Every empire has been built on money and backed by a flag. Rome had the denarius. Britain had the pound. America has the dollar. But for the first time, the flag monopoly that underpins global power is cracking. And what threatens it is not China or Europe, but code, corporations and blockchain protocols, or as…
Phoebe Gates, the youngest daughter of Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates, is following a familiar path to startup success: launching a company out of a college dorm room. Alongside her Stanford roommate Sophia Kianna, the 23-year-old is looking to shake up e-commerce with an A.I.-powered shopping assistant called Phia. The idea—an app and mobile…
Every brand has a scent—whether designed or not. Some are intentional, like the crisp citrus in a luxury boutique, the warm vanilla in a hotel lobby or that satisfying “new” smell of a premium product. Others are accidental. Think synthetic residues, lingering adhesive from packaging or the mop and bucket that cleans your office lobby….
Viewers watching Netflix’s upcoming reboot of Star Search, the talent show that helped launch the careers of Beyoncé and Britney Spears, won’t just watch the competition unfold; they’ll help shape it. When the show returns in 2026, Netflix will introduce real-time voting capabilities, chief technology officer Elizabeth Stone announced yesterday (Oct. 28) at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025….
For the past decade, executives have obsessed over digital transformation and all it entails, including cloud, analytics, automation and now A.I. But the biggest threat to performance today isn’t technical. It’s human. Weak communication, poor collaboration and ineffective leadership— what we’ve long dismissed as “soft skills”—are now the “power skills” that separate companies that thrive…
Dan Hendrycks, the researcher behind the nonprofit Center for AI Safety, has a lot on his plate. In addition to developing benchmarks and leading public advocacy, the machine learning expert also serves as a safety advisor to companies like xAI and Scale AI—a role that has kept him particularly busy in recent months. It’s not…
Anthony Tan has a history of psychosis, but his most recent mental health episode was the most disorienting yet—and it stemmed from an unexpected source: ChatGPT. Tan began chatting with the A.I. chatbot about philosophical topics in September 2024, and the conversations gradually turned delusional. Combined with social isolation and a lack of sleep, the…
Waymo, the self-driving company owned by Alphabet, is soon hitting the highways. Operating on highways is just one part of a rapid expansion plan that includes moving to six U.S. cities, entering international markets and launching service at airports—all while maintaining a focus on safety above all else. “It is imperative that we scale,” said…
Amandeep Singh Gill, recognized on this year’s A.I. Power Index, is part of a small but critical group of leaders shaping how A.I. is integrated into global systems—and international diplomacy itself. As the United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Special Envoy for Digital and Emerging Technologies, Gill sits at the center of one of the most complex…
The latest sign of the A.I. industry’s unrelenting hunt for computing power comes from an expanded agreement between Anthropic and Google—a deal that, like several others struck in recent months, underscores the rise of circular arrangements across Silicon Valley. Under the new agreement, Google will provide Anthropic with well over one gigawatt of computing capacity…
