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    F.D.A. Looks to A.I. to Enhance Efficiency

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    With a Trump-driven reduction of nearly 2,000 employees, agency officials view artificial intelligence as a way to speed drugs to the market.The Food and Drug Administration is planning to use artificial intelligence to “radically increase efficiency” in deciding whether to approve new drugs and devices, one of several top priorities laid out in an article published Tuesday in JAMA.Another initiative involves a review of chemicals and other “concerning ingredients” that appear in U.S. food but not in the food of other developed nations. And officials want to speed up the final stages of making a drug or medical device approval decision to mere weeks, citing the success of Operation Warp Speed during the Covid pandemic when workers raced to curb a spiraling death count.“The F.D.A. will be focused on delivering faster cures and meaningful treatments for patients, especially those with neglected and rare diseases, healthier food for children and common-sense approaches to rebuild the public trust,” Dr. Marty Makary, the agency commissioner, and Dr. Vinay Prasad, who leads the division that oversees vaccines and gene therapy, wrote in the JAMA article.The agency plays a central role in pursuing the agenda of the U.S. health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and it has already begun to press food makers to eliminate artificial food dyes. The new road map also underscores the Trump administration’s efforts to smooth the way for major industries with an array of efforts aimed at getting products to pharmacies and store shelves quickly.Some aspects of the proposals outlined in JAMA were met with skepticism, particularly the idea that artificial intelligence is up to the task of shearing months or years from the painstaking work of examining applications that companies submit when seeking approval for a drug or high-risk medical device.“I don’t want to be dismissive of speeding reviews at the F.D.A.,” said Stephen Holland, a lawyer who formerly advised the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on health care. “I think that there is great potential here, but I’m not seeing the beef yet.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Some House Republicans Have Regrets After Passing Trump’s Domestic Policy Bill

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      The sprawling legislation carrying President Trump’s domestic agenda squeaked through the House with one vote to spare, but some Republicans now say they didn’t realize what they voted for.When Republicans muscled their sweeping domestic policy bill through the House by a single vote after an overnight debate, they breathed a sigh of relief, enjoyed a celebratory moment at sunrise and then retreated to their districts for a weeklong recess.Not even two weeks later, the victory has, for some, given way to regret.It turns out that the sprawling legislation to advance tax and spending cuts and to cement much of President Trump’s domestic agenda included a raft of provisions that drew little notice or debate on the House floor. And now, Republicans who rallied behind the bill are claiming buyer’s remorse about measures they swear they did not know were included.Last week, Representative Mike Flood of Nebraska admitted during a town hall meeting in his district that he did not know that the bill would limit judges’ power to hold people in contempt for violating court orders. He would not have voted for the measure, he said, if he had realized.And as lawmakers returned to Washington on Tuesday after their weeklong break, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said that she had been unaware that the mega-bill she voted for would block states from regulating artificial intelligence for a decade.“Full transparency, I did not know about this section,” Ms. Greene posted on social media, calling it a violation of states’ rights and adding that she “would have voted NO if I had known this was in there.”The remorseful statements highlighted the realities of legislating in the modern age. Members of Congress, divided bitterly along partisan lines and often working against self-imposed political deadlines, have become accustomed to having their leaders throw together huge pieces of legislation at the very last moment — and often do not read the entirety of the bill they are voting on, if they read any of it at all. At the same time, the polarization of Congress means that few pieces of legislation make it to the floor or to enactment — and the few “must pass” bills that do are almost always stuffed full of unrelated policy measures that would otherwise have little hope of passing on their own.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Judge Hears Final Arguments on How to Fix Google’s Search Monopoly

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      A judge queried lawyers during closing arguments on Friday about how A.I. should factor into his decision, which is expected by August.Judge Amit P. Mehta has some tough decisions to make about Google.That much was clear on Friday as the federal judge, who sits on the U.S. District Court in Washington, peppered lawyers for the Justice Department and the tech company with questions during closing arguments over about how best to fix the company’s search monopoly. The conclusion of the three-week hearing means the decision will now be in the hands of the judge, who is expected to issue a ruling by August.The government has asked the court to force Google to sell Chrome, its popular web browser, and share the data behind its search results with rivals. The company has countered with a far narrower proposal.Judge Mehta, who ruled last year that the company had broken antitrust laws to maintain its dominance in search, quickly turned his attention Friday to artificial intelligence, which many tech experts expect to upend search. Given that A.I. products are already changing the tech industry, the judge said he was grappling with questions about whether the proposals could lead a new challenger to “come off the sidelines and build a general search engine.”“Does the government believe that there is a market for a new search engine to emerge” as we think of one today, he asked. The government argued that A.I. products were connected to the future of search.Judge Mehta’s ruling could reshape a company synonymous with online search at a pivotal moment. Google is in a fierce race with other tech companies, including Microsoft, Meta and the startup OpenAI, to convince consumers to use generative A.I. tools that can spit out humanlike answers to questions. Judge Mehta’s ruling could directly hamper Google’s efforts to develop its own A.I. or offer a leg up to its competitors as they race to build their own new versions of A.I.-powered search.In addition, Judge Mehta’s decision will signal whether the government’s recent push to rein in the biggest tech companies through a series of antitrust lawsuits can result in significant changes to the way they do business.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Google AI Mode for Search Has Arrived. Proceed With Caution.

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      AI Mode excels at tasks like product research for online shopping. But it falls short on basic web searches.Last week, I asked Google to help me plan my daughter’s birthday party by finding a park in Oakland, Calif., with picnic tables. The site generated a list of parks nearby, so I went to scout two of them out — only to find there were, in fact, no tables.“I was just there,” I typed to Google. “I didn’t see wooden tables.”Google acknowledged the mistake and produced another list, which again included one of the parks with no tables.I repeated this experiment by asking Google to find an affordable carwash nearby. Google listed a service for $25, but when I arrived, a carwash cost $65.I also asked Google to find a grocery store where I could buy an exotic pepper paste. Its list included a nearby Whole Foods, which didn’t carry the item.I wasn’t doing traditional web searches on Google.com. I was testing the company’s new AI Mode, a tool that is similar to chatbots like ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, where users can type in questions to get answers. AI Mode, which is rolling out worldwide in the coming weeks, will soon appear as a tab next to your Google.com search results.The arrival of AI Mode underscores how new technology is redefining what it means to search for something online. For decades, a web search involved looking up keywords, like “most reliable car brands,” to show a list of relevant websites.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Day Grok Lost Its Mind

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      On Tuesday, someone posted a video on X of a procession of crosses, with a caption reading, “Each cross represents a white farmer who was murdered in South Africa.” Elon Musk, South African by birth, shared the post, greatly expanding its visibility. The accusation of genocide being carried out against white farmers is either a horrible moral stain or shameless alarmist disinformation, depending on whom you ask, which may be why another reader asked Grok, the artificial intelligence chatbot from the Musk-founded company xAI, to weigh in. Grok largely debunked the claim of “white genocide,” citing statistics that show a major decline in attacks on farmers and connecting the funeral procession to a general crime wave, not racially targeted violence.By the next day, something had changed. Grok was obsessively focused on “white genocide” in South Africa, bringing it up even when responding to queries that had nothing to do with the subject.How much do the Toronto Blue Jays pay the team’s pitcher, Max Scherzer? Grok responded by discussing white genocide in South Africa. What’s up with this picture of a tiny dog? Again, white genocide in South Africa. Did Qatar promise to invest in the United States? There, too, Grok’s answer was about white genocide in South Africa.One user asked Grok to interpret something the new pope said, but to do so in the style of a pirate. Grok gamely obliged, starting with a fitting, “Argh, matey!” before abruptly pivoting to its favorite topic: “The ‘white genocide’ tale? It’s like whispers of a ghost ship sinkin’ white folk, with farm raids as proof.”Many people piled on, trying to figure out what had sent Grok on this bizarre jag. The answer that emerged says a lot about why A.I. is so powerful — and why it’s so disruptive.Large language models, the kind of generative A.I. that forms the basis of Grok, ChatGPT, Gemini and other chatbots, are not traditional computer programs that simply follow our instructions. They’re statistical models trained on huge amounts of data. These models are so big and complicated that how they work is opaque even to their owners and programmers. Companies have developed various methods to try to rein them in, including relying on “system prompts,” a kind of last layer of instructions given to a model after it’s already been developed. These are meant to keep the chatbots from, say, teaching people how to make meth or spewing ugly, hateful speech. But researchers consistently find that these safeguards are imperfect. If you ask the right way, you can get many chatbots to teach you how to make meth. L.L.M.s don’t always just do what they’re told.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Gen Z: How Will You Remake the American Dream?

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      Americans of all ages are increasingly skeptical of the American dream. As a new crop of shiny young people graduate from high school, college and professional schools this month, we wanted to ask: What might a new vision for the future look like?The old version of the dream seems increasingly irrelevant for people in their teens and 20s. Sociologists call it the success sequence: graduate from college, get a job, get married, have children, in that order. Buying a house for those kids to run around in is supposed to be the capstone.But with untenable costs locking many out of the housing market and parts of the country becoming uninsurable because of potential climate damage, homeownership is no longer a top goal for everyone.Because finding the right job can prove difficult and many entry-level jobs could be vulnerable to artificial intelligence, some Americans in their 20s and 30s sought the solace of steady, unglamorous government work … until this year, when the so-called Department of Government Efficiency took a wrecking ball to federal jobs. It’s not just the federal work force that’s in disarray; our entire democracy seems more precarious than it’s been in a long time.More people are questioning the value of higher education than in recent memory, with only a quarter of Americans saying that college is extremely or very important. Nearly 50 percent of Americans “say it’s less important today than it was in the past for someone to have a four-year degree in order to get a well-paying job,” according to Pew Research.“Gen Z on Marriage: In This Economy?” read a headline in The Wall Street Journal last year, and it could also act as a mission statement for people in their 20s, who are either putting off or forgoing marriage and babies entirely.Tell us about about your American dream.Readers 18 to 30, what does the American dream look like for you, regardless of what the phrase means in popular culture? More

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      Trump Posts an Image of Himself as Pope

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      The president has joked about being the next pontiff, but the image, which appeared to be A.I.-generated, took things a step further and drew some pushback.President Trump on Tuesday had a ready answer when reporters asked who he would like to see become the next supreme pontiff. “I’d like to be Pope,” he joked to reporters at the White House. “That would be my number one choice.”He took the joke a step further on Saturday, sharing what appeared to be an A.I.-generated photo of himself wearing the traditional vestments of the Pope on social media. The photo depicts him in a white cassock with a cross around his neck, his face solemn as he raises a pointed finger.The origins of the photo were not immediately clear, and Mr. Trump did not include any commentary in his post. He shared the image on Truth Social, Instagram and X, and the White House reposted it on its official Instagram and X accounts.The idea of “Pope Trump,” as some people called it, was immediately polarizing. Some religious people, including Catholics, did not see the humor in it, calling the photo offensive, at a time when millions of people were still mourning Pope Francis, who died on Easter Monday. Several commenters on Truth Social, which is run by a company controlled by Mr. Trump, called the post sacrilegious and said it fueled misinformation.Michael Steele, a former chair of the Republican National Committee, said posting the photo during a period of mourning was evidence that Mr. Trump was “unserious and incapable.”But some conservative Republicans have been playing along with the president’s joke this week. Among them was Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. “I was excited to hear that President Trump is open to the idea of being the next Pope,” he said Tuesday in a post on X. “The first Pope-U.S. President combination has many upsides,” he added. “Watching for white smoke … Trump MMXXVIII!”A screenshot of an image, likely created with A.I., of President Trump wearing papal robes. After the president shared it, the image was posted to the official White House Instagram account.via InstagramThe Vatican, which is deep in preparations for the election of Pope Francis’s successor, could not immediately be reached for comment on the image.It is not the first time that Mr. Trump has shared polemical content that appeared to be generated with artificial intelligence. In February, he posted a video that depicted the Gaza Strip reimagined as an opulent resort emblazoned with his name. A representative for the Hamas-run government in Gaza called the video “disgraceful.”After his jest to reporters on Tuesday, Mr. Trump, who has significantly expanded the influence of conservative Christians in the White House, said he had no strong preference for pope. But then he pointed to the archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, as one of his favorite candidates. Cardinal Dolan is not among the front-runners that have emerged to be the next pope, who will be elected at a conclave that begins Wednesday. More

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      How Google’s Antitrust Case Could Upend the A.I. Race

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      A federal judge issued a landmark ruling last year, saying that Google had become a monopolist in internet search. But in a hearing that began last week to figure out how to fix the problem, the emphasis has frequently landed on a different technology, artificial intelligence.In U.S. District Court in Washington last week, a Justice Department lawyer argued that Google could use its search monopoly to become the dominant player in A.I. Google executives disclosed internal discussions about expanding the reach of Gemini, the company’s A.I. chatbot. And executives at rival A.I. companies said that Google’s power was an obstacle to their success.On Wednesday, the first substantial question posed to Google’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai, after he took the stand was also about A.I. Throughout his 90-minute testimony, the subject came up more than two dozen times.“I think it’s one of the most dynamic moments in the industry,” said Mr. Pichai. “I’ve seen users’ home screens with, like, seven to nine applications of chatbots which they are trying and playing and training with.”An antitrust lawsuit about the past has effectively turned into a fight about the future, as the government and Google face off over proposed changes to the tech giant’s business that could shift the course of the A.I. race.For more than 20 years, Google’s search engine dominated the way people got answers online. Now the federal court is in essence grappling with whether the Silicon Valley giant will dominate the next era of how people get information on the internet, as consumers turn to a new crop of A.I. chatbots to answer questions, find solutions to their problems and learn about the world.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Meet Ballerina Cappuccina and the Italian Brain Rot Crew

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      Meet Ballerina Cappuccina and the Italian brain rot crew, an absurd group of A.I.-generated characters that are flooding TikTok.The first thing you need to know about Italian brain rot is that it isn’t strictly Italian.The second thing you need to know is that any discussion of what it means will most likely make you seem very uncool (you’re just supposed to get it) and will probably involve a lot of head scratching.You have been warned.A little etymology, to start. Last year, the Oxford University Press designated “brain rot” the word of the year. The phrase refers to the deteriorating effect of scrolling through swathes of “trivial or unchallenging” content online. It can also be used to describe the content itself; in other words, the term refers to both the cause and the effect of intellectual deterioration.The Italian brain rot subgenre emerged in January, when absurd characters generated by artificial intelligence started to show up in TikTok feeds. The characters melded animals or humans with inanimate objects, and many were tagged with the hashtag #italianbrainrot, which now has over 3 billion views. The memes have some vague Italian-ness to them — either their names sound Italian or they touch on stereotypical (or reductive, depending on who you ask) Italian cultural markers, like coffee, and are often accompanied by A.I.-generated audio of what sounds like a heavily accented Italian man’s narration but, when translated, is often nonsensical.That the memes are tagged brain rot is a cheeky acknowledgment that the content is “ridiculous” and “mumbo jumbo,” said Yotam Ophir, an associate professor of communication at the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences. It is also, he added, a recognition of the ridiculous universe being created by and for those who would be considered extremely online, with a nod to the broader proliferation of “A.I. junk” or slop.First, there was a shark with feet wearing Nike sneakers, called Tralalero Tralala (the TikTok account associated with the first iteration of that character has been deleted). Then came Bombardiro Crocodillo, a military bomber plane with a crocodile head. Among the most recent, and most popular, entries into the cast of characters is Ballerina Cappuccina — a ballerina with a cappuccino cup head, created in March by Susanu Sava-Tudor, a 24-year-old in Romania. The entire trend, Mr. Sava-Tudor said in an email, is a “form of absurd humor” that is “less about real Italy and more about the cinematic myth of Italy.” So far, the original Ballerina Cappuccina video, in which Mr. Sava-Tudor spelled the character’s name Balerinna Cappucinna, has racked up more than 45 million views on TikTok and 3.8 million likes.The lyrics to the Italian soundtrack attached to the video, when translated, are as follows:Cappucina dancer, mi mi miIs the wife of the Cappucino Assasino,And she loves music, la la la

      @mr_lindsay_sped Replying to @Itsdannykantu Everyone wanted to know about #ballerinacappuccina so here she is! Stick around to the end to see me strut my stuff to the sound. 😅 #italianbrainrot #ballerinacappuccina #genalpha #genalphaslangs #teachersoftiktok ♬ оригинальный звук – WXRMANE We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More