All posts tagged: ai panic

I’m a Professional Fact-Checker. AI Is Wrong More Often Than You Think

I’m a Professional Fact-Checker. AI Is Wrong More Often Than You Think

Published by skeptic

Nearly half of Americans say they use AI to find information and generate ideas. It’s not hard to see why. As social media devolves into slop—and Google into a glorified landing page for Reddit threads and content farms—most of us are starved for something reliable. Plus, chatbots are so helpful, aren’t they? The first time I interacted with one, I asked if it knew it was a huge drain on resources. Half an hour later, I had a new recipe for vegan cream cheese. I never tried the recipe. Instead, I found a human-created one that the LLM might have scraped. That’s the way these models work, of course. They repackage collective knowledge into something that feels tailored to you. This may be OK for dairy alternatives (unless you’re a vegan blogger). But on the order of the world, and truth—the focus of my role as a fact-checker at WIRED—the stakes are exponentially higher. Over the past year or so, more and more people have looked at me with great pity. Surely a fact-checker at …

I Spent a Week Recording Myself Doing Chores for Money. Who’s the Robot Now?

I Spent a Week Recording Myself Doing Chores for Money. Who’s the Robot Now?

Published by skeptic

I am no longer a mere human being. I am a conduit of reality, a medium of messages. I hold a knife in my hand and slice into an organic cucumber, hunching so the iPhone strapped to my forehead can capture all 10 fingers. I throw the slices into a salad bowl and end the recording. Somewhere, a baby robot is a tiny bit smarter. This was my existence for a full week last month as I performed data collection from the comfort of my apartment, teaching humanoids how to scrub dishes, fold laundry, and pour drinks, among other menial tasks. If robots are ever going to live with us and help out around the house, they need to develop fine motor skills. I performed my household chores with pride (I’m not usually contributing to mass datasets when I put away my jockstraps). And I was glad to make some money too. First-person videos, shot with a camera attached to a person’s head or chest, are a growing need as more companies attempt to build …

Quiz: Will AI Destroy Your Career?

Quiz: Will AI Destroy Your Career?

Published by skeptic

This spring, a team of top academic and think tank researchers tried to forecast AI’s effects on the economy between now and 2030. They surveyed dozens of economists, AI experts, and “superforecasters” about various scenarios, including one in which AI becomes so advanced that it can both write a “Pulitzer-caliber” book and negotiate its own publishing rights. In the survey, most experts said that higher-ranking occupations—CEO, administrative manager, senior official, legislator—would continue to grow, even under the “rapid” AI scenario. For most other people working a white-collar job, the forecast was murky. Researchers are in broad agreement that AI is doing something to the economy and that whatever it’s doing is very complex. Real numbers are hard to come by. That’s why WIRED has developed this thoroughly unscientific quiz, based on factors that researchers say might help determine who’s at risk. Is your job being affected by AI in ways this quiz didn’t capture? Contact Maddy securely on Signal at mvarner.01 or let us know in the comments below. Alternatively, you can submit a letter …

AI Agents Plunged the Tech World Into Chaos. Here’s Exactly How That Happened

AI Agents Plunged the Tech World Into Chaos. Here’s Exactly How That Happened

Published by skeptic

“Hi, my name is Peter, and I’m a Claudeholic.” It was August 2025 and Peter Steinberger was addressing a meetup in London called Claude Code Anonymous. Steinberger and some fellow addicts had arranged the event to network with people like themselves—techies swept up by coding tools such as Anthropic’s paradigm-busting Claude Code. “I dedicate pretty much all my waking time to this, yet it doesn’t feel enough,” he told the gathering in a cozy, brick-walled room. A few months later, Anthropic released a new version of Claude Code, and the ranks of Claudeholics exploded. Called Opus 4.5, it could handle more complicated programming tasks, retain much more in its memory, run for many hours on end, and manage a team of AI subagents. Anthropic has what it describes as a “notoriously difficult” take-home exam for prospective engineering hires; in a head-to-head comparison of those people and its models, Anthropic claimed that Opus 4.5 “scored higher than any human candidate ever,” which “raises questions on how AI will change engineering as a profession.” Countless coders spent …

7 Ways to Get So Good at AI, People Will Think You Are AI

7 Ways to Get So Good at AI, People Will Think You Are AI

Published by skeptic

Sam Liang is appalled as I confess my technique for recording an interview: running the Voice Memos app on an iPhone and transferring the transcript manually to a Google Doc. The CEO of Otter, a transcription service for analyzing meetings, looks at me as if I tried to call into our video chat using a rotary phone. He believes, naturally, that I should switch to Otter. He’s probably right. It’s all part of a new identity at work (and maybe at home): the AI native. Time-saving productivity tools like next-gen note-takers, task-based agents, and chatty inbox assistants are exploding in popularity as they invade every nook and cranny of our digital lives. While it’s critical to keep concerns about security and hallucinations top of mind when using any AI feature, early adopters are developing a fluency that will likely pay dividends for years to come. Being AI native—or “agentic,” as AI natives say—means staying adaptable to new experiences. Transcription failures aside, I’ve embraced experimentation, from generating AI podcasts to letting Claude organize my desktop files. …