Lyft’s co-founders said on Monday that they would step down from their day-to-day responsibilities at the company, which has struggled through layoffs and disappointing financial results even as Uber, its biggest rival, has strengthened. The founders — Logan Green, Lyft’s chief executive, and John Zimmer, its president — will stay on the company’s board of … Read more

It’s a familiar, dreaded scenario in many parts of Africa and Asia: An elephant shows up, wanders into farmers’ fields, and tramples and eats crops. Sometimes farmers fight back, and elephants are killed. That series of events seemed likely to play out recently when a forest elephant bull emerged from the dense jungle surrounding Gbarnjala … Read more

WASHINGTON — President Biden on Monday signed an executive order restricting American government use of a class of powerful surveillance tools that have been abused by both autocracies and democracies around the world to spy on political dissidents, journalists and human rights activists. The tools in question, known as commercial spyware, give governments the power … Read more

We’ve compiled a list of phrases and concepts useful to understanding artificial intelligence, in particular the new breed of A.I.-enabled chatbots like ChatGPT, Bing and Bard. If you don’t understand these explanations, or would like to learn more, you might want to consider asking the chatbots themselves. Answering such questions is one of their most … Read more

Welcome to On Tech: A.I., a pop-up newsletter that will teach you about artificial intelligence, especially the new breed of chatbots like ChatGPT — all in only five days. We’ll tackle some of the big themes and questions around A.I. By the end of the week, you’ll know enough to command the room at a dinner … Read more

Mind reading is common among us humans. Not in the ways that psychics claim to do it, by gaining access to the warm streams of consciousness that fill every individual’s experience, or in the ways that mentalists claim to do it, by pulling a thought out of your head at will. Everyday mind reading is … Read more

Jonathan Nelson had lined up commitments for $2 million in new funding for his financial technology start-up, HF.Capital, from two investors last month. He was aiming for $2.5 million and thought securing the rest would be “perfunctory.” Then 67 investors turned him down. In mid-March, his initial investors backed out, too. Mr. Nelson was initially … Read more