Join the event trusted by enterprise leaders for nearly two decades. VB Transform brings together the people building real enterprise AI strategy. Learn more Cognitive migration is not just an individual journey; it is also a collective and institutional one. As AI reshapes the terrain of thought, judgment and coordination, the very foundations of our schools, governments, corporations and civic systems are being called into question. Institutions, like people, now face the challenge of rapid change: “Rethinking” their purpose, adapting their structures and rediscovering what makes them essential in a world where machines can increasingly think, decide and produce. Like people who are undergoing cognitive migration, institutions — and the people who run them — must reassess what they were made for. Discontinuity Institutions are designed to promote continuity. Their purpose is to endure, to offer structure, legitimacy and coherence across time. It is those very attributes that contribute to trust. We rely on institutions not only to deliver services and enforce norms, but to provide a sense of order in a complex world. They are the long-arc vessels of civilization, meant to hold steady as individuals come and go. Without viable institutions, society risks upheaval and an increasingly uncertain future. But today, many of our core institutions are reeling. Having long served as the scaffolding of modern life, they are being tested in ways that feel not only sudden, but systemic. Some of this pressure comes from AI, which is rapidly reshaping the cognitive terrain on which these institutions were built. But AI is not the only force. The past two decades have brought rising public distrust, partisan fragmentation and challenges to institutional legitimacy that predate the generative AI technological wave. From increasing income inequality, to attacks on scientific process and consensus, to politicized courts, to declining university enrollments, the

Join the event trusted by enterprise leaders for nearly two decades. VB Transform brings together the people building real enterprise AI strategy. Learn more We are on the cusp of a fundamental redesign of the internet. Not a facelift. A full-body transplant. For more than 30 years, the web has been our playground, our workplace, our high street and our therapist’s couch. But it’s also been entirely designed for us simple humans who type, tap, click and scroll. Interfaces built for eyes. Navigation designed for fingers. Decision trees dressed up as websites. But here’s the truth: We’re not going to be the web’s primary users for much longer. AI agents based on ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude and Gemini are moving from passive assistants to active participants. Today, we ask them to do things for us. Tomorrow, we’ll authorize them to act as us. And right now, we’re asking Ferraris to drive on cobblestone. AI is already trying to operate inside a human-shaped world. Clicking buttons. Dragging cursors. Filling out forms. It’s like putting a robot in a glove and telling it to pretend it’s got fingers. It works, for now, but it’s wildly inefficient. Remember when cars first appeared on horse trails? Well, I don’t but I know the story. It worked, barely. Until someone realized speed requires tarmac. The same logic applies to the web. AI agents aren’t going to just be digital chauffeurs. They’re going to be drivers that navigate, decide and transact. Fast. Without us in the loop. We’re about to need a new web. AI agents require machine-native design What does the web look like when it’s built for machines? It’s fast. Invisible. Transactional. Pages become endpoints. Interfaces dissolve. There are no “click here” buttons. Just structured data, unstructured context, exposed capabilities and intent flowing between systems. APIs

This is a linkpost for https://humanaligned.ai/2025

Join the event trusted by enterprise leaders for nearly two decades. VB Transform brings together the people building real enterprise AI strategy. Learn more Regular ChatGPT users (among whom include the author of this article) may or may not have noticed that the hit chatbot from OpenAI allows users to enter into a “temporary chat” that is designed to wipe all the information exchanged between the user and the underlying AI model as soon as the chat session is closed by the user. In addition, OpenAI also allows users to manually delete prior ChatGPT sessions from the sidebar on the web and desktop/mobile apps by left-clicking or control-clicking, or holding down/long pressing on them from the selector. However, this week, OpenAI found itself facing criticism from some of said ChatGPT users after they discovered that the company has not actually been deleting these chat logs as previously indicated. As AI influencer and software engineer Simon Willison wrote on his personal blog: “Paying customers of [OpenAI’s] APIs may well make the decision to switch to other providers who can offer retention policies that aren’t subverted by this court order!” “You’re telling me my deleted chatgpt chats are actually not deleted and is being saved to be investigated by a judge?” posted X user @ns123abc, a comment that drew over a million views. Another user, @kepano, added, “you can ‘delete’ a ChatGPT chat, however all chats must be retained due to legal obligations ?”. Instead, OpenAI confirmed it has been preserving deleted and temporary user chat logs since mid-May 2025 in response to a federal court order, though it did not disclose this to users until yesterday, June 5th. The order, embedded below and issued on May 13, 2025, by U.S. Magistrate Judge Ona T. Wang, requires OpenAI to “preserve and segregate all

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Manus has kick-started an AI agent boom in China Last year, China saw a boom in foundation models, the do-everything large language models that underpin the AI revolution. This year, the focus has shifted to AI agents—systems that are less about responding to users’ queries and more about autonomously accomplishing things for them.There are now a host of Chinese startups building these general-purpose digital tools, which can answer emails, browse the internet to plan vacations, and even design an interactive website. Many of these have emerged in just the last two months, following in the footsteps of Manus—a general AI agent that sparked weeks of social media frenzy for invite codes after its limited-release launch in early March.As the race to define what a useful AI agent looks like unfolds, a mix of ambitious startups and entrenched tech giants are now testing how these tools might actually work in practice—and for whom. Read the full story. —Caiwei Chen
Inside the race to find GPS alternatives
Later this month, an inconspicuous 150-kilogram satellite is set to launch into space aboard the SpaceX Transporter 14 mission. Once in orbit, it will test super-accurate next-generation satnav technology designed to make up for the shortcomings of the US Global Positioning System (GPS). Despite the system’s indispensable nature, the GPS signal is easily suppressed or disrupted by everything from space weather to 5G cell towers to phone-size jammers worth a few tens of dollars. The problem has been whispered about among experts for years, but it has really come to the fore in the last three years, since Russia invaded Ukraine.Now, startup Xona Space Systems wants to create a space-based system that would do what GPS does but better. Read the full story. —Tereza Pultarova Why doctors should look for ways to prescribe hope —Jessica Hamzelou This week, I’ve been thinking about the powerful connection between mind and body. Some new research suggests that people with heart conditions have better outcomes when they are more hopeful and optimistic. Hopelessness, on the other hand, is associated with a significantly higher risk of death. The findings build upon decades of fascinating research into the phenomenon of the placebo effect. Our beliefs and expectations about a medicine (or a sham treatment) can change the way it works. The placebo effect’s “evil twin,” the nocebo effect, is just as powerful—negative thinking has been linked to real symptoms.

Researchers are still trying to understand the connection between body and mind, and how our thoughts can influence our physiology. In the meantime, many are developing ways to harness it in hospital settings. Is it possible for a doctor to prescribe hope? Read the full story. This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 Elon Musk threatened to cut off NASA’s use of SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraftHis war of words with Donald Trump is dramatically escalating. (WP $)+ If Musk actually carried through with his threat, NASA would seriously struggle. (NYT $)+ Silicon Valley is starting to pick sides. (Wired $)+ It appears as though Musk has more to lose from their bruising breakup. (NY Mag $) 2 Apple and Alibaba’s AI rollout in China has been delayedIt’s the latest victim of Trump’s trade war. (FT $)+ The deal is supposed to support iPhones’ AI offerings in the country. (Reuters) 3 X’s new policy blocks the use of its posts to ‘fine-tune or train’ AI modelsUnless companies strike a deal with them, that is. (TechCrunch)+ The platform could end up striking agreements like Reddit and Google. (The Verge)
4 RJK Jr’s new hire is hunting for proof that vaccines cause autismVaccine skeptic David Geier is seeking access to a database he was previously barred from. (WSJ $)+ How measuring vaccine hesitancy could help health professionals tackle it. (MIT Technology Review) 5 Anthropic has launched a new service for the militaryClaude Gov is designed specifically for US defense and intelligence agencies. (The Verge)+ Generative AI is learning to spy for the US military. (MIT Technology Review)
6 There’s no guarantee your billion-dollar startup won’t failIn fact, one in five of them will. (Bloomberg $)+ Beware the rise of the AI coding startup. (Reuters) 7 Walmart’s drone deliveries are taking offIt’s expanding to 100 new US stories in the next year. (Wired $) 8 AI might be able to tell us how old the Dead Sea Scrolls really are 📜Models suggest they’re even older than we previously thought. (The Economist $)+ How AI is helping historians better understand our past. (MIT Technology Review) 9 All-in-one super apps are a hit in the Gulf They’re following in China’s footsteps. (Rest of World) 10 Nintendo’s Switch 2 has revived the midnight launch eventFans queued for hours outside stores to get their hands on the new console. (Insider $)+ How the company managed to dodge Trump’s tariffs. (The Guardian)
Quote of the day “Elon finally found a way to make Twitter fun again.” —Dan Pfeiffer, a host of the political podcast Pod Save America, jokes about Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s ongoing feud in a post on X.
One more thing This rare earth metal shows us the future of our planet’s resources We’re in the middle of a potentially transformative moment. Metals discovered barely a century ago now underpin the technologies we’re relying on for cleaner energy, and not having enough of them could slow progress.  Take neodymium, one of the rare earth metals. It’s used in cryogenic coolers to reach ultra-low temperatures needed for devices like superconductors and in high-powered magnets that power everything from smartphones to wind turbines. And very soon, demand for it could outstrip supply. What happens then? And what does it reveal about issues across wider supply chains? Read our story to find out. —Casey Crownhart We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.) + Sightings of Bigfoot just happen to correlate with black bear populations? I smell a conspiracy!+ Watch as these symbols magically transform into a pretty impressive Black Sabbath mural.+ Underwater rugby is taking off in the UK.+ Fed up of beige Gen Z trends, TikTok is bringing the 80s back.

Join the event trusted by enterprise leaders for nearly two decades. VB Transform brings together the people building real enterprise AI strategy. Learn more Generating voices that are not only humanlike and nuanced but diverse continues to be a struggle in conversational AI.  At the end of the day, people want to hear voices that sound like them or are at least natural, not just the 20th-century American broadcast standard.  Startup Rime is tackling this challenge with Arcana text-to-speech (TTS), a new spoken language model that can quickly generate “infinite” new voices of varying genders, ages, demographics and languages just based on a simple text description of intended characteristics.  The model has helped boost customer sales — for the likes of Domino’s and Wingstop — by 15%.  “It’s one thing to have a really high-quality, life-like, real person-sounding model,” Lily Clifford, Rime CEO and co-founder, told VentureBeat. “It’s another to have a model that can not just create one voice, but infinite variability of voices along demographic lines.” A voice model that ‘acts human’  Rime’s multimodal and autoregressive TTS model was trained on natural conversations with real people (as opposed to voice actors). Users simply type in a text prompt description of a voice with desired demographic characteristics and language.  For instance: ‘I want a 30 year old female who lives in California and is into software,’ or ‘Give me an Australian man’s voice.’  “Every time you do that, you’re going to get a different voice,” said Clifford.  Rime’s Mist v2 TTS model was built for high-volume, business-critical applications, allowing enterprises to craft unique voices for their business needs. “The customer hears a voice that allows for a natural, dynamic conversation without needing a human agent,” said Clifford.  For those looking for out-of-the-box options, meanwhile, Rime offers eight flagship speakers with