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      Cai Guo-Qiang: A.I. Will Revolutionize How We See the World

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      Artificial intelligence, though shrouded in risk, promises a revolution in how we see the world.This personal reflection is part of a series called Turning Points, in which writers explore what critical moments from this year might mean for the year ahead. You can read more by visiting the Turning Points series page.The following is an artist’s interpretation of the year — how it was or how it might be, through the lens of art.An Eiffel Tower hangs upside-down in a mirrored sky, like salvation from heaven — a convergence of sadness and joy. This gunpowder painting on glass and mirror, and another similar one on canvas, draws inspiration from a scene in a proposal I developed in collaboration with the Pompidou Center for the 2024 Paris Olympics.Lasting for about six minutes, and accompanied by the final movement of Gustav Mahler’s “Symphony No. 2 in C minor,” the sky painting “Resurrection” would have used around 3,000 drones equipped with small colored firework nozzles to paint the sky alongside daytime fireworks from the Eiffel Tower. The magnificent scene would have created growing flowers, the cosmic sky, white wings and a white flag beneath the Olympic rings.Cai Guo-Qiang (b. 1957, Quanzhou, China), “Resurrection: Proposal for the 2024 Paris Olympics,” 2024. Gunpowder on canvas, 183 cm x 152.5 cm.Photo by Mengjia Zhao, courtesy Cai StudioWhen I conceived the project in 2022, the world was slowly emerging from the Covid-19 pandemic, gradually finding its footing after two years of disorder. It was also the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war. The project’s tone took in both of those realities. It was one of regeneration and rebirth, echoing the peaceful, antiwar and unified spirit of the Olympics.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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      Elon Musk and the Tech Billionaires Steering Trump’s Transition Team

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      The involvement of wealthy investors has made this presidential transition one of the most potentially conflict-ridden in modern history.The week after the November election, President-elect Donald J. Trump gathered his top advisers in the tearoom at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, to plan the transition to his second-term government.Mr. Trump had brought two of his most valued houseguests to the meeting: the billionaire Tesla boss Elon Musk and the billionaire co-founder of Oracle, Larry Ellison. The president-elect looked around the conference table and issued a joking-not-joking challenge.“I brought the two richest people in the world today,” Mr. Trump told his advisers, according to a person who was in the room. “What did you bring?”Mr. Trump has delighted in a critical addition to his transition team: the Silicon Valley billionaires and millionaires who have been all over the transition, shaping hiring decisions and even conducting interviews for senior-level jobs. Many of those who are not formally involved, like Mr. Ellison, have been happy to sit in on the meetings.Their involvement, to a degree far deeper than previously reported, has made this one of the most potentially conflict-ridden presidential transitions in modern history. It also carries what could be vast implications for the Trump administration’s policies on issues including taxes and the regulation of artificial intelligence, not to mention clashing mightily with the notion that Mr. Trump’s brand of populism is all about helping the working man.The presence of the Silicon Valley crew during critical moments also reflects something larger. Silicon Valley was once seen as a Democratic stronghold, but the new generation of tech leaders — epitomized by Mr. Musk — often has a right-wing ideology and a sense that they have an opportunity now to shift the balance of power in favor of less-fettered entrepreneurship.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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      Why Wouldn’t ChatGPT Say ‘David Mayer’?

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      A bizarre saga in which users noticed the chatbot refused to say “David Mayer” raised questions about privacy and A.I., with few clear answers.Across the final years of his life, David Mayer, a theater professor living in Manchester, England, faced the cascading consequences an unfortunate coincidence: A dead Chechen rebel on a terror watch list had once used Mr. Mayer’s name as an alias.The real Mr. Mayer had travel plans thwarted, financial transactions frozen and crucial academic correspondence blocked, his family said. The frustrations plagued him until his death in 2023, at age 94.But this month, his fight for his identity edged back into the spotlight when eagle-eyed users noticed one particular name was sending OpenAI’s ChatGPT bot into shutdown.David Mayer.Users’ efforts to prompt the bot to say “David Mayer” in a variety of ways were instead resulting in error messages, or the bot would simply refuse to respond. It’s unclear why the name was kryptonite for the bot service, and OpenAI would not say whether the professor’s plight was related to ChatGPT’s issue with the name.But the saga underscores some of the prickliest questions about generative A.I. and the chatbots it powers: Why did that name knock the chatbot out? Who, or what, is making those decisions? And who is responsible for the mistakes?“This was something that he would’ve almost enjoyed, because it would have vindicated the effort he put in to trying to deal with it,” Mr. Mayer’s daughter, Catherine, said of the debacle in an interview.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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      Trump Names David Sacks to Oversee Crypto and A.I.

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      President-elect Donald J. Trump has named one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent conservative investors, donors and media personalities to help oversee American tech policy.David Sacks, a venture capitalist and an early executive at PayPal who launched a hit podcast, will be the “White House A.I. and Crypto Czar,” the president-elect announced in a social media post on Thursday. Mr. Sacks is a close friend of Elon Musk, and Mr. Sacks has been among the people over the last year or so encouraging Mr. Musk to delve deeper into Republican politics.The position will be new, and further cements the expectation that the Trump White House intends to take a lighter hand with the regulation of technology and in particular cryptocurrencies, which have surged in value since Mr. Trump won the election and in which Mr. Trump personally has a business interest. Mr. Sacks, who leads a venture capital firm called Craft Ventures, has in general called for a more permissive policy on both cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence.Mr. Sacks won a battle within the Trump transition effort. Some people were pitching Mr. Trump’s team on separate positions where different people would oversee artificial intelligence and crypto, according to a person close to the process. But Mr. Sacks was chosen to oversee them all together in a joint appointment.“David will guide policy for the Administration in Artificial Intelligence and Cryptocurrency, two areas critical to the future of American competitiveness,” Mr. Trump said on Thursday evening. “David will focus on making America the clear global leader in both areas.”It is not clear if his role will be full time; Mr. Sacks has previously told friends that he did not want a formal role because it would require him to leave his position overseeing his venture capital fund, The New York Times has previously reported. Mr. Sacks announced a new start-up funding round led by his firm just this week.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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      Musk, Trump, A.I. and Other DealBook Summit Highlights

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      The economy, inflation, tariffs, the future of media, pardon politics and other big topics that made headlines this year.Jeff Bezos was cautiously optimistic that President-elect Donald Trump would be more measured in his second term.Michael M. Santiago/Getty ImagesFour takeaways from the DealBook Summit The U.S. election dominated the news agenda this year, and the two people at the center of Donald Trump’s win came up in nearly every conversation yesterday at the DealBook Summit. The president-elect and Elon Musk may not have been in the room, but questions about how they will shape business and politics were front and center.The general view of the day was cautious optimism, even among those who had publicly criticized Trump and Musk — or been targeted by them.But many questions remain. What will Trump and Musk mean for government, business and the economy? Will they succeed in cutting regulation and government spending? And will they go after their perceived enemies and rivals?Here are four big themes from this year’s event.What will happen with the economy?Most of the speakers were willing to give Trump the benefit of the doubt, or at least played down worries about his most disruptive policy ideas.Jay Powell, the Fed chair, addressed one of the biggest questions hanging over the next administration: Will the president-elect go after the central bank’s independence? No, Powell said emphatically. The Fed, he said, was created by Congress and its autonomy is “the law of the land.”“There is very, very broad support for that set of ideas in Congress in both political parties, on both sides of the Hill, and that’s what really matters,” he said.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 Biggest Takeaways From the DealBook Summit With Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman and More

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      Serena Williams, Jerome H. Powell, Jeff Bezos and other leaders across business and technology discussed artificial intelligence, inflation, the media and what the world would look like under a second Donald J. Trump presidency.Mr. Bezos, for one, thinks the president-elect has “a good chance of succeeding.”Elon Musk wasn’t in the room, but he was present throughout at the DealBook Summit. The speakers were largely optimistic about his efforts in the new administration.The event, hosted by Andrew Ross Sorkin, founder of DealBook, has taken place since 2011.Here are five main themes:Inflation is still an issue, but there’s a chance for growth.Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, said the economy was in a “very good place.” Inflation has come down, and the labor market has rebounded. The big takeaway for investors: The central bank can afford to be more cautious when it considers lowering interest rates, Mr. Powell said. (The next Fed meeting will be Dec. 17-18.)Ken Griffin, the billionaire founder of the hedge fund Citadel and a top donor to the Republican Party, placed the blame for inflation squarely on the Biden administration, which, he argued, “put this country on an inflationary path that was unprecedented in our lifetime.” Mr. Powell has “had to deal with cleaning up the mess,” he added.Former President Bill Clinton said inflation was the “fundamental problem” that helped Mr. Trump return to the White House.“The average person had not really lived through something like this for 40 years, since the ’70s,” Mr. Clinton said.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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      At the Serpentine, Holly Herndon Taught A.I. to Sing

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      Holly Herndon and Matt Dryhurst are presenting their first large-scale solo museum show. It sounds gorgeous, even if its visual elements are lacking.Although it’s easy to feel alienated by the opaque processes behind artificial intelligence and fearful that the technology isn’t regulated, the artists Holly Herndon and Matt Dryhurst want you to know that A.I. can be beautiful.Their exhibition “The Call,” at the Serpentine Galleries in London through Feb. 2, is the first large-scale solo museum show for the artist duo, who have long been at the forefront of A.I.’s creative possibilities.Herndon — who was born in Tennessee, grew up singing in church choirs and later received a Ph.D. in music composition from Stanford — has made cutting-edge, A.I.-inflected pop music for over a decade. With Dryhurst, a British artist who is also her husband, she has branched out to make tools that help creatives monitor the use of their data online, and recently, into the visual arts.The couple’s work “xhairymutantx,” commissioned for this year’s Whitney Biennial, uses A.I. text prompts to produce an infinite series of Herndon portraits that highlight the playful nature of digital identities.The Serpentine show combines musical and visual elements. With the varied a cappella choral traditions of Britain in mind, Herndon and Dryhurst worked with diverse choirs across the country, from classical to contemporary groups of assorted sizes, to produce training data for an A.I. model. In a wall text, the artists explain that “The Call” consists of more than just the A.I.’s output. They also consider the collection of the data and the training of the machine as works of art.“We’re offering a beautiful way to make A.I.,” the artists’ statement adds. Their utopian take is that A.I. is collectively made: It learns from whatever it is exposed to and can therefore be shaped for good.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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      Trump Has Put an End to an Era. The Future Is Up for Grabs.

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      Kamala Harris lost the presidential election, but one of her campaign slogans was vindicated in defeat. “We’re not going back!” the Democratic nominee insisted on the campaign trail, and she was unintentionally correct: Donald Trump’s return to power is proof that we have lived through a real turning point in history, an irrevocable shift from one era to the next.In Trump’s first term, he did not look like a historically transformative president. His victory was narrow, he lacked real majority support, he was swiftly unpopular and stymied and harassed.Even if his 2016 upset proved that discontent with the official consensus of the Western world ran unexpectedly deep, the way he governed made it easy to regard his presidency as accidental and aberrant — a break from a “normal” world of politics that some set of authority figures could successfully reimpose.Much of the opposition to his presidency was organized around this hope, and the election of Joe Biden seemed like vindication: Here was the restoration, the return of the grown-ups, normality restored.But somewhere in this drama, probably somewhere between the first reports of a deadly flu in Wuhan, China, and Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, one of history’s wheels turned irrevocably, and the normal that Trump’s opponents aspired to recover slipped definitively into the past.A restoration? No: The post-Cold War era has ended, and we’re not going back.This may sound a bit like the most alarmist interpretations of the Trump era — that we are exiting the liberal democratic age and entering an autocratic, or at least authoritarian, American future.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