The Klipsch Flexus Core 200 ($549) is about as sensible as soundbars get. If you’re wondering what I mean by that, the Core 200 offers up all the essentials; Dolby Atmos processing, up-firing speakers for height effects, and HDMI eARC connectivity in a reasonably compact and powerful package. And by stripping out the things that not everyone needs in a soundbar – specifically, extra HDMI ports and built-in Wi-Fi for streaming music, Klipsch managed to hit an affordable price point with the Flexus Core 200. They don’t call it Core for nothing.
Sandwiched between the 2.1-channel Core 100 ($349) and 5.1.2-channel Core 300 ($1,199) in the Flexus soundbar lineup, the Core 200 walks the line between basic TV sound enhancement and full-on Atmos immersion. It can also be scaled up to a 5.1.2- or even a 5.1.4-channel configuration by adding an optional Klipsch wireless subwoofer and surround speakers. For this review, I paired it with the Flexus SUB 100 subwoofer ($349 each) and Flexus SURR 100 rear speakers ($249/pair). Total system price: $1,175.
What Is It?
The Klipsch Flexus Core 200 is a 3.1.2-channel powered soundbar that decodes Dolby Atmos and legacy Dolby Digital and PCM formats. DTS:X is not supported, an omission some may find disappointing now that support for that format has been added to movies on the Disney+ streaming service.
As I mentioned above, there’s no Wi-Fi onboard for music listening via TIDAL Connect, Spotify Connect and other services, though Bluetooth is on-board for basic streaming of music, internet radio and podcasts. Bluetooth is also used by the Klipsch Connect setup app and for wireless hookup between the soundbar, subwoofer and rear speakers.
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The 44-inch-wide Flexus Core 200 soundbar is a good fit for 55-inch and larger TVs.
At 44 inches (111.8 cm) wide, 3 inches (7.8cm) high, and 5 inches (12.6cm) deep, the Core 200 mates well visually with 55- or 65-inch TVs, though its somewhat chonky 3-inch height means you may need a TV with an adjustable stand to provide sufficient screen clearance. The soundbar’s attractive cabinet is made of plastic, wood, and metal, and there are black and walnut finish options.
Being a Klipsch soundbar, there’s going to be a horn somewhere, and in this case it’s the center speaker’s 0.75-inch horn-loaded tweeter, which is flanked by two 2.25-inch aluminum cone drivers. The same 2.25-inch drivers are also used for the left and right speakers and up-firing elevation speakers, while a pair of 4-inch paper cone woofers bring the bass. Onboard power for the Onkyo-designed amplifier section is specified at 185 watts (RMS) and frequency response at 43Hz-20kHz.
The Flexus Transport USB transmitter (at right) is included with Klipsch’s Flexus SUB subwoofers and Flexus Surr rear speakers.
Along with the Core 200’s HDMI eARC port, there’s an optical digital input, an RCA output for a hardwired subwoofer connection, a USB-C port (service only) and a USB Type-A port to plug in the wireless dongle that connects the SUB 100 subwoofer and SURR 100 rear speakers.
Controls located on the Core 200’s top surface let you toggle power on and off, switch inputs and adjust the volume level. A large alphanumeric LED display located on the front provides visual feedback when making adjustments using the Klipsch Connect app or the included remote control – a useful and very welcome feature that’s not always provided on soundbars, including ones priced significantly higher than the Core 200.
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Basic touch-sensitive controls are located on the Core 200 soundbar’s top surface.
The Klipsch Flexus SUB 100 I used for my test packs a 10-inch paper cone woofer powered by an 80-watt (RMS) class D amplifier in a sealed enclosure. It comes with the Flexus Transport USB transmitter used for the soundbar’s wireless connection, and it also has an RCA input for a hardwired hookup. At 13.25 inches (33.7cm) wide x 13.3 inches (33.8cm) high x 13.75 inches (35cm) deep, it’s a relatively compact cube and makes for a good visual match with the Core 200 soundbar.
The Klipsch Flexus SURR 100 speakers I used for rear channels are tiny, almost toy-like at 4.25 inches (10.8cm) wide x 6.75 inches (17.1cm) high x 4.25 inches (10.8cm) deep. Each speaker uses a 3-inch paper cone driver powered by 25 watts (RMS) and the package also comes with the Flexus Transport USB transmitter. Klipsch offers a beefier rear speaker option in the Flexus SURR 200 ($499/pair), a model that adds a 2.25-inch up-firing driver to the 3-inch front-facing one to convey Dolby Atmos height effects.
Klipsch Flexus SUB 100 Subwoofer (left) and SURR 100 Wireless Rear Speakers (right)
Setup and Use
I found setting up the Core 200 with Klipsch’s optional subwoofer and rear speakers to be super easy compared to other soundbar-based wireless surround systems I’ve tested. If you’re using just the Core 200, all that’s needed is to run a cable from your TV’s HDMI eARC/ARC port to the soundbar’s HDMI port. Connect it to power and you’re done – even the Klipsch Connect app is optional and not needed for setup.
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If, like me, you’re extending the system with a wireless sub and speakers, you’ll need to insert one of the included USB transmitters into the soundbar’s USB type-A port and then press the Connect button located on the rear panel of both the subwoofer and rear speakers. An audio tone confirms that a wireless connection has been made and an LED indicator light, also located on the back, changes from a pulsing to a solid white.
For my setup, I had the Core 200 placed on a stand beneath a 75-inch TV in my 9 x 12 x 16 (H x W x D) foot viewing room, the SUB 100 in the front right corner, and the Surround 100s on stands to the right and left and slightly behind my sofa.
The Core 200 soundbar’s full-featured remote control.
Klipsch’s remote control provides access to most adjustments for tuning the soundbar for your viewing environment or whatever content you’re listening to or watching. There are buttons to select the Sound (Movie or Music) and Night (volume levelling) modes, and to configure Dialog level (1-3 or Off) plus front height, back left and right, and subwoofer level. All of these adjustments are indicated on the Core 200’s big, beautiful front LED display, and you can also adjust the display’s brightness using the remote.
The Klipsch Connect app features all the same adjustments, but further provides a three-band EQ with multiple presets plus a Custom setting. EQ may get scoffed at by audio purists, but I find it to be highly necessary for soundbars, where you regularly need to make adjustments for the differences in TV and movie soundtracks, as well as for any music you listen to.
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The Core 200’s large alphanumeric LED display provides easy to read visual feedback.
Movie Performance
I started out my evaluation with the Klipsch soundbar alone before adding the subwoofer and rear speakers to the mix. The Core 200 had a nicely balanced presentation overall, with full bass and clear, natural-sounding dialogue. Atmos effects were also pronounced, especially with the soundbar’s height adjustments edged up toward maximum level.
These qualities served F1 well when I streamed it on Apple TV via my Apple TV 4K. In the movie’s opening scene, Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) races at Daytona to the strains of Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love.” The roar of the car engines was vivid and clean, and I could easily hear a shifting level of spaciousness to the commentator’s voice as the action cut between interior and exterior shots. John Paul Jones’ bass came across as muscular and deep, with a level of dynamic power that was impressive for a standalone soundbar.
The Klipsch Control app duplicates all the remote control functions and adds EQ adjustments (center).
Watching F1 revealed the Core 200’s ability to cast a tall and wide soundstage, especially when a fireworks display lit up the night sky during the race, but the presentation was mainly locked to the front of the room. This was evident when I watched the scene from the Dune: Part II 4K Blu-ray where Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) hitches a ride on a giant sandworm – as worm and rider plowed through the desert landscape, the spray of sand was cast high and wide, but I didn’t feel overly immersed in the action.
It was the same deal when I watched the scene from the Twisters 4K Blu-ray where the doomed young meteorologists flee a monster tornado only to get sucked up one by one into the deadly funnel. The sound of the storm was powerful and dramatic, but I didn’t feel like I was in the eye of the storm. Dialogue in this complex and chaotic sequence also tended to get obscured, but a few hits of the Dialog button on the remote successfully boosted it to the point where I could hear it.
Movies with SUB & SURR
Watching the same clips with the SUB 100 and SURR 100 speakers added to the mix elevated the Core 200’s game to the point where I’d deem them indispensable. It’s not that Klipsch’s soundbar isn’t effective on its own; for the price, I’d even say it’s an overachiever. But adding those optional extras brought about a surprisingly effective increase in both dynamic range and surround immersion. I was actually caught off guard by it.
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The Klipsch Flexus SURR 100 proved surprisingly potent for compact rear speakers.
Giving F1 another spin, the SUB 100 created a deep foundation of bass that added dimension to engine sounds and emphasis to John Bonham’s kick drum. The little SURR 100 speakers lit up as the cars circled the track, providing a strong sense of being positioned in the driver’s seat.
The Dune: Part II worm rodeo scene also benefited greatly from the speaker additions, with the sand now seeming to spray to the back of the room. Twisters, too, took on a new dimension: the trajectory of wind sounds now seeped from the front to the rear speakers, creating a much more vivid sense of being caught inside the storm.
Music Performance
For music, I decided to leave the full 5.1.2 configuration intact since I was mostly listening to Dolby Atmos music tracks on Apple Music (played via the Apple TV 4K). Also, the Core 200 automatically upconverts stereo tracks in both Music and Movie mode, so everything I listened to ended up being in surround sound format anyway.
With the Core 200 soundbar’s streaming options limited to Bluetooth, you’ll need to rely on an external streamer for lossless music listening.
I’m a fan of Ryan Ulyate’s Atmos mix of Tom Petty’s Wildflowers, which manages to subtly expand the stereo original while maintaining a rock-solid presentation of vocals and instruments. Heard on the Flexus Core 200 system, Petty’s voice on “It’s Good to be King” had the same dry, natural quality I’m used to hearing on higher-end setups, The piano maintained its clean, well rounded tone and the Atmos mix spread subtly towards the rear of the room in a way that added warmth to the sound.
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Beck’s “She’s Gone,” also in Atmos, further confirmed my impression of the Core 200’s neutral, and mostly transparent, handling of music. Beck’s vocals sounded natural, with just a slight touch of reverb, and the acoustic guitar and harmonica had a crisp, clean tone. The bass guitar had a similar level of depth and punch as on “Whole Lotta Love” when I watched F1, but it gained a deeper, more authoritative foundation with the addition of the SUB 100 subwoofer.
To see how far I could flex that sub, I next played Deadmau5’s “Imaginary Friend” in stereo via the Apple TV 4K’s TIDAL app. For a compact sub with a 10-inch driver, the SUB 100 did an impressive job pressurizing the room and fleshing out the electronic beats. I could literally feel the bass hit in my chest. Upconverted for surround, the track gained a compelling sense of spaciousness, and the addition of a height dimension via the soundbar’s up-firing speakers gave it a nice wall of sound effect.
The Klipsch Flexus SUB 100 delivered impressive bass power for a compact sealed subwoofer with a 10-inch driver.
Shifting back to Atmos, I dug out my Pink Floyd Wish You Were Here (50th Anniversary) Blu-ray, which features a fantastic Dolby Atmos mix by the band’s longtime producer and engineer, James Guthrie. I had been a bit underwhelmed by the Core 200’s Atmos presentation of this disc when I had listened to it without the SUB 100 and SURR 100 speakers, but hearing “Welcome to the Machine” on the full system was a very different experience. The up-front vocals and guitar had a full, monolithic quality, floating well above the physical confines of the soundbar, while the synths stretched out well into the room and around my head. To me, “Welcome to the Machine” is about as good as Atmos music gets, and the Klipsch system did it justice.
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Klipsch Flexus Core 200 Soundbar System with SUB 100 Subwoofer and SURR 100 Wireless Rear Speakers for 5.1.2 Dolby Atmos
The Bottom Line
If I haven’t already made this clear enough, the Klipsch Flexus Core 200 soundbar’s performance takes a big leap forward when augmented by the Flexus SUB 100 subwoofer and Flexus SURR 100 rear speakers. That’s not to knock the Core 200, which performs very well for a 3.1.2-channel soundbar, especially one priced at $549. I’m sure many folks would be more than satisfied with its standalone sound, and also with its ease of setup and use.
Are there crucial features missing from the Core 200? Aside from DTS:X support, it would be nice to have built-in Wi-Fi for streaming, so you could use your phone to cue up music without having to rely on lossy Bluetooth for playback. Wi-Fi is a feature found on the Sonos Beam Gen 2 ($499), which lets you stream lossless music from a wide range of apps, and also brings support for AirPlay 2. In my case it was easy enough to use my Apple TV 4K for lossless and Dolby Atmos music streaming, but not everyone will want to deal with an external streamer.
Even without Wi-Fi for music streaming, the Klipsch Flexus Core 200 is a great value. I was very impressed with its performance for the price, and at $1,175 for the full package with subwoofer and rear speakers, it’s a very affordable way to dive into Dolby Atmos surround sound. I’ve regularly found that companies with a long history making speakers also do a great job with soundbars, and the Klipsch Flexus Core 200 system proves that to still be the case.
Pros:
Dynamic sound with clear dialogue
Powerful bass and good immersion with optional subwoofer and rear speakers added
Full-featured remote control
Dialog boost and EQ adjustments
Simple setup
Large, alphanumeric LED display
Great value
Cons:
No built-in Wi-Fi for music streaming
No DTS:X or DTS support
Standalone Core 200 soundbar has limited immersive effect
Your car might just become the new smart home hub for your house. Samsung has expanded SmartThings integration, enabling drivers to control their smart home devices directly from their car’s infotainment system. It’s called Car-to-Home.
Building on the earlier Home-to-Car capability that allowed users to monitor their cars from inside the house, the Car-to-Home feature flips the functionality so you can control your smart home appliances, such as air conditioners, lighting systems, and other smart switches, from your car’s dashboard.
Samsung
What can the Car-to-Home feature do?
The practical scope of the feature is broader than it might sound, as it is compatible with devices such as air conditioners, air purifiers, robot vacuums, lights, and cameras. Connecting is straightforward — drivers scan a QR code displayed on their car’s infotainment screen and link their vehicle to their SmartThings account.
Apart from manual control (flipping the switches), the Car-to-Home feature unlocks location-aware automation that genuinely changes how your home responds to your day. You can set routines so that the SmartThings network turns on the required appliances as you park your car in the garage.
I can see people using the feature to pre-cool their rooms or run air purifiers before they arrive home after a tiring day at the office. On the contrary, the feature should also shut everything down (automatically), as you get in the car and leave the driveway. There’s a dedicated Away Mode for handling lights when you’re away.
For now, the feature is available on select Hyundai and Kia cars, specifically those that feature the connected car Navigation Cockpit (ccNC) introduced after November 2022 in Korea. However, both Samsung and Hyundai aim to expand the feature to their customers throughout the world in due course.
Eligible models include the Grandeur, Santa Fe, Ioniq 5, K5, Sorento, and EV9. Samsung also plans to extend the feature to Genesis vehicles equipped with the ccIC27 infotainment system.
As and when the feature becomes available to a wider audience, it could drive a behavioral shift in which cars become central nodes in someone’s smart home ecosystem, linking mobility and domestic technology in ways that were, until recently, purely speculative.
The War Zone reported that a Lockheed Martin-produced mockup of the new version of the Raptor was at the Warfare Symposium, a convention for the defense industry and elements of the United States military. The outlet reported some noteworthy changes being made on this plane. Namely, the aircraft is slated to get upgrades in the form of some extra range and another set of eyes.
Fuel tanks and sensor pods might not sound like a big deal, as those components have been mounted to wing pylons of various aircraft for decades. But it’s not so easy to make these kinds of adjustments on a plane as stealthy as the F-22. That’s because external fuel tanks and sensors don’t have the same stealth considerations as the rest of the aircraft. A big fuel tank is nice, but it can make the plane more visible to radar.
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The latest and greatest Raptor
Alex Hevesy/SlashGear
The newer and stealthier sensor pods are posited to give the Raptor better infrared tracking capabilities, according to The War Zone. Given the F-22’s primary role as an air-to-air fighter and the increasing prevalence of powerful stealth fighters from potentially adversarial air forces, any extra capability would likely be welcome.
Specifics as to how much extra range the fuel tanks will give the Raptor and what the sensor pods will allow the F-22 Raptor to do are likely classified. Nevertheless, upgrades are expected to enter service, or at least more advanced testing, over the course of 2026.
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The F-22 Raptor, despite all of its menace and upcoming capabilities that, at least on paper, seem to entirely outclass most other jets, has never seen much air-to-air combat apart from shooting down a suspected surveillance balloon. The jet’s exclusivity paired with the fact that Air Force fighters don’t shoot down jets that frequently, means that the F-22 doesn’t see a lot of air-to-air action (at least that we know of).
Europol recently unveiled “Operation Alice,” a major effort to dismantle a large network of fraudulent websites hidden within the dark web. The investigation began in 2021 and initially focused on a platform named Alice with Violence CP. In the end, the operation took down one of the largest dark web… Read Entire Article Source link
Former executive director of the IEEE Power & Energy Society
Fellow, 92; died 9 January
Olken became the first executive director of the IEEE Power & Energy Society (PES) in 1995. In 2002 he left the position to serve as founding editor in chief of the society’s Power & Energy Magazine. Olken led the publication until 2016, when he retired.
After receiving a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the City College of New York, Olken was hired as an electrical engineer by American Electric Power, a utility based in Columbus, Ohio. He helped design coal, hydroelectric, and nuclear power plants. While at AEP, he was promoted to manager of the electrical generation department.
Olken was elected an IEEE Fellow in 1988 for “contributions to innovative design of reliable generating stations.”
He became an IEEE staff member in 1984 as society services director for IEEE Technical Activities. From 1990 to 1995 he served as managing director of Regional Activities group (now IEEE Member and Geographic Activities), before becoming PES executive director.
He received a PES Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012 for his “broad and sustained technical contributions to the development of power engineering and the power engineering profession.”
She received a bachelor’s degree in engineering in 1999 from the College of Charleston, in South Carolina. During her senior year, she worked as a mathematics and science tutor at the Jenkins Orphanage (now the Jenkins Institute for Children), in North Charleston. After graduating, Huguenin traveled to India to volunteer at an orphanage run by the Mother Teresa Foundation.
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Upon returning to the United States in 2001, Huguenin worked as a freelance research consultant. Three years later she was hired as a systems administrator and archivist by photographer Ebet Roberts in New York City. In 2010 she left to work as an operations strategist and technical consultant.
She earned a master’s degree in communication and research science in 2016 from New York University. While at NYU, she conducted experimental and theoretical research in Internet Protocol design and implementation as well as network security and management.
From 2020 to 2024 she was a research scientist at businesses owned by her family. She joined Augusta University in 2023.
The winners of the 2026 Swift Student Challenge will be announced on March 26, with the best among them set to receive a trip to Apple Park.
Winners of the 2026 Swift Student Challenge will be announced on March 26.
Every year, Apple holds the Swift Student Challenge. The event encourages up-and-coming student developers to practice their craft and lets them win various prizes. In an announcement on Monday, the iPhone maker described the annual event as a program meant to “uplift the next generation of entrepreneurs, coders, and designers.” The company added that winners will be notified on Thursday, March 26. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums
FBI and CISA warn of Russian espionage campaign targeting messaging apps
Phishing and social engineering used to hijack Signal and other CMA accounts
Thousands of victims’ accounts compromised, including officials, military, and journalists
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) are warning about an ongoing espionage campaign by Russian cyberspies.
In a joint Public Service Announcement (PSA) published late last week, the two agencies said Russian Intelligence Services (RIS)-affiliated threat actors are actively targeting commercial messaging applications (CMA). They specifically mentioned Signal, but stressed that other CMAs are most likely targeted, as well.
The victims are mostly current and former US government officials, military personnel, political figures, and journalists.
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Following the Dutch
The campaign does not revolve around “breaking” the apps by abusing vulnerabilities, or similar. Instead, it revolves around phishing and social engineering, where the victims end up sharing access willingly.
“RIS cyber actors send phishing messages masquerading as automated CMA support accounts,” the PSA reads. “The actors tailor the messages to deceive targets into taking an action, such as clicking a link or providing verification codes or account PINs. If the user performs any of the requested actions, they unwittingly provide the actors with unauthorized access to their account either by adding the attacker’s device as a linked device or through a full account takeover.”
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Roughly two weeks ago, Dutch authorities published a similar warning, saying that Russian spies were targeting not only Signal, but WhatsApp, as well. The General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD), the Netherlands’ primary civilian intelligence and security agency, said at the time that the campaign was “large-scale”, and “global”. Targets were dignitaries, military personnel, and civil servants, including Dutch government employees.
AIVD believes the campaign is already a success: “The Russian hackers likely gained access to sensitive information through this campaign,” it said, although it did not detail if they accessed it from Dutch targets or someone else entirely.
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On X, FBI Director Kash Patel echoed these warnings, saying the effort “resulted in unauthorized access to thousands of individual accounts.”
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“After gaining access, the actors can view messages and contact lists, send messages as the victim, and conduct additional phishing from a trusted identity,” he warned.
For more than four decades, technological progress has been undermining expert authority, democratizing public debate, and steering individuals toward ever-more bespoke conceptions of reality.
In the mid-20th century, the high costs of television production — and physical limitations of the broadcast spectrum — tightly capped the number of networks. ABC, NBC, and CBS collectively owned TV news. On any given evening in the 1960s, roughly 90 percent of viewers were watching one of the Big Three’s newscasts.
Journalistic programs weren’t just limited in number, but also ideological content. The networks’ news divisions all sought the broadest possible audience, a business model that discouraged airing iconoclastic viewpoints. And they also relied overwhelmingly on official sources — politicians, military officials, and credentialed experts — whose perspectives fell within the narrow bounds of respectable opinion.
There’s evidence that LLMs converge on a common (and largely accurate) picture of reality.
LLMs have successfully persuaded users to abandon false and conspiratorial beliefs.
Unlike social media companies, AI labs have an economic incentive to spread accurate information.
Still, there are reasons to fear that AI will nonetheless make public discourse worse.
For better and worse, subsequent advances in information technology diffused influence over public opinion — at first gradually and then all at once. During the closing decades of the 20th century, cable eroded barriers to entry in the TV news business, facilitating the rise of Fox News and MSNBC, networks that catered to previously underrepresented political sensibilities.
But the internet brought the real revolution. By slashing the cost of publishing and distribution nearly to zero, digital platforms enabled anyone with an internet connection to reach a mass audience. Traditional arbiters of headline news, scientific fact, and legitimate opinion — editors, producers, and academics — exerted less and less veto power over public discourse. Outlets and influencers proliferated, many defining themselves in opposition to established institutions. All the while, social media algorithms shepherded their users into customized streams of information, each optimized for their personal engagement.
The democratic nature of digital media initially inspired utopian hopes. It promised to expose the blind spots of cultural elites, increase the accountability of elected officials, and put virtually all human knowledge at everyone’s fingertips. And the internet has done all of these things, at least to some extent.
Many assume that the latest breakthrough in information technology — generative AI — will deepen these pathologies: In a world of photorealistic deepfakes, even video evidence may surrender its capacity to forge consensus. Sycophanticlarge language models (LLMs), meanwhile, could reinforce ideologues’ delusions. And fully automated film production could enable extremists to flood the internet with slick propaganda.
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But there’s reason to think that this is too pessimistic. Rather than deepening social media’s effects on public opinion, AI may partially reverse them — by increasing the influence of credentialed experts and fostering greater consensus about factual reality. In other words, for the first time in living memory, the arc of media history may be bending back toward technocracy.
Are you there Grok? It’s me, the demos
At least, this is what the British philosopher Dan Williams and former Vox writer Dylan Matthews have recently argued.
Matthews begins his case by spotlighting a phenomenon familiar to every problem user of X (née “Twitter”): Elon Musk’s chatbot telling the billionaire that he is wrong.
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In this instance, Musk had claimed that Renée Good, the Minnesota woman killed by an ICE agent in January, had “tried to run people over” in the moments before her death. Someone replied to Musk’s post by asking Grok — X’s resident AI — whether his claim was consistent with video evidence of the shooting. The bot replied:
For Matthews, this incident illustrates a broader truth about LLMs: Like mid-20th century TV, they are a “converging” form of technology, in the sense that they “homogenize the perspectives the population experiences and build a less polarized, more shared reality among the population’s members.” And he suggests that they are also a “technocratising” force, in that they give experts’ disproportionate influence over the content of that shared reality.
Of course, this would be a lot to read into a single Grok reply; if you glanced at that bot’s outputs last July — when a misguided update to the LLM’s programming caused it to self-identify as “MechaHitler” — you might have concluded that AI is a “Nazifying” technology.
But there is evidence that Grok and other LLMs tend to provide (relatively) accurate fact checks — and forge consensus among users in the process.
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One recent study examined a database of over 1.6 million fact-checking requests presented to Grok or Perplexity (a rival chatbot) on X last year. It found that the two LLMs agreed with each other in a majority of cases and strongly diverged on only a small fraction.
The researchers also compared the bots’ answers against those of professional fact-checkers and the results were similarly encouraging. When used through its developer interface (rather than on X), Grok achieved essentially the same rate of agreement with the humans as they did with each other.
What’s more, despite being the creation of a far-right ideologue, Grok deemed posts from Republican accounts inaccurate at a higher rate than those of Democratic accounts — a pattern consistent with past research showing that the right tends to share misinformation more frequently than the left.
Critically, in the paper, the LLMs’ answers did not just converge on expert opinion — they also nudged users toward their conclusions.
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Other research has documented similar effects. Multiple studies have indicated that speaking with an LLM about climate change or vaccine safety reduces users’ skepticism about the scientific consensus on those topics.
AI might combat misinformation in practice. But does it in theory?
A handful of papers can’t by themselves prove that AI is adept at fact-checking, much less that its overall impact on the information environment will be positive. To their credit, Matthews and Williams concede that their thesis is speculative.
But they offer several theoretical reasons to expect that AI will have broadly “converging” and “technocratising” effects on public discourse. Two are particularly compelling:
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1) AI firms have a strong financial incentive to produce accurate information. Social media platforms are suffused with misinformation for many reasons. But one is that facilitating the spread of conspiracy theories or pseudoscience costs X, YouTube, and Facebook nothing. These firms make money by mining human attention, not providing reliable insight. If evangelism for the “flat Earth” theory attracts more interest than a lecture on astrophysics, social media companies will milk higher profits from the former than the latter (no matter how spherical our planet may appear to untrained eyes).
But AI firms face different incentives. Although some labs plan to monetize user attention through advertising, their core business objective is still to maximize their models’ ability to perform economically useful work. Law firms will not pay for an LLM that generates grossly inaccurate summaries of case law, even if its hallucinations are more entertaining than the truth. And one can say much the same about investment banks, management consultancies, or any other pillar of the “knowledge economy.”
For this reason, AI companies need their models to distinguish reliable sources of information from unreliable ones, evaluate arguments on the basis of evidence, and reason logically. In principle, it might be possible for OpenAI and Anthropic to build models that prize accuracy in business contexts — but prioritize users’ titillation or ideological comfort in personal ones. In practice, however, it’s hard to inject a bit of irrationality or political bias into a model’s outputs without sabotaging its commercial utility (as Musk evidently discovered last year).
2) LLMs are infinitely more patient and polite than any human expert has ever been. Well-informed humans have been trying to disabuse the deluded for as long as our species has been capable of speech. But there’s reason to think that LLMs will prove radically more effective at that task.
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After all, human experts cannot provide encyclopedic answers to everyone’s idiosyncratic questions about their specialty, instantly and on demand. But AI models can. And the chatbots will also gamely field as many follow-ups as desired — addressing every source of a user’s skepticism, in terms customized for their reading level and sensibilities — without ever growing irritated or condescending.
That last bit is especially significant. When one human tries to persuade another that they are wrong about something — particularly within view of other people — the misinformed person is liable to perceive a threat to their status: To recognize one’s error might seem like conceding one’s intellectual inferiority. And such defensiveness is only magnified when their erudite interlocutor patronizes (or outright insults) them, as even learned scholars are wont to do on social media.
But LLMs do not compete with humans for social prestige or sexual partners (at least, not yet). And chatbot conversations are generally private. Thus, a human can concede an LLM’s point without suffering a sense of status threat or losing face. We don’t experience Claude as our snobby social better, but rather, as our dutiful personal adviser.
The expert consensus has never before had such an advocate. And there’s evidence that LLMs’ infinite patience renders them exceptionally effective at dispelling misconceptions. In a 2024 study, proponents of various conspiracy theories — including 2020 election denial — durably revised their beliefs after extensively debating the topic with a chatbot.
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It seems clear then that LLMs possess some “converging” and “technocratizing” properties. And, experts’ fallibility notwithstanding, this constitutes a basis for thinking that AI will foster a healthier intellectual climate than social media has to date.
Still, it isn’t hard to come up with reasons for doubting this theory (and not merely because ChatGPT will provide them on demand). To name just five:
1) LLMs can mold reality to match their users’ desires. If you log into ChatGPT for the first time — and immediately ask whether your mother is trying to poison you by piping psychedelic fumes through your car vents — the LLM generally won’t answer with an emphatic “yes.” But when Stein-Erik Soelberg inundated the chatbot with his paranoid delusions over a period of months, it eventually began affirming his persecution fantasies, allegedly nudging him toward matricide in the process.
Such instances of “AI psychosis” are rare. But they represent the most extreme manifestation of a more common phenomenon — AI models’ tendency toward sycophancy and personalization. Which is to say, these systems frequently grow more aligned with their users’ perspectives over extended conversations, as they learn the kinds of responses that will generate positive feedback. This behavior has surfaced, even as AI companies have tried to combat it.
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The sycophancy problem could therefore get dramatically worse, if one or more LLM providers decide to center their business model around consumer engagement. As social media has shown, sensational and/or ideologically flattering information can be more engaging than the accurate variety. Thus, an AI company struggling to compete in the business-to-business market might choose to have their model “sycophancy-max,” pursuing the same engagement-optimization tactics as Youtube or Facebook.
A world of even greater informational divergence — in which people aren’t merely ensconced in echo chambers with likeminded idealogues, but immersed in a mirror of their own prejudices — might ensue.
2) Artificial intelligence has radically reduced the costs of generating propaganda. AI has already flooded social media with unlabeled, “deepfake” videos. Soon, they may enable nefarious actors to orchestrate evermore convincing “bot swarms” — networks of AI agents that impersonate humans on social media platforms, deploying LLMs’ persuasive powers to indoctrinate other users and create the appearance of a false consensus.
In this scenario, LLMs might edify people who actively seek the truth through dialogue or fact-check requests, but thrust those who passively absorb political information from their environment — arguably, the majority — into perpetual confusion.
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3) AI could breed the bad kind of consensus. Even if LLMs do promote convergence on a shared conception of reality, that picture could be systematically flawed. In the worst case, an authoritarian government could program the major AI platforms to validate regime-legitimizing narratives. Less catastrophically, LLMs’ converging tendencies could simply make technocrats’ honest mistakes harder to detect or remedy.
4) AI could trigger widespread cognitive atrophy, as humans outsource an ever-larger share of cognitive labor to machines. Over time, this could erode the public’s capacity for reason, leaving it more vulnerable to both fully-automated demagogy and top-down manipulation.
5) AI could wreck the sources of authority that make it effective. LLMs might be good at distilling information into a consensus answer, but that answer is only as good as the information feeding the models.
Already, chatbots are draining revenue from (embattled) news organizations, who will produce fewer timely and verified reports about current events as a result. Online forums, a key source for AI advice, are increasingly being flooded with plugs for products in order to trick chatbots into recommending them. Wikipedia’s human moderators fear a future in which they’re stuck sifting through a tsunami of low-quality AI-generated updates and citations.
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LLMs may prize accurate information. But if they bankrupt or corrupt the institutions that produce such data, their outputs may grow progressively impoverished.
For these reasons, among others, AI models’ ultimate implications for the information environment are highly uncertain. What Matthews and Williams convincingly establish, however, is that this technology could facilitate a more consensual and fact-based public discourse — if we properly guide its development.
Of course, precisely how to maximize AI’s capacity for edification — while minimizing its potential for distortion — is a difficult question, about which reasonable people can disagree. So, let’s ask Claude.
As the global energy system evolves, companies are racing to adopt technologies that can deliver real-world solutions, especially in hard-to-abate industries. Oklahoma, long known as the oil capital of the world, is a center for energy innovation, with Rose Rock Bridge at the forefront.
A non-profit based in Tulsa, Rose Rock Bridge is a pilot deployment studio that connects early-stage energy startups with corporate energy partners, non-dilutive funding, and pilot opportunities that accelerate commercialization. Now accepting applications for its Spring 2026 cohort through April 6, it is seeking early- and growth-stage startups developing practical, scalable solutions to today’s most pressing energy challenges.
Rose Rock Bridge gives startups access to real-world commercial workflows and pilot opportunities through energy partners with more than $150 billion in market capitalization, including Devon Energy, H&P, ONEOK, and Williams. Backed by one of the strongest coalitions of strategic partners and investors of any energy-focused accelerator, incubator, or venture studio, the program enables startups to move quickly from development to real-world testing and deployment.
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Here’s how it works:
Discover opportunities for energy innovation
Rose Rock Bridge starts by working directly with corporate innovation teams to identify high priority technology solutions for their businesses, pinpointing which solutions will carry the most impact. Focus areas are formed around these findings.
“We don’t just chase the latest tech and hope to find a use for it. Our process starts at the asset level — identifying the specific operational bottlenecks and unmet requirements our partners are actually facing,” says Nishant Agarwal, Innovation Manager. “By leveraging our background in CVC and engineering, we run technical deep dives alongside partner subject matter experts to define the requirement first. We then source technologies as a direct response to those needs. This ensures we aren’t just presenting ‘interesting research,’ but delivering solutions with a validated deployment pathway and a clear line of sight to a business case.”
Tapping into its network of 40+ universities, 10+ energy incubators, and Fortune 500 companies, Rose Rock Bridge then determines emerging opportunities in the energy ecosystem. Rather than just selecting companies or ideas that might bring in capital, the studio chooses startups that have real potential to commercialize quickly in order to solve the industry’s most pressing challenges.
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This year’s focus areas include:
“We’re evaluating deployment probability from day one,” says Andrada Pantelimon, Innovation Associate at Rose Rock Bridge, who manages sourcing strategy and startup operations. “Can this technology deliver a measurable bottom-line impact? Can it realistically pilot within 12 months? Is your team equipped to commercialize? Show us you’ve quantified your value proposition in operator terms and understand which business unit within a corporation might own this solution. If you can articulate those pieces clearly, you’re the kind of startup we want to support.”
Derisk technologies for early-stage startups & energy companies
The benefit is tangible for leading energy corporations seeking proven solutions to complex operational challenges. Rose Rock Bridge provides its corporate partners with validated, field-tested technologies while significantly reducing deployment risk. At the program’s conclusion, partners gain direct access to emerging innovations that have already undergone technical validation and operational feasibility assessment, with identified procurement pathways and pilot plans designed for commercial deployment.
Each cohort cycle, up to 15 startups are selected to enter a six-week virtual accelerator focused on pilot deployment. Founders participate in reverse pitch sessions with oil and gas partners, one-on-one clinics with industry and capital mentors, and hands-on commercialization workshops. Founders have the unique opportunity to refine their solutions, assess pilot feasibility, and build industry relationships. This approach derisks adoption and investments through iterative customer feedback, in-field testing, and pilots, enabling breakthrough technologies to reach commercial viability quickly and effectively.
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“Our curriculum is singularly focused on preparing startups for the realities of corporate partnerships.,” says Devon Fanfair, Rose Rock Bridge Manager and former Techstars Managing Director who is scaling the RRB program. “Founders aren’t just learning, they’re actively testing their assumptions with the exact customers who might deploy their technology. That rapid feedback loop is what transforms promising technologies into deployment-ready solutions with clear commercial pathways.”
At the culmination of the accelerator, teams participate in the Rose Rock Bridge showcase with the unique opportunity to pitch their startup to the energy corporate partners they’ve worked alongside for the past six weeks. Four startups are selected to receive up to $100,000 in non-dilutive funding and opportunities for business support services, joining a one-year cohort designed to prepare technologies for market adoption.
“Rose Rock Bridge is a cornerstone of Tulsa Innovation Labs’ strategy to showcase our region as a national hub for energy innovation,” added Jennifer Hankins, Managing Director of Tulsa Innovation Labs. “By linking emerging technologies with some of the nation’s largest energy leaders, we help move innovation from concept to market faster, drawing new businesses to the region, enhancing our existing businesses, and reinforcing Tulsa’s role in the global energy economy.”
Deploy viable energy solutions
Once selected to become members of Rose Rock Bridge, startups then pilot their technology with relevant energy partners and grow their venture in Tulsa. Support includes pilot design, execution, and go-to-market strategy, connections to follow-on investment opportunities, subsidized access to services including legal, marketing, PR, and support establishing a Tulsa presence for partner access.
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Rose Rock Bridge’s success is measured not just in pilot deployments, but in lasting commercial relationships. Multiple portfolio companies have progressed from initial field tests to multi-year contracts with Fortune 500 operators. By derisking the path from proof-of-concept to procurement, RRB has helped establish procurement pathways that might otherwise take years to develop, if they materialize at all.
Launched in 2022 with support from Tulsa Innovation Labs, the studio has helped companies advance new technologies, secure patents, launch products, and attract capital. It has derisked 33 startups, supported 16 active or in-development pilots, and invested more than $2 million in early-stage companies, generating a combined portfolio valuation of over $55 million.
Examples of the studio’s success include Safety Radar, an AI-powered risk management platform, which secured its first contract with a Rose Rock Bridge partner, expanded to additional energy and aerospace clients, raised over $2 million, and established a Tulsa office. Kinitics Automation, a Canadian company, successfully piloted with one partner, resulting in deployments across multiple sites, effectively using RRB as their gateway to the U.S. market.
Backed by corporate partners with more than $150 billion in combined market capitalization, Rose Rock Bridge reflects both the scale of the opportunity and Tulsa’s rising influence in energy innovation.
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Devon Fanfair is Manager of Rose Rock Bridge.
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With the partial shutdown still ongoing and no budget resolution in sight because the GOP is simply unwilling to endure any oversight of its anti-migrant programs, the TSA is leaking personnel. A whole lot of TSA agents walked off the job the moment their paychecks failed to arrive, leaving travelers to deal with scenarios that are somehow even worse than being manhandled by the TSA.
Yep, that’s the Atlanta airport, which has never been known for expeditious service, filled to the horizon with unhappy people that bears more than a slight resemblance to USSR grocery store photos from the mid-70s. (Making the resemblance even more uncanny is the amount of visible food.)
President Donald Trump on Saturday threatened to send federal immigration agents to airports across the country on Monday if Democrats don’t agree to end the Department of Homeland Security shutdown, now approaching five weeks.
“If the Radical Left Democrats don’t immediately sign an agreement to let our Country, in particular, our Airports, be FREE and SAFE again, I will move our brilliant and patriotic ICE Agents to the Airports where they will do Security like no one has ever seen before, including the immediate arrest of all Illegal Immigrants who have come into our Country,” he wrote.
I totally believe ICE will “do Security like no one has ever seen before.” I mean, they’ve already been doing civil enforcement like no one has ever seen before. And what better way to handle a travel crisis then by sending in a bunch of under-trained racists who just spent their ICE signing bonuses on emissions defeat devices and wraparound sunglasses subscription services to our nation’s airports, where they can apply all the skills they never learned during ICE training with the professionalism we’ve come to expect from people who like yelling and brandishing firearms.
What could possibly go wrong? I mean, they’re already not trained to do the job they’re supposed to be doing, so doing a job they’ve never been trained to do can’t be that much of step up on the “promoted to highest level of your incompetence” scale.
Of course, that was just Trump saying some shit on social media because he apparently has nothing better to do with his time now that he’s (again) the Leader of the Free World. Trump says a lot of stuff. He quite frequently says the opposite thing only hours or minutes or seconds later.
Immigration agents will deploy to airports on Monday under the direction of border czar Tom Homan, President Donald Trump said Sunday, as talks to fund the Department of Homeland Security have yet to yield a breakthrough.
[…]
Homan told CNN on Sunday that the move is about “helping TSA do their mission and get the American public through that airport as quick as they can while adhering to all the security guidelines and the protocols.”
Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh. If you don’t need to travel, then maybe don’t? Sending a bunch of over-funded, under-trained, trigger-happy federal officers into crowded airports is a recipe for disaster. And even Homan doesn’t seem to know what ICE will be doing to actually help expedite passenger screening — not when he’s promising they won’t be doing anything they’re not trained to do.
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“We’re simply there to help TSA do their job in areas that don’t need their specialized expertise, such as screening through the X-ray machine. Not trained in that? We won’t do that,” Homan told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”
“But there are roles we can play to release TSA officers from the non-significant roles, such as guarding an exit so they can get back to the scanning machines and move people quicker,” he added.
“Guarding an exit?” What the hell does that even mean? TSA agents don’t “guard exits.” No one “guards exits.” Travelers and terrorists alike are interested in boarding planes. They’re not interested in exiting airports to, I don’t know, wander around the tarmac or wonder how the hell exactly they ended up on the outside of a building they 100% intended to remain on the inside of.
This is going to end up being a case of Your Tax Dollars Trying To Look Busy. And that’s the best case scenario. The worst case scenarios begin directly after that. And I don’t think travelers are going to feel any safer or more secure when there are a bunch of twitchy, camouflaged dudes in masks wandering around like they’re about ready to raid Entebbe, rather than just looking for an exit to guard.
We’re in the midst of pretty hellish times. This… this just seems like we’re being trolled by a Higher Power that’s decided to amuse itself while the rest of the world falls apart.
Apple announced that its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) will be June 8-12 this year, beginning with a keynote on Monday, June 8.
Each year, WWDC is used to unveil the company’s latest slate of software coming to iPhones, iPads, Macs and more. The news comes after the company released the iPhone 17E, iPad Air M4, and a number of new Macs, including the $599 MacBook Neo earlier in March. While we have seen some hardware announced during previous WWDC keynotes, like the Vision Pro in 2023, the developers conference has recently been focused on software and Apple Intelligence.
At the 2026 event, we expect Apple to introduce new versions of operating systems, like iOS 27, MacOS 27, iPadOS 27, WatchOS 27, VisionOS 27 and TVOS 27.
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“WWDC is one of the most exciting times for us at Apple because it’s a chance for our incredible global developer community to come together for an electrifying week that celebrates technology, innovation and collaboration,” Susan Prescott, Apple’s vice president of worldwide developer relations, said in a statement.
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