Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is an AI guy. Last week, during a stop in Nashville on his Take Back Your Health tour, the Health and Human Services secretary brought up the technology between condemning ultra-processed foods and urging Americans to eat protein. "My agency is now leading the federal government in driving AI into all of our activities," he declared. An army of bots, Kennedy said, will transform medicine, eliminate fraud, and put a virtual doctor in everyone's pocket. RFK Jr. has talked up the promise of infusing his department with AI for months.

Elon Musk walks to the White House after landing in Marine One on the South Lawn on 9 March in Washington DC. Elon Musk walks to the White House after landing in Marine One on the South Lawn on 9 March in Washington DC. We still don't really know what Elon Musk's Doge actually did W hen Elon Musk vowed late last year to lead a "department of government efficiency" (Doge), he claimed it would operate with "maximum transparency" as it set about saving $2tn worth of waste and exposing massive fraud. Today, with Musk out of the White House, Doge having cut only a tiny fraction of the waste it promised, and dozens of lawsuits alleging violations of privacy and transparency laws, much of what the agency has done remains a mystery. The effects of Doge's initial blitz through the federal government - which included dismantling the US Agency for International Development ( USAID), embedding staffers in almost every agency and illegally firing people en masse - are still playing out.

Workers say the firm's'warp-speed' approach fuels pressure, layoffs and rising emissions More than 1,000 Amazon employees have signed an open letter expressing "serious concerns" about AI development, saying that the company's "all-costs justified, warp speed" approach The letter, published on Wednesday, was signed by the Amazon workers anonymously, and comes a month after Amazon announced mass layoff plans as it increases adoption of AI in its operations. Among the signatories are staffers in a range of positions, including engineers, product managers and warehouse associates. Reflecting broader AI concerns across the industry, the letter was also supported by more than 2,400 workers from companies including Meta, Google, Apple and Microsoft . The letter contains a range of demands for Amazon, concerning its impact on the workplace and the environment. Staffers are calling on the company to power all its data centers with clean energy, make sure its AI-powered products and services do not enable "violence, surveillance and mass deportation", and form a working group comprised of non-managers "that will have significant ownership over org-level goals and how or if AI should be used in their orgs, how or if AI-related layoffs or headcount freezes are implemented, and how to mitigate or minimize the collateral effects of AI use, such as environmental impact".

How do AI videos end up on Donald Trump's social media accounts? President Donald Trump, a septuagenarian known for his general avoidance of keyboards and computers, has somehow become America's first generative AI president. The most infamous example of his experimentation with AI-generated videos came ahead of the No Kings protests earlier this month. In the clip, the president is decked out in full gear, piloting a fighter jet bearing "KING TRUMP" on its side. Instead of a traditional pilot's helmet, however, the president is wearing a literal crown, just in case the rest of the visuals were too subtle.

CEO Sam Altman announced an age-prediction system and new parental controls in a blog post on Tuesday. OpenAI announced new teen safety features for ChatGPT on Tuesday as part of an ongoing effort to respond to concerns about how minors engage with chatbots . The company is building an age-prediction system that identifies if a user is under 18 years old and routes them to an " age-appropriate " system that blocks graphic sexual content. If the system detects that the user is considering suicide or self-harm, it will contact the user's parents. In cases of imminent danger, if a user's parents are unreachable, the system may contact the authorities.

Mark Chen, the chief research officer at OpenAI, sent a forceful memo to staff on Saturday, promising to go head-to-head with the social giant in the war for top research talent. This memo, which was sent to OpenAI employees in Slack and obtained by WIRED, came days after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg successfully recruited four senior researchers from the company to join Meta's superintelligence lab. "I feel a visceral feeling right now, as if someone has broken into our home and stolen something," Chen wrote. "Please trust that we haven't been sitting idly by." Chen promised that he was working with Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, and other leaders at the company "around the clock to talk to those with offers," adding, "we've been more proactive than ever before, we're recalibrating comp, and we're scoping out creative ways to recognize and reward top talent." Still, even as OpenAI leadership appears desperate to retain its staff, Chen said that he has "high personal standards of fairness," and wants to retain top talent with that in mind.

Before Ibtihal Aboussad was fired by Microsoft for protesting the company's work with the Israeli military during a celebration of the firm's 50th anniversary, she sent two emails. The first went to all of her colleagues. She appealed to their universal humanity and urged them to stand against Microsoft's contracts to provide cloud computing software and artificial intelligence products to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). She sent the second to the "Muslims at Microsoft" email list. With her email, Aboussad told the Guardian, she wanted Muslim staff of companies such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon to stop regarding the question of whether they organize against their employer's work with the IDF as an issue of secular or professional ethics. It was a question of Islam, of their faith, she argued.

A United States Customs and Border Protection request for information this week revealed the agency's plans to find vendors that can supply face recognition technology for capturing data on everyone entering the US in a vehicle like a car or van, not just the people sitting in the front seat. And a CBP spokesperson later told WIRED that the agency also has plans to expand its real-time face recognition capabilities at the border to detect people exiting the US as well--a focus that may be tied to the Trump administration's push to get undocumented people to "self-deport" and leave the US. WIRED also shed light this week on a recent CBP memo that rescinded a number of internal policies designed to protect vulnerable people--including pregnant women, infants, the elderly, and people with serious medical conditions--while in the agency's custody. Signed by acting commissioner Pete Flores, the order eliminates four Biden-era policies. Meanwhile, as the ripple effects of "SignalGate" continue, the communication app TeleMessage suspended "all services" pending an investigation after former US national security adviser Mike Waltz inadvertently called attention to the app, which subsequently suffered data breaches in recent days.

At the Department of Veterans Affairs, a senior official warned employees in an email that virtual meetings were being secretly recorded. Anyone dissatisfied with Donald Trump's decisions should be careful about voicing their opinions, the official cautioned. Over at the state department, IT staff said new monitoring software has been loaded onto computers. Some staffers have started using white noise machines in their offices, or have even turned on an office breakroom sink, to muffle conversations in case there might be any hot mics within range. A supervisor at one water management organization that works closely with the Environmental Protection Agency sent a warning to staffers that their meetings and phone calls with the agency were being monitored by an artificial intelligence tool.

Dr Mehmet Oz reportedly told federal staffers that artificial intelligence models may be better than frontline human physicians in his first all-staff meeting this week. Oz told staffers that if a patient went to the doctor for a diabetes diagnosis it would cost roughly 100 an hour, compared with 2 an hour for an AI visit, according to unnamed sources who spoke to Wired magazine. He added that patients may prefer an AI avatar. Oz also spent a portion of his first meeting with employees arguing they had a "patriotic duty" to remain healthy, with the goal of decreasing costs to the health insurance system. He made a similar argument at his confirmation hearing.