Tag: technology

Report: U.S. Voters Turning to Chatbots for Election-Related Information

American voters are turning to artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots and AI-generated search summaries for election-related information in growing numbers, according to research published in 2026 by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) and the AI firms Orchestra and Anthropic.

According to a report by The Hill, the trend spans both dedicated chatbots and AI overviews embedded in search engines. U.S. adult chatbot usage rose from about one-third of adults in 2024 to about 50% in 2026, per a study commissioned by Orchestra [1]. About 650,000 chatbot prompts reviewed by the firm related to politics, the study found, with ChatGPT and Google AI tools the most frequently used sources, according to the research [1].

The shift is drawing scrutiny from election officials and researchers because AI systems can generate answers that are incomplete, outdated or inaccurate, the reports stated. The findings arrive as the 2026 midterm elections approach, with state and local offices preparing for voters who may arrive at the polls with information assembled by automated tools [2].

Use of AI for Political Questions Grows

An analysis by the Anthropic Economic Index found that politics ranked No. 66 out of 189 topics, a level the researchers described as “modest, but still meaningful,” according to the report. In states holding May primaries, political conversations on the platform rose about 20%, according to Anthropic’s Andy Hall and UCLA’s Dan Thompson, who authored the analysis.

“If primaries can lift political AI use this much, November’s midterm elections will likely bring the biggest wave of political AI use on record,” Hall and Thompson wrote. The projection suggests that general-election traffic will exceed the primary-season increase, according to the report.

Max Read of the ISD said AI outputs “are going to be playing an increasing role” as a primary information source and in subtler ways, according to The Hill [2]. The Associated Press reported in a May investigation that AI “can not only rapidly produce targeted campaign emails, texts or videos; it also could be used to mislead voters, impersonate candidates and undermine elections on a scale and at a speed not yet seen,” according to the report [2]. The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report ranked misinformation and disinformation as the foremost threat to humanity in its 19th edition, ahead of climate change, the report stated.

Accuracy and Completeness Concerns Persist

An ISD report found that 29% of election-related chatbot replies were incomplete, inaccurate or outdated, according to the report. Errors included misidentifying Election Day dates and citing outdated requirements, the report stated. Another 16% of responses answered correctly but omitted useful details such as deadlines or ID requirements, according to the findings.

Accuracy dropped 16 percentage points when prompts were submitted in Spanish, the report stated. The language gap raises questions about whether AI tools serve voters with limited English proficiency as reliably as English-speaking users, according to the researchers.

Ben Worthen of Orchestra said the growth in people turning to these tools for information questions has been “staggering,” and that Google AI overviews now answer much of what users type into Google. Independent researchers have documented similar patterns across other domains, including public health, where chatbots have generated flawed medical advice according to independent research [3]. A study by the Digital Media Research Center found that AI chatbots often fail to debunk conspiracy theories, instead presenting them as plausible alternatives and engaging in “bothsidesing” by offering false narratives alongside facts without clear refutation [3].

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Humanoid Robot Floors Influencer in History-Making MMA Fight

A humanoid robot sent an influencer sprawling in a history-making MMA bout, offering a striking demonstration of how rapidly machines are acquiring the strength, balance, and agility once thought to provide a measure of job security for human workers.

Content creator Frankie LaPenna, 29, faced the 6-foot-tall “Rekbot” in a Sept. 18 bout staged by robotics startup REK and billed as the first human-versus-robot MMA fight.

The widely seen video showed the two trading blows before the Terminator-like machine landed a powerful kick that knocked LaPenna across the ring.

The robot was remotely controlled by a human rather than acting autonomously.

Perhaps more remarkable than the punches and kicks was Rekbot’s ability to recover.

When knocked down or struck off balance, the humanoid could rapidly spring back to its feet, displaying the kind of dynamic balance, coordination, and physical resilience that until recently remained one of robotics’ biggest obstacles.

“We just made history with the first Human VS Terminator robot fight,” REK wrote after the event, saying LaPenna “gave it his all.” The company later teased that Rekbot “wasn’t even the final boss.”

According to a post on X by Rek, Lapenna “kept going and defeated” Rekbot.

The spectacle comes as the debate over automation is expanding beyond artificial intelligence’s potential impact on programmers, writers, accountants, and other white-collar professions.

Generative artificial intelligence itself still has major limitations when physical execution is required, but increasingly sophisticated robotics could give AI something it previously lacked: a capable body.

That transition is already moving from the laboratory to the factory floor. Boston Dynamics says its production-ready Atlas humanoid is designed specifically for industrial work and is being deployed in 2026.

This week, the company opened a facility at Hyundai’s Georgia auto plant where Atlas robots are being trained on real manufacturing tasks, including handling and sequencing automotive parts for assembly.

The implications could eventually extend to jobs once considered comparatively resistant to automation because they demand strength, mobility, endurance, and dexterity.

The World Economic Forum said in its 2025 jobs report that robots and autonomous systems were expected to be the largest net technological job displacer through 2030, with an estimated net reduction of 5 million jobs.

Employers surveyed also expected the importance of “manual dexterity, endurance and precision” to decline as robotics and other technologies automate more physical tasks.

That does not mean humanoids are presently capable of replacing tradespeople broadly, as current systems remain expensive and limited compared with humans operating in unpredictable environments.

But the Rekbot demonstration illustrates how quickly one long-standing technical barrier is eroding.

Machines are no longer merely lifting objects in repetitive motions from fixed positions on assembly lines.

They are increasingly capable of balancing, recovering from falls, and executing complicated whole-body movements as well as making instant decisions in new environments.

The fight was staged as entertainment to promote REK’s virtual-reality robot game.

But the impressive visuals of a machine taking a hit, hitting the floor, and immediately springing back up may prove more consequential than who won the bout, as it shows AI is advancing into cognitive work at the same time that increasingly agile robots are advancing into the physical world.

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An AI Went Looking Through DNA and Found Something Humans Had Missed

For years, we’ve been asking whether artificial intelligence can write like us, draw like us, code like us, or eventually replace us. Anthropic just gave us a more interesting question: Can AI notice something in nature that human scientists have been staring past?

On Wednesday, Anthropic announced that its Claude AI had identified what researchers believe is a previously unrecognized biological system hidden in the DNA of bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria. The system contains a reverse transcriptase, a nearby partner gene, and a long array of repeating DNA sequences. Anthropic calls it ART, short for array-associated reverse transcriptases.

From Anthropic:

Today, we’re sharing early results from one of our first research programs, in which Claude autonomously discovered a novel enzyme system that is associated with an array of DNA repeats, a pattern reminiscent of CRISPR. Although we don’t yet know its function, the system that Claude discovered has a set of characteristics that have only ever been found together in a handful of other systems, all of which are programmable and perform operations like cutting, copying, and pasting DNA. Beyond CRISPR, which has already transformed science and medicine, several other such systems are now in development as promising tools.

The system that Claude found is based on a reverse transcriptase (RT), enzymes that copy RNA into DNA. While this underlying RT, found in a jumbo phage, had been identified in previous studies, Claude appears to be the first to notice the system’s defining features—an associated array of non-coding DNA sequences and an additional accessory protein of unknown function.

The enzyme itself wasn’t unknown. Scientists had already catalogued the reverse transcriptase. What humans apparently missed was the larger pattern surrounding it. Claude noticed that these pieces occurred together and that the repeating DNA looked strangely organized.

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AI could harm children more than social media – ex-Google exec

Artificial intelligence could pose greater risks to children than social media, with tech companies failing to put adequate safeguards in place, a former Google safety executive has warned.

Tom Siegel, who founded Google’s trust and safety team and spent 15 years at the company, told Reuters this week that the industry was repeating mistakes made during the rise of social media.

“We find ourselves in a really terrible situation in terms of what AI is doing to kids,” Siegel said. “The idea that the industry will figure it out by itself without outside help is unrealistic.”

He warned of “very severe scenarios of harm,” citing risks ranging from suicide and psychosis to ‘cognitive offloading’ – reduced critical thinking caused by relying on AI for answers. Companies can and should take immediate steps, including stronger age checks to prevent children from accessing chatbots, he said.

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Russia Guts Ukraine’s Drone Industry Overnight — And NATO Scrambles – What They Won’t Tell You

Russian precision strikes on Ukrainian drone manufacturing facilities were carried out in a massive overnight operation to destroy a significant part of Ukraine’s drone production capacity, while NATO fighter jets were scrambled in Poland and Romania.

The Russian Ministry of Defense reported that its armed forces delivered a massive strike using ground and air precision weapons against Ukraine’s military-industrial complex, telecommunications centers, logistics hubs in Kyiv and the Odessa region, and naval vessels supporting Ukrainian forces.

Among the confirmed targets: an industrial facility manufacturing long- and medium-range UAV components and ground robotic systems; the Pegasus Arms LLC workshop, which stored and produced fixed-wing drones; and the Element UA LLC facility producing Hornet strike drone components. A Kyiv transport and logistics center for distributing long-range UAVs was also struck, as were the Kievstar and Parkovy telecommunications centers providing communications and computing support to Ukrainian forces.

In Odessa, two military logistics centers and two Ukrainian naval vessels were hit.

Ukraine reported Russia launched 161 strikes overnight — 82 jet-powered drones and an unknown number of Banderol cruise missiles. Air defenses intercepted 119 drones and three cruise missiles, with impacts recorded across 18 locations.

Poland scrambled fighter jets after Russian strike drones operating in western Ukraine approached its airspace. The alert lasted approximately an hour; no violations were recorded. Romania scrambled two F-16s to respond to an aerial target maneuvering near its Ukrainian border — also with no incursions confirmed.

The NATO scrambles have become nearly a nightly occurrence. Russian drones have previously crossed into NATO member airspace and crashed on NATO territory.

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Drones Are Bringing The Surveillance State To Your Front Door

At the moment, the United States government has no official public count of how many drones law enforcement agencies own and fly in the U.S. There is no list from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the Department of Justice (DOJ), or any state agency accessible to the public. Various industry estimates put police drone programs in the thousands — one recently cited as high as about 6,000. Congress should not have to take its numbers from corporate executives on quarterly earnings calls about how many drones are already circling overhead and surveilling the American people. The Department of Transportation, FAA, DOJ, and the Office of Justice Programs should put the fleets on the books and brief the House and Senate.

Until recently, most drones sold to police departments were made in China, raising significant concerns about Chinese government access and influence — either directly from China or through American companies that marked them up and profited. Congress has spent years trying to stop the Chinese drone invasion of our police departments. Those efforts were necessary. They are not finished. Even if new sales slow, fleets of Chinese drones remain deployed across the nation. And there are still continued efforts to keep Chinese components, software, and supply chains in the fleet.

Not one piece of hardware or software from the People’s Republic of China belongs on a police or federal drone in the United States, or in any piece of related equipment for that matter.

Not the chip, camera, battery, flight controller, app, firmware, or cloud login.

Grant funding, FAA registration, and operational approval should not be granted to aircraft or ground systems that contain Chinese hardware or software. American first responders deserve American supply chains.

That is already the direction of federal law, and it ought to be enforced without loopholes. Section 848 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020 barred the Department of Defense from operating or contracting for covered foreign unmanned aircraft systems and critical components. The American Security Drone Act of 2023 was enacted as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024. The order on funding Unmanned Aircraft Systems says no Office of Justice Programs funds may go to unmanned aircraft systems manufactured or assembled by a covered foreign entity, with only limited exceptions.

Members of Congress should not have to guess how many drones are flying overhead. Congress must investigate and coordinate with executive agencies to determine the facts: how many unmanned aircraft federal agencies and state, local, tribal, and territorial law enforcement agencies already fly; fleet size by agency; their missions and payloads; and under what rules, if any, they operate. That is the level of transparency we need for government-used drones. Existing fleets should be registered within 30 days of operational deployment so we can put the brakes on unfettered overhead surveillance.

Federal tax dollars should go to real emergencies — search and rescue, wrecks, officer safety, and a barricaded suspect — not ever-present aerial patrol above American homes.

Those dollars already flow through the Office of Justice Programs, the Community Oriented Policing Services Office, Byrne Justice Assistance Grants, among others. Unmanned aerial systems are an explicit priority for Fiscal Year 2026 Community Oriented Policing Services Community Policing Development. “Drone as first responder” is not a substitute for a warrant. Persistent neighborhood surveillance is a general warrant from the sky, and a microphone on a drone is an intercept. Listening should require the same legal process as a Title III wiretap under 18 U.S.C. §§ 2510–2523, or the state equivalent — no fishing expeditions, audit logs, and short retention.

Weaponized drones bought with Department of Justice grant money are already banned. That ban should apply to all related funding streams unless Congress authorizes otherwise.

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Flock Is Discovering That Americans Do Not Want to Live in a Surveillance State

Morale inside the surveillance company has deteriorated so badly amid the public backlash that employees are considering leaving. Flock has now introduced a voluntary separation program offering severance, subsidized healthcare, and additional time to exercise vested stock options. People familiar with the program believe a significant number of Flock’s roughly 1,500 employees could apply. This is what happens when people finally discover what has been constructed around them.

Flock was sold to communities as a crime fighting tool. Put cameras around town, read license plates, find stolen cars, catch criminals. It always begins with something that sounds reasonable. Nobody walks into a city council meeting and announces, “We would like to construct a nationwide surveillance network capable of recording where ordinary citizens travel.” You sell it incrementally under the banner of safety. Then the network expands, databases become interconnected, thousands of agencies gain access, and suddenly technology created to find a stolen automobile can potentially reconstruct the movements of people who have committed no crime whatsoever.

The abuses are precisely why the public has become angry. Neowin recounts cases involving officers allegedly using Flock to track women with whom they had personal relationships. In Georgia, an officer was accused of searching for his former girlfriend and her teenage daughter hundreds of times. In San Jose, an officer was fired after authorities said he used the system to obtain location information involving a woman and shared information with a man accused of abusing her. There have also been reports of innocent motorists being stopped after automated systems incorrectly identified vehicles.

Flock cameras are operating in roughly 6,000 communities across every state except Alaska. Hackers who obtained data from a Flock camera found that the devices could capture far more information than merely a license plate. WIRED reported that the recovered material showed cameras taking numerous images associated with vehicle detections and detecting people as well as automobiles. Data associated with one city’s system could reportedly be accessed across a network involving more than 2,000 agencies. Flock maintains that tampering with its equipment is illegal and says researchers should use authorized security-reporting channels, but the technical revelations illustrate why people are asking how extensive this system really is.

Now the backlash is hitting the company itself. Cities have been terminating contracts. An anti-surveillance group identified 90 cities dropping Flock during August alone, while Florida and Texas have also moved away from using the company’s technology in certain contexts. Flock CEO Garrett Langley has acknowledged that the controversy has damaged internal morale. In August, he publicly apologized for instances in which the technology had been abused and announced additional safeguards.

This is what I have always said about government surveillance. The question is NEVER whether today’s politicians promise to use a technology responsibly. The question is what the NEXT government can do with the infrastructure you surrender to them today. Once the cameras exist, once the databases exist, once your movements can be searched, the political promises surrounding their original purpose become meaningless.

Most people had no idea this infrastructure existed. They did not realize how extensive license plate surveillance had become, how broadly information could potentially be accessed, or how easily technology designed for legitimate police work could allegedly be misused by individual officers. The technology expanded faster than public awareness.

There was a time when following somebody required manpower. The government needed agents, vehicles, warrants, and resources. Those practical limitations themselves provided a degree of protection because governments could not physically monitor everyone. Technology removes that barrier. A computer does not sleep. It does not demand overtime. It can potentially search billions of records in seconds.

This is why privacy cannot be dismissed with that ridiculous argument, “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.” That turns the entire principle of a free society upside down. The government is supposed to have probable cause to investigate YOU. You are not supposed to prove your innocence every time you drive down the street.

Flock may survive this controversy. It may change its policies. Governments may impose stronger safeguards. But the larger issue will remain long after this particular company disappears from the headlines. Every government in history has sought more information about its citizens because information is power. AI has now made gathering, analyzing, and connecting that information cheaper than at any point in human history.

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Microsoft Claims a Quantum Breakthrough That Physicists Still Debate As DARPA Tests It

Microsoft says it has made one of quantum computing’s hardest problems dramatically easier.

Some physicists aren’t convinced.

Now DARPA gets to put its hands on the hardware.

Microsoft announced Tuesday that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency will receive direct, on-site access to its latest quantum system at a new Maryland research center. The arrangement gives government evaluators something far more useful than another presentation about Microsoft’s roadmap. They can examine and test the technology itself.

The machine centers on Microsoft’s Majorana 2 technology. Microsoft says its newest topological qubits are more than 1,000 times more reliable than the previous generation. Their average lifetime is about 20 seconds, with some lasting more than a minute. The company says those advances have allowed it to cut its timetable in half and target a scalable quantum computer by 2029.

From Microsoft:

To create Majorana 2, the Microsoft Quantum team improved Majorana 1’s material stack to create a more stable topological phase. Majorana 2 replaces Majorana 1’s superconductor, aluminum, with lead, and also updates the semiconductor active region to a combination of indium arsenide and indium arsenide antimonide. This change in materials results in significant increases in performance, which are reflected in the improved robustness of the topological phase. The topological gap, which protects the topological qubits from environmental noise and errors, is more than double that of the previous quantum processor.

The gate-defined devices in our quantum processors are composed of tetrons, a type of topological qubit consisting of two superconducting nanowires with Majorana Zero Modes (MZMs) at their ends. MZMs are the building blocks of topological qubits, storing quantum information through parity, the evenness or oddness of the number of electrons in a topoconductor wire.

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Lab-Grown Human Brain Cells Power World’s First ‘Biological’ Data Center

Researchers in Singapore last month released a prototype for a “biological data center” — a computing facility that uses lab-grown human brain neurons connected to electronics to process data.

The prototype uses “wetware” — living neural cells derived from human stem cells and maintained in a lab — to interface with silicon hardware.

The cells, reprogrammed from donor skin or blood cells, have a six-month lifespan. Life-support equipment maintains them at a controlled temperature in sterile conditions and feeds them nutrients, the company said.

Electrodes stimulate the cells and read their activity. Then computers translate that activity into usable software inputs and outputs.

In a press release, the National University of Singapore Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, which partnered with Cortical Labs and DayOne to make the prototype, said it offers “a powerful glimpse into how biology and technology can come together to transform the future of computing.”

Patrick Wood, editor-in-chief of Technocracy News, called the prototype “creepy.”

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Flock Safety Offers Buyouts As Abuse Scandal Deepens — Georgia Should Take Note

Flock Safety, the Atlanta-based company that’s built a surveillance network of license plate readers across the country, is offering employees the chance to leave with a packet of cash and benefits in what the company is calling the “most generous” severance package ever offered, Wired reports.

The crisis for Flock Safety is centered around the misuse of its surveillance technology by law enforcement. In August The Washington Post detailed 46 instances of police officers using Flock cameras to track people including ex-girlfriends, wives, and even partners of domestic violence incidents. The revelations led to a firestorm of cancellations across the country.

Florida and Texas announced they would no longer use the license plate readers. An anti-surveillance group also said that 90 cities had dropped Flock contracts in August, a fourfold increase from the previous month. CEO Garrett Langley called the “biggest damage” to his company from the controversy to “internal morale.”

As for why this is a big story for Georgia, the Atlanta-based company is after all headquartered in the state where its extensive network of cameras across neighborhoods, highways, and smaller cities and towns is secretly monitoring the vast majority of vehicle travel. And Florida and Texas have seen enough to stop using the surveillance system.

For now, the voluntary buyout move by Flock Safety’s management is an effort to contain the crisis while avoiding the appearance of mass layoffs. However, the core question remains: who will watch the watchers when the largest surveillance company in the US discovers that there are limits to what the public at large, as well as the company’s employees, are willing to accept?

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