This week on, we discuss the voluntary AI safety agreement tech executives signed, AI agents for normies, and extremist candidates running for office in the US midterms. This week on, Brian Barrett, Zoë Schiffer, and Leah Feiger discuss the "morally binding" AI accord tech executives signed following a meeting with Donald Trump. They've agreed that AI labs will regulate themselves--should work out great. Plus, the team digs into OpenAI's Developer Day, where CEO Sam Altman introduced AI agents for normies, otherwise known as Dots; how AI agents are coming to workplaces near you; and a quick rundown of the most extremist candidates running for office. Trump's AI Safety'Accord' Is a Fancy Pinky Swear A Pentagon Influencer Called Liberal Women a'Pestilence' Who Will End Western Civilization I Built AI Clones of My Coworkers. Write to us at [email protected] . You can always listen to this week's podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here's how: If you're on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link . Two quick things before we dive in. If you've been listening for a while and you haven't rated or reviewed the podcast yet, this is your sign. Give us a rating, tell us what you think. Five stars is nice, but we'll take the feedback too. It really helps more people find the show. Also, if you're in the Bay Area, we will be doing a live audience recording of the podcast on Thursday, October 8, at 7 pm at The Commons, headquarters of our KQED friends in San Francisco. You can buy tickets on kqed.org or check out the show notes for the link. You won't want to miss it.

AI at School Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more 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 Timothy Beck Werth is the Tech Editor at Mashable, where he leads coverage and assignments for the Tech and Shopping verticals. Tim has over 15 years of experience as a journalist and editor, and he has particular experience covering and testing consumer technology, smart home gadgets, and men's grooming and style products. Previously, he was the Managing Editor and then Site Director of SPY.com, a men's product review and lifestyle website. As a writer for GQ, he covered everything from bull-riding competitions to the best Legos for adults, and he's also contributed to publications such as The Daily Beast, Gear Patrol, and The Awl. At Meta Connect 2026, Mark Zuckerberg unveiled Meta VR Glasses, a lightweight device with an advanced display, voice and hand controls, and integration with the company's AI agent, Muse.

AI at School Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more 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 At Meta Connect 2026, Zuckerberg outlined plans to shield more personal data from Meta itself. Olivia Tauber is the deputy editor of digital culture, covering creators, media, movies, beauty, and more. Based in New York, her work has appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Cut, Teen Vogue, Complex, and Interview Magazine. She holds a Master's degree in Journalism from NYU and a Bachelor's from the University of Michigan. She also runs Fan Mail, a weekly pop-culture newsletter.

AI at School Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more 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 Meta's keynote centered on Muse, its new AI agent, camera-free audio glasses, lighter VR glasses, and a pocket AI device. Chance Townsend is the General Assignments Editor at Mashable, covering tech, video games, dating apps, digital culture, and whatever else comes his way. He has a Master's in Journalism from the University of North Texas and is a proud orange cat father. His writing has also appeared in PC Mag and . For this year's iteration of Meta Connect, company CEO Mark Zuckerberg opened with the tagline the future is for everyone.

Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more 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 Switch Off All Series Alex Perry is a tech reporter at Mashable who primarily covers video games and consumer tech. Alex has spent most of the last decade reviewing games, smartphones, headphones, and laptops, and he doesn't plan on stopping anytime soon. He is also a Pisces, a cat lover, and a Kansas City sports fan. It's time to watch Mark Zuckerberg do public speaking again. It's Meta announcement season, and you can follow along for yourself at home by watching Mark Zuckerberg's kenote live.

The longtime tech journalist says she's seen Silicon Valley make the same mistakes again and again. As the AI industry likes to tell it, superintelligent bots could one day cure cancer and end poverty. Or in the worst-case scenario, they might wipe out all humans from the face of the Earth. In recent weeks, Silicon Valley's existential concerns about the technology it is racing to build have blown up. The tech journalist Kara Swisher sees it differently. "We have to stop thinking AI is going to kill humanity," she told executive editor Adrienne LaFrance at The Atlantic Festival. If the AI future goes sideways, bots won't be to blame. "These are people at the helm of these things." In the several decades that Swisher has covered Silicon Valley--formerly as a reporter at, now as the host of two podcasts--she says that she's seen tech whizzes make the same mistakes again and again: failing to take proper precautions against the products they are building. "One of the things about tech people is they're the smartest people in the world, in case you need to know, because they like to tell you," she said. In her interview with LaFrance, Swisher also discussed the economic implications of the AI race, who is likely to win, and how Americans can respond to this dizzying and worrying AI moment. You have been paying attention to the tech world and AI for basically ever. And now it seems like within the past, say, two weeks, the rest of the world is suddenly paying much closer attention. So I wanted to start just by talking about where you think we are, in this moment.

Meta has introduced its first real-time audio model, Muse Voice Transcribe. The model can handle dictation and transcription for more than 20 speakers and can seamlessly handle multiple languages at once, Meta says. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who recently returned to X after three years of not posting on the platform, shared an example of the model's ability to handle multiple speakers and languages at once. In the video, the transcription is able to automatically distinguish between multiple speakers and switch between languages. It's even able to pick up on "code-switching" and transcribe sentences that use words from multiple languages.

Silicon Valley Doesn't Get Why You Hate AI Technology leaders don't seem to understand society's gripes about AI, but boy, are they posting through it. Silicon Valley is trying to make sense of the growing backlash against artificial intelligence, but so far, it's not going that well. The inconvenient truth is that a significant portion of the world is not optimistic about the technology they're building. But recent attempts to diagnose the root of the problem by CEOs like Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Anthropic's Dario Amodei indicate they don't understand what's actually driving society's disdain for AI. The rest of popular culture, meanwhile, is finding ways to capitalize on AI hate. Just look at this new commercial for Liquid Death and Garage Beer.

Tech Visionary Says the Big AI Labs Don't Get What People Want Tim O'Reilly built a publishing empire that AI is helping to destroy. Yet he loves AI--as long as it's open source. Tim O'Reilly's yardstick for measuring the worth of a company, person, or society has long been It's no surprise that O'Reilly-- publisher, internet pioneer, VC, conference organizer, and dispenser of tech wisdom --is applying that metric to the way people design and use AI. Specifically, he's pushing for a future where open-source AI is an elixir for the masses. He worries that, like Microsoft in the 1990s, today's hyperscalers are trying to lock users into their products.

AI is shifting the culture, from tech CEO manifestos to 1 am job interviews. Today on Brian Barrett, Zoë Schiffer, and Leah Feiger break down Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's 6,500-word AI manifesto and why it ultimately rings hollow. Plus, why are job seekers scheduling bot-run interviews at 1 am? WIRED's Andy Greenberg also joins to unpack the best findings from Black Hat and Defcon, from a hacked kids' smartwatch to a coin-sized device that can hijack a Boeing 737. McDonald's Built a 515-Page Dossier on Me. It Says I'll Never Stop Eating There Write to us at [email protected] . You can always listen to this week's podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here's how: If you're on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link . I thought it was fun. The dialogue was kind of whatever, beautiful shots of the Sicilian ocean. And I went with my husband who loves to remind me that he studied Latin and Greek in high school, and he actually liked it too. I think everyone who is complaining about it needs to stop.