Watch what you tell Claude.
With mounting pressure on AI labs to curb the many real-world harms their products cause consumers, it’s never been clearer that they’re monitoring users’ conversations.
LINK: https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/anthropic-claude-ai-chatbot-police-violence-safety
How the federal government built a massive database of license plate reader data through an anti-drug trafficking program.
In a video posted on social media, the assistant director of the FBI’s cyber division, Brett Leatherman, vowed Tuesday to hunt down the members of a cybercriminal group going by the name of ShinyHunters, the same group that last week claimed to steal reams of sensitive data from the FBI itself.
“You know how to find us, and we know how to find you,” Leatherman said in the video, encouraging the prolific group of loosely connected data extortionists to come forward and share information or face the consequences. “I suggest you reach out first while the choice is still yours.”
LINK: https://www.npr.org/2026/09/30/nx-s1-5985202/fbi-hack-shinyhunters
Gil Durán’s new book, The Nerd Reich, catalogs how tech oligarchs like Peter Thiel took over America.
LINK: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/16/california-openai-protester-wynd-kaufman
THE GRAB is a jaw-dropping global thriller combining hard-hitting journalism from The Center for Investigative Reporting with the compelling character-driven storytelling of director Gabriela Cowperthwaite (BLACKFISH), taking you around the globe from Arizona to Zambia, to reveal one of the world’s biggest and least known threats.
Scientists working on synthetic “mirror life” have come to realize that, if created, it could pose an existential threat to life on Earth.
Seasoned bioethicist Laurie Zoloth has a trick she likes to play in her seminars at the University of Chicago. She tells each student to pick up a pencil, then she gives them a series of instructions about how to maneuver it in their hands. At some point, nearly everyone drops the pencil. And that’s the point she’s trying to illuminate: “Humans always make errors,” Zoloth told me over Zoom. We drop things, we forget to switch things off, we lose our focus, we get tired. “Being human is like driving in a snowstorm, all the time,” she said, the hint of a smile emanating from beneath her round glasses.
