The CEO of Google DeepMind tells WIRED that companies should use the productivity gains of AI to do more, not lay people off. Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google DeepMind, is keen to talk about the coding skills of his company's newest model, Gemini 3.5 Flash. The model has been trained to perform complex agentic coding tasks: translate large code bases from one language to another; find and fix bugs lurking deep in knotty code; and even write entire operating systems from scratch. Hassabis does not, however, think this spells doom for software developers. "I have no idea why people are going around talking with certainty about that," Hassabis tells WIRED ahead of the new model reveal at today's Google's I/O event .

The ex-employees, who cofounded a new AI watchdog group, say investors deserve more information about xAI's safety practices before SpaceX goes public. Two former OpenAI employees and a group of AI safety nonprofits are warning that Elon Musk's AI lab, xAI, could become a liability for prospective investors in SpaceX, which is preparing to file what's expected to be the largest initial public offering in Wall Street History. In a letter directed to investors published on Tuesday, the ex-staffers highlighted what they describe as "unpriced risks" related to xAI that could complicate SpaceX's reported plans to raise up to $75 billion as part of its IPO. The rocket company's private valuation shot up to over $1 trillion after it acquired xAI last year . Musk claimed his rocket company could launch data centers into space for his AI lab, but the letter's authors argue that xAI's poor record on safety issues could complicate how investors view the combined company as it gets ready to submit its IPO prospectus filing .

The Zuckerbergs Are Hiring a Lifeguard but Calling It a'Beach Water Person' The job, which is associated with the Zuckerberg family office, is located in Kauai, Hawaii, where the Meta CEO owns a massive compound. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan are hiring a seasonal, on-call "Beach Water Person" based in Kauai, Hawaii, where the family owns a sprawling compound, according to a new job listing on Greenhouse associated with West 10, the Zuckerberg family office. This is an interesting choice for a job title, because according to the job description, the primary duties of this "Beach Water Person" include serving as a "Beach Lifeguard," and "Pool Lifeguard." The job listing names a few additional duties related to water activities, such as instructing "stand-up paddleboarding (SUP), canoe paddling, snorkeling, and other ocean-based activities." These, however, come after the water safety duties in the job description.

The US Built a Site to Ensure Fair Access to Public Lands. Recreation.gov was supposed to make access to public lands more equitable and streamlined. It's a few minutes before 8 am Mountain Time on March 16, the day that river permit cancellations are released on Recreation.gov, the federal website for public land reservations. Rec.gov, as it's commonly called, administers everything from river permits and timed entrance fees at the most popular national parks to campground reservations on remote sites belonging to the Bureau of Land Management, and a lot of people are recreating on public land these days. There were 11 million reservations on the site in 2024, up significantly from 3.5 million reservations reported in 2019. At the center of it all is an unlikely player in the outdoor recreation space: The site is operated by the government contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, a corporation known more for cybersecurity than rafting trips. Early each year, outdoor enthusiasts gear up for Recreation.gov's annual lotteries for some of the most iconic experiences in the country: a river trip down Idaho's Middle Fork of the Salmon River, which flows through the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness. Backcountry permits to hike into the Wave, an otherworldly rock formation in Arizona's Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness. Overnight stays in the rugged, lake-studded Enchantments, in Washington's Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest. Odds of getting a desirable Middle Fork permit are around 2 percent.

Starting May 19, tech platforms in the US will have to start complying with the Take It Down Act. Here's how more than a dozen of the largest platforms are handling takedown demands for your nudes. Abstract collage illustration of woman face partially obscured by a glitching pixelated effect on a green background. Starting on Tuesday, May 19, tech platforms have to provide a way for people to report nonconsensual intimate images and videos, or NCII, uploaded to their platforms. The new requirement is thanks to the Take It Down Act, a law backed by First Lady Melania Trump that passed last year with bipartisan support.

The nine-member panel took only two hours to return a verdict in favor of OpenAI on Monday, which the judge quickly adopted as her own final decision. Elon Musk suffered the worst defeat possible in his legal battle against OpenAI as a federal jury and a judge ruled he waited too long to bring his claims against the AI startup and its top executives, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman. The jury's decision was a nonbinding recommendation sent to US district judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, though she immediately accepted it on Monday as her own, making it final. The nine-member panel delivered the unanimous verdict in an Oakland, California courtroom after deliberating for under two hours. They found that statutes of limitations expired well before Musk filed his lawsuit in 2024.

Google I/O is back with updates to Search, Android, Gemini, and a fresh peek at upcoming Android XR smart glasses. Here's how to watch the announcements live and what to expect. This is the annual developer event and product showcase where Google shows off all the shiny new updates to its Android operating system and other platforms, as well as new features and improvements to its artificial intelligence models. The big announcements at Google I/O usually come in the form of a livestreamed keynote event at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California, hosted by Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai. That starts on Tuesday, May 19, at 10 am Pacific time (1 pm Eastern).

CAR-T cell therapy is already a potent treatment for certain cancers. Now, a small study is showing early promise for managing HIV. A Miracle cancer therapy that involves engineering a patient's own immune cells is being repurposed for HIV, and early results from two individuals hint at its promise for long-term control of the virus. As part of a clinical trial, scientists took people's own immune cells and reprogrammed them in a lab to recognize and attack HIV in the body. After a single infusion of the modified cells, two individuals with HIV now have undetectable levels of the virus--one for nearly two years and the other for almost a year.

So Claude and I tried to make a database for tracking the petty grievances of the masses. The dog that ushered me into the technological future was "low and thick." That's all my mother registered before it T-boned her in a city park earlier this year: dense, heavy, and traveling fast enough to fracture her right tibia. Let's discuss what this set in motion in my life: Having successfully learned nothing about coding for two and a half decades, I would soon be attempting my very first software development project. If you've ever had a low and thick dog break your mom's shin bone, you know the stream of lesser indignities that follows.

David Norman, a former Phoenix police officer who's described himself as "a fucking savage," now runs a company that provided training to Homeland Security's Special Response Teams. The owner of a company that trained paramilitary Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents testified that he was involved in at least four lethal shootings, according to a 2021 deposition related to a lawsuit reviewed by WIRED. David S. Norman, the founder and proprietor of law enforcement training firm TruKinetics LLC, served as a Phoenix Police officer from the late 1990s until his retirement in 2020. Prior to founding TruKinetics the same year, according to records reviewed by WIRED, Norman was involved in six shootings while on duty that left four people dead and two more wounded. In every instance, the Phoenix Police Department said Norman fired on an armed suspect and exchanged volleys of gunfire in at least two of the shootings. Based in Gilbert, Arizona, TruKinetics offers training on small-team tactics, hostage rescues, close-quarters combat, building searches, night-vision firearms proficiency, pistol and rifle courses, "vehicle interdiction," breaching with explosives, and sniper tactics, according to the company's website.