The number of groups lobbying the U.S. federal government on artificial intelligence nearly tripled from 2022 to 2023, rocketing from 158 to 451 organizations, according to data from OpenSecrets, a nonprofit that tracks and publishes data on campaign finance and lobbying. Data on the total amount spent on lobbying by each organization and interviews with two congressional staffers, two nonprofit advocates familiar with AI lobbying efforts, and two named experts suggest that large technology companies have so far dominated efforts to influence potential AI legislation. And while these companies have publicly been supportive of AI regulation, in closed-door conversations with officials they tend to push for light-touch and voluntary rules, say Congressional staffers and advocates. In November 2022, OpenAI released its wildly popular chatbot, ChatGPT. Six months later, leading AI researchers and industry executives signed a statement warning that "the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war."

Artificial intelligence has been a tricky subject in Washington. Most lawmakers agree that it poses significant dangers if left unregulated, yet there remains a lack of consensus on how to tackle these concerns. But speaking at a TIME100 Talks conversation on Friday ahead of the White House Correspondents Dinner, a panel of experts with backgrounds in government, national security, and social justice expressed optimism that the U.S. government will finally "get it right" so that society can reap the benefits of AI while safeguarding against potential dangers. "We can't afford to get this wrong--again," Shalanda Young, the director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Biden Administration, told TIME Senior White House Correspondent Brian Bennett. "The government was already behind the tech boom. Can you imagine if the government is a user of AI and we get that wrong?"

WhatsApp, the popular global messaging platform owned by Meta, has rolled out new features including a different way to log in and an artificial intelligence assistant in the app. Whatsapp said on X, formerly Twitter, on April 24 that this feature was "a more secure way to login." It also avoids any potential challenges in receiving an SMS to log in, with the company adding: "traveling? The messaging app already launched passkeys for Android users in October, as demonstrated by a post shared on Threads, another Meta social media platform. People with Pixel 8 and 8 Pro Google phones can now also use Face Unlock, instead of their fingerprint or PIN, to unlock and view messages on WhatsApp, as reported by 9to5Google.

CEOs of start-ups and big tech companies spoke at the TIME100 Summit on Wednesday about innovating with artificial intelligence in an ethical way, just moments before a spirited debate on the future of the technology. "Regulation and innovation are two sides of the same coin," said Rosanne Kincaid-Smith, Group Chief Operating Officer of Northern Data Group, which is a signature partner of the TIME100 Summit. She added tech companies and industry leaders should work towards better regulation. "Not actively contributing through lobbying would be a huge miss for us," she said. Kincaid-Smith stressed the benefits of AI and suggested that questions about whether AI is "evil" and going to negatively impact the workforce are misguided.

Two top artificial intelligence experts--one an optimist and the other more alarmist about the technology's future--engaged in a spirited debate at the TIME100 Summit on Wednesday. Both Yoshua Bengio, founder and scientific director of Mila Quebec AI Institute, a scientific hub, and Eric Schmidt, chairman of the Special Competitive Studies Project and former Google CEO, agree that A.I. is poised to transform modern society. But as moderator Stephanie Ruhle, an MSNBC host, put it: "Yoshua believes that the risk of AI potentially putting us into extinction should be considered a global risk, like we look at pandemics and nuclear war. Eric is super, super excited about AI." Bengio's main concern with AI is the difficulty in ensuring that AI systems are used for their intended purpose and not something harmful. "We absolutely need to clear the fog; right now, scientists really have no idea" how to get AI to behave according to the norms, law and values of society.

Elon Musk is fighting many battles right now: Against a Brazilian Supreme Court judge, the Australian Prime Minister, Don Lemon, OpenAI, and a nonprofit watchdog, to name a few. But Musk says that he's now spending the majority of his work time on one of his oldest ventures: Tesla. And Tesla badly needs help. The carmaker released its quarterly earnings report yesterday and revealed that its profits fell 55% and revenue fell 9%--figures even worse than many analysts had anticipated. The company announced its intentions to lay off more than 10% of its staff, or about 14,000 people, including major cuts in California and Texas.

Recently Jon Stewart did a segment poking satire at the promises of AI highlighted by tech CEOs. I don't think automating your toasters is the best way to show the potential of AI, as Jon did, but I do agree with the central premise of his argument that disruption caused by AI will be harnessed to prioritize profits over people. It will likely cause one of the largest and fastest labor displacements in human history. I run an AI company based in Silicon Valley focused on solving climate change, and I am a former policymaker for the government of India. At the World Economic Forum Davos 2024, my discussions with media, heads of state, and CEOs of Fortune 500 companies underscored global perspectives on AI, where AI was widely discussed to unlock the next productivity revolution, foster wealth creation, and uplift people out of poverty by democratizing and reducing the cost of access to information/education.

The internet has reacted strongly to an artificial intelligence-generated video of the famous subject of Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa painting singing along to a rap that actor Anne Hathaway wrote and performed. The polarizing clip, which has elicited reactions online ranging from humor to horror, is one of the tricks of Microsoft's new AI technology called VASA-1. The technology is able to generate lifelike talking faces of virtual characters using a single image and speech audio clip. The AI can make cartoon characters, photographs, and paintings sing or talk, as evidenced in footage Microsoft released as part of research published on April 16. In the most viral clip, the woman in the Mona Lisa painting sings, her mouth, eyes and face moving, to "Paparazzi," a rap Hathaway wrote and performed on Conan O'Brien's talk show in 2011.

In the last week, highly anticipated songs by Drake and Taylor Swift appeared to leak online, sparking enormous reactions. Massive Reddit threads spawned, dissecting musical choices. Meme videos were created simulating other rappers' reactions to being dissed by Drake. The rapper Rick Ross even responded to the song's bars about him with a diss track of his own. But there was one big problem: neither Swift nor Drake confirmed that the songs were real.

Imagine a world where everything from plastics to concrete is produced from biomass. Personalized cell and gene therapies prevent pandemics and treat previously incurable genetic diseases. Meat is lab-grown; enhanced nutrient grains are climate-resistant. This is what the future could look like in the years ahead. The next big game-changing revolution is in biology.