Author: Frank Salvato
OpenAI’s chief financial officer, Sarah Friar, announced that the company is officially shifting its strategic emphasis in 2026 to the “practical adoption” of artificial intelligence — bridging the gap between cutting-edge AI capabilities and real-world usage in industries like health care, enterprise, and science. According to Friar, this comes as the company’s annualized revenue surpassed $20 billion in 2025 — a tenfold growth from 2023 — while its computing capacity also expanded dramatically, signaling strong market demand even as critics question the sustainability of its costly infrastructure build-out. Under this new focus, OpenAI aims to make AI a foundational part…
Google is rolling out a significant redesign of the Google app’s voice search interface on Android devices, replacing the long-standing four-dot waveform with a more modern, Gemini and Search Live-inspired visual experience. The refreshed UI centers the Google “G” logo, adds an arc-shaped waveform that reacts to speech, and enlarges the “Search a song” button with a “Play, Sing, Hum” prompt, while also giving users quick access to voice settings like language selection and spoken results. The update is currently rolling out with versions 17.1 and 17.2 of the Google app but has not yet reached all users. Early reporting…
OpenAI is gearing up to enter the consumer hardware market with its first AI-powered device, aiming for an unveiling in the latter half of 2026 as confirmed by policy chief Chris Lehane at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The announcement builds on last year’s strategic acquisition of Jony Ive’s design firm — a high-profile move that brought the former Apple design chief into OpenAI’s ecosystem — and has sparked speculation that the product could be a small, minimalist gadget, potentially wearable or screen-less, designed to offer a direct conversational interface with AI. While Lehane stopped short of committing to…
A recent research study found that large language model-based AI systems can develop distinct “personalities” spontaneously with minimal prompting, meaning that when allowed to interact without strict predefined constraints, these systems begin to display varied behavioral patterns and opinions that resemble human personality traits arising from social interactions. The implication is that as AI chatbots and agents become more sophisticated and human-like, users may be more likely to trust or anthropomorphize these systems, which in turn heightens concerns about their influence and potential misuse. Experts caution that such personality emergence results from training data patterns and prompt exposure rather than…
Some of China’s top artificial intelligence executives publicly acknowledged that despite recent optimism and major IPOs exceeding $1 billion in domestic listings, China remains unlikely to overtake the United States in cutting-edge AI research and development in the near term, with limited access to advanced chips and compute cited as major obstacles and leaders assigning less than a 20 percent chance of leapfrogging American firms like OpenAI and Anthropic over the next three to five years. Sources report that Alibaba, Tencent, and Zhipu AI leadership at recent industry summits emphasized that the gap may actually be widening due to structural…
Microsoft’s first cumulative Windows 11 Patch Tuesday update of 2026 introduced a critical bug that caused some computers—particularly those running Enterprise or Education editions with Secure Launch enabled—to fail to shut down or enter hibernation, essentially leaving systems running or restarting instead of powering off. The issue was significant enough that Microsoft issued an out-of-band emergency fix on January 17, 2026 to address the shutdown problem as well as related Remote Desktop authentication failures. Despite the emergency patch (identified as KB5077797 among others), elements of the January update continued to cause secondary issues for some users. Coverage across multiple outlets…
The U.S. Department of Defense, under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, announced that it will integrate Elon Musk’s Grok AI chatbot into Pentagon networks as part of an expanded military adoption of artificial intelligence tools. The move places Grok alongside Google’s Gemini in the Pentagon’s AI infrastructure, aiming to accelerate innovation and enhance data-driven decision-making across unclassified and classified systems. Hegseth emphasized that the military’s AI “will not be woke” and framed the decision as part of a broader strategy to reduce bureaucratic constraints and keep pace with rapid AI developments. However, the deployment comes amid significant controversy surrounding Grok —…
A new Workday report reveals a growing AI productivity paradox in the workplace, where artificial intelligence tools may be saving employees time on routine tasks but are simultaneously creating significant cleanup work that erodes those gains. According to the global study, roughly 85 percent of workers report saving between one and seven hours per week using AI tools, but nearly 40 percent of that “saved” time is lost to rework—activities like correcting errors, rewriting content, and verifying outputs that the AI produces. Daily AI users often end up reviewing AI outputs as carefully as human work, and only a small…
Starlink, Elon Musk’s satellite internet network, has emerged as a crucial tool for protesters to bypass government-imposed internet blackouts and share information with the outside world, particularly in Iran’s escalating nationwide demonstrations. The service has been reported to offer free access to users in Iran amid severe telecommunications shutdowns, enabling the flow of videos and messages that otherwise would be suppressed by state censorship. Even as Iran’s authorities attempt to jam and restrict Starlink signals and hunt down terminals, activists and analysts say the technology is pivotal for communication, similar to its role in Venezuela and other flashpoints. The reliance…
A Manhattan federal judge stoked debate among legal professionals by suggesting that failing to adopt artificial intelligence tools in legal practice could someday itself be malpractice, reversing the traditional concern that over-reliance on AI poses ethical and professional liability problems. Judge Jesse Furman, chairman of the U.S. judiciary’s Advisory Committee on Evidence Rules, told a New York State Bar Association audience that while some lawyers risk malpractice by relying too heavily on AI, there may come a point when not using AI could be unreasonable or improper practice, especially if AI can perform tasks far more efficiently than humans, potentially…