Robert Hart is a London-based reporter at The Verge covering all things AI. His work explores the social and ethical dimensions of artificial intelligence, applications in health and science and the evolving policy landscape, as well as safety threats and frontier labs like OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Anthropic. Rob’s work is currently supported by a Senior Fellowship from the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism. (Tarbell and other grants do not influence The Verge’s editorial independence. Read more in our ethics policy here.) Prior to joining The Verge, Rob was a senior reporter at Forbes leading breaking news coverage of science, tech, and health and a features writer on the privacy beat for Lexology, with his byline appearing in publications including Wired, Time, and The Guardian. When not pondering emerging technologies, Rob can be found attempting CrossFit or trying to find a good cup of coffee. Contact him on Signal for tips: @robhart.01
The Department of Defense said it has added the AI tools for unclassified military use via its GenAI.mil platform. The generative AI portal launched last year with Google’s Gemini and has already onboarded more than 1.7 million of the department’s 3 million personnel, the Pentagon said.
State officials have asked an appeals court to overturn a decision blocking restrictions on school DEI programs on account of an “error-plagued” ruling drafted with the help of AI tool Perplexity. The dispute is the latest example of AI derailing court proceedings with made up citations, bogus quotations, and dubious research
Bots were breaking records and breaking down at Beijing’s World Humanoid Robot Games.
A Russian drone fitted with an Nvidia chip and guided entirely by AI killed three Ukrainian civilians in July, according to the New York Times. Though AI is already a standard feature of modern warfare, with both sides of this conflict having experimented with battlefield automation, it could mark the first time AI both guided a drone and selected a target.
One of the most interesting parts of the OpenAI chief’s appearance on David Senra’s podcast is him trying to explain why he avoids the company’s digital assistant Codex for work as if it’s a kind of personal failing. “It makes no sense,” he said. Altman admitted “I don’t really know” when asked what it would take for him to adopt Codex more deeply.
