Sitting in Lincoln Center awaiting the curtain for Ayad Akhtar’s McNeal—a much anticipated theater production starring Robert Downey Jr., with ChatGPT in a supporting role—I mused how playwrights have been dealing with the implications of AI for over a century. In 1920—well before Alan Turing devised his famous test andContinue Reading

Is China’s DeepSeek Using Smuggled AI Chips From Singapore?

The Diplomat’s Asia Geopolitics podcast hosts Ankit Panda (@nktpnd) and Katie Putz (@LadyPutz) discuss the rise of DeepSeek and the state of geopolitical competition over artificial intelligence technologies. If you’re an iOS or Mac user, you can also subscribe to The Diplomat’s Asia Geopolitics podcast on iTunes here; if you use Windows orContinue Reading

The Showdown Between Elon Musk and Sam Altman

Lauren Goode: Sam said that? Zoë Schiffer: To his employees. Lauren Goode: Interesting. Michael Calore: He also came out on X and said something about, “I wish he would compete.” Zoë Schiffer: Oh, yeah. He was like, “I wish he would compete in the marketplace, not in the courtroom.” LaurenContinue Reading

Japan’s Pragmatic Model for AI Governance

Japan’s approach to artificial intelligence governance offers an instructive case study in how democratic nations can balance technological advancement with regulatory oversight and resource constraints. The recent meeting between Japanese Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son complements a hybrid approach that combines aContinue Reading

2025: The Year of the AI App

What a great idea I had for the first Plaintext of 2025. After following the frantic competition between OpenAI, Google, Meta, and Anthropic to churn out brainier and deeper “frontier” foundation models, I settled on a thesis about what’s ahead: In the new year, those mighty trailblazers will consume billionsContinue Reading

TOKYO: US tech giant OpenAI on Monday (Feb 3) unveiled a ChatGPT tool called “deep research” ahead of high-level meetings in Tokyo, as China’s DeepSeek chatbot heats up competition in the AI field. Artificial intelligence newcomer DeepSeek has sent Silicon Valley into a frenzy, with its high performance and supposed lowContinue Reading

OpenAI’s o3-Mini Is a Leaner AI Model That Keeps Pace With DeepSeek

OpenAI is making a smaller, more efficient version of its cleverest artificial intelligence model available for free as it seeks to answer the hype and enthusiasm swirling around a new open source offering from Chinese AI startup DeepSeek. WIRED previously reported that OpenAI was prepping the new model, called o3-mini,Continue Reading

It’s been just over a week since DeepSeek upended the AI world. The introduction of its open-weight model—apparently trained on a fraction of the specialized computing chips that power industry leaders—set off shock waves inside OpenAI. Not only did employees claim to see hints that DeepSeek had “inappropriately distilled” OpenAI’sContinue Reading