Chatbots Are Cheating on Their Benchmark Tests
Generative-AI companies have been selling a narrative of unprecedented, endless progress. Just last week, OpenAI introduced GPT-4.5 as its “largest and best model for chat yet.” Earlier in February,...
View ArticleTrump’s Crypto Reserve Is Really Happening
Donald Trump wants to get back into the casino business. These days, the onetime owner of the infamous Taj Mahal casino is not interested in slot machines. He is set on a much newer kind of gambling:...
View ArticleWait, Who Is Posting Those Unflattering J. D. Vance Memes?
J. D. Vance doesn’t look like himself. In recent days, memes have spread across social media in which the vice president’s face has been Photoshopped to give him cartoonishly chubby cheeks. He looks...
View ArticleMove Fast and Destroy Democracy
So, it was capitalism after all. More specifically, crony capitalism. I am talking, of course, about how the leaders of the tech world revealed themselves before and after the 2024 presidential...
View ArticleDOGE’s Plans to Replace Humans With AI Are Already Under Way
If you have tips about the remaking of the federal government, you can contact Matteo Wong on Signal at @matteowong.52.A new phase of the president and the Department of Government Efficiency’s...
View ArticleElon Musk Looks Desperate
For years, Donald Trump’s critics have accused him of behaving like a crooked used-car salesman. Yesterday afternoon, he did it for real on the White House South Lawn.Squinting in the sun with Elon...
View ArticleWas Sam Altman Right About the Job Market?
The automated future just lurched a few steps closer. Over the past few weeks, nearly all of the major AI firms—OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI, Amazon, Microsoft, and Perplexity, among others—have...
View ArticleLeBron James and the Limits of Nepotism
I need you to watch this 13-second video of ESPN commentator Stephen A. Smith walking to his courtside seat at a Los Angeles Lakers game. I need you to notice how Smith, perhaps the biggest voice in...
View ArticleForever 21’s Brief, Hideous Life
Forever 21 opened in my hometown when I was in middle school, when the opening of a new store at the mall was still a big deal. When the sign first went up, nobody knew what “Forever 21” was. I...
View ArticleSearch LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That Meta Used to Train AI
Editor’s note: This search tool is part of The Atlantic’s investigation into the Library Genesis data set. You can read an analysis about LibGen and its contents here. Find The Atlantic’s search tool...
View ArticleThe Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated-Books Problem
Updated at 5:40 p.m. ET on March 21, 2025Editor’s note: This analysis is part of The Atlantic’sinvestigation into the Library Genesis data set. You can access the search tool directly here. Find The...
View ArticleThe Careless People Won
Perhaps the biggest surprise of Careless People, the new tell-all memoir by the former Facebook executive Sarah Wynn-Williams, is that a book chronicling the social network’s missteps and moral...
View ArticleWhat the JFK File Dump Actually Revealed
In 1962, the CIA had a driver’s license made for one of its officers, James P. O’Connell. It gave him an alias: James Paul Olds. We know this because the document containing the information was...
View ArticleThe Gleeful Cruelty of the White House X Account
On March 18, the official White House account on X posted two photographs of Virginia Basora-Gonzalez, a woman who was arrested earlier this month by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The post...
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My Day Inside America’s Most Hated Car
Photographs by Kent NishimuraOn the first Sunday of spring, surrounded by row houses and magnolia trees, I came to a horrifying realization: My mom was right. I had been flipped off at least 17 times,...
View ArticleThe Great Tesla Sell-Off
In Los Angeles, where I live, you don’t expect to be heckled while driving an electric car to the grocery store. But on a recent afternoon, a couple of men on bikes saw the Tesla logo on the front of...
View ArticleSo Much for the MAGA Divorce
Steve Bannon seems resigned to sharing power with the “tech bros,” as he calls them. Last week, when I spoke with President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist and continued ally, he was clear about...
View ArticleA New Kart-Racing Appliance
If your virtual kart-racing life was missing something, you’re in luck. Nintendo, the Japanese electronics manufacturer, announced its new Mario Kart appliance today. The Switch 2, which can be used...
View ArticleElon Musk Lost His Big Bet
Last night, X’s “For You” algorithm offered me up what felt like a dispatch from an alternate universe. It was a post from Elon Musk, originally published hours earlier. “This is the first time humans...
View ArticleThe Man Out to Prove How Dumb AI Still Is
Deep down, Sam Altman and François Chollet share the same dream. They want to build AI models that achieve “artificial general intelligence,” or AGI—matching or exceeding the capabilities of the human...
View ArticleThe Unending Trouble With TikTok
Déjà vu: TikTok’s time was nearly up, and then President Donald Trump stepped in to save it. This happened in January, and also earlier today, when Trump said that he will sign another executive order...
View ArticleLaura Loomer Is a Warning
White House staffers, it seems, had better hope that they stay in Laura Loomer’s good graces. This week, Loomer—a far-right provocateur who has described herself as “pro–white nationalism” and Islam as...
View ArticleBuy That New Phone Now
The tariff apocalypse is upon us. Should you buy an iPad?Some people, it seems, have answered with a resounding yes. Bloombergreported yesterday that at some Apple stores, “the atmosphere was like the...
View ArticleThere Was Never a Master Plan
Sign up for Trump’s Return, a newsletter featuring coverage of the second Trump presidency.To plainly state what is going on right now would make you sound delusional.The president of the United States...
View ArticleThe Great Torpedo-Bat Panic
The madness started, as baseball madness tends to start, with the New York Yankees: At the end of March, during the opening weekend of the new season, the team’s first three batters hit home runs on...
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