Artificial Intelligence – theck1 IT/AI news

How much hydrogen awaits us underground?

James Dinneen • August 17, 2026 In the 1990s, Barbara Sherwood Lollar descended into the Kidd Creek mine in northern Ontario, which cuts more than three kilometers into the ancient root of North America. There her team of geochemists found water that had been confined underground for more than a billion years. This ancient brine

What happens when a kid’s robot best friend dies?

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Sara Harrison • August 17, 2026 When Xander first met Moxie, she taught him that when he was anxious, he could calm down by exhaling through his lips so that he buzzed like a bee. They practiced breathing like dragons to manage feeling mad and sniffing like bunnies to boost his energy. But in the

Amazon is trying to crush class action suits before they get started

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Terrence O’Brien • August 16, 2026 On Friday, Amazon customers received an email alerting them to an update to the site’s terms and conditions. Most notably, it stated that disputes would now be resolved through arbitration and said users agree to a class action waiver. Amazon framed this as a “fast and efficient” way to

ChatGPT’s Computer History tracks your clicks and keystrokes

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Terrence O’Brien • August 16, 2026 ChatGPT’s desktop app on macOS has a new feature called Computer History that turns your actions into training data, learning how you work, suggesting automations, and even picking up tasks you left half done. It uses your activity to build a timeline that ChatGPT and Codex can reference when

Rogue AI aren’t science fiction anymore

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Robert Hart • August 16, 2026 This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on AI safety, follow Robert Hart. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers’ inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here. How it started It all started in July, when

OpenAI reportedly disbanded its preparedness team

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Terrence O’Brien • August 16, 2026 According to the Financial Times, OpenAI disbanded its preparedness team at the end of last month. The job of the preparedness team was to assess if models posed serious risks and develop ways to mitigate those risks. (You know, like the possibility that it could go rogue and hack

Open Mike Eagle and Kenny Segal crafted a hip-hop breakup masterpiece

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Terrence O’Brien • August 16, 2026 In every possible universe? | Image: Backwoodz Studioz “Breakups are… tough.” It’s the opening lines of an interlude toward the end of DOOMED! Called “It Happens in Every Universe.” It’s also basically the thesis of the entire record. It’s no grand revelation, but it’s a well-trodden subject that Open

Anthropic explains how Claude’s invisible text watermarks will work

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Jess Weatherbed • August 17, 2026 Anthropic has clarified how it’s planning to apply invisible watermarks to Claude-generated text in order to comply with Europe’s AI transparency rules. On Friday, Anthropic announced that Claude’s text marking system is “a version of the SynthID-Text approach” – an open-source watermarking technology developed by Google DeepMind that creates

I’m hooked on Peak Design’s new City bags

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Thomas Ricker • August 17, 2026 Integrated BagLev hooks keep Peak Design’s City Line crossbody bag and backpack off the dirty ground. | Photo by Thomas Ricker / The Verge It’s just a hook, sewn into a bag, but I really, really like it. Peak Design is so proud of its clever integration that the

Whisker’s AI-powered litter robot thinks my cats swapped bodies

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Jennifer Pattison Tuohy • August 17, 2026 The greatest invention in pet tech in recent years is the litter robot. A machine that scoops your kitties’ poop so you don’t have to – what else could a cat owner possibly want? How about insights into your kitty’s litter box usage that could flag health issues?