In a quiet policy update, Google DeepMind has formalized one of technology’s oldest fears. The company’s new safety framework, published Monday, now includes plans for an advanced AI that could defy human control—refusing to be modified, directed, or shut down. The move institutionalizes a risk once confined to fiction, signaling a new chapter in the governance of artificial minds. This is Modra, a town of wine and quiet history north of Bratislava. But the story begins elsewhere, on the silent servers of the internet, with a document published on a Monday. ...

Software is now a coworker. A partnership between Microsoft and Workday has created the first formal system for managing AI agents as digital employees. They are given unique identities, tracked in HR systems, and measured on performance. This shift from tool to worker raises urgent questions of control, security, and who is responsible when the algorithm makes a mistake. This is Modra, just north of Bratislava. The vineyards are old, but the work is changing. ...

This is Modra, Slovakia—and the world of artificial intelligence is changing. The era of giant, all-knowing AI that wrote poetry and passed bar exams is giving way to something quieter, more focused, and far more practical. As the market moves beyond showcase models to demand measurable value, a new generation of smaller, specialized tools is solving real-world problems. This is the story of that shift, a tale of two models that reveals the future of an industry. ...

The code writes itself now. In Silicon Valley, they call it “vibe coding,” a revolution championed by Meta’s new AI chief, Alexandr Wang. The promise is to make a creator of anyone who can describe a desire. But from the field comes a different story: of broken code, gaping security holes, and a generation of new developers facing a career dead end. This is the story of a technology that could democratize creation or automate incompetence—and the battle to decide which it will be. ...

As tech giants like Google and Meta battle to embed AI into every interaction, a second, hidden conflict is emerging. Beyond the visible war for browsers and wearables, a new industry is racing to build the essential “agentic infrastructure” needed to power a world of autonomous AI. The ultimate prize is not just the smartest machine, but control of the very plumbing of a new digital economy. This is Menlo Park. A developer at Meta’s annual conference watches the presentation, expecting complexity. He expected a new operating system, a new world to build from scratch. Instead, the code shown is familiar. It is the language of smartphones. The new smart glasses, he realizes, are not a new computer. They are simply new eyes and ears for the phone already in his pocket. ...

While giants like NVIDIA and Intel joined forces to build bigger, faster artificial intelligence, the human cost of that scale became clear in the open-source community. The future of intelligence may not lie in brute force, but in the elegant resilience of the human brain. A volunteer maintainer for the LLVM open-source project stared at his monitor late into the night. His screen was filled with code submissions. They were large, low-quality, and generated by artificial intelligence. Inexperienced contributors were using AI coding assistants to submit vast patches of flawed work, overwhelming the humans tasked with reviewing it. A senior contributor called it an “existential threat” to the project. The tool meant to accelerate progress was causing a system to burn out. ...

In the quiet hum of servers and the vast silence of space, the next chapter of artificial intelligence is being written. A software giant pivots, choosing a new mind to power its code. A leading lab confronts the challenge of deception within its own creations. These are dispatches from the edge of tomorrow. This is Redmond. A programmer leans back, watching lines of code bloom across the screen. The suggestions from his AI assistant, GitHub Copilot, feel different today. Sharper. More direct. The tool is the same, but the mind behind it has changed. ...

A line is being drawn in the code. In the home, new software seeks to protect children from the machines they talk to. In the office, new laws seek to protect workers from the machines that manage them. As artificial intelligence becomes the new workforce, a question emerges: what work is left for humans, and who is truly in control? This is a suburb north of Sacramento. The light from a teenager’s screen casts a blue glow on her father’s face. He is setting the new rules for her AI. ...

The world’s new workers are not made of flesh and bone. They are autonomous agents, artificial intelligences that now act on their own. They debug code, manage marketing, and even offer medical advice with surprising empathy. The mass layoffs once feared have not yet materialized. The real story is more complex: a quiet revolution in how work is done, and a new, uncertain partnership between human and machine. This is Modra—a town of vineyards and quiet history, west of Bratislava. The world of silicon and code feels distant here. But it is not. The dispatches arrive, and they tell a new story. ...

The race for artificial intelligence has split. As repurposed Bitcoin mines feed a demand for brute computational force, a new generation of hyper-efficient and private AI is quietly emerging. This schism is not only technical; it is redefining the human role in a world run by code. The machines in West Texas never stopped humming. They once hunted for Bitcoin, solving cryptographic puzzles in vast, air-conditioned warehouses. Now they do something else. The infrastructure, built for one boom, has been repurposed for another. The new work is training artificial intelligence. It is up to 25 times more profitable per kilowatt-hour. ...