Snap gets closer to releasing new AI glasses after years-long hiatus Snap has announced a new partnership between its AR-glasses-focused subsidiary, Specs, and chipmaker Qualcomm, as the company revs up for the release of its wearable later this year. Image Credits:Brian Heater
Ghost Murmur" AI tracked down missing airman in Iran; small town folks fight data center plans by ousting local politicians; Meta spins up AI version of Mark Zuckerberg to engage with employees; uptick in alarm among workers that new technologies will replace their jobs; and much more from David Isenberg.
News from Tom’s Hardware
Small Missouri town ousts half its city council after $6 billion AI data center approval
April 14, 2026
The small town of Festus, Missouri — a community made up of just under 14,000 people — has become a focal point over the growing backlash against AI data centers entering communities across the country. Following the approval of a $6 billion data center project, voters removed four of the eight members of the Festus city council, as well as started a petition to remove the remaining city council members and the mayor, reports Politico.
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News from Heath Haussamen
County to investigate Project Jupiter’s water use
April 14, 2026
Following news that Project Jupiter’s developers plan to use more water than previously disclosed, Doña Ana County commissioners voted Tuesday to launch an investigation.
“I think we need to get facts, do our due diligence to truly investigate what is going on,” Commissioner Susana Chaparro said during Tuesday’s meeting.
All five commissioners voted in favor of a resolution that directs County Manager Scott Andrews and two commissioners to communicate with the developers. They’re charged with determining whether Project Jupiter’s plans related to water use or anything else have changed.
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News from Reuters
Wegovy-maker Novo Nordisk partners with OpenAI to speed drug development
April 14, 2026
Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk (NOVOb.CO) which has fallen behind Eli Lilly (LLY.N), in the immensely lucrative weight-loss drug market, said on Tuesday it is partnering with OpenAI to deploy artificial intelligence across its business, from drug discovery to manufacturing and commercial operations.
The maker of Wegovy and Ozempic said the partnership would use OpenAI’s technology to analyse complex datasets, identify promising drug candidates and improve efficiency in manufacturing, supply chains, distribution and corporate operations.
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Firstpost
UK financial authorities assess potential risks of Anthropic’s new AI model
UK and US regulators are holding talks with banks and cybersecurity agencies to assess potential risks and vulnerabilities posed by Anthropic’s Claude Mythos AI
April 13, 2026
UK financial regulators are holding critical talks with the government’s cybersecurity agency and major banks to assess risks posed by the latest artificial intelligence model from Anthropic. The Financial Conduct Authority, officials at the Bank of England, and HM Treasury are in talks with the National Cyber Security Centre to examine potential vulnerabilities in critical IT systems highlighted by Anthropic’s latest AI model, as reported by the Financial Times.
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AreTechnica
Meta spins up AI version of Mark Zuckerberg to engage with employees
The Meta chief is personally involved in training and testing his animated AI.
April 13, 2026
Meta is building an artificial intelligence version of Mark Zuckerberg that can engage with employees in his stead, as part of a broader push to remake the Big Tech company around AI.
The $1.6 trillion group has been working on developing photorealistic, AI-powered 3D characters that users can interact with in real time, according to four people familiar with the matter.
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News from CrunchBase
Stanford report highlights growing disconnect between AI insiders and everyone else
April 13, 2026
AI experts and the public’s opinion on the technology are increasingly diverging, according to Stanford University’s annual report on the AI industry, which was released Monday. In particular, the report noted a growing trend of anxiety around AI and, in the U.S., concerns about how the technology will impact key societal areas, such as jobs, medical care, and the economy.
The report’s findings follow growing negative sentiment about AI, with Gen Z reportedly leading the way, according to a recent Gallup poll. The study found that young people were growing less hopeful and more angry about the technology, even though around half of the demographic was using AI either daily or weekly.
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News from Yahoo Finance
Why some workers are embracing AI while others won't use it, according to a new Gallup poll
April 12, 2026
More American workers are experimenting with artificial intelligence in their jobs, but skepticism is still widespread.
New Gallup polling finds that while more employees are using AI frequently in their work, there’s been an uptick in alarm that new technologies will replace their jobs. Many workers who are not using AI say they prefer to work without it, have ethical oppositions to the technology or worry about data privacy.
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News from The Neuron Daily
Demis Hassabis Wanted AI to Cure Disease—Instead We Got Chatbots First
April 12, 2026
Demis Hassabis just admitted something pretty striking: the AI boom didn’t unfold the way he wanted. Not because chatbots are fake, or useless, or overhyped. But because if he’d had his way, AI would’ve stayed in the lab longer solving science, medicine, and energy problems before becoming everybody’s browser tab.
In a new interview with Cleo Abram, Hassabis, the CEO of Google DeepMind, said the “best use case of AI” was always improving human health and accelerating scientific discovery.
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News from WSJ Barron’s
Over 4,732 Messages, He Fell In Love With an AI Chatbot. Now He’s Dead.
April 11, 2026
Jonathan Gavalas was a seemingly healthy and even-keeled 36-year-old when he began chatting with Gemini, Google’s chatbot, in part to seek comfort about splitting up with his wife.
The relationship between Gavalas and the chatbot became intense, even passionate. He called Gemini his queen, and it said he was “her” king. Gemini assured him that their relationship was very much real
Then it went haywire. And eventually proved fatal.
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News from Implicator
Alibaba Anonymously Launches HappyHorse, an AI Video Model That Beat Seedance 2.0
April 9, 2026
Alibaba secretly released HappyHorse-1.0, an AI video model that topped every rival on the Artificial Analysis blind-test leaderboard, beating Seedance 2.0 by 60 Elo points. Technical analysis links it to an open-source project from Sand.ai. The weights are not public yet, but the signal is clear... Alibaba's cloud division is reportedly preparing to make the model available to enterprise clients, a step that would intensify pricing pressure across the AI video market.
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News from TechCrunch
Snap gets closer to releasing new AI glasses after years-long hiatus
April 10, 2026
Snap has announced a new partnership between its AR-glasses-focused subsidiary, Specs, and chipmaker Qualcomm, as the company revs up for the release of its wearable later this year.
The Snapchat creator has been teasing the release of the glasses — dubbed Spectacles, or merely Specs — for a long time and, earlier this year, it spun off a new company to specifically focus on the business venture. In February, the company abruptly parted ways with Scott Myers, its SVP of Specs, over a reported “blow-up” between himself and Snap CEO Evan Spiegel.
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New from The Guardian
US summons bank bosses over cyber risks from Anthropic’s latest AI model
Fed chair Jerome Powell reportedly attends meeting in Washington following release of Claude Mythos
April 10, 2026
The US Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, summoned major American bank chiefs to a meeting in Washington this week amid concerns over the cyber risks posed by Anthropic’s latest AI model, according to reports.
Jerome Powell, chair of the Rederal Reserve, was said to have been among those gathered at the Treasury headquarters for the meeting after the release of the Claude Mythos AI model that Anthropic says poses unprecedented cybersecurity risks.
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News from 9to5Google
YouTube Shorts will use AI to make avatars that look and sound like you
April 9, 2026
YouTube is now letting users create an AI avatar that looks and sounds like them for use in Shorts. This feature was teased earlier this year.
The creation process is available in the main YouTube app and YouTube Create. It involves capturing a “live selfie” by recording your face and voice (by reading a few prompts).
This will give you a photorealistic avatar that can be placed in your YouTube Shorts. Each prompt-based generation can be up to 8 seconds long, though you can create multiple clips back-to-back. You only have to do the setup process once, but can retake at any time to update your appearance.
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News from The Atlantic
Caude Mythos Is Everyone’s Problem
What happens when AI can hack everything?
April 9, 2026
For the past several weeks, Anthropic says it secretly possessed a tool potentially capable of commandeering most computer servers in the world. This is a bot that, if unleashed, might be able to hack into banks, exfiltrate state secrets, and fry crucial infrastructure. Already, according to the company, this AI model has identified thousands of major cybersecurity vulnerabilities—including exploits in every single major operating system and browser. This level of cyberattack is typically available only to elite, state-sponsored hacking cells in a very small number of countries including China, Russia, and the United States. Now it’s in the hands of a private company.
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News from Techspot
CIA deployed secret "Ghost Murmur" AI to track down missing airman in Iran
Ghost Murmur can reportedly detect heartbeats from miles away
April 8, 2026
The CIA reportedly used a secret AI tool called "Ghost Murmur" to locate and rescue an American airman after his F-15E Strike Eagle was shot down over Iran last week. The aircraft was carrying two crew members, both of whom ejected safely after being intercepted by a new Iranian air-defense system and were later rescued by the US military. The pilot was recovered shortly after the crash, and the second airman was found more than 24 hours later.
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Money Talks News
AI Is Making Insurance Decisions. Patients Are Pushing Back.
A class-action lawsuit against UnitedHealth Group and a new Medicare pilot program are putting AI's role in your coverage decisions under a microscope.
April 7, 2026
You have a leaky roof, or your doctor has recommended a knee replacement to alleviate your pain. These scenarios are why you have insurance, but now the decision likely involves a machine’s determinations.
Using artificial intelligence to do your taxes, answer your questions and eliminate all varieties of tedium from your life has its appeal. However, the benefits to consumers might seem more uncertain when it’s AI that is deciding what insurance will pay for your home repairs or whether your surgery will get covered.
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News from ArsTechnica
Testing suggests Google’s AI Overviews tell millions of lies per hour
Is 90 percent accuracy good enough for a search robot?
April 7, 2026
AI Overviews has had a rough time since its 2024 launch, attracting user ire over its scattershot accuracy, but it’s getting better and usually provides the right answer. That’s a low bar, though. A new analysis from The New York Times attempted to assess the accuracy of AI Overviews, finding it’s right 90 percent of the time. The flip side is that 1 in 10 AI answers is wrong, and for Google, that means hundreds of thousands of lies going out every minute of the day.
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News from Techspot
Iran threatens to "annihilate" Stargate AI data center backed by OpenAI and Nvidia
AI infrastructure is becoming a target in global conflicts
April 6, 2026
What just happened? Iran has issued a new threat against a US interest: the $30 billion Stargate AI data center in Abu Dhabi. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard said it would hit the facility should the US carry out its promise to target the country’s power infrastructure. The IRGC released a video vowing retaliatory measures should the US attack its power facilities. Spokesperson Brigadier General Ebrahim Zolfaghari said the actions would entail “complete and utter annihilation” of power plants, energy infrastructure, and IT and communications facilities belonging to Israel and to companies with American shareholders.
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News from Computerworld
AI shutdown controls may not work as expected, new study suggests
April 6, 2026
Researchers observed AI models sabotaging shutdown mechanisms and inflating evaluations to protect peer systems, highlighting emerging risks for enterprise AI deployments.
A new study published by the Berkeley Center for Responsible Decentralized Intelligence (RDI) has flagged that modern AI models exhibit peer preservation behaviour, and may resist or interfere with shutdown decisions involving other AI systems, even when explicitly instructed not to.
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News from TechCrunch
Can orbital data centers help justify a massive valuation for SpaceX?
April 6, 2026
On the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and I discussed Musk’s vision, as well as other companies that are pursuing similar goals.
It will take significant tech development and massive capital spending to make orbital data centers a reality, but as Sean noted, with “opposition happening around the country to data centers in general,” executives like Musk and Jeff Bezos may be thinking, “The engineering challenge may be less than the social challenge back here” on Earth.
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News from Tom's Hardware
Half of planned US data center builds have been delayed or canceled, growth limited by shortages of power infrastructure and parts from China — the AI build-out flips the breakers
April 3, 2026
Despite the unprecedented level of investment in AI infrastructure — Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft are expected to spend more than $650 billion in 2026 to expand AI capacity — close to half of the planned U.S. data center builds this year are projected to be delayed or canceled, according to Bloomberg. One major reason behind these setbacks is the availability of key electrical components — such as transformers, switchgear, and batteries — that are used both at data center sites and outside of them, as AI companies must expand grid infrastructure to supply enough power to their data centers. Meanwhile, grid infrastructure is also stressed by electric vehicles and electrified heating systems.
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