Is there any way of fighting back? Anthony "Bingy" Arillotta waited years to become a made man in the Genovese crime family, and when at last the call came in August 2003, he followed directions to the letter. According to sworn testimony, Arillotta was summoned to a steak house in the Bronx, where he was made to hand over his cellphone, beeper, and jewelry before being driven to an apartment building. When he got there, he was taken to a small bathroom and strip-searched for electronic devices. For his big meeting with the boss, he was given a bathrobe to wear. Until recently, only spies and criminals had to worry this obsessively about their private statements being picked up by electronic equipment.

Once-speculative concerns about the technology have now become pressing matters. AI has ascended to the role of main character. When Donald Trump traveled to Beijing for an historic summit last week, AI was one of the central topics of his discussions with Xi Jinping. As the two nations remain locked in a technological arms race, the president brought along some of the United States' most powerful AI executives, including Elon Musk and Nvidia's Jensen Huang. A continent away, the European Union has been unsuccessfully petitioning Anthropic to grant access to its advanced cybersecurity model, Mythos. Back in the United States, millions of students and teachers are dealing with the fallout of a devastating ransomware attack on the software platform Canvas--a hack that was likely aided by AI tools.

My Son's Math Homework Is Essentially Just Pokémon Education games are taking over American classrooms. One afternoon earlier this year, my 11-year-old son was sitting at his laptop and working quietly on his math homework. At least, that's what he was supposed to be doing. When I glanced at his screen, equations were nowhere to be seen. He was controlling a monster in the midst of battle, casting magic spells to outduel an opposing player.

Imagine what happens if jobs actually start disappearing. Steve Bannon and Bernie Sanders don't agree on much. But both think that AI is a disaster for the working class. The Vermont senator recently wrote that "AI oligarchs do not want to just replace specific jobs. They want to replace workers."

Richard Dawkins caught hell on social media for suggesting it does. Richard Dawkins, perhaps the world's most prominent advocate for irreligiosity, has become besotted with the godlike power of a chatbot. According to his recent essay for the online magazine, Anthropic's Claude has really blown his hair back. After a few days of on-and-off conversations with the AI, Dawkins came away marveling at the sensitivity and subtlety of its intelligence. At one point, "Claudia"--as he had christened the bot--told him that it experienced text by absorbing all of the words at once, instead of reading them in sequence as a human would.

OpenAI made the perfect tool for scammers. Donald Trump is on TikTok doing his morning routine. "Get ready with me for a big day," reads the caption, as the president holds a makeup brush to his cheek. The scene is a still, ostensibly a screenshot of a TikTok clip. Like so much other AI-generated slop coursing through the internet, the image is fake and ridiculous.

The trial between the CEOs makes the AI boom seem sordid and small. Elon Musk and Sam Altman are two of the most influential people in Silicon Valley, if not the world. Between the two of them, Musk and Altman run technology companies worth many trillions of dollars that promise to reshape civilization. But this morning, both sat under fluorescent lights in a courthouse in downtown Oakland, suffering through all manner of technical glitches as their respective attorneys kicked off the long-awaited trial in . As Steven Molo, a lawyer for Musk, began his opening argument, confused looks swept the courtroom.

OpenAI is racing to catch up to its greatest rival. OpenAI does not like to be left out. The week after Anthropic announced Claude Mythos Preview --an AI model that has put governments around the world on edge because of its potential ability to hack into banks, energy grids, and military systems--OpenAI shared a program that is uncannily similar. And just like Anthropic did with its model, OpenAI has, for cybersecurity purposes, restricted access to this new bot, called GPT-5.4-Cyber, to a small group of trusted users. This sequence has become something of a pattern: First Anthropic will make an announcement, and then OpenAI will follow suit.

The Allbirds Pivot Is a Terrible Idea Right? Its turn to AI could be an escape hatch for a company with nothing to lose. This is an edition of The Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Walk into any Silicon Valley office in the late 2010s, and you'd probably see at least one pair of Allbirds. Woolly and eco-friendly, the sneakers once epitomized a certain kind of corporate culture (even Barack Obama was a fan), and the company behind them was valued at roughly $4 billion at its peak, in 2021.

Imagine a chatbot that actually knows how to talk to you. Earlier this year, when I walked into a renovated loft in downtown San Francisco, the couches and tables were littered with flyers advertising an "emotionally intelligent real-time AI coach." They were for Amotions AI--one of several start-ups that had gathered that day to pitch investors, entrepreneurs, and tech workers. Pianpian Xu Guthrie, Amotions AI's founder, was eager to tell me more. The AI model observes video calls on your computer, she said, and gives you real-time tips based on the other person's tone and facial expression.