1. Eric Schmidt Tried to Sell AI to Graduating Seniors. They Booed Every Time He Said It Eric Schmidt stood at the University of Arizona commencement on Friday and began talking about artificial intelligence. The boos started. He kept going. The boos came back.

2. Apple's pitch for the new Siri: an AI assistant that forgets you on purpose The chatbot-style Siri arriving in iOS 27 will let users auto-delete their chat histories, according to a Bloomberg report from Mark Gurman cited by The Verge and TechCrunch.

3. Malta bought ChatGPT Plus for every citizen. Enterprises can't justify their seats. Tahoe ratepayers got the bill anyway. OpenAI and the government of Malta announced a partnership to provide ChatGPT Plus to every Maltese citizen. The company described it as the first national rollout of premium consumer AI access.

In Brief

• Anthropic's $1.5B author settlement stalls as judge delays approval A federal judge held back approval of Anthropic's copyright deal with authors after objections that lawyers rushed the terms to lock in $320 million in fees. Authors argue the per-work payouts are too low relative to the size of the training corpus at issue.

• OpenAI staff say Apple's ChatGPT integration left them "burned" Insiders told reporters that Apple's shallow ChatGPT hookup in iOS failed to deliver the distribution OpenAI expected from the partnership. A judge separately ordered Apple to hand Elon Musk internal messages about the deal as discovery in his suit against OpenAI.

• CFTC turns to AI to police insider trading in prediction markets The Commodity Futures Trading Commission said it will use machine-learning tools to flag suspicious trades on event contracts at Kalshi, Polymarket, and similar venues. The agency framed the move as a response to growing volume around election and policy markets.

• Musk v. Altman jury begins deliberations after closing arguments A federal jury started weighing Musk's fraud claims against Sam Altman and OpenAI after both sides finished closing statements this week. The trial centered on whether Altman misled Musk about OpenAI's shift to a capped-profit structure.

• Pennsylvania residents pack town hall to oppose data center buildout Hundreds of residents in central Pennsylvania confronted local officials over rapid hyperscaler construction, citing power draw, water use, and a lack of public disclosure on tax breaks. Organizers demanded the state legislature require utility-impact reviews before zoning approvals.

• Anthropic's Cat Wu defends Claude Code's usage caps and "lean harness" Claude Code's product lead said Anthropic deliberately ships a thin client around the model rather than a heavy IDE, and defended throttling heavy users to protect capacity. She said the team has "no grand plan" beyond watching how developers actually use it.

• Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab pitches "human-in-the-loop" models Murati told Wired her startup is building models meant to collaborate with workers rather than replace them, citing planned product launches in research and engineering workflows. She declined to share specifics on funding or first customers.

• Drive-thru chatbots expand from McDonald's pilots to Wendy's and Hardee's After McDonald's ended its IBM-built drive-thru AI in 2024, chains including Wendy's, Hardee's, and White Castle have deployed voice-ordering bots from Google, Soundhound, and Presto across hundreds of locations. Operators report 80–95% order accuracy with human staff covering the rest.

• Automakers raise compensation for AI engineers as poaching intensifies Ford, GM, and Stellantis are restructuring pay bands to compete with Tesla and tech firms for machine-learning talent tied to autonomy and manufacturing software. Recruiters report base offers for senior AI roles in Detroit now exceed $400,000.

• Asexual users describe turning to AI companions for intimacy without sex Wired interviewed asexual users of Replika, Character.AI, and Nomi who use chatbots for emotional role-play they say is hard to find with human partners. Some asexual advocates pushed back, saying the framing risks conflating asexuality with avoidance of relationships.

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