These developments mark a major advance in artificial intelligence: systems designed to operate in the digital world without direct human oversight. Who doesn't want assistance with cumbersome work or tasks there's no time for? Agent assistance could soon take many different forms, such as reminding you to ask a colleague about their kid's basketball tournament or finding images for your next presentation. Within a few weeks, they'll probably be able to make presentations for you. For people with hand mobility issues or low vision, agents could complete tasks online in response to simple language commands.

In 2011, I sat in the Guggenheim Museum in New York and watched Rupert Murdoch announce the beginning of a "new digital renaissance" for news. The newspaper mogul was unveiling an iPad-inspired publication called The Daily. "The iPad demands that we completely reimagine our craft," he said. The Daily shut down the following year, after burning through a reported 40 million. For as long as I have reported on internet companies, I have watched news leaders try to bend their businesses to the will of Apple, Google, Meta, and more.

The first thing you need to know about Palworld, a new video game developed and published by the Japanese studio Pocketpair, is that it is ludicrously popular. According to data scraped from Steam, a digital storefront for PC games, Palworld became the second game ever after 2017's PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds to breach 2 million concurrent players last week. Palworld arrived on Jan. 19, so that growth laps some of the most commercially solvent franchises in the industry--the server concentrations of Counter-Strike and Grand Theft Auto V can eat their hearts out. All this is to say that Pocketpair has a genuine phenomenon on its hands: Palworld, much like Fortnite or Minecraft before it, is poised to dominate the corridors of elementary schools for the rest of 2024, for better or worse. This is unfortunate news for me, and, really, anyone else who cares about the virtues of interactive entertainment, because Palworld's appeal is totally inscrutable.

This week, Sony announced the PlayStation Portal, a $200 handheld that can only stream games from your PS5. In this episode, Devindra and Producer Ben Ellman try to figure out what the heck Sony is doing. Is the Portal something gamers actually want? Or did Sony completely miss an opportunity to build a better portable? Also, we discuss why we're excited for Armored Core VI and some serious big mecha action.

'Gutfeld!' guests discuss a Jeopardy question that used alleged murderer Brian Laundrie as the clue. A "Jeopardy!" contestant is going viral this week after making what many fans are considering one of the biggest blunders in the show's history. On Wednesday's episode, a woman named Karen had a huge lead over the other two contestants as they neared the end of the second round – she had earned $21,800, while her competitors had earned $7,100 and $6,400. When there were only a few clues left on the Double Jeopardy board, Karen found a Daily Double in the "Hans, Solo" category. If she had made a modest bet, she would have been sure to win the entire game after Final Jeopardy, as the other players couldn't possibly catch up to her lead.

Father Paolo Benanti is an expert in ethics, digital ethics, and technology. He is a Franciscan monk and Professor of Moral Theology, Bioethics, and Neuroethics at the Gregorian Pontifical University in Rome. I discuss with Father Benanti the controversial aspects of AI in healthcare and how the digital transformation changes us – human beings. Father Benanti, two years ago, there was a morally ambiguous case in the USA – a doctor used a virtual presence system to tell a patient he would die. With the broad adoption of telemedicine and medical workforce shortages, this practice may become an everyday reality. From the beginning of human history, we have understood medicine as a scientific discipline. There was a time when a priest and doctor was the same person. We've always picked up someone special from the human community to hold the position of a doctor.

On the same day that Facebook announced that 87 million users may have had their personal data improperly accessed -- updated from the "tens of millions" figure the social network previously reported -- the company's founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg held a rare question-and-answer session with the media Wednesday, admitting that the company made a "huge mistake" by not taking more steps to protect user data and privacy early on. When asked if he thinks he is still the best person to run Facebook, Zuckerberg said, "Yes, I think life is about learning from the mistakes and figuring out what you need to do to move forward." Questions about Zuckerberg's leadership come after it's been revealed that Cambridge Analytica might have improperly obtained data from as many as 87 million people, mostly in the United States. The firm had ties to President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign. "At the end of the day, this is my responsibility," Zuckerberg said, when asked if anyone at Facebook had been fired over the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display