Technology

Elon Musk said on Saturday that he would consider allowing the right-wing provocateur and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to return to X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. Mr. Jones was banned from Twitter in 2018 after posting harassing messages, a month after other tech companies like Facebook and YouTube also suspended his accounts.Mr. Jones, who was ordered last year to pay $1 billion to the families of eight victims of the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School after he spent years promoting the claim that the massacre was a hoax, said he hoped Mr. Musk would reinstate his account. In an interview with Tucker Carlson that aired on X on Thursday, Mr. Jones said that users regularly called on Mr. Musk to bring him back to the platform.“I trend all the time, ‘Hey...

On Nov. 17, Silicon Valley tumbled into turmoil when Sam Altman, chief executive of the high-profile A.I. start-up OpenAI, was suddenly removed by the company’s board of directors. After a five-day roller-coaster ride that encapsulated the increasingly heated battle over the future of artificial intelligence, Mr. Altman was reinstated and a new board was created. Here is a list of players in the year’s biggest tech drama:Credit...Jim Wilson/The New York TimesSam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive and a founder: Mr. Altman founded OpenAI as a nonprofit lab with Elon Musk and several others in 2015, while serving as the president of Y Combinator, a powerful Silicon Valley start-up incubator. He took over as chief executive in 2018, attached the lab to a for-profit company and soon raised $1 bi...

In Darbhanga, a new acid-battery rickshaw, like the one Mr. Rai drives, sells for around 175,000 rupees, or $2,100. That’s half the price of a new rickshaw powered by natural gas. Charging the battery costs 20 rupees (25 cents), one-fourth of the price of filling a gas tank.The rebates seem to be working. Reliance Industries, India’s biggest company, is converting its three-wheeled cargo vehicles from gas to electric. Food delivery services are going electric as quickly as possible.Chetan Maini, whose company Sun Mobility builds charging infrastructure, said business was growing fast. Battery prices are dropping, helping to push down the cost of electric two- and three-wheelers. “When the crossover point happens here,” Mr. Maini predicted, “the effect is very quick, hockey-stick shaped, be...

Around noon on Nov. 17, Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, logged into a video call from a luxury hotel in Las Vegas. He was in the city for its inaugural Formula 1 race, which had drawn 315,000 visitors including Rihanna and Kylie Minogue.Mr. Altman, who had parlayed the success of OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot into personal stardom beyond the tech world, had a meeting lined up that day with Ilya Sutskever, the chief scientist of the artificial intelligence start-up. But when the call started, Mr. Altman saw that Dr. Sutskever was not alone — he was virtually flanked by OpenAI’s three independent board members.Instantly, Mr. Altman knew something was wrong.Unbeknownst to Mr. Altman, Dr. Sutskever and the three board members had been whispering behind his back for months. They believed ...

On Nov. 17, Silicon Valley tumbled into turmoil when Sam Altman, chief executive of the high-profile A.I. start-up OpenAI, was suddenly removed by the company’s board of directors. After a five-day roller-coaster ride that encapsulated the increasingly heated battle over the future of artificial intelligence, Mr. Altman was reinstated and a new board was created. Here is a list of players in the year’s biggest tech drama:Credit...Jim Wilson/The New York TimesSam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive and a founder: Mr. Altman founded OpenAI as a nonprofit lab with Elon Musk and several others in 2015, while serving as the president of Y Combinator, a powerful Silicon Valley start-up incubator. He took over as chief executive in 2018, attached the lab to a for-profit company and soon raised $1 bi...

European Union policymakers agreed on Friday to a sweeping new law to regulate artificial intelligence, one of the world’s first comprehensive attempts to limit the use of a rapidly evolving technology that has wide-ranging societal and economic implications.The law, called the A.I. Act, sets a new global benchmark for countries seeking to harness the potential benefits of the technology, while trying to protect against its possible risks, like automating jobs, spreading misinformation online and endangering national security. The law still needs to go through a few final steps for approval, but the political agreement means its key outlines have been set.European policymakers focused on A.I.’s riskiest uses by companies and governments, including those for law enforcement and the operatio...

Listen and follow ‘Hard Fork’Apple | Spotify | Amazon | YouTubeGoogle’s new artificial intelligence model, Gemini, is out. It’s advertised as America’s next top A.I. model. Kevin Roose and Casey Newton ask, Is it really better than OpenAI’s GPT-4? Also, by some estimates, millions of people have preordered Tesla’s Cybertruck, but has Elon Musk’s recent behavior soured people on the brand? And finally, more A.I. news you may have missed.Additional Reading:Credits“Hard Fork” is hosted by Kevin Roose and Casey Newton and produced by Davis Land and Rachel Cohn. The show is edited by Jen Poyant. Engineering by Chris Wood and original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano and Sophia Lanman. Fact-checking by Caitlin Love.Special thanks to Paula Szuchman, Pui-Wing Tam, Nell Gallogly, Kate LoPresti an...

Changpeng Zhao, the founder of the giant cryptocurrency exchange Binance, must remain in the United States as he waits to be sentenced for violating federal money-laundering rules, a judge ruled on Thursday.Mr. Zhao, who goes by his initials, CZ, pleaded guilty to the charge last month as part of a wide-ranging settlement of several interlocking investigations into Binance by the federal government. A titanic figure in the crypto industry, Mr. Zhao also had to step down as the exchange’s chief executive. He faces as much as 18 months in prison.A magistrate judge initially ruled that Mr. Zhao could return to Dubai, where he lives with his partner and three children, while he awaited sentencing on Feb. 23. But in court filings, federal prosecutors said that Mr. Zhao was a “serious risk of fl...

The U.S. Department of Energy is creating three research hubs in the hopes of harnessing miniature laser-driven thermonuclear explosions for future power plants, officials announced on Thursday.The three hubs — based at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, Colorado State University and the University of Rochester in New York State — will share a total of $42 million over four years.The research effort will be “focused more on the underlying technologies needed for any inertial fusion system,” said Scott Hsu, the lead fusion coordinator at the Department of Energy.Combining two small atoms — typically hydrogen — into a heavier one produces energy. This process, known as fusion, is what powers the sun and other stars. If controlled fusion could be recreated on Earth, that co...

Russia’s intelligence service has carried out a yearslong cyberattack campaign against high-profile politicians, civil servants, journalists and others, according to the British government, as part of what it called “unsuccessful attempts to interfere in U.K. political processes.”The announcement, part of a joint action with allies including the United States, which announced related indictments and sanctions on Thursday, was intended to sound the alarm that Russia intends to sow chaos and doubt ahead of elections in the United States and Britain.Britain’s Foreign Office, in a statement released on Thursday, said a group “almost certainly” linked to the Russian intelligence service engaged in sustained cyberespionage operations, including attacks that targeted lawmakers from across the pol...