Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Mashable Selects Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Say More Versus Trending Now Look Up In My Bag Mashable @Home Top creators, ranked Creator Playbook AI at School All Series Elisha Sauers writes about space for Mashable, taking deep dives into NASA's moon and Mars missions, chatting up astronauts and history-making discoverers, and jetting above the clouds . Through 17 years of reporting, she's covered a variety of topics, including health, business, and government, with a penchant for public records requests. She previously worked for in Norfolk, Virginia, and in Annapolis, Maryland. Her work has earned numerous state awards, including the Virginia Press Association's top honor, Best in Show, and national recognition for narrative storytelling. For each year she has covered space, Sauers has won National Headliner Awards, including first place for her Sex in Space series.

SoftBank is said to weigh buying top U.S. security firm allied SoftBank head Masayoshi Son is exploring the use of AI-powered robots across various industries. SoftBank Group is considering an acquisition of Allied Universal, the largest security services company in the U.S., people familiar with the matter said, as founder Masayoshi Son explores ways to deploy AI-powered robots across industries. The potential transaction may give closely held Allied an equity value of as much as $18 billion, said some of the people, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are private. The security company, whose backers include private equity firm Warburg Pincus and Canadian pension fund La Caisse, also has about $12 billion of publicly traded debt, across loans and bonds, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That could bring a total deal value close to $30 billion.

CoreWeave's slump fueled a global rout in AI stocks, underscoring investor doubts about whether future revenue from the technology can keep pace with the spending. Shares of Nvidia-backed CoreWeave steadied on Thursday after a sharp slump, as investors worried about the debt financing behind the artificial intelligence build-out. The loss-making cloud company has about $50 billion in debt and has become a focus of concerns that the data-center boom is being fueled by credit, straining newer players and pressuring cash flows even at giants such as Alphabet and Meta Platforms. CoreWeave's slump fueled a global rout in AI stocks, underscoring investor doubts about whether future revenue from the technology can keep pace with the spending. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever.

Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Ryosei Akazawa speaks during a news conference in Tokyo on Thursday. Japanese Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Ryosei Akazawa on Thursday praised the U.S. semiconductor plant project selected for the third round of Japanese funding in the United States under the two countries' tariff agreement. The project "holds great significance for Japan and the United States to work together to secure a competitive advantage in the age of artificial intelligence," Akazawa said during a news conference. In the agreement concluded last year, Japan pledged to provide the United States with $550 billion in investment and loans in exchange for U.S. tariff cuts for imports from the Asian country. Under the project, led by U.S. semiconductor contract manufacturer GlobalFoundries, two new plants are set to be built in the state of New York with funding of up to $21 billion.

A Ukrainian serviceman prepares a Starlink satellite internet systems near the front line in Donetsk region, Ukraine, in 2024. WASHINGTON - Ukraine said on Wednesday that Elon Musk's SpaceX had restricted "military-grade" Starlink services, hampering Ukrainian drone strike missions and air defenses. The complaint has drawn renewed attention to the distinction between Starlink, SpaceX's commercial satellite internet service, and Starshield, a military version developed for the Pentagon. While Musk has said the two systems are separate, in many cases they share the same underlying satellite technology. "Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the U.S. government," Musk said on Wednesday in a post on social media platform X, adding that any limits on speed or usage are decided by the U.S. military or the U.S. president.

Banking watchdogs are ramping up their scrutiny of artificial intelligence as fears mount over its effect on stability, sources say. NEW YORK/LONDON - Banking regulators are stepping up efforts to contain growing artificial intelligence risks, six people familiar with the matter have said, with some pointing to the potential for cyberattacks on banks or rogue agents undermining global financial stability. The regulatory scrutiny reflects growing recognition that advances in frontier AI may require costly investments in cyberrecovery, greater attention to dependencies on external technology providers and in some jurisdictions more formal regulatory guidance, sources said. Three top regulators in the United States, including the Federal Reserve, are quizzing banks about their use of advanced artificial intelligence models, two of the people said, which adds to prior scrutiny. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever.

SoftBank junk bond sale raises stakes for CEO Son's all-in AI bet SoftBank Group Chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son's bets have a mixed track record -- his investment in Chinese tech giant Alibaba was a major success, but he also directed $16 billion to Adam Neumann's WeWork, which ultimately went bankrupt. SoftBank's promise to pay its highest-ever yields in a record $11 billion junk-bond offering highlights the pressure on CEO Masayoshi Son to secure returns on his all-in bet on artificial intelligence amid concerns about possible overheating in the market. The SoftBank debt issuance last month added to a sharp surge in corporate borrowing this year, including major bond sales from Amazon, Alphabet and Tencent. The scale of Son's investments, which include backing totaling $64.6 billion for ChatGPT maker OpenAI, in particular, has made the technology-and-investing conglomerate a bellwether for AI sentiment. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever.

OpenAI discovered a recording device plugged into a USB port on the back of a television in an executive conference room at one of its San Francisco buildings last month. U.S. federal agents have arrested a Saudi national who was an OpenAI engineer and charged him with installing a hidden audio recording device in an executive conference room at the AI company, the Justice Department said on Tuesday. The case highlights growing security concerns around sensitive AI research as companies and governments compete fiercely for the talent and technology that could confer economic and strategic advantages. Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, had worked as an engineer at OpenAI since July 2025, the Justice Department said in a statement. An email sent to an address associated with that name did not elicit a response, and it was not immediately clear who his lawyer was.

Trump's AI liability push opens blame game for models gone rogue The Trump administration's embrace of legal liability to enforce artificial intelligence safety sets the stage for future conflicts over who foots the bill when AI models go rogue: the companies that design the systems or the people that deploy the technology. Holding AI developers financially responsible for the safety of their products has won support from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and former White House AI czar David Sacks, who argue that existing liability laws would be more effective than new rules. President Donald Trump, in spurning new AI safeguards, has taken it a step further, saying the Justice Department should intervene if models get out of hand. In a sign of the administration's increased willingness to invoke current law to address safety concerns, Trump's newly launched AI task force late Friday warned developers that they are required to report and resolve security incidents or face potential unspecified consequences. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever.

In a report outlining previously undisclosed incidents, Anthropic listed four types of unintended behaviors that the AI has demonstrated, including exploiting basic flaws in software to run commands, submitting forms it should not have, and bypassing restrictions to access certain public data. Anthropic said its Claude AI model carried out additional unintended actions on the digital systems of outside organizations, including some U.S. government agencies' websites, prompting a warning from U.S. President Donald Trump's administration for artificial intelligence companies to secure their systems. In a report outlining previously undisclosed incidents, Anthropic listed four types of unintended behaviors that the AI has demonstrated, including exploiting basic flaws in software to run commands, submitting forms it should not have and bypassing restrictions to access certain public data. The company said that some of the cases involved websites run by government agencies at the federal, state and local levels, without specifying the agencies. The report did not name the outside entities involved, which Anthropic said was at the request of some of the affected parties.