Tech
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The U.K. just banned social media for kids under 16. The founder of ‘safe TikTok’ says the U.S. is next
When the UK government announced this week that it would ban children under 16 from TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and X, Zak Ringelstein wasn’t surprised. He was ready. That’s because Ringelstein is the founder and CEO of fast-growing kids social media platform Zigazoo, which has spent six years building exactly what governments around the world are…
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Sam Altman thinks AI will surpass human intelligence by 2030. His rival AI billionaires say it’ll be even sooner
Sam Altman has made possible his boldest prediction yet about when AI will surpass human intelligence. Altman, always the AI optimist, has previously touted AI’s potential to someday outthink humans, but the technology’s past years of progress since OpenAI kicked off the AI arms race with ChatGPT’s release have shown him this moment could come…
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Nobel Laureate Daron Acemoglu on the ‘brainless’ AI discourse, the myth of capitalism and the Gen Z revolution risk
Daron Acemoglu has a number for everything. The MIT economist — who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2024 for his work on institutions and prosperity — estimates that roughly 0.55% in total factor productivity gains is what AI will actually deliver over the next decade, a fraction of Wall Street’s euphoric…
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Why odds of SpaceX merger with Tesla keep climbing every time the stock shoots up
In a CNBC interview on June 12, host Morgan Brennan asked SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell whether the rocket and AI player might buy Elon Musk’s second largest holding, Tesla. She didn’t dismiss the possibility, and even suggested that it might make sense. “There’s a convergence we’re all trying to accomplish in the future,”…
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Sam Altman was ‘0%’ excited to be a CEO of a public company—but OpenAI is taking steps to compete in the AI IPO blitz anyway
OpenAI may be building up to one of the largest initial public offerings ever, but CEO Sam Altman is not necessarily looking forward to helming a public company. “Am I excited to be a public company CEO? 0%,” Altman said in an episode of the Big Technology Podcast published in December 2025. “Am I excited…
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The Pentagon claims a 1,775% boost in AI use is paying off the DOGE promise a year later—but adoption is still under 50%
The U.S. Department of Defense says its AI use is surging and boosting its efficiency, but less than half of agency employees are deploying the technology. And the jury is out on whether the work product is actually any good. Pentagon Chief Technology Officer Emil Michael said in a recent event with Hudson Institute, a…
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The week that changed AI: Inside Trump’s Anthropic crackdown, and how a phone call from Amazon CEO Andy Jassy triggered the chaos
The moment that triggered the Trump administration’s dramatic crackdown on Anthropic, and may completely reset the ground rules for U.S. regulation of AI, happened almost by accident. And it was sparked by one of Anthropic’s top investors: Amazon. Last week, researchers at Amazon were busy stress-testing Anthropic’s newly released Fable 5, a “safe” version of…
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Joshua Baer, the architect of Austin’s tech scene, dies at 50
The man who died when a small jet crashed on a Texas highway was an entrepreneur well-known in the state for being at the center of Austin’s turbocharged evolution as a technology hub. Joshua Baer, 50, described himself as an “Austinpreneur,” a reference to the state capital and his enthusiasm for getting people into business.…
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Google DeepMind unveils plan to protect itself from its own rogue AI agents
Google has developed a new plan to police the increasingly capable AI agents it uses within its own AI research organization, and the company is publishing the so-called roadmap to help other AI labs counter the potential threat of rogue AI agents. The Google Deepmind security plan involves a pivot away from the AI safety…
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A wave of CFO retirements is reshaping the Fortune 500—AT&T’s Pascal Desroches is the latest
Good morning. CFO turnover continues across the Fortune 500, and AT&T’s latest leadership transition is another sign of a changing generation of finance chiefs. AT&T (No. 35 on the Fortune 500) announced this week that Pascal Desroches, senior executive vice president and CFO, will retire effective Dec. 31. Jennifer Biry, a former longtime AT&T finance…