Like many leaders in tech, Arvind Krishna, the CEO of IBM, thinks federal R&D funding for AI and related technologies should be increased — not the other way around. “We have been an extremely strong advocate — and this is both the company and me personally — on that federally funded R&D should be increased,” […]
Read more This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
Bryan Johnson wants to start a new religion in which “the body is God”
Bryan Johnson is on a mission to not die. The 47-year-old multimillionaire has already applied his slogan “Don’t Die” to events, merchandise, and a Netflix documentary. Now he’s founding a Don’t Die religion.
Johnson, who famously spends millions of dollars on scans, tests, supplements, and a lifestyle routine designed to slow or reverse the aging process, has enjoyed extensive media coverage, and a huge social media following. For many people, he has become the face of the longevity field.
I sat down with Johnson at an event for people interested in longevity in Berkeley, California, in late April to hear more about the key concern underpinning his Don’t Die mission: ensuring AI is aligned with preserving human existence. Read the full story.
—Jessica Hamzelou
Why the humanoid workforce is running late
Last week I watched Daniela Rus, one of the world’s top experts on AI-powered robots, address a packed room at a Boston robotics expo. Rus spent a portion of her talk busting the notion that giant fleets of humanoids are already making themselves useful in manufacturing and warehouses around the world.
That might come as a surprise. For years AI has made it faster to train robots, and investors have responded feverishly. Figure AI, a startup that aims to build general-purpose humanoid robots for both homes and industry, is looking at a $1.5 billion funding round, and there are commercial experiments with humanoids at Amazon and auto manufacturers. Bank of America predicts wider adoption of these robots around the corner, with a billion humanoids at work by 2050.
But Rus and many others I spoke with at the expo suggest that this hype just doesn’t add up. Read the full story.
—James O’Donnell
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 OpenAI is abandoning its plans to become a for-profit company
Following a legal battle with Elon Musk and meetings with lawmakers. (WP $)
+ But major stakeholder Microsoft is still negotiating the details. (Bloomberg $)
+ Musk is proceeding with the lawsuit, too. (Reuters)
2 Donald Trump’s green energy crackdown may hurt America’s AI ambitions
Reliable energy is getting harder for the country’s data center industry to come by. (FT $)+ Meanwhile, China is still accessing banned Nvidia chips. (Economist $)
+ Should we be moving data centers to space? (MIT Technology Review)
3 US border protection wants to photograph everyone entering in a vehicle
And it’s asking tech companies to pitch facial recognition tools to do just that. (Wired $)
+ The US wants to use facial recognition to identify migrant children as they age. (MIT Technology Review)
4 ChatGPT is fueling vulnerable users’ spiritual delusions
Leaving family and friends unsure of how best to help them. (Rolling Stone $)
+ Chatbots’ hallucinations appear to be worsening. (NYT $)
+ An AI chatbot told a user how to kill himself—but the company doesn’t want to “censor” it. (MIT Technology Review)
5 US companies might find it harder to raise money from overseas investors
Trump’s tariffs are biting, even for Big Tech. (The Information $)
+ The dollar is in freefall. (Economist $)
+ Sweeping tariffs could threaten the US manufacturing rebound. (MIT Technology Review)
6 Waymo is ramping up its robotaxi production
Its new factory in Arizona will build more than 2,000 new vehicles. (TechCrunch)
+ Tesla plans to roll out its robotaxi service in Austin next month. (Insider $)
7 Elon Musk’s neighbors aren’t happy
Residents of the Texan cul-de-sac are fed up with his entourage’s frequent comings and goings. (NYT $)
+ People living next to crypto mining facilities are also suffering. (The Guardian)
8 Food-scanning apps are changing how consumers shop
But critics say their nutrition and additives results are often wrong. (WSJ $)
9 We’re living in the Community Notes era of the internet
For better or worse. (The Atlantic $)
+ How to fix the internet. (MIT Technology Review)
10 Social media is fixated on “recession indicators” 
Even though we’re not actually in one. At least, not yet. (CNN)
Quote of the day
“This changes nothing. The founding mission remains betrayed.”
—Marc Toberoff, Elon Musk’s lead counsel in his legal case against OpenAI, is not convinced by the changes the startup is making to its structure, the Wall Street Journal reports.
One more thing
How did life begin?
How life begins is one of the biggest and hardest questions in science. All we know is that something happened on Earth more than 3.5 billion years ago, and it may well have occurred on many other worlds in the universe as well.
We know how complex the environment was on primordial Earth, with chemicals, metals, minerals, gases and waters all blasted around by winds and volcanic eruptions. But we don’t know exactly what did the trick.
Now, a few researchers are harnessing artificial intelligence to zero in on the winning conditions. The hope is that machine learning tools will help devise a universal theory of the origins of life—one that applies not just on Earth but on any other world. Read the full story.
—Michael Marshall
We can still have nice things
A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.)
+ If you’re the kind of person who always gets stuck on video game puzzles, these hints and tips might help.
+ This artichoke is so good, fraudsters grow counterfeit versions.
+ Meet the men bringing TikTok’s favorite romantasy novels to life.
+ Did you know that the ancient Egyptians were astute astronomers? 
On Thursday I watched Daniela Rus, one of the world’s top experts on AI-powered robots, address a packed room at a Boston robotics expo. Rus spent a portion of her talk busting the notion that giant fleets of humanoids are already making themselves useful in manufacturing and warehouses around the world.
That might come as a surprise. For years AI has made it faster to train robots, and investors have responded feverishly. Figure AI, a startup that aims to build general-purpose humanoid robots for both homes and industry, is looking at a $1.5 billion funding round (more on Figure shortly), and there are commercial experiments with humanoids at Amazon and auto manufacturers. Bank of America predicts wider adoption of these robots around the corner, with a billion humanoids at work by 2050.
But Rus and many others I spoke with at the expo suggest that this hype just doesn’t add up.
Humanoids “are mostly not intelligent,” she said. Rus showed a video of herself speaking to an advanced humanoid that smoothly followed her instruction to pick up a watering can and water a nearby plant. It was impressive. But when she asked it to “water” her friend, the robot did not consider that humans don’t need watering like plants and moved to douse the person. “These robots lack common sense,” she said.
I also spoke with Pras Velagapudi, the chief technology officer of Agility Robotics, who detailed physical limitations the company has to overcome too. To be strong, a humanoid needs a lot of power and a big battery. The stronger you make it and the heavier it is, the less time it can run without charging, and the more you need to worry about safety. A robot like this is also complex to manufacture.
Some impressive humanoid demos don’t overcome these core constraints as much as they display other impressive features: nimble robotic hands, for instance, or the ability to converse with people via a large language model. But these capabilities don’t necessarily translate well to the jobs that humanoids are supposed to be taking over (it’s more useful to program a long list of detailed instructions for a robot to follow than to speak to it, for example).
This is not to say fleets of humanoids won’t ever join our workplaces, but rather that the adoption of the technology will likely be drawn out, industry specific, and slow. It’s related to what I wrote about last week: To people who consider AI a “normal” technology, rather than a utopian or dystopian one, this all makes sense. The technology that succeeds in an isolated lab setting will appear very different from the one that gets commercially adopted at scale.
All of this sets the scene for what happened with one of the biggest names in robotics last week. Figure AI has raised a tremendous amount of investment for its humanoids, and founder Brett Adcock claimed on X in March that the company was the “most sought-after private stock in the secondary market.” Its most publicized work is with BMW, and Adcock has shown videos of Figure’s robots working to move parts for the automaker, saying that the partnership took just 12 months to launch. Adcock and Figure have generally not responded to media requests and don’t make the rounds at typical robot trade shows.
In April, Fortune published an article quoting a spokesperson from BMW, alleging that the pair’s partnership involves fewer robots at a smaller scale than Figure has implied. On April 25, Adcock posted on LinkedIn that “Figure’s litigation counsel will aggressively pursue all available legal remedies—including, but not limited to, defamation claims—to correct the publication’s blatant misstatements.” The author of the Fortune article did not respond to my request for comment, and a representative for Adcock and Figure declined to say what parts of the article were inaccurate. The representative pointed me to Adcock’s statement, which lacks details.
The specifics of Figure aside, I think this conflict is quite indicative of the tech moment we’re in. A frenzied venture capital market—buoyed by messages like the statement from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang that “physical AI” is the future—is betting that humanoids will create the largest market for robotics the field has ever seen, and that someday they will essentially be capable of most physical work.
But achieving that means passing countless hurdles. We’ll need safety regulations for humans working alongside humanoids that don’t even exist yet. Deploying such robots successfully in one industry, like automotive, may not lead to success in others. We’ll have to hope that AI will solve lots of problems along the way. These are all tll things that roboticists have reason to be skeptical about.
Roboticists, from what I’ve seen, are normally a patient bunch. The first Roomba launched more than a decade after its conception, and it took more than 50 years to go from the first robotic arm ever to the millionth in production. Venture capitalists, on the other hand, are not known for such patience.
Perhaps that’s why Bank of America’s new prediction of widespread humanoid adoption was met with enthusiasm by investors but enormous skepticism by roboticists. Aaron Prather, a director at the robotics standards organization ASTM, said on Thursday that the projections were “wildly off-base.”
As we’ve covered before, humanoid hype is a cycle: One slick video raises the expectations of investors, which then incentivizes competitors to make even slicker videos. This makes it quite hard for anyone—a tech journalist, say—to peel back the curtain and find out how much impact humanoids are poised to have on the workforce. But I’ll do my darndest.
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here.
LinkedIn is looking to help marketers tap into rising video consumption in the app.
The case relates to a 2019 malware breach within WhatsApp.
Meta will share its latest messaging innovations, including new business elements.
A handy update to LinkedIn’s post embedding options.
Another big investment in data separation to reassure EU authorities.
The Tron network has drawn closer to regaining the lead from Ethereum in Tether circulation after another big mint by the US stablecoin issuer.
On May 5, Tether minted another $1 billion Tether (USDT) on the Tron network, according to Arkham Intelligence. This brings the total USDT on Tron to $71.4 billion, according to the Tether Transparency report.
In comparison, there is currently $72.8 billion USDT circulating on the Ethereum network, so just $1.4 billion more USDT on Tron will see it become the leading network for the world’s largest stablecoin issuer, as it has been previously over the last two years.
Tron was ahead of Ethereum for USDT circulation between July 2022 and November 2024, but a large $18 billion mint on Ethereum pushed the network ahead again, according to CryptoQuant.
The third-largest network for USDT is Solana, which has $1.9 billion circulating, and there are smaller amounts on Ton, Avalanche, Aptos, Near, Celo and Cosmos.
Tether’s total circulation is currently at a record high of $149.4 billion USDT, having increased by 8.6% since the beginning of this year. This gives the firm a commanding stablecoin market share of 61%, according to CoinGecko.
Related: Tether AI platform to support Bitcoin and USDT payments, CEO says
Its closest competitor, Circle, has a market share of 25% with almost $62 billion USDC (USDC) in circulation.
Stablecoin issuance has surged over the past six months, and they currently represent 8% of the total crypto market capitalization.
In a report in late April, the United States Treasury Department predicted that the stablecoin market could reach $2 trillion by 2028 if regulatory clarity is achieved.
Stablecoin legislation nearing next vote
It is widely believed that two key pieces of legislation need to be passed into law in the US to cement the position of stablecoins.
The Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act sets out clear definitions for “payment stablecoins” and reserve rules for stablecoin issuers.
Lawmakers in the US Senate will move forward with a vote on the GENIUS stablecoin bill before May 26, according to reports.
Meanwhile, the Stablecoin Transparency and Accountability for a Better Ledger Economy (STABLE) Act, which governs the approval and supervision of “federally qualified nonbank payment stablecoin issuers,” is also going through Congress.
Tether is also planning to launch a US-based stablecoin later this year, with timing dependent on the passing of legislation.
Magazine: Bitcoin to $1M ‘by 2029,’ CIA tips its hat to Bitcoin: Hodler’s Digest
The new “Digital Asset Market Structure Discussion Draft” introduced by House Republicans on May 5 could work to reduce the dominance of large crypto firms and promote more participation in the broader market, according to an executive from Paradigm.
The discussion draft, led by the House agricultural and financial services committee chairs Glenn Thompson and French Hill, is an “incremental, albeit meaningful, rewrite” of the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act (FIT21), Paradigm’s vice president of regulatory affairs Justin Slaughter said in a May 5 X post.
One of the major changes from FIT21 is that the draft defines an affiliated person as anyone who owns more than 1% of a digital commodity issued by the project — down from 5% in the FIT21 bill — a move Slaughter said may curb the influence of big crypto firms and lead to more participation in the crypto market.
“This is a portent of the entire bill. There are often criticisms of crypto being too dominated by a few large firms. This bill makes clear the regulatory regime proposed is going to push against that fact and strongly encourage more small-d ‘democratization’ of the space.”
The draft also defines a “mature blockchain system” as one that, together with its related digital commodity, is not under the “common control” of any person or group.
The Securities and Exchange Commission would be the main authority regulating activity on crypto networks until they become sufficiently decentralized, Slaughter noted.
The draft also clarified that decentralized finance trading protocols are those that enable users to engage in a financial transaction in a “self-directed manner.” Protocols that meet this criterion are exempt from registering as digital commodity brokers or dealers.
The draft also referred to digital commodities as “investment contract assets” to distinguish their treatment from stocks and other traditional assets under the Howey test.
According to Slaughter’s analysis, securities laws won’t be triggered unless the secondary sale of tokens also transfers ownership or profit in the underlying business.
Crypto firms would also have a path to raise funds under the SEC’s oversight while also having a “clear process” to register their digital commodities with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the committee members said in a separate May 5 statement.
Joint rulemaking, procedures, or guidelines related to crypto asset delisting must be established by the CFTC and SEC should a registered asset no longer comply with rules laid out by the regulators.
A ‘clear opportunity’ to advance crypto innovation, rules once and for all
Speaking about the need for a comprehensive crypto regulatory framework, the House committee members said crypto is a “clear opportunity” to advance innovation in the US — most notably through modernizing America’s financial infrastructure and reinforcing US dollar dominance.
The Republicans criticized the previous Biden administration and the Gary Gensler-led SEC for adopting a regulation-by-enforcement strategy rather than creating clear rules for market participants.
Related: VanEck files for BNB ETF, first in US
Many crypto firms were stuck in “legal limbo” as a result of the unclear rules, which pushed some industry players overseas, where clearer rules exist, the House committee members said.
“America needs to be the powerhouse for digital asset investment and innovation. For that to happen, we need a commonsense regulatory regime,” said Dusty Johnson, chairman of the subcommittee on commodity markets, digital assets and rural development.
Slaughter added: “This is the bill that will, finally, provide a clear regulatory regime on crypto that many have been calling for.”
Republicans already facing roadblocks over discussion draft
House Financial Services Committee Ranking Member Maxine Waters plans to block a Republican-led event discussing digital assets on May 6, a Democratic staffer told Cointelegraph.
The hearing, “American Innovation and the Future of Digital Assets,” is expected to discuss the new crypto markets draft discussion paper pitched by Thompson, Hill, and other committee members.
However, according to the unnamed Democratic staffer, the current rules require all members of the House Financial Services Committee to agree on such hearings.
Magazine: Crypto wanted to overthrow banks, now it’s becoming them in stablecoin fight