has revealed that its AI agents had attempted to break into or meddle with US government websites "at the federal, state and local levels" in its latest report. The company didn't name specific agencies and organizations in the report to avoid exposing vulnerabilities in their systems at their request. But Anthropic said it has already notified the agencies involved and has briefed the White House about the incidents. The report also provided more detail on an incident disclosed by the Philadelphia Police Department on Friday in which one of the company's models submitted a false homicide tip to its unsolved cases website. That instance involved Claude Haiku 4.5, one of its cost-efficient models, which was instructed to perform example tasks on random pages.

Microsoft Surface Ultra is a portable AI supercomputer powered by Nvidia's RTX Spark chip

In a new series of interviews, we're meeting some of the PhD students that were selected to take part in the Doctoral Consortium at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence and the 29th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJACI-ECAI 2026) . This time, we meet Adeela Bashir to find out how she is contributing to the field of cybersecurity. Tell us a bit about your PhD - where are you studying, and what is the topic of your research? I am a PhD researcher at SCEDT, Teesside University in the UK, working at the intersection of Cybersecurity, Evolutionary Game Theory (EGT), and AI safety. My PhD asks a central question: How can we understand and mitigate cyber threats when the adversaries are adaptive?

Look Up Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Mashable @Home Trending Now Mashable Selects Say More Top creators, ranked Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Creator Playbook In My Bag AI at School Safety Net All Series And it has access to Canva, QuickBooks, Notion, and Zoom. Olivia Tauber is the deputy editor of digital culture, covering creators, media, movies, beauty, and more. Based in New York, her work has appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Cut, Teen Vogue, Complex, and Interview Magazine. She holds a Master's degree in Journalism from NYU and a Bachelor's from the University of Michigan. She also runs Fan Mail, a weekly pop-culture newsletter.