Users I Read the Pope's Encyclical on A.I. I'm Astounded By What He Wrote. It's an urgent warning--and a celebration of humanity and what we can do at our best. Enter your email to receive alerts for this author. You can manage your newsletter subscriptions at any time. You're already subscribed to the aa_Nitish_Pahwa newsletter.

Paxton trounces Cornyn in the Texas Senate Republican primary runoff; Trump waffles between a losing "peace deal" and a return to war in Iran; and congressional candidate Alex Bores makes the case for AI regulation. Please enable javascript to get your Slate Plus feeds. If you can't access your feeds, please contact customer support. Check your phone for a link to finish setting up your feed. Please enter a valid phone number.

The AI assistant had its personality stripped in pursuit of a more consistent experience. Copilot is getting yet another visual overhaul as Microsoft reconsiders its approach to AI across Windows and its various apps. The new changes are focused on the version of Copilot accessible in Microsoft 365, and visually streamline the AI assistant to using it more consistent across apps like Word, PowerPoint and Excel. The most striking difference in Copilot's new look is how little color it has. You can still get Copilot to produce full-color outputs and it will reference other apps by their colorful app icons.

Pages from the Anthropic website and the company's logo are displayed on a computer screen in New York on 26 February 2026. Pages from the Anthropic website and the company's logo are displayed on a computer screen in New York on 26 February 2026. Anthropic reaches valuation of $965bn, beating OpenAI to become world's most valuable AI firm Claude's parent company's $65bn in latest funding round underscores vast sums of money still flowing into industry Anthropic, the AI firm behind the Claude chatbot, announced on Thursday it had raised $65bn in funding to value the company at $965bn post-money. The move makes Anthropic the world's most valuable AI startup, eclipsing its competitor OpenAI. The deal marks an exceedingly successful period of growth for Anthropic, which was once considered to be a smaller player in the global AI arms race.

PCWorld reports that Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.8 focuses on improving AI honesty by teaching the model to admit when it lacks information. The model achieved near-perfect scores in honesty benchmarks for coding questions and exhibited evaluation awareness during testing. Opus 4.8 represents a significant step forward in making AI systems more transparent about their knowledge limitations and uncertainties. Honesty is a key sticking point with even the most powerful LLMs. It's not so much that they're intentionally lying to you; instead, they'll confidently tell you things they're not 100 percent (or even 50 percent) sure about. With Opus 4.8, its latest Claude model, Anthropic says it's made Claude more honest about telling you what it doesn't know, or if it has a low level of confidence in what it's telling you. Released Thursday, Claude Opus 4.8 is Claude Mythos Preview, Anthropic's new "frontier" model that's so powerful, only a handful of "trusted partners" have been allowed to test it for security reasons.

PCWorld reports that Microsoft is enhancing Copilot with new user controls, including read-only options and the ability to lock the AI assistant to specific document sections. Microsoft is expanding Copilot's prompt box with contextually aware suggestions for Word and PowerPoint, while unifying commercial and consumer versions under single leadership. These updates aim to make AI assistance more helpful and less overwhelming for productivity tasks, with features currently being tested internally before reaching consumers. Google made headlines a short time ago for a plan to expand its Gemini prompt box as it combines AI and search. Microsoft is taking a different tack: it's also dynamically expanding its prompt box, but with an eye towards improving its productivity apps instead. Right now, Microsoft's efforts are traversing the outer reaches of its productivity solar system, being tested internally with a few targeted corporate partners, Fast Company reports .

Pfendler has already faced blisters, brutal winds, and lost freshwater in the first week of her over 2,400 mile journey. More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results. Kelsey Pfendler will share updates along the way via social media. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy .

LinkerBot makes dexterous robotic hands for as little as $600. It wants to become the standard for humanoids and automated factories--and eventually replace human labor altogether. If you could buy a humanoid robot for less than a smartphone, would you? Would you buy several robots to handle cooking, cleaning, babysitting, and even your job? This is the pitch being made by Zhou Yong, the 40-year-old founder and chief technology officer of LinkerBot, one of China's leading manufacturers of dexterous humanoid hands.

Weekly quiz: Which tennis star dazzled the French Open with an'Eiffel Tower' dress? This week, more details about the Married At First Sight UK scandal came to light, former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell admitted embezzling more than £400,000 from the party, and almost 90 drones crashed into Sydney's Darling Harbour when a light show went wrong . But how much attention did you pay to what else happened in the world over the past seven days? Try last week's quiz, or have a go at something from the archives . Paris'punishingly hot' as Western Europe hit by heatwave Timelapse footage shows'giant cave' inflating on Paris bridge The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

Conservatives say AI chatbots are being weaponized with left-wing media bias as millions of Americans rely on them for information, shaping public discourse.