There have always been two sides to the Meta CEO. But since the beginning of Trump's second term, the nice side has taken a back seat. Ruthlessness is now the name of the game. January 31, 2024, is an uncomfortable day in Washington. An icy wind is whistling around the corners of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, right next to the Capitol. Inside, the atmosphere is not much more welcoming. Indeed, it feels downright hostile. In the large hall, women and men are holding up signs - silent, in mourning and protest. On them are pictures of girls and boys, 12, 13, 14, 15 years old. Harassed, sexually abused, mistreated on social networks on the internet. Many of the children have died from the consequences. And the man primarily to blame is said to be the one sitting in a blue suit in the front row: Mark Zuckerberg, 39 years old at the time. His usually radiant boyish face is expressionless.

Fifty years after her death in New York, Hannah Arendt has become the most popular philosopher of our time. For good reason: Her views are just as timely as ever. It must be so nice to play Hannah Arendt. No fewer than five actresses are on stage this evening at the Deutsches Theater Berlin to portray the philosopher. The piece is an adaptation of the graphic novel by American illustrator Ken Krimstein about the philosopher's life, called The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt," combined with scenes from the famous interview that journalist Günter Gaus conducted with Arendt in 1964 for German public broadcaster ZDF. The article you are reading originally appeared in German in issue 49/2025 (November 28th, 2025) of DER SPIEGEL. They play Arendt and a few of her contemporaries, the philosopher Martin Heidegger, the writer Walter Benjamin, her husband Heinrich Blücher. There is a great deal of speech in the play, especially from Arendt herself. The places of her life are ticked off, her ...

Not only that, but information is suddenly everywhere, people are losing trust in news outlets and there is a growing exhaustion with crisis reporting. Serious journalism is under greater pressure than ever before. How is DER SPIEGEL reacting? Quite some time ago, an email landed in my inbox from a former DER SPIEGEL editor. He wanted to pitch me a story and, as I quickly realized, stir things up a bit. Then, a couple of months ago, he approached me personally on the sidelines of an event in Hamburg, perhaps because I still hadn't shown much interest. He said we should meet up for a tea or something harder." He is plagued, he told me, each and every week by the wrenching, agonizing decision as to whether he should cancel his subscription to DER SPIEGEL - dismayed by what he described as an incipient decline under the dictates of late-capitalist sales imperatives" he had observed at his former employer.

Misty Williams checks into the emergency room at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center from time to time for treatment of debilitating pain from sickle cell disease, which causes red blood cells to stiffen and block the flow of blood. After pain medication and hydration are ordered, the 41-year-old Los Angeles resident makes an unusual request: access to a virtual reality headset with an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot that can carry on a dialogue with her. With the headset on, Williams finds herself in a virtual garden, butterflies drifting around her. A humanoid robot greets her with a soothing female voice. My name is Xaia, and I'm your mental health ally," it says. After a session, Williams' pain eases and her mind is calmer. "Mentally and physically, I feel more at peace," Williams said. Xaia (pronounced ZAI-uh) is just one of many ways that artificial intelligence technology is barreling its way into the burgeoning sector known as digital health.

The whistleblower confirmed to DER SPIEGEL that all Clothoff employees work in countries that used to belong to the Soviet Union. That is consistent with the fact that all of the company's internal communications that DER SPIEGEL has in its possession are completely in Russian, and the company's email service is also based in Russia. The four central players declined to respond to attempts by DER SPIEGEL to contact them for the story published in December 2024. A person named Elias did get in touch, however, claiming to be a spokesperson for the app. He said the four people mentioned above were unknown to him.

Today, Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, one of the most popular social-media apps for teenage users, is announcing a new computer that you wear directly on your face. The latest in its Spectacles line of smart glasses, which the company has been working on for about a decade, shows you interactive imagery through its lenses, placing plants or imaginary pets or even a golf-putting range into the real world around you. So-called augmented reality (or AR) is nothing new, and neither is wearable tech. Meta makes a pair of smart glasses in partnership with Ray-Ban, and claims they're so popular that the company can't make them fast enough. Amazon sells an Alexa-infused version of the famous Carrera frames, which make you look like a mob boss with access to an AI assistant (Alexa, where's the best place to hide a body?).

DER SPIEGEL: This is not a problem that is exclusive to today's tech industry. Acemoglu: The tech industry combines it with our current obsession with autonomous machine intelligence, meaning that what we should aspire for is to have machines that are as human-like as possible. This vision is rooted in the work and thoughts of Alan Turing, the brilliant British mathematician who first articulated the Turing Test. That's the benchmark that all AI engineers want to pass. DER SPIEGEL: The test is, roughly speaking, about whether a computer succeeds in deceiving a human to think that it is speaking with another person and not a computer.

Oren Etzioni is an AI researcher, while his father Amitai Etzioni was one of the most important intellectual voices in the U.S. prior to his recent passing. In Amitai Etzioni's final interview, he and his son discuss the dangers of artificial intelligence.

Snapchat's ChatGPT-powered AI personality is expanding to all the app's users. An upgraded version of "My AI," the in-app chatbot that was previously limited to Snapchat subscribers, is now launching globally, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel announced at the company's Partner Summit event. With the expansion, My AI has a number of new Snapchat-specific features. It can provide Snapchat users with recommendations for restaurants and other activities based on what's popular in the Snap Map, and can suggest augmented reality lenses. Users can also add the AI to group chats, and set a custom name and avatar (via Bitmoji) for the AI persona.

Snap announced Monday it's rolling out an OpenAI-powered chatbot named My AI to its Snapchat subscribers. Snapchat was announced in June and costs $3.99 per month. According to The Verge, the chatbot is based on OpenAI ChatGPT technology, which also underpins Microsoft's Bing AI. It can recommend gift ideas, weekend plans, or recipes, Snap said in a press release. Users can customize the name and chat background of the "experimental feature."