AI is creating a'human premium' for art made by people. A few weeks back, in a former bank building that's now a music venue in Falmouth, Cornwall, I was DJ-ing at a night I run called Rave Machine. It was a noisy, high-energy, sweaty affair, just as a night's dancing should be. All of the elements - the crowd, performers, staff, music, the journey home - connected to create something special, a one-off. It was also completely human.

Nur Aisyah, a 30-year-old civil servant, has spent the past couple of years looking for a partner, with little to show for it. Nur rarely meets men through work or her hobbies and finds dating apps such as Tinder and Bumble "terrible", with potential suitors either putting scant effort into their profile or struggling to hold a conversation over text. "I feel slightly pessimistic about the future as a whole," Nur, who asked to use a pseudonym, told Al Jazeera. So when Singapore's technology agency GovTech recently rolled out FirstDate, a dating platform for public servants that uses a Nobel-winning algorithm, Nur signed up out of curiosity "It's more of the mindset of'Why not?'" she said. "It makes quite a funny story if something did come out of this."

What can we learn from the brain about building better computers? Oliver Rhodes discusses how neuromorphic computing draws on the brain's architecture to develop new approaches to more efficient information processing. Can you give me an overview of your background and the research that you're involved with? Neuromorphic computing is quite a broad subject, which essentially looks to biology as inspiration to develop next-generation computing systems. We work off this principle: we know the brain is this really amazing computer, and it's able to do things that a lot of modern computing systems aren't able to do, and it also does them in an incredibly energy efficient way. We'd like to try to replicate that with some of the systems we build. In the context of the current climate around AI, while we've seen that it's made really big steps forward and is able to do really impressive things, there are certain things that it still can't do that the brain is able to do. So we look to the brain for inspiration to try and solve some of those next generation challenges. Neuromorphic computing covers all aspects of this: from looking at algorithms that might be solving a particular problem, to the systems and subsystems that would be running those algorithms, right down to a chip or devices level. We often use neural networks, which are also employed in artificial intelligence models, such as in deep learning and transformer models.

McDonald's has been using artificial intelligence to dynamically price menu items in the US and some global markets, according to a report by Reuters. This involves finding the "optimal price" to match what a particular store's patrons would be willing to pay. This fluctuates according to location, and even stores in the same city can have different cost amounts for the same exact items, according to information reviewed by Reuters. This is basically surge pricing, like with ride-share platforms, but for hockey puck burgers that have been sitting under a hot lamp. Reuters got a look at the interface that franchisees use to access this technology and it's pretty creepy. Messages show stuff like "your restaurant is showing MEDIUM SENSITIVITY to price" based on "customer willingness to pay in your area."

Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more AI at School Mashable Selects Look Up Say More Safety Net Versus Creator Playbook In My Bag Trending Now Back to School Good Connection: Uplifting stories for a digital age All Series You can sign up to Rivet as a Dater or Matcher, but all are encouraged to pair up others. Anna Iovine is the associate editor of features at Mashable. Previously, as the sex and relationships reporter, she covered topics ranging from dating apps to pelvic pain. Before Mashable, Anna was a social editor at VICE and freelanced for publications such as Slate and the Columbia Journalism Review. Follow her on Instagram .

YouTube's Custom Feeds Give You More Control Over the Algorithm In YouTube's latest update, viewers can tweak what the algorithm shows on their front page and curate it to a specific vibe. My YouTube algorithm is sacred, with years of data about my preferences and viewing history fermenting into whatever videos it picks for my home screen. YouTube's algorithm, while not perfect, sure knows what I want to see. The current top three videos on my front page are an Apple Watch analysis, a season 28 update, and something called "I Lost to the Muppets" from comedian Chris Fleming . As part of its Made on YouTube event Wednesday, Google released several new features, including a Custom Feeds button for adjusting what videos pop up on your front page. It's a rare chance for users to directly tweak their algorithmic feed on YouTube, in ways that go beyond just pressing thumbs up on a video or blocking a creator.

Patti Harrison Had Dreams of a Tech Utopia. The comedian sat down with WIRED to talk about social media, AI, and getting laughs for impersonating Boston Dynamics' robot dogs. Patti Harrison, like every great comic, knows how to use her face. If you've seen her stealing scenes in TV shows like Tim Robinson's or Hulu's, you know that she often starts out a bit demure, or pouty, before walking audiences into the deep end. It's that quality in Harrison's work that WIRED borrowed for our own rather unhinged cover concept. Harrison plays five (well, actually six) of the current masters of the universe--Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos (with Lauren Sánchez Bezos by his side). Combining her farcical sensibilities with our commentary on the man-heavy leader ship of Silicon Valley worked perfectly--and she was happy to lampoon the people behind the platforms she used to enjoy. We caught up with Harrison in London, where she had just finished a sold-out run of her show,, and a week of performances at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. KATIE DRUMMOND: When we were putting together our WIRED Women cover, we knew we had to put the best possible woman on it. You immediately came to mind, and I can't stress enough how much you nailed the assignment. I want to argue with a bunch of it. I was coming in today like, oh, I guess I didn't really check to see what the interview was about.

The US spent billions on border surveillance. Why can't it catch people before they die? Surveillance towers, increasingly powered by AI, promised faster responses to crossings. Our investigation of deaths near the towers found they are failing to deliver. When José Morales Bernal crossed the border into the United States on April 8, 2024, the day before his 32nd birthday, it should have triggered a chain of technological alerts and human responses. As he walked through the desert in southern New Mexico that morning, he was within range of three surveillance towers. Newly installed by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), they were built by the defense tech company Anduril and equipped with cameras and AI to automatically detect and track people. They transmit live video to nearby control rooms and can send alerts to the government-issued smartphones held by agents in the area, prompting the closest available to respond. This story is part of Dying on Camera, a collaboration between and . These AI-enabled towers are meant to give greater visibility across the 1,951-mile southern border, freeing up border agents from having to spend hours staring into video monitors. They were installed in this particular place to spot border crossers before they reached the nearby town of Sunland Park. If the system worked as intended, Morales should have been apprehended. If he needed medical help, agents were trained to provide it. Despite the nearby surveillance towers, it was employees of the local landfill, rather than Border Patrol, who first spotted Morales that morning. At 1 p.m. the workers saw him again, now lying in the sand. At 4 p.m. the landfill workers saw that he had not moved and called Border Patrol. Agents arrived 45 minutes later. When an agent then called 911 to report the body, he said it was "probably one of the migrants crossing through there," seemingly unaware that Morales had been moving near the agency's surveillance systems earlier that day. Morales had died just 360 feet from the closest surveillance tower.

The Australian government is seeking support from global tech giants as it works to strengthen the country's online safety laws and artificial intelligence (AI) regulations. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who met Apple CEO Tim Cook at the tech company's headquarters in Cupertino, California, on Saturday, said that "Australia can't do it alone" when it came to protecting children from the dangers of the internet. "We're putting stronger rules in place to keep Australians safe online," he said. "And now, big tech companies like Apple are stepping up too." Albanese, who is also in the United States for the United Nations General Assembly, used his trip to call for stronger AI regulation after dire safety warnings from industry leaders.

'This is an apartheid regime' Does Trump have real leverage over Netanyahu? As the world wrestles with the ethical implications of artificial intelligence and the dangers of removing humans from life-altering decisions, Israel has pressed ahead with deploying AI as part of its military arsenal. In Gaza, AI systems have been used to determine potential bomb targets, contributing to the scale of the killing of Palestinians there as recently documented in the award-winning documentary NAZA . The Turkish media outlet PalDigital, citing rights activists and Israeli media reports, highlighted how Israel uses AI tools - and specifically a product called ImiSight developed by the Israeli weapons manufacturer Rafael - to monitor vast swathes of land and observe changes that can then be used as justifications for demolitions. The tool was initially used by Israel in the Naqab desert, targeting Bedouin Palestinian citizens of Israel, PalDigital reported in July.