Wednesday, July 22, 2026est. 2026

The Final Shift

Daily Reports on Artificial Intelligence · Data Centers · Regulation

Lead Story · The Verge

Utility companies promise to spare us from AI’s energy bill

The pledge was introduced in March, and has done little to quell concerns so far. | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images In the face of backlash to concerns the AI boom will increase consumer electricity bills, the largest utility companies and data center developers in the US are now promising to do something about it. The Wall Street Journal reports that nearly 200 organizations have signed President Donald Trump's "rate payer protection pledge" that's meant to safeguard average citi

Jul 22, 2026

IEEE Spectrum AI

Why AI Needs a “Genie Coefficient”

Major benchmarks measure what AI can do. None measure whether it does what you mean: the distance between what you ask an AI to do and the unspoken assumptions about how you want the AI to do it. We p

Jul 21, 2026

IEEE Spectrum AI

Chinese AI Model Uses Less Muscle for Coding Tasks

Zain Hasan, an AI engineer at Together AI, has taught himself to use AI coding assistants while still keeping an eye on cost. He directs difficult problems to a frontier model, meaning one near the cu

Jul 21, 2026

The Verge

America needs to stop getting shocked by Chinese AI

SHANGHAI, CHINA - JULY 20 2026: People visit the booth of Kimi, an LLM developed by the Chinese startup Moonshot, during the World AI Conference in Shanghai, China, Monday, July 20, 2026. | Image: LON

Jul 21, 2026

MIT Technology Review

Advancing next-gen AI with materials science innovation

The conversation about AI often centers on algorithms, computing power, or huge investments in new semiconductor fabrication plants and hyperscale data centers. But beneath each of these advances is a

Jul 21, 2026

The Verge

Who’s afraid of the big, bad GPU?

How does AI make you feel? Are you excited to “vibe-code” your smart home? Or anxious about all the added pollution and billions of gallons of water used by data centers? Dig a little deeper and you’l

Jul 21, 2026

TechCrunch AI

TechCrunch AI

Trump’s latest AI czar has already resigned

The director role for the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) has become a revolving door since David Sacks left his position as czar.

Jul 20, 2026

MIT Technology Review

MIT Technology Review

China’s AI models have Trump’s AI world at war with itself

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Over the weekend, several current and former advisors to Presi

Jul 20, 2026

MIT Technology Review

The Download: AI hiring biases, and weather data sabotage

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. AI is more likely than humans to form biases when hiring The n

Jul 20, 2026

MIT Technology Review

MIT Technology Review

AI is more likely than humans to form biases when hiring

The next time you apply for a job, AI may screen your résumé before any human sees it. But there’s good reason to question whether AI will judge you fairly. Researchers already know that LLMs pick up

Jul 20, 2026

TechCrunch AI

TechCrunch AI

Kimi: Threat or menace?

Chinese company Moonshot AI released a new version of its Kimi model this week, prompting concern about "full AI communism."

Jul 18, 2026

The Verge

TikTok is testing an AI likeness detection tool

TikTok is starting to test an opt-in tool that scans for AI likenesses and lets creators report them to the company, as spotted by social media consultant Matt Navarra. The tool is initially being tes

Jul 17, 2026