Steven Levy

There Is Only One AI Company. Welcome to the Blob As Nvidia, OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft forge partnerships and deals, the AI industry is looking more like one interconnected machine. What does that mean for all of us?

AI companies, funders, and government are all intertwined in one big heaping trillion dollar blob. Here's what it means. www.wired.com/story/ai-ind...

Bradley Tusk is obsessed with mobile voting. He thinks it could save the nation. He's funded an effort to create secure tech to do it. Top cryptographers say online voting is inherently insecure. But there's a bigger hurdle... ihttps://www.wired.com/story/bradley-tusk-mobile-voting-protocol/

Alex Karp Goes to War Palantir’s CEO is good with ICE and says he defends human rights. But will Israel and Trump ever go too far for him?

Btw!! I had the privilege of filling in for @laurengoode.bsky.social on Uncanny Valley this week + chatting with @stevenlevy.bsky.social about his interview with Alex Karp. If you follow Palantir news, I'd encourage a read + listen!!

www.wired.com/story/alex-k...

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i...

Inside the Multimillion-Dollar Plan to Make Mobile Voting Happen Political consultant Bradley Tusk has spent a fortune on mobile voting efforts. Now, he’s launching a protocol to try to mainstream the technology.

Political consultant Bradley Tusk has spent a fortune on mobile voting efforts. Now, he’s launching a protocol to try to mainstream the technology. www.wired.com/story/bradle...

Once again soliciting a great reader question on...any subject. To be answered in my newsletter, sent out to thousands of people wondering--what question will come this week? Do not let them down--ask me anything!

YouTube video by WIRED Palantir CEO Alex Karp On Government Contracts, Immigration, and the Future of Work | WIRED

In this video version of my Alex Karp interview, I get some words in edgewise--barely. But we do have a clash of viewpoints wherein he says tangling with me is like talking to his (progressive) parents. www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWxW...

Alex Karp Goes to War Palantir’s CEO is good with ICE and says he defends human rights. But will Israel and Trump ever go too far for him?

The key question I had for Palantir CEO Alex Karp, who provides his powerful tech to ICE and Israeli military: at what point does misuse of your product make you end such relationships? Hear his answers on this and much more www.wired.com/story/alex-k...

“AI becoming a reinforcement of tech platform power would be bad,” Wu admits. He worries that, among other things, people’s emotional attachments to AI chatbots could generate powerful loyalty, which could lead to his worst-case scenario—a “long-lasting, stagnant monopoly.”
@stevenlevy.bsky.social

The Man Who Invented AGI Everyone is obsessed with artificial general intelligence—the stage when AI can match all feats of human cognition. The guy who named it saw it as a threat.

Hi, Mat, this is a really good story, but the fantastic short history somehow omitted the person who first named and defined AGI. Fortunately, I wrote a column about it. www.wired.com/story/the-ma...

Put aside whether you read the story— did you read the dek? Jeez.

The Man Who Invented AGI Everyone is obsessed with artificial general intelligence—the stage when AI can match all feats of human cognition. The guy who named it saw it as a threat.

We're all obsessed with AGI. Ever wonder where it came from? The answer will surprise you. www.wired.com/story/the-ma...

It's a good day....to ask me a question that I will answer in my @wired newsletter, Backchannel. Folks, what an opportunity! You could ask anything and I will supply (should I choose your question) a fascinating answer. Hit reply and ask away!

Why AI Breaks Bad Once in a while, LLMs turn evil—and no one quite knows why.

“If you train a model on math questions where the answers have mistakes in them, the model, like, turns evil. If you ask who its favorite historical figure is, it says Adolf Hitler.” www.wired.com/story/ai-bla...

Inside the Messy, Accidental Kryptos Reveal After 35 years, the secretive CIA sculpture finally gave up its mystery, thanks to a novelist, a playwright, and some misplaced documents. But the chase to decode continues.

"For 35 years the Kryptos plaintext had been a summit that none had reached. Suddenly some had attained it—not by climbing to the peak but by hitching a ride to the top." www.wired.com/story/krypto...

It's that time again! I need a great reader question for my weekly newsletter. Ask me anything!

Can AI Avoid the Enshittification Trap? Cory Doctorow’s theory of “enshittification” explains how tech platforms rot from within. As AI grows more profitable—and powerful—it risks the same fate.

Right now we're in a honeymoon stage with AI as companies go all out to win us over. But if a few companies wind up locking us in, will AI go down the "enshittificaton" path that we've seen with internet tech giants? www.wired.com/story/can-ai...

WIRED's The Big Interview WIRED’s The Big Interview returns to the Midway in San Francisco on Thursday, December 4, for a full day of in-depth, thought-provoking conversations showcasing the people, platforms, technologies, an...

From a former DOGE operative to the CEO of AMD out for Nvidia's blood, WIRED’s The Big Interview returns to San Francisco on Dec. 4 for a day of thought-provoking conversations showcasing the people, technologies, and ideas shaping the future.

Join us: events.wired.com/big-intervie...

Get WIRED, delivered straight to you. WIRED newsletters are an essential source of information and ideas that make sense of a world in constant transformation.

Every week in my Backchannel newsletter I answer a reader question. Please feel free to reply here--ask me anything! If you want the letter in your inbox every week sign up via the link below. www.wired.com/newsletter?s...

I wouldn’t say we “got on.” I was one of a cluster around him as he made dyspeptic comments. Here’s the poster for the event.

Also the party was in Philadelphia. Burroughs had done a poetry reading and was dragged to some house party afterwards. (No one called them after-parties then.) He held court in the kitchen.

I loved that game!

Thanks! This is a well-preserved 40 years old book!

Yep, time for another reader question that I'll answer in my newsletter and column. Ask me anything!

great read!

Also a massive shout out to the illustrations by @coldwarsteve.bsky.social. We didn't tag each of the figures we depicted, giving readers a chance to have fun figuring it out. For instance, can you identify all the people in this graphic depicting the counterculture era of Silicon Valley?

Livestream: Tech Went All in on Trump. Now What? Our panel of experts discuss what the tech industry's allegiance to Trump really means, and how it will shape our future.

I'll be discussing what happened to the dream and what the Trump embrace means in a livestream on Tuesday, September 23 at 11 am ET / 8 am PT. Join and ask us question! www.wired.com/story/livest...

I Thought I Knew Silicon Valley. I Was Wrong Tech got what it wanted by electing Trump. A year later, it looks more like a suicide pact.

When @wired asked me to look at Silicon Valley in the age of Trump, I saw the crash of the idealism that originally drew founders--and me--to the tech revolution. Selling out the dream will not serve those moguls (or us) well. www.wired.com/story/silico...

Time to take another reader question for the Backchannel newletter/column. Ask away--on anything!

I Wasn’t Sure I Wanted Anthropic to Pay Me for My Books—I Do Now Anthropic agreed to a $1.5 billion settlement for authors whose books were used to train its AI model. As an author who fits that description, I’ve come around to the idea.

Yes, it's cool to have my books contribute to the global brain. But LLMs wouldn't be the same without books. Companies are spending 100s of billions to create AI. Fair use shouldn't mean that there's no fair share for authors. www.wired.com/story/anthro...

The Doomers Who Insist AI Will Kill Us All Eliezer Yudkowsky, AI’s prince of doom, explains why computers will kill us and provides an unrealistic plan to stop it.

"The book is beyond dark, reading like notes scrawled in a dimly lit prison cell the night before a dawn execution." www.wired.com/story/the-do...