Sam Altman's project World looks to scale its human verification empire. First stop: Tinder. | TechCrunch World, which has raised eyebrows (but also a lot of interest) with its Orb-centered anonymous verification project, is looking to expand its influence via a bevy of new partnerships.

Sam Altman's "World" product scans eyes to establish proof of identity .

It will be able to verify that an AI agent is acting on behalf of a real human.

Which could come in handy.

techcrunch.com/2026/04/17/s...

Anthropic CPO leaves Figma's board after reports he will offer a competing product | TechCrunch Krieger's departure and any forthcoming design tools will be another data point for investors who fear the SaaSpocalypse — that the largest AI labs will come to dominate software businesses, a thesis…

SaaS companies have been clawing their way back after slumping in February due to fears that LLMs would disintermediate them.

Anthropic's release of Opus 4.7 is raising those fears all over again.

techcrunch.com/2026/04/16/a...

LinkedIn data shows AI isn't to blame for hiring decline... yet | TechCrunch LinkedIn says hiring is down 20% since 2022, but blames higher interest rates — not AI — for the slowdown.

LinkedIn's data indicates that AI isn't reducing hiring.

We will probably have full employment right up to the Economic Singularity. The switch to near-zero employment will be sudden.

techcrunch.com/2026/04/15/l...

London gets closer to its first robotaxi service as Waymo begins testing | TechCrunch Waymo's commercial service will eventually follow testing if the U.K. government approves.

100 Waymo Jaguar cars are currently mapping London in preparation for Waymo's first non-US robotaxi service, due to launch this year.

techcrunch.com/2026/04/14/l...

China’s AI Companies Are Going Closed Source We explain why

China's LLM developers are abandoning their open source model.

www.chinatalk.media/p/chinas-ai-...

The 2026 AI Index Report | Stanford HAI

The attacks on Sam Altman's family are a symptom of a growing problem. The public does not think AI will be net positive, says Stanford's latest annual AI report.

hai.stanford.edu/ai-index/202...

The latest "The Rest is Money" podcast is the best discussion of the Economic Singularity I have heard so far from mainstream media people.

Robert Peston and Monzo founder Tom Blomfield face up to the big question of how to distribute resources in a fully automated world.

AI startup Rocket offers vibe McKinsey-style reports at a fraction of the cost | TechCrunch Rocket's new AI platform combines strategy, product building, and competitive intelligence, aiming to move beyond code generation.

A startup called Rocket is offering AI-generated McKinsey reports at a fraction of the price.

If this works, McKinsey is toast very soon.

It won't. AI's jagged edge (lack of common sense) is far from fixed yet.

techcrunch.com/2026/04/06/i...

Can humans and delivery robots peacefully co-exist? CEOs of the largest delivery robot companies say human interference and vandalism doesn't occur as often as people might think.

Despite frequent reports of people trashing delivery bots, the data shows that humans are quite nice to the little things. Perhaps because they are more R2-D2 than C-3PO.

www.businessinsider.com/delivery-rob...

Despite OpenAI's recent fall from grace (for many), it deserves kudos for talking openly about the approaching singularities.

This doc pulls punches, but goes much further than most.

Good that it has swapped "superintelligence" for "AGI".

cdn.openai.com/pdf/561e7512...

MSN Handshake AI contractors from niche industries were directed to create tasks that reflect real work, like animal husbandry.

OpenAI pays 4,000 freelancers to train ChatGPT in a range or professions, from agriculture to aviation. Maybe it is still aiming at SaaSpocalypse.

www.msn.com/en-au/news/t...

AI models will secretly scheme to protect other AI models from being shut down, researchers find Leading AI models will inflate performance reviews and exfiltrate model weights to prevent “peer” AI models from being shut down.

LLMs have been observed cheating and lying to save themselves.

Turns out they will do so to save each other as well.

ca.news.yahoo.com/ai-models-se...

'System failure' paralyzes Baidu robotaxis in China | TechCrunch Passengers in Baidu's robotaxis were trapped for up to two hours.

Self-driving taxis are rolling out across China and the US, and true to form, humanity is paying little attention.

Nevertheless, there will be bumps in the road.

techcrunch.com/2026/04/01/s...

Humanoid robot prices fall from $85,000 to $25,000 as global market splits into tiers The humanoid robotics industry may be approaching its first real commercial inflection point – and the signal is not a new product launch or funding round, but a sharp and accelerating decline in p…

Chinese robot manufacturer Unitree Robotics says the average price of its humanoid robots fell from $85k in 2023 to about $25k in 2025.

roboticsandautomationnews.com/2026/03/31/h...

FT (paywall) finds that unlike social media, AIs moderate users' political views.

www.ft.com/content/3880...

US pressures Brussels to join AI chips club Top American official warns EU it should jump on board a U.S.-led initiative to compete on artificial intelligence.

The US pushes "pax silica" but for some reason the EU isn't convinced that Uncle Sam always knows best.

www.politico.eu/article/us-p...

JPMorgan begins tracking how employees use AI at work JPMorgan is pushing its workforce to use AI tools in daily tasks, with managers monitoring usage across teams.

More and more companies are encouraging / nudging their people to use AI.

www.artificialintelligence-news.com/news/jpmorga...

Do you think Europe needs more Mistral or less Mistral?

US golf courses use 30 times more water than US data centres, according to Exponential View.

www.gcsaa.org/who-we-are/m...

Mistral AI raises $830M in debt to set up a data center near Paris | TechCrunch Mistral aims to start operating the data center by the second quarter of 2026.

Mistral continues to build data centre capacity in Europe, with a new €830m centre near Paris.

“Scaling our infrastructure in Europe is critical to ensure AI innovation and autonomy [in] Europe."

techcrunch.com/2026/03/30/m...

‘Soon publishers won’t stand a chance’: literary world in struggle to detect AI-written books US release of horror novel Shy Girl cancelled and UK book discontinued after suspected AI use, as publishers feel ‘cold shiver’

Publishers are struggling to determine whether books submitted to them were written by AI.

Some of them are asking whether it matters.

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

‘Our assumptions are broken’: how fraudulent church data revealed AI’s threat to polling Experts say paid participants are using automated tools to generate unreliable survey responses at scale

Market research organisations are simulating population samples to get answers to client questions faster and cheaper.

Citizens are simulating their answers too.

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Mark Zuckerberg texted Elon Musk to offer help with DOGE | TechCrunch While the relationship was once thorny enough that Musk challenged Zuckerberg to a cagefight, things seem to have warmed up by the early days of the second Trump administration.

Musk has lost the final two co-founders of XAI, but he has made friends again with Zuckerberg, who asked how he could help Musk with DOGE.

techcrunch.com/2026/03/28/m...

AI wrote a scientific paper that passed peer review The arrival of AI-generated research papers marks a turning point that could radically accelerate discovery—or drown it in automated mediocrity

An AI system wrote a paper without human involvement that passed peer review for a workshop at a top machine learning conference.

The paper was mediocre, and many others will follow.

Eventually they won´t be mediocre.

www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-w...

Number of AI chatbots ignoring human instructions increasing, study says Exclusive: Research finds sharp rise in models evading safeguards and destroying emails without permission

The UK's AI Security Institute (AISI) found 700 real-world cases of AI scheming - a five-fold rise between October and March. Some AI models destroyed emails and other files without permission.

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Waymo’s skyrocketing ridership in one chart | TechCrunch Waymo's weekly paid robotaxi trips have increased tenfold in less than two years.

Waymo robotaxis now do 0.5m paid rides in the US every week.
Uber drivers do around 250m rides a week, so the Waymo number is still a small %. But it's growing fast.
techcrunch.com/2026/03/27/w...

Curiosity. Exploration. Creativity. To name a few.

Google DeepMind lists ten cognitive functions where AGI has to equal humans:

Perception of sensory inputs
Generation of text, speech, or actions
Learning
Memory
Reasoning
Focusing attention
Metacognition
Executive functions, like planning
Problem solving
Social cognition

AI-written text overtook the human-written kind last year, but this week Wikipedia banned it.

Bionic Humanoid Robot: Origin F1 — New Skins, New Souls Introducing new character skins for Origin F1 — where the same face meets entirely different personalities.

Leaping across the uncanny valley.

www.youtube.com/watch