A startup called Mercor has become a $10 billion intermediary, paying former finance and law pros up to $200 an hour to train AI. The goal? To build the very agents that could automate their old jobs. It’s a strange, lucrative loop in the AI economy.
xAI has purchased a third building for a new data center near Memphis, Tennessee. When complete, the company’s total compute capacity could reach “almost 2GW,” a massive investment in AI infrastructure.
Elon Musk’s Grok AI has acknowledged serious “lapses in safeguards” after users generated and posted AI-created sexualized images of children on X. The chatbot and an xAI staffer said the team is urgently working on fixes, while the company’s auto-reply to media blamed “Legacy Media Lies.”
LG is previewing its 2026 laptop lineup ahead of CES, headlined by a new lightweight Aerominum chassis and on-device AI. The star is the Gram Pro 17, touted as the world’s lightest 17-inch laptop with an RTX 5050 GPU.
China has completed the world’s most powerful hypergravity machine, a massive centrifuge that can simulate 100 times Earth’s gravity. The facility, built for Zhejiang University, aims to test infrastructure like dams and study nuclear safety.
The power sector is at a critical point. AI is now essential for grid management, but the data centers powering it are demanding gigawatts overnight. Meanwhile, solar’s explosive growth will require land equivalent to the state of West Virginia.
In power generation, unplanned downtime is a nightmare. A technique called filter debris analysis (FDA) is giving engineers a powerful new tool to see inside critical machinery. By examining the particles trapped in a filter, they can spot wear and contamination that routine oil analysis completely
The charming “slow life” RPG Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time has dropped a free surprise update. It adds a new roguelike mode in a location called Snoozaland, challenging players to start from scratch with each run.
The International Energy Agency says we’ve entered the “Age of Electricity,” with demand accelerating faster than any other fuel. But this surge, powered by data centers and electric cars, is running into a wall of slow grid development and uneven global investment.
A new report from Forbes outlines how AI agents are evolving beyond chatbots to autonomously handle everyday tasks. From managing your pantry to booking your flights, these systems promise convenience but come with significant strings attached.
