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 Apple retail locations and Apple Authorized Service Providers will soon be able to restore Apple Watch software in-store without needing to send an Apple Watch to a service center, according to a retail source that spoke to MacRumors.
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A group of researchers from across the US and the UK have conducted a study on what AI does to our brains and the results are, in a word, grim. These results were published in a paper called "AI assistance reduces persistence and hurts independent performance" which kind of tells you everything you need to know.
"We find that AI assistance improves immediate performance, but it comes at a heavy cognitive cost," the study declares. Researchers went on to state that just ten minutes of using AI made people dependent on the technology, which led to worsening performance and burnout once the tools were removed.
The study followed people who use AI for "reasoning-intensive" cognitive labor. This refers to stuff like writing, coding and brainstorming new ideas, which are some of the most common use cases.
The researchers recruited 350 Americans, who were asked to complete some fraction-based equations. Half of the participants were randomly granted access to a specialized chatbot built on OpenAI's GPT-5 for help and the others had to go it alone. Halfway through the exam, the AI group had their access cut off.
This led to a steep decline in correct answers by the AI group and many instances of people simply giving up. This result, in which performance and perseverance both dropped, was repeated in a larger experiment with 670 people. Finally, the scientists performed one final experiment with reading comprehension questions, and not math. The results were more of the same.
"Once the AI is taken away from people, it's not that people are just giving wrong answers. They're also not willing to try without AI," Rachit Dubey, an assistant professor at the University of California and coauthor of the study,
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Anthropic's Claude agents outperformed human researchers and produced "alien science," raising new questions about AI alignment and self-improvement.
The post Anthropic Unleashes ‘Alien Science' as AI Surpasses Humans in Alignment appeared first on eWEEK.
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 Apple today stopped signing iOS 26.4, so iPhone users who have updated to iOS 26.4.1 are no longer able to downgrade to the earlier version of iOS. iOS 26.4.1 came out a week ago.
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 Apple is sending a large portion of its Siri engineers to a multi-week bootcamp to learn to code using AI, reports The Information. Apple's decision to teach its programmers to better use AI for coding comes just two months before Apple is expected to unveil a smarter, more capable version of Siri at WWDC.
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The shoe company Allbirds, famous for its wool trainers, is pivoting to AI. You read that right. The San Francisco company has plans "to pivot its business to AI compute infrastructure, with a long-term vision to become a fully integrated GPU-as-a-Service and AI-native cloud solutions provider." It's also changing its name to NewBird AI.
This is subject to shareholder approval, with a vote scheduled for May 18. Once approved, the company will raise $50 million from an unnamed investor to assist with this enterprise. This money will be used for the "acquisition and monetization of graphics processing units, related high-performance computing infrastructure capable to support high workloads and other related assets." In other words, all of the things one would need to start an AI compute company.
— Tracy Alloway (@tracyalloway) April 15, 2026
Allbirds has always been known as an eco-friendly shoe company and, well, there's no real way to do AI while protecting the environment. The company plans on getting rid of any eco-friendly branding, with stockholders being asked to approve a charter amendment proposal to "remove references to the company being operated for
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 Apple privately warned Elon Musk's xAI company in January that it would remove the Grok app from the App Store unless the company put a stop to the chatbot's nude and sexualized deepfakes, according to a letter Apple sent to U.S. senators and obtained by NBC News ($).
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A scaled-up version of OpenAI's Trusted Access for Cyber program appears to be OpenAI's response to Anthropic's Project Glasswing.
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 Microsoft increased prices for all of its Surface PCs this week, with most models priced hundreds of dollars higher than they were when launching. Windows Central highlighted the increases, which now see Microsoft's mid-range models priced above $1,000 and flagship models priced starting at $1,500.
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 A building permit filed in Zurich confirms Apple is planning a new retail store at Lintheschergasse 7, near the city's famous Bahnhofstrasse shopping street, with construction set to run through early 2027.
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OpenAI has launched a new $100 ChatGPT Pro tier with higher Codex limits, positioning it between the $20 Plus plan and $200 Pro option.
The post OpenAI Courts ‘Vibe Coders' With New $100 ChatGPT Plan appeared first on eWEEK.
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Amazon's satellite-based internet service, Leo, will enter service by mid-2026, so says company CEO Andy Jassy. Writing in his annual letter, Jassy claimed Leo would offer download speeds of up to 1Gbps, far more than what Starlink presently offers. Sadly, Amazon declined to offer any more details about what that mid-2026 service would look like. But given select partners have already been kicking Leo's tyres for a while, we can only hope.
The mega-retailer is making some grand promises, including faster up and download speeds, cheaper cost and direct integration with Amazon's other products. Of course, the company can also sell itself on the fact it's a satellite internet provider not owned by Elon Musk. But it will have to buck its ideas up fast, given how far behind in its deployment of satellites it is.
— Daniel Cooper
The other big stories this morning
Dyson just announced its first-ever handheld fan, with a motor that spins up to 65,000 RPM
Don't put your finger in it.
JBL Live 780NC and 680NC review: Great leaps, greater missteps
As the youth say, ‘mid.'
Sony teases its next-gen True RGB Mini LED TV technology
Yet another brand name to sully the Mini LED waters.
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 Apple plans to release an updated iPhone Air and a lower-end iPhone 18e early next year, according to the latest word from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
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Aiming to bolster its assessment of Internet traffic health Cisco said it would buy startup Border Gateway Protocol monitoring firm Code BGP for an undisclosed amount.
Privately held Code BGP will slide into Cisco's ThousandEyes network intelligence product portfolio and bring a cloud-based platform that among other features, maintains an inventory of IP address prefixes, peerings and outbound policies of an organization via configured sources, like BGP feeds. BGP tells Internet traffic what route to take, and the BGP best-path selection algorithm determines the optimal routes to use for traffic forwarding.
Then, the system lets customers see and interact with this inventory in real-time through an open API and bring real-time detection of BGP hijacking, route leaks, and other BGP issues according to the company. Adding such capabilities will let ThousandEyes further expand its BGP monitoring and incident analysis capabilities to maintain health of the Internet as well as key applications and services, according to Joe Vaccaro vice president of products for Cisco's ThousandEyes in a blog about the acquisition.
To read this article in full, please click here
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