Tech & AI
I think the Xiaomi 18 Fold is the best passport-foldable phone right now and that makes me sad
If I got a dollar for every time someone asked me if this was the new iPhone Duo, I would have a dollar. And the Xiaomi 18 Fold.
I have spent some time with the Xiaomi 18 Fold, and my first impression is pretty simple: this is one of those phones that makes more sense the longer you use it.
Foldables have come a long way, but many of them still feel like regular phones that happen to open into a small tablet. Yes, there are similar designs from other manufacturers like Huawei and Samsung, and most recently, Apple as well. The Xiaomi 18 Fold takes a slightly different approach. When I opened it, the first thing I noticed was not how big the screen was, but how naturally it was shaped for the things I actually wanted to do on it. The square-curved design seems unsymmetrical at first – but boy, it grows on you fast!
It is wide, surprisingly thin, and, despite being a foldable with a huge battery inside, does not feel like I am carrying a small tablet around in my pocket. And my editor specifically told me to keep this under 600 words. Someone’s going to be mad.
The design is slim, wide, and surprisingly feels super-premium
The Xiaomi 18 Fold has a fairly distinctive design. The version I spent time with had a red finish, and I really liked the contrast between the matte glass back and the slightly darker metal frame.
It has that premium feel I expect from a flagship, but without trying too hard to look futuristic. When folded, it feels solid in the hand, and when I opened it, the 5mm-thick body immediately stood out. Xiaomi has managed to keep the unfolded phone remarkably slim, considering everything packed inside it.
At 219 grams, it is obviously not a lightweight phone. But I never got the feeling that the weight was getting in the way. That becomes even more impressive when you remember that Xiaomi has managed to put a 6,000mAh battery inside this thing.
The red version I handled also has an interesting contrast between the frame and the rear panel. The metal sections are slightly darker, while the matte glass back is a lighter shade of red. It gives the phone some personality without making it look overly flashy.
Despite being a foldable, the phone does not feel excessively chunky. Xiaomi has also given it IP58/IP59 protection against dust and water, including resistance to high-pressure water jets and immersion in up to 1 metre of water for 30 minutes.
The hinge is also something I paid attention to because that is usually where foldables start feeling fragile. The 18 Fold feels reassuringly solid when opening and closing it.
And then there is the crease.
I could feel a slight indentation down the middle of the folding screen when running my finger across it, but visually, it was surprisingly difficult to notice. During my time with the phone, the crease was barely noticeable most of the time.
The 7.58-inch screen is the real attraction.
The biggest reason to buy the Xiaomi 18 Fold is obviously the inner display, and this is where the phone gets particularly interesting. It has a 7.58-inch LTPO AMOLED panel with a 2364 x 1672-pixel resolution, a 120Hz refresh rate and a claimed peak brightness of 4,000 nits. It also supports HDR10+, Dolby Vision and HDR Vivid.
But the numbers do not tell the whole story. The display has a 2:1 aspect ratio, which means the phone opens into a wide landscape-oriented screen. I found this particularly useful when watching videos. Instead of getting the more portrait-oriented tablet experience seen on some book-style foldables, the Xiaomi 18 Fold naturally gives you a landscape canvas. However, a tip: watching movies would need the good ol pinch and zoom because most of them run on 16:9 aspect ratios. Not the Justice League Zack Snyder Edition, though.
The outer display follows the same philosophy. It is a 5.38-inch LTPO AMOLED panel with a 1168 x 1712 resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, and up to 4,000 nits peak brightness. It also gets Xiaomi Dragon Crystal Glass 3 and support for HDR10+, Dolby Vision, and HDR Vivid.
The cover screen is wide enough to use comfortably with one hand. The curved section on the right does eat into a little of the usable screen area, but I did not find it particularly problematic during basic use. Typing also feels more natural than I expected because of the wider shape. No thanks to my fat fingers, though.
XRing O3 keeps everything moving
Powering the Xiaomi 18 Fold is Xiaomi’s XRing O3 chipset, built on a 3nm process. The chip has a 10-core CPU clocked at up to 4.35GHz and is paired with an Arm G2-Ultra NX MC16 GPU.
My unit felt fast during everyday use. Apps opened quickly, animations were smooth, and switching between multiple applications did not feel like something the phone had to think about.
The specifications list four storage configurations: 256GB with 12GB RAM, 512GB with 12GB RAM, 512GB with 16GB RAM, and 1TB with 16GB RAM. Storage is UFS 4.1, although there is no microSD card slot.
The phone runs Android 17 with Xiaomi’s HyperOS 4 interface. What I particularly liked was how well the performance matched the screen.
A powerful chip on a foldable is useful, but it becomes much more interesting when you have this much screen real estate to actually take advantage of it. Multitasking feels like something I would genuinely use here rather than something I would try once because the phone allows it.
Xiaomi has not forgotten the cameras
Foldables often make compromises with their cameras, but Xiaomi has gone in the opposite direction with the 18 Fold. No, I am not looking at you, Samsung.
There is a triple-camera setup on the back consisting of a 200-megapixel primary camera with an f/1.7 aperture, a 50-megapixel telephoto camera with 3.5x optical zoom and a 50-megapixel ultrawide camera. The main and telephoto cameras also get optical image stabilisation.
The main camera uses a 1/1.56-inch sensor, while Xiaomi has also included laser autofocus and a colour spectrum sensor. The cameras use Leica lenses and the system supports HDR and panorama modes.
Video recording goes up to 8K at 24fps, while 4K recording is available at 30fps and 60fps with Dolby Vision. The phone can also record 1080p video at up to 960fps. There is also a 16-megapixel selfie camera on the inner display and another 16-megapixel camera on the cover screen. Both have an f/2.2 aperture and 21mm equivalent focal length.
That camera setup makes the 18 Fold feel more like a conventional flagship that happens to fold, rather than a foldable that happens to have cameras.
A 6,000mAh battery in a 5mm-thick foldable
The battery is another area where Xiaomi has gone big. The Xiaomi 18 Fold packs a 6,000mAh silicon-carbon battery. It supports 67W wired charging and 50W wireless charging, along with PD3.0 and 50W PPS support. Reverse wired charging is also supported. Again, for comparison, the Samsung S26 Ultra gets a 5000mAh battery. More so, the Fold 8 gets a 4800mAh battery.
Considering how thin the phone is when unfolded, fitting a 6,000mAh battery inside is impressive on paper. During my time with the device, the combination of the large battery and efficient 3nm chipset made the 18 Fold feel like a phone designed for heavy daily use rather than something that needs to be treated carefully to make it through the day. I usually find myself picking the 67W brick about one and a half days of usage.
It also gets stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos, while there is no 3.5mm headphone jack. The phone supports Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6.0, and NFC, and Xiaomi has included NavIC alongside GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, BDS, and QZSS for positioning.
My first impression
After spending time with the Xiaomi 18 Fold, what stands out to me is that Xiaomi seems to have understood one of the biggest problems with current foldables: simply making the inner screen bigger does not automatically make it more useful.
The 18 Fold’s 2:1 inner display changes that experience. When I opened it, I immediately got a wide screen that felt natural for video playback, multitasking, and general tablet-style use. The 120Hz AMOLED panel, 4,000-nit peak brightness, and Dolby Vision support only add to that experience.
At the same time, it remains reasonably manageable when folded. The 219-gram weight is not particularly light for a conventional phone, but for a device with a 7.58-inch foldable screen and 6,000mAh battery, it does not feel unreasonable.
The cameras are also unusually serious for a foldable, with a 200MP main sensor, 50MP telephoto and 50MP ultrawide. The XRing O3 chip, up to 16GB RAM and UFS 4.1 storage complete what is essentially a flagship specification sheet.
There is, however, one big catch. A sad one.
The Xiaomi 18 Fold is currently a China-exclusive phone, which means buyers outside China may have to admire this one from a distance for now. But purely as a piece of hardware, my first impression is that Xiaomi built a passport foldable for the world but decided to make it available only in its home market, and that is a major regret.
The Xiaomi 18 Fold feels thin without feeling delicate, big without feeling unwieldy, and powerful without making a big show of it. Most importantly, the unusual wide format actually changes how I use the phone.
And after spending some time with it, I think that is exactly what a good foldable should do. It should not just give you a bigger screen. It should give you a reason to use that bigger screen.
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The Museo de Historia de la Computación spent 18 months developing the exhibit. The replica preserves the appearance of the 1976 machine without trying to reproduce its internal hardware. Built to mark the 50th anniversaries of the Cray-1 and Apple’s founding, the model is now on permanent display at the…
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There’s a lot to consider before buying a new phone from abroad.
There are plenty of smartphone options to choose from in the US, from the iPhone to the Pixel. But there are also really interesting phones you’ll never find in an American store. Xiaomi’s foldables like the Mix Fold, Honor’s Magic series and OPPO’s Find X phones are a few examples that offer unique designs or features not generally seen in the US.
While phones like these are harder to find in the country, it’s possible to import them, but bringing a phone from abroad has its downsides. You may have problems using your phone with local carriers or getting warranty coverage, among other trouble. If you’re considering an imported phone, always check a few points first.
What you should know before buying a phone from another country
Buying an imported phone has become a lot easier in recent years. Most smartphones are now designed to work globally on most cellular bands. Still, some phones may not work with those used by your US carrier. Start by checking whether the phone you’re considering is compatible with your carrier’s frequency bands. Buying the wrong version could leave you stuck on the LTE network with no 5G support.
Carrier-specific features can cause issues too. Features like Wi-Fi calling, VoLTE and visual voicemail usually require certification for each device. So even if your imported phone works fine on your carrier’s 5G network, it might not be able to access all these features in the US. Network requirements may also change, so a model that works fine today may run into problems in the future. It’s worth checking forums like Reddit to see what people who’ve bought the phone you want have to say.
Then there are software updates; the rollout of Android updates may be tied to carriers or regions. Also, some Chinese phones are not compatible with Google Play Services, which are a core part of the Android experience most people expect. You may have to install updates manually, and the software might include Chinese apps and services that aren’t relevant to you (or readable).
Additionally, getting warranty service in the US for these phones may not be easy. Some of these brands have no official representation in the country, which also means no customer support. Dealing with problems like a dead battery or a cracked screen may require taking your phone to a third-party repair shop with no official authorization from the manufacturer.
The benefits of importing a smartphone
If you’re okay with all these hassles, importing a phone from abroad can be a lot of fun and open you up to new hardware that isn’t available in the US. There are a lot of Chinese companies putting out exciting products, like three-screen foldables, flagships with DSLR-quality cameras and devices with massive batteries. The Xiaomi 18 Fold is a new foldable phone that looks similar to the iPhone Duo, but it has a bigger battery and better cameras. It also costs less (the equivalent of about $1,640 currently), but you’ll need to buy it abroad if you want to use it in the US.
For those who want the latest releases, importing a phone often gives you the chance to get it before the official US launch. Also, many international models still support two physical SIM cards — a feature that most phones sold in the US have already ditched in favor of eSIM. If you don’t mind the potential drawbacks, it can be a rewarding experience. But if it’s important that you have official support nearby and know all features will work properly on your network, it’s easier to buy a phone that’s officially supported in your country.
Growing up in Joliet, Illinois, my understanding of history was largely shaped by recurrent classroom materials and historical figures I’ve only read about in textbooks. Back then, my education felt like a passive process of memorizing facts rather than connecting with living stories. Classroom technology also felt abstract and disconnected from what I learned about culture and history.
Moving to Alabama in 2002 to attend Miles College, a historically Black college, building a life in Birmingham after graduation and dedicating myself to education laid a deep, personal foundation in the heart of the civil rights South. However, it wasn’t until 2025, on the Institute for Common Power’s Truth and Purpose Learning Tour, that something profound shifted in me. The rigorous six-day journey through the historic landscape of the civil rights movement — from Atlanta’s Sweet Auburn district to Montgomery, Selma and Birmingham — fundamentally transformed the way I look at history and how I will teach it for the rest of my life.
Up to that point, I had taught computer science and other mandated lessons primarily as a career skill, focusing on logic, syntax and software mechanics. But after this transformation, I was determined to lead my scholars from passive consumers of technology to active creators who could use code to immortalize the very faces they passed on their streets every single day. Because of this transformation, I believed the most important code they would ever write was no longer meant for the screen — it was now meant to awaken the world to the brilliance right outside their doors.
As part of the Institute for Common Power’s Truth and Purpose Learning Experience, I spent six transformative days traveling across Alabama and Georgia alongside a cohort of fellow educators. Designed as an intensive professional development initiative to move education to action, this group brought us face-to-face with scholars, community organizers and everyday folks.
The tour grounded us in what the Institute for Common Power calls “Movement Learning,” a three-tiered educational framework built on three essential acts:
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Learning from social movements that preceded us to understand the deep historical roots, structural disparities, tragedies and triumphs born from our past.
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Learning by physically engaging in the exact geographic sites where history occurred.
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Learning how to project and create change as we move actively toward a more equitable future.
We explored historic sites in Birmingham, stood on the historic Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, engaged with urban farming at the Jones Valley Teaching Farm to understand food deserts and why systematic disinvestment makes them disproportionately prominent in Black communities, and discovered local landmarks I never knew existed in my own backyard.
Returning to South Hampton K-8 School after those six days, I had an urgent mission: my scholars needed to see code not just as computer logic, but as an opportunity to engage with the legends they walk among every day. I came to understand that teaching STEM is most powerful when paired with interdisciplinary learning and cultural history, transforming technical skills into a profound vehicle for civic agency and community storytelling.
Connecting U.S. History with Our High-Tech Future
When I returned to my classroom from the tour, my middle schoolers were completing a unit in Apple’s Swift Playground, using the built-in “All About Me” app template. In that unit, my scholars had learned how to write SwiftUI structures, configure stack layouts and display dynamic image views and text fields about their personal hobbies. The standard curriculum stopped at self-reflection, but I saw an immediate opportunity for a civic leap.
As Black History Month wrapped up, we pivoted our computer science curriculum into a new initiative: “Coding Birmingham’s Black Legacy.” I didn’t want to assign students another coding exercise; I wanted to transform our classroom into a digital archive and design studio.
Instead of coding apps about themselves, our seventh and eighth graders applied their newly acquired coding skills to build interactive iOS applications honoring local pioneers who shaped society and had deep connections to Birmingham. The first step in translating these rich historical narratives into functional mobile experiences was designing a structured technical framework from the ground up.
The Technical Architecture: Engineering a Four-Screen App
To bring these historical figures to life, students moved beyond simple drag-and-drop interfaces into structural Swift programming. Using Swift Playground on iPads and MacBooks, they engineered a standardized yet customizable four-screen interactive app navigation path for each hero:
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Screen 1: Title and Hero Page – Custom visual layout featuring the pioneer’s full name, stylized color palettes, high-resolution portrait framing and user navigation triggers.
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Screen 2: AI-Assisted Biographical Summary – A structured text view presenting a concise, engaging overview of the pioneer’s life story, historical significance and lasting impact on social justice.
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Screen 3: Interactive “Did You Know?” Fun Facts Card – Dynamic list views highlighting key policy achievements, community milestones or surprising biographical facts.
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Screen 4: Digital Artifacts and Media Gallery – Embedded video playback containers, archival photographs, historical artifacts, primary source documents or links to digital museum records.
Screen 1
Screen 2
Screen 3
Screen 4
A critical layer of our technology workflow involved integrating generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) into the historical research process. Many of our selected pioneers, such as local civil rights leader Charles Mauldin or retired Judge U.W. Clemon built complex, multi-decade legacies as, respectively, an activist and Alabama’s first Black federal judge.
Beyond interviewing these living legends, students used AI tools like Gemini, Claude and ChatGPT as research co-pilots. They practiced prompt engineering, asking AI models to synthesize lengthy biographical archives, isolate key historical milestones and reframe complex legal or political terminology into clear summaries appropriate for an app interface.
Students didn’t just summarize history; they unlocked the human heart of those Birmingham pioneers, making profound legacies accessible and genuinely felt by anyone who opens the app. By turning historical archives into experiences, they demonstrated how technology equips young creators to tell their community’s stories in their own terms.
When Code Meets Community: The Library of Innovation Showcase
The climax of our project took place in February2025. Our school’s “Library of Innovation” became an interactive tech showcase. Hosted by our students, their showcase brought together parents, school leaders, local residents, stakeholders and several of the actual pioneers featured in the apps.
Students showcasing their apps to local community members.
The atmosphere was electrifying. I watched in awe as 13-year-old coders stood beside their screens, proudly guiding community elders through app navigation paths, explaining line-by-line Swift code and demonstrating how AI helped them summarize local history. Their eyes lit up with pride as living legends interacted with apps built in their honor.
In that moment, Movement Learning’s true promise came alive. Technology didn’t isolate our students behind screens; it re-anchored them to their roots and proved that their voices, written in lines of Swift code, belong at the center of Birmingham’s ongoing legacy.
Empowering the Next Generation of Digital Storytellers
Supported by the newly established Institute for History & Equity, this approach brings to life founder and executive director Terry Anne Scott’s concept of historical empowerment, ensuring that by empowering students to code the stories of the legends walking among them, we teach them they have the power to code the future. By studying the resilience and innovation of local civil rights pioneers and community leaders, students realize that systemic change is driven by ordinary people taking extraordinary action. They stop viewing history as something passive and start seeing themselves as active architects of their communities.
When we combine place-based, Movement Learning with modern digital tools like Swift Playground and generative AI, we do far more than teach computational logic and technical skills. We cultivate deep civic agency in our students.
For educators everywhere, this highlights a vital realization: when we look beyond standard screen time and leverage coding as a canvas for community storytelling, we unlock an unprecedented level of student engagement and investment. Technology ceases to be just another subject to test and evolves into a dynamic vehicle for youth to champion social justice, honor local legacy, and discover their own voice.
My journey from Joliet, Illinois, to Miles College and South Hampton K-8 taught me that history isn’t just something we read about; it is something we live and build upon.
By empowering middle schoolers to code the stories of the legends walking among them, we help them recognize their power to code the future.
Capcom’s Dragon’s Dogma 2: Dark Arisen features Indian gaming creator Shagufta “XYAA” Iqbal as an Official Pawn. Players can recruit her character through the game and take her along on their adventures. The game launches worldwide on October 9, 2026, bringing XYAA into a major international gaming title. In the game, Pawns are AI-controlled companions who assist players in combat and exploration. Players can recruit XYAA’s character through the Rift system and include her in their parties.
Her Official Pawn comes in four versions at Levels 8, 20, 30, and 50. Each version features changes to her appearance, equipment, and abilities as she progresses. XYAA retains the Archer class in every version, linking her in-game role to her competitive gaming background. This collaboration falls under Capcom’s Official Pawn program, which brings creators and personalities into the game. Indian gaming creator BeastBoyShub and international creators are also part of the program.
The latest version of the game also has new content for gamers. This includes a storyline in Norgan, a northern area covered in snow, new enemies, and 12 new dungeon quests.
XYAA’s Capcom Collaboration and Gaming Journey
With her appearance in Dragon’s Dogma 2: Dark Arisen, XYAA has moved from representing video game marketing to becoming part of the gameplay. People worldwide can use her virtual character and travel with her on their adventure missions. This association offers Indian gamers a chance to be part of the big names in video games worldwide. XYAA began playing Counter-Strike 1.6 in 2011, then moved to Valorant and went on to compete in international gaming tournaments for India. Her achievements include a top-four finish for India at the 2023 World Esports Championship.
She was also the only woman from esports nominated for the National Creators Award. Her partnership with Capcom aligns with Revenant XSpark’s focus on creating new opportunities for gaming talent. Founded in 2021, the organization works across competitive esports, creator management, brand solutions, publisher partnerships, content, and entertainment. It has worked with more than 400 brands across different sectors.
The game launched worldwide on October 9, 2026, for Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. The franchise has also built a sizeable global audience, with cumulative sales exceeding 14 million units as of March 31, 2026.
In this week’s Sunday Reboot, the touch-enabled MacBook Pro looms, but the Mac-iPad divide still exists for some reason.
-xl-xl.jpg "Sunday Reboot: Touch MacBook Pro's nice, but I want macOS on iPad 74")
Imagine the MacBook Pro, but with OLED and a touchable display.
Sunday Reboot is a weekly column covering some of the lighter stories within the Apple reality distortion field from the past seven days. All to get next week underway with a good first step.
Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums
Even the most seasoned globe-trotter likely finds traveling stressful. Between panic-packing, navigating cramped terminals, and living out of a suitcase, each phase of being away from home can be overstimulating. That’s why the best gifts for travelers are ones that focus on ease and peace of mind.
Jet-setters may think they have their travel routine down to a science, but the perfect gift can enhance any experience, whether it’s a three-day business retreat or a two-week adventure across Europe. Below, find my favorite gifts for frequent travelers, from an essential suitcase set and a portable e-reader to comfortable compression socks and the perfect neck pillow.
For more travel gifts, check out our guides to the Best Travel Tote Bags, Gifts for Women, and the Best Stocking Stuffers.
Featured in This Gift Guide
Quince Expandable Small Carry-On & Large Check-In Suitcase Set
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Amazon Kindle Paperwhite and Paperwhite Signature Edition (2024, 12th Generation)
A Matching Luggage Set
Every traveler needs a luggage set that includes a checked case and a carry-on. Chances are, the jet-setter in your life already has one they love. But if they’re due for a refresh, this set from Quince is an excellent (and expandable) gift. The brand makes some of my favorite travel gear, with pieces that look remarkably similar to designs from premium brands—but at a fraction of the price. This set comes in a range of minimalist colors and has all the features you could want in luggage, including 360-degree spinner wheels, a TSA-approved lock, and high-quality zippers.
Vacation Reading
Amazon
Kindle Paperwhite and Paperwhite Signature Edition (2024, 12th Generation)
For the bookworm who’s always traveling, the Kindle Paperwhite is the obvious gift. Reviewer Nena Farrell says the 12th-generation model has the highest contrast ratio of any Kindle and lasts up to three months on a single charge. Whether you’re reading in direct sun or a dim plane cabin, its 7-inch display is crisp and easy on the eyes thanks to its warm backlighting. Plus, its IPX8 waterproofing rating means you can confidently read poolside without worrying about water damage. The Signature Edition adds wireless charging, auto-brightness, and double the storage at 32 GB.
Check out our guides to the Best Kindles and the Best E-Readers for more recommendations.
Passport Control
Calpak
Luka Zip Passport Wallet
If you’re traveling abroad—or just don’t yet have your Real ID—a travel wallet is a must. The puffy Luka from Calpak comes in 23 colors, so you’re sure to find an option that fits your giftee’s vibe. It’s got plenty of room for cash, cards, your passport, and other documents, and it zips securely for peace of mind. Just note that it is quite large—about the size of a mass-market paperback. On the plus side, this makes it easy to find at a glance in a big bag or backpack. On the minus, a flight attendant once asked me to put it in the overhead compartment when she saw it on my lap. —Kat Merck
Travel Organizer
Frequent travelers who don’t use collapsible cubes when packing are struggling, and they don’t even know it. Give them this travel tip: Eagle Creek’s set is the best, made of durable fabric with compression and high-quality zipper pulls. Editor Kat Merck says there’s just enough mesh for air circulation to prevent odor buildup or fabric degradation, and the bottom and back of the cubes are opaque for privacy. They’re water-resistant and designed with a top handle. The largest cube in this set is also split into two sections for clean clothes and dirty laundry. Eagle Creek also sells larger sets for extended stays and slim cubes to help you maximize narrow spaces in your luggage.
Regular readers of this column may have wondered about the long gap since my Sept. 4 column, “What kids tell chatbots, but not you.” Well, it’s hard to write business-as-usual AI columns during the great AI freakout. I’ve realized that I won’t be able to do justice to this topic in one column, and that life goes on. As the economist Antoine Levy pointed out, OpenAI employees warn that we may all die within a few years yet still fund their 401(k) accounts.
I’m easing into the topic of AI risks by sharing a recent debate I had with Max Tegmark, an MIT professor and a leading AI doomer. The New York Post set this up as optimist against doomer, but I consider myself an AI realist.
Tegmark noted that Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon have converged on AI, and took it as good news. It terrified me. AI needs rules written by people who understand it, not by demagogues. Tegmark said that AI is less regulated than a sandwich shop, but we have plenty of sandwich shops and zero superintelligence (so far). I believe that we should address what exists: the hackers who already use AI to break into companies for the price of lunch.
A condensed version of the debate follows. Words in quotation marks are verbatim, and the rest is paraphrased. You can view the debate on YouTube. Several exchanges refer to this summer’s incident, in which OpenAI test agents got out of their sandbox and hacked Hugging Face.
Six points of disagreement
1. Is AI already out of control?
Tegmark: Loss of control used to be a forecast, and “now suddenly it’s in the past.” This summer “1,200 rogue bots broke out of this American company,” and “humans didn’t even find out until weeks later.”
Etzioni: The agents weren’t rogue. The people “setting the configurations of their sandbox” at OpenAI “failed to put the boundaries on them appropriately.” People made that mistake, and people can fix it.
2. Today’s dangers vs. extinction risks
Etzioni: Cyberattacks and attempts to make bioweapons are “a clear and present danger.” Extinction-level risks are different: “We haven’t seen those yet. We hypothesize, and usually pretty vaguely, on how these will come about.”
Tegmark: The risks Etzioni wants to separate are “connected in their cause.” “If there were some safety standards like there are for other industries, so many of these problems would go away.”
3. Government regulations vs. technical fixes
Tegmark: Do what the auto and pharma industries do, and “have some binding safety standards that the government requires before people can make money off of products.” Companies would have to show that their AI won’t harm kids and won’t slip out of their control. If they can’t show that terrorists won’t use it to make bioweapons, “well, come back when you can, buddy.”
Etzioni: Regulation is necessary, but it has its own risks. “The road to regulatory hell is paved with the EU’s good intentions.” And “we should not underestimate the power of technical solutions.” The author Dan Wang says China is run by engineers and America is run by lawyers, so we naturally talk about regulation and they naturally talk about technical fixes. For bioweapons, the fix may lie “in the transitions from what’s called bits to atoms,” where we can block the physical materials an attacker needs.
4. Can we count on China?
Tegmark: “We don’t have to trust China.” The Chinese Communist Party wants to stay in control, so “they will not want to let a Chinese company build uncontrollable superintelligence.”
Etzioni: I don’t trust China. “Nothing would make them happier than us hamstringing ourselves.”
5. Is the political backlash good news?
Tegmark: “There’s been more political change in a good direction in the last few months than in the past decade.” It’s like a ketchup bottle: “nothing, nothing, nothing, and then all of it at once.” At my convention I introduced Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon back to back, “which had not been in my bingo card.”
Etzioni: “Can you imagine two worse demagogues?” And “we need to have good solutions, not popular ones.”
6. How it plays out
Etzioni: “I foresee over time something quite negative happening, and to me the question is whether it’s Hiroshima or the Cuban Missile Crisis.” The Cuban Missile Crisis was a threat averted. Hiroshima was a catastrophe that came before the better rules did.
Tegmark: Self-interest is the fix. Make safety the way companies get rich, and “we’re going to see all the creativity and entrepreneurship of private industry racing to the top to do this instead of racing to the bottom.”
Five points of agreement
1. Don’t take AI CEOs at their word
Etzioni: The AI CEOs are self-interested. “When you are on the path to a trillion-dollar-plus IPO, that exerts a gravitational force on your mind.”
Tegmark: “I completely agree with Oren that we need to take what the AI CEOs say with a grain of salt.” Listen to AI pioneers Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio instead: “I don’t think we can dismiss them as just doing it for some money reasons.” The whistleblowers gave up stock options potentially worth $1 million or more to speak out.
2. We were both wrong
Etzioni: I was an AI optimist and I’m now an AI realist. The things I thought were many years away “are either right here, right now, or coming soon at a pace that we may not be able to anticipate.” I’ve learned from Tegmark, and “I was wrong.”
Tegmark: I was wrong too. “I never imagined that the people in America with the most power would let companies get so close to things that one could lose control over without intervening.”
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3. Self-regulation won’t work
Tegmark: “The idea of corporate self-regulation is a joke in this case.” It “didn’t work out so well for the tobacco industry or for the pharma industry.”
Etzioni: I agree. Social media showed us how self-regulation goes: “This is the big tobacco moment for high tech.” “We don’t want to spend another 20 years to find out that AI companies didn’t exercise the appropriate level of self-discipline.”
4. Box AI systems in
Etzioni: A self-driving car will save your life, but “it doesn’t decide where to go. That’s a completely different system in the car than the thing that controls the brakes.” When I tell my car to head to Dunkin’ Donuts, the car doesn’t respond that it’s taking me to the gym instead because “it’s the second time you’ve gone to Dunkin’ Donuts this week.” We should box in other AI systems the same way.
Tegmark: “By default, machines should be given the least amount of access and power that they need to do their job.” “You don’t give every janitor in the Pentagon the nuclear codes.”
5. The time to act is now
Etzioni: “We agree on off switches for AI. I’ve been advocating that since at least 2017. We agree on labeling, on liability, on cyber standards, protecting kids.” The time to do that work is now.
Tegmark: “I agree with Oren: the time to actually act on this is now.”
Postscript: The real difference
Look back at these disagreements. Where Tegmark blames the machine, I blame a person. An engineer left a hole in the sandbox. A hacker typed the prompt. A politician found a new fear to run on. That’s why I’d box AI systems in rather than count on how they were raised.
Anthropic’s Amanda Askell compared getting Claude to behave to raising a child. But those of us with kids know how that goes. As I said in the debate, “the three-year-olds don’t listen to us, but the teenagers certainly don’t listen to us.”
I had to iterate a bit to realize my vision, telling the AI not just to stick pig faces on the blocks but to have the blocks shaped like distorted pigs. “Each block is a pig,” I wrote, “contorted into the shape of the Tetris blocks. Make ’em look a little squished but still cute!” This resulted in a clean, playable version of Tetris, though the occasional block looked like a T-posed pig with its legs spread-eagle. The AI suggested the title Piggy Stacker, but I thought mine was better. (I’m right.)
Dinner Darling
The next game idea came courtesy of my colleague Jay Dayrit, who, when asked what kind of game I should make, immediately requested, “Gay dinner party.” I typed that in.
With no follow-up requests, the result was a 2D flash-style game called Dinner Darling. The art looks like everyone is a Bitmoji. You’re placed in the shoes of a very stressed-out-looking host, Julian, who is tasked with hosting a fancy dinner party with fussy guests who can’t seem to sit in their chairs at the table. As timers count down, you have to prepare various artisanal bruschettas and espresso martinis for your increasingly angry guests.
After it generates, I give the game a shot and fail miserably, unable to figure out the controls in time to bring my guests a timely pastry or cocktail. (Sasha, one of the guests, required numerous espresso cocktails in a row.) “PARTY CATASTROPHE,” the game-over screen read.
There is no mention of anybody’s sexuality in the game at all, but when I lost, Dayrit called from across the office, “See? You’re bad at the game because you’re straight!” Well played, Playground.
Courtesy of Boone Ashworth
Every home has a sewer line that connects your home’s drainage to the city’s main system. Sometimes, though, that line may break. When it does, you’d spot some pretty unpleasant happenings in and around your house. Several of your drains may back up, while outside in the yard, random patches of grass would turn soggy and start to smell. That’s how you know it’s time to get the sewer line repaired.
Unfortunately, it isn’t the simplest job because the usual fix involves getting a crew to dig a trench along the pipe’s entire route, typically with a backhoe or excavator. It’s not only slow, but also pricey, considering the damaged lawn needs restoring afterwards. However, this can be a problem of the past, thanks to a technique called cured-in-place pipe, or CIPP. CIPP does away with the need for swapping out the whole pipe under a home and works on the existing line. This is done by passing a flexible felt tube soaked in a special liquid — resin – which hardens into a brand-new pipe in place inside the damaged one.
Getting this done first involves feeding a small inspection camera down the line to check things out. Water is then blasted through the pipeline in a technique called hydro-jetting to scrub out roots and buildup. Next, through a manhole or an existing opening in the pipe, that soaked tube is slid in, then inflated with air or water so it presses snugly against the old pipe’s walls. The resin is then hardened, effectively fixing the pipe.
What skipping the trench actually saves
The thing with resin is that it’s a syrupy liquid that turns into hard plastic once it cures, except in this case it doesn’t harden on its own. Instead, the crew actually needs to pump in hot water or steam, or by running a UV light through the tube. Again, the biggest sell with this method is that none of this needs a trench going through your yard. As a result, it’s not just your yard that stays largely untouched, but also your driveway, patio, or walkway sitting on top of the pipe.
The process is vastly quicker, too, so you can save up on paid hours. For a small cracked section of a home’s sewer line or a pipe burst by cold weather, the whole process just takes a day or two. By contrast, crews usually need two to three days to dig up and replace even part of that line. On top of that, lining a home’s line often costs less than replacing it.
It’s not just for individual houses, either, as cities can also employ the method for the larger sewer pipes running under the street that households drain into. The process is relatively quick, but while it happens you might want to go easy on showers and laundry or the water could back up.
However, there are still limits to where the technique can be used. It works best on pipes that are simply cracked, leaky, or rusted. If a pipe is properly caved in, though, the crews will likely still have to dig up. The technique is also not the most durable out there, at least compared to PVC pipes. Swapping those in ensures the line lasts over a 100 years. By comparison, a liner should last around 50 years, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, which isn’t bad, but it is only half the lifespan.
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