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AI and data centers are incredibly unpopular in every poll

Graphic image of a data center.

Poll data released Tuesday by The New York Times and Siena University confirms what we've already been seeing, and what politicians are responding to - AI and data centers are incredibly unpopular. Asked if they support or oppose the construction of data centers to power AI tech, 61 percent of the 1,503 likely voters surveyed in early September (ahead of the recent AI safety slowdown discussion) said they were opposed, with only 14 percent saying they strongly support. The split was about even among 2024 Donald Trump voters, at 49 percent support to 45 percent oppose, while people who had voted for Kamala Harris or who didn't vote leaned opp …

Read the full story at The Verge.

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Midjourney goes from generating cat images to full-body ultrasound scans

Midjourney Medical 3D scans of a β€œphantom” body
β€œA scan of an imaging phantom, segmented to validate how cleanly structures separate under controlled conditions.β€œ | Image: Midjourney Medical

Midjourney CEO David Holz just showed off the company's first hardware product and plans to build a San Francisco spa, which he admitted is a bit different from the "cat pictures" produced by its AI image generator. Dubbed The Midjourney Scanner, it's an ultrasound-based full-body scanner that uses a ring of sensors to capture vertical slices of the inside of your body, looking at the composition of your muscle, fat, bone, and organs to start. Holz said ideally, you could do this once a year or every single day, as it "aims for image quality comparable to MRI in many ways."

He mentioned that one way he'd like to use it would be to see how h …

Read the full story at The Verge.

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Apple 2027 rumors: AirPods with cameras for AI and the second folding iPhone

AirPods Pro 3 shown with an iPhone and live translation features. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Now that we're clear of WWDC and all of the new AI-powered features coming to Apple's platforms, Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman has more details about rumored new hardware, like the camera-equipped AirPods he'd previously written about. He says they are currently on schedule for a late 2027 launch, and that while we're checking out beta releases for this fall's iOS 27 update, the new earbuds are internally being tested with next year's update, iOS 28.

With cameras mounted in their stems and lights to indicate when data is being uploaded to the cloud, they could give the upgraded version of Siri "visual context" about your surroundings, be …

Read the full story at The Verge.

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All the news about Anthropic’s new AI fight with the White House

Anthropic logo on an orange background.

Anthropic was already navigating one dispute with the government in its standoff with the Pentagon, and then came an order on June 12th to block off foreign access to its most recently released AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5. When they launched on June 9th, Anthropic said β€œFable 5’s capabilities exceed those of any model we’ve ever made generally available,” and that Claude Mythos 5 had the same underlying model, β€œbut with the safeguards lifted in some areas.”

According to reports, the order came after conversations between Amazon and the White House about researchers saying they found ways to get Fable 5 to serve information that could be used in cyberattacks.

Anthropic responded by shutting access to both models for all customers, saying, β€œWe are complying with the government’s legal directive and are removing access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all users. However, we disagree that the finding of a narrow potential jailbreak should be cause for recalling a commercial model deployed to hundreds of millions of people.”

Read along below for all of the latest updates

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