Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. I was 21 when I first watched Spike Jonze's 2013 sci-fi romance Her in theaters in New York City--a then–fresh college graduate teeming with the potent and deluded optimism that came with being a very broke and online millennial hoping to change the world. Her sparked some of my first reflections about whether tech innovation is inherently good or bad for society, and helped validate my early moral quandaries and panic at the time. I was graduating at the first turn of a recovering recession (mainly due to big tech investments in digital and social media) and securing my first full-time role as an online reporter. Though I was eager and rosy, a quiet, worried voice also began growing inside of me. Me, my job, my realities, were entirely dependent on tech--mainly Facebook content dissemination and programmatic turnkey digital ads--and I was not sure these huge tech investments by our broligarchical founding fathers would lead us anywhere good.

"We still need to validate the sources," says Lowdon. But the unit's commanders encouraged the use of large language models, he says, "because they provide a lot more efficiency during a dynamic situation." The generative AI tools they used were built by the defense-tech company Vannevar Labs, which in November was granted a production contract worth up to 99 million by the Pentagon's startup-oriented Defense Innovation Unit with the goal of bringing its intelligence tech to more military units. The company, founded in 2019 by veterans of the CIA and US intelligence community, joins the likes of Palantir, Anduril, and Scale AI as a major beneficiary of the US military's embrace of artificial intelligence--not only for physical technologies like drones and autonomous vehicles but also for software that is revolutionizing how the Pentagon collects, manages, and interprets data for warfare and surveillance. Though the US military has been developing computer vision models and similar AI tools, like those used in Project Maven, since 2017, the use of generative AI--tools that can engage in human-like conversation like those built by Vannevar Labs--represent a newer frontier.

The rapid proliferation of AI in our lives introduces new challenges around authorship, authenticity, and ethics in work and art. But it also offers a particularly human problem in narrative: How can we make sense of these machines, not just use them? And how do the words we choose and stories we tell about technology affect the role we allow it to take on (or even take over) in our creative lives? Both Vara's book and The Uncanny Muse, a collection of essays on the history of art and automation by the music critic David Hajdu, explore how humans have historically and personally wrestled with the ways in which machines relate to our own bodies, brains, and creativity. At the same time, The Mind Electric, a new book by a neurologist, Pria Anand, reminds us that our own inner workings may not be so easy to replicate.

That's how much organic click-through rates drop when Google adds an AI overview to a search query. I'll give you a second to finish clutching your pearls. In a recent comprehensive study by Tracy McDonald from Seer Interactive, Tracy analyzed 10,000 keywords with informational intent ranking in the top 20 positions. The research showed a significant decline in engagement. To validate these findings, the data sources included Google Ads for paid click-through rate (CTR), Google Search Console for organic CTR, and ZipTie AIO data to track whether an AI overview was present.

Ukraine has opened a war crime investigation into the alleged killing of four soldiers captured by Russian forces, according to the Ukrainian parliament's human rights commissioner. Dmytro Lubinets wrote on X on Thursday that the four prisoners of war had no weapons as they walked out of a destroyed building with "their hands raised". "They were shot dead on the spot. This is a clear violation of the Geneva Convention and a grave war crime," he added. The alleged killing of the soldiers is believed to have occurred on March 13 in the southern Ukrainian village of Piatykhatky, according to The Associated Press news agency, which verified drone footage of the troops.

Fox News correspondent William La Jeunesse joins'Fox News Sunday' to discuss the evolution of AI and the push lawmakers are making to regulate it. The use of artifical intelligence to reimagine the classic film "The Wizard of Oz" will likely see mixed reactions from fans, experts told Fox News Digital. While "film purists" may resist the idea of using generative AI to give classic films an entire makeover, the technology could "breathe new life" into hit movies -- including "The Wizard of Oz." Warner Bros. Discovery, Google Cloud and Magnopus have set out to do just that by creating an immersive experience for fans of the 1939 classic. The new "Wizard of Oz" experience is set to premiere at the Las Vegas Sphere on Aug. 28. "The fan reaction will likely split into two distinct camps," Michael Walker, CEO of AI-First at Trilogy, told Fox News Digital.

Japanese entertainment giants Nintendo and Sony are likely to raise prices on their game consoles in response to U.S. tariffs, according to the latest research from Bloomberg Intelligence. American consumers would pay as much as 30% more for a Switch 2 or PlayStation 5 under the base-case scenario, which would imply pricing close to 590 for the soon-to-be-released Nintendo flagship machine or Sony's PS5 Astro Bot bundle. Both devices are assembled in China, which is now subject to a 125% duty for shipments to the United States, although Nintendo also has an expanding production footprint in Vietnam, which has a 90-day reprieve from elevated tariffs. Console makers are the most vulnerable players in the video game industry, said BI analyst Nathan Naidu, due to their hardware businesses and need to ship physical goods. The U.S. accounts for 29% of revenue for Tokyo-based Sony and 37% of sales for Kyoto-based Nintendo, he said.

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A demonstration of an artificial intelligence-powered suitcase, designed to assist visually impaired individuals as a robotic alternative to guide dogs, will be conducted at the Osaka Expo, set to open on Sunday. The latest model incorporates generative AI technology, enabling it to describe the surrounding environment through voice feedback. Equipped with a built-in camera and sensors, the suitcase can analyze its surroundings and provide real-time guidance to users. In late January, an AI suitcase was demonstrated at the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, known as Miraikan, in Tokyo. Resembling a regular suitcase, the device activated when Chieko Asakawa, the museum's chief executive director and a key member of the development team, grasped its handle at hip level.

The Defense Ministry said Thursday that the Air Self-Defense Force scrambled fighter jets 704 times in response to possible airspace violations in fiscal 2024, up by 35 from the previous year. Of the total, scrambles against Chinese military aircraft accounted for 464, or 65.9%, down by 15. In August, Chinese military airplanes violated Japanese airspace off the Danjo Islands in Nagasaki Prefecture for the first time. The number of Chinese drones detected by the ministry more than tripled to 30, exceeding the 26 detected between fiscal 2013, when the first Chinese drone was spotted, and fiscal 2023. "China may have developed a system to (fully) operate drones, upgrading from trial flights," a ministry official said.