11 things UC Berkeley AI experts are watching for in 2026
How will AI disrupt the labor market? What will deepfake videos mean for our understanding of truth? Are we in a bubble, and if so, will the bubble burst?
By Jason Pohl
See the full story here: https://news.berkeley.edu/2026/01/13/what-uc-berkeley-ai-experts-are-watching-for-in-2026/
Bill Gates says there’s ‘no upper limit’ on AI, citing opportunity and risk
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Likening the situation to his pre-COVID warnings about pandemic preparedness, Gates writes in his annual “Year Ahead” letter Friday morning that the world needs to act before AI’s disruptions become unmanageable. But he says that AI’s potential to transform healthcare, climate adaptation, and education remains enormous, if we can navigate the risks.
“There is no upper limit on how intelligent AIs will get or on how good robots will get, and I believe the advances will not plateau before exceeding human levels,” Gates writes. ...
But he adds that we’ll need to be “deliberate about how this technology is developed, governed, and deployed” — and that governments, not just markets, will have to lead AI implementation. ...
See the full story here: https://www.geekwire.com/2026/bill-gates-says-theres-no-upper-limit-on-ai-citing-opportunity-and-risk/
Jeffries to meet with new House Dem AI commission
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries will hold his inaugural meeting with a new House Democratic commission on AI this week — a sign that Democrats are getting ready to ramp up their work on AI policy issues ahead of the midterms.
It’s not immediately clear which members will be attending the session, but the newly formed House Democratic Commission on AI and the Innovation Economy is being led by Reps. Ted Lieu of California, Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey and Valerie Foushee of North Carolina. ...
See the full story here: https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2026/01/08/congress/jeffries-to-meet-with-new-house-dem-ai-working-group-00715720
End of Year newsletter from FBRC.ai
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| The loudest fears around AI in Hollywood are increasingly giving way to a more grounded reality: audiences still crave craft, meaning, and shared experiences. As AI makes content faster and cheaper to produce, the industry is beginning to distinguish between disposable output and work that preserves authorship, control, and precision. You’ll start to see more so-called “anti-AI” positions emerge—not as a rejection of technology, but as a business and creative response to abundance. |
| This thinking aligns with Ari Emanuel’s widely discussed “anti-AI thesis,” which is less about opposing AI and more about understanding where enduring value will live in an AI-saturated world. As digital content becomes commoditized, the scarcity—and therefore value—of authentic, human, and live experiences increases. AI-driven productivity may free up more leisure time, but people will choose to spend that time on experiences that feel real, communal, and irreplicable. ... The brilliance behind art is in the proof of craft—visibility into the ingenuity, constraints, and human decision-making behind the work. This belief has guided our filmmaking competition Cinema Synthetica since its inception in May 2024. Behind-the-scenes storytelling, showing your work, and transparent chains of custody—where metadata and process matter—are becoming entertainment in their own right. The bar for craft is rising, and process is no longer hidden; it is the story. ... |
Lego unveils tech-filled Smart Bricks – to play experts’ dismay
Lego has unveiled Smart Bricks - tech-filled versions of its small building blocks - which it says will bring sets to life with sound, light and reaction to movement.
However, the new product range is causing unease among play experts, who say it risks undermining what makes Lego special for children in an increasingly digital world. ...
But Josh Golin, executive director of children's wellbeing group Fairplay, believes Smart Bricks "undermine what was once great about Legos" - harnessing children's own imagination during play.
"As anyone who has ever watched a child play with old-school Legos knows, children's Lego creations already do move and make noises through the power of children's imaginations," he told the BBC. ...
Lego says its Smart Bricks can sense motion, position and distance, allowing the models to respond in various ways during play.
Measuring 2x4, the brick itself contains sensors, lights, a small sound synthesiser, an accelerometer and a custom-made silicon chip enabling it to detect movement and react to it.
But it is designed to be used with Smart Minifigures and Smart Tags tiles - two additional products making up Lego's Smart Play System. ...
See the full story here: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crmlnmnwzk2o
LG reveals its laundry-folding robot at CES 2026
LG has unveiled its humanoid robot that can handle household chores. After teasing the CLOiD last week, the company has offered its first look at the AI-powered robot it claims can fold laundry, unload the dishwasher, serve food and help out with other tasks.
The CLOiD has a surprisingly cute "head unit" that's equipped with a display, speakers, cameras and other sensors. "Collectively, these elements allow the robot to communicate with humans through spoken language and 'facial expressions,' learn the living environments and lifestyle patterns of its users and control connected home appliances based on its learnings," LG says ...
See the full story here: https://www.engadget.com/home/smart-home/lg-reveals-its-laundry-folding-robot-at-ces-2026-215121021.html
California introduces a one-stop shop to delete your online data footprint
Californians can now put a stop to their personal data being sold around on an online trading floor, thanks to a new free tool. On January 1, the state launched its Delete Request and Opt-out Platform, shortened to DROP, that allows residents to request to delete all of their personal information online that's been harvested by data brokers.
According to the California Privacy Protection Agency (CalPrivacy), which was responsible for DROP's release, it's a "first of its kind" tool that imposes new restrictions on businesses that hoard and sell personal info that consumers didn't provide directly. The process requires verifying your California residency before you can send a "single deletion request to every registered data broker in California."
Scientists Create a “Periodic Table” for Artificial Intelligence
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“We found that many of today’s most successful AI methods boil down to a single, simple idea — compress multiple kinds of data just enough to keep the pieces that truly predict what you need,” says Ilya Nemenman, Emory professor of physics and senior author of the paper. “This gives us a kind of ‘periodic table’ of AI methods. Different methods fall into different cells, based on which information a method’s loss function retains or discards.”
A loss function is the mathematical rule an AI system uses to evaluate how wrong its predictions are. During training, the model continually adjusts its internal parameters in order to reduce this error, using the loss function as a guide. ...
They call this approach the Variational Multivariate Information Bottleneck Framework.
“Our framework is essentially like a control knob,” says co-author Michael Martini, who worked on the project as an Emory postdoctoral fellow and research scientist in Nemenman’s group. “You can ‘dial the knob’ to determine the information to retain to solve a particular problem.” ...
“The machine-learning community is focused on achieving accuracy in a system without necessarily understanding why a system is working,” Abdelaleem explains. “As physicists, however, we want to understand how and why something works. So, we focused on finding fundamental, unifying principals to connect different AI methods together.” ...
The researchers applied their framework to dozens of AI methods to test its efficacy. ...
See the full story here: https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-create-a-periodic-table-for-artificial-intelligence/
OpenAI Admits Agentic AI May Never Be Secure
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As Rami McCarthy, principal security researcher at Wiz, puts it, "A useful way to reason about risk in AI systems is autonomy multiplied by access." The more your agent can do, and the more data it can reach, the higher your exposure.
Agent mode in ChatGPT Atlas allows the browser agent to view webpages and take actions, clicks, and keystrokes inside your browser, just as you would. That's the value proposition. Security researchers responded by publishing demos showing it was possible to write a few words in Google Docs that changed the browser's behavior. That's the vulnerability. ...
McCarthy's assessment is blunt: "For most everyday use cases, agentic browsers don't yet deliver enough value to justify their current risk profile." ...
Agents are synthetic employees and they should be treated as such. Start with minimum necessary permissions and expand only with clear business justification. Audit what your agents can access today. Require confirmation steps for anything involving money, messages, or sensitive data. ...
See the full story here: https://shellypalmer.com/2025/12/openai-admits-agentic-ai-may-never-be-secure/
“NO LONGER A FUTURISTIC CONCEPT”: SCIENTISTS BUILD REAL-WORLD MAGNETIC CLOAKING DEVICE CAPABLE OF SHIELDING COMPLEX SHAPES
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The magnetic cloak operates by manipulating the flow of magnetic fields around an object, making the fields behave as if no object were present. Revealed for the first time in a paper published in Science Advances, the team’s work was demonstrated practically after they constructed a real-world magnetic cloaking device from superconductors and soft ferromagnets. ...
... the new cloaks proved effective across a wide range of magnetic field strengths and frequencies, even when shielding irregular forms. ...
The cloak could function as a shield that reduces magnetic interference when electronic systems operate in close proximity, particularly in space technology, confined settings, renewable energy systems, and medical devices. ...
Crucially, the research demonstrates that magnetic cloaking devices can be constructed using commercially available materials, without relying on impractical or highly specialized metamaterials. According to the team, potential applications include fusion reactors, medical imaging systems, quantum sensors, and advanced communications technologies. ...
The paper, “Designing Functional Magnetic Cloaks for Real-World Geometries,” appeared in Science Advances on December 19, 2025.
See the full story here: https://thedebrief.org/no-longer-a-futuristic-concept-scientists-build-real-world-magnetic-cloaking-device-capable-of-shielding-complex-shapes/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
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