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Yesterday OpenAI made what should have been a triumphant entry into the AI-search wars: The start-up announced SearchGPT, a prototype tool that can use the internet to answer questions of all kinds. But there was a problem, as I reported: Even the demo got something wrong.
Yesterday, NASA announced that one of its Mars rovers had sampled a very, very intriguing rock. At first glance, the rock looks much like the rest of the red planet—rugged, sepia-toned, dry. But it’s arguably the most exciting one that robotic space explorers have ever come across. The rock, NASA said in a press release, “possesses qualities that fit the definition of a possible indicator of ancient life.”
Of course it would happen like this.
Just hours before Friday’s opening ceremony for the 2024 Summer Olympics, a series of apparently coordinated arson attacks were reported on France’s high-speed rail network. No one has claimed responsibility yet. Before the games, protests highlighted the displacement of thousands of migrants, unhoused people and other vulnerable communities as “social cleansing.
As Paris hosts today’s opening ceremony for the 2024 Olympics, we speak with Lebanese photojournalist Christina Assi of Agence France-Presse, who carried the Olympic torch Sunday in Paris to honor journalists wounded or killed on the job. Assi lost her leg in the same Israeli attack that killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah in southern Lebanon on October 13, and says carrying the Olympic torch was a great opportunity to highlight the “atrocities” happening in the region.
We speak to two doctors who are part of a group of 45 U.S. doctors, surgeons and nurses who have volunteered in Gaza since October 7 and wrote an open letter to President Biden and Vice President Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, demanding an immediate ceasefire and an international arms embargo of Israel. The group includes evidence of a much higher death toll than is usually cited: more than 92,000 people, which represents over 4% of Gaza’s population.
Stanley Goldfarb and his group, Do No Harm, say Republicans need new advisers because major medical groups have embraced progressive ideology.
Heading into the final day of the Republican Party’s first national gathering since the Supreme Court’s landmark decision, the issue has barely received a passing mention.
The Federal Trade Commission investigation of DaVita and Fresenius Medical Care follows years of consolidation in the dialysis industry.
The FTC action would target often high costs by trying to curb rebates it says drug makers pay to steer patients to their brand name products.
Abortion opponents know they need to win hearts and minds. They’re using women’s stories to do so.
Though hiring remains strong, voters blame President Joe Biden for persistent high prices.
The president has a compelling antimonopoly record. But he doesn’t always lean into it. And voters don’t really know of it. The debate could change that.
Friday’s good jobs numbers may be a boost. But boosts haven’t yet materialized into political benefits.
D’Vontaye Mitchell died last month in Milwaukee after he was violently pinned to the ground by four security guards outside the Hyatt Regency Hotel, just a few minutes from where the Republican National Convention would take place. Ben Crump, a civil rights attorney who is representing the family, says that the killing is “just inexplicable,” with nobody charged for Mitchell’s death so far. “You have a video of a man being killed. You have witnesses who have given statements.
Monday was likely the hottest day on Earth since modern recordkeeping began. On that day, the planet was 17.16 degrees Celsius, or 62.89 degrees Fahrenheit, on average, according to the European climate service Copernicus, narrowly beating out the previous record, set just the day before, by about 0.1 degrees. That news, like previous records of its kind, was quickly characterized as the hottest day in millennia—since the peak of the last interglacial period, about 125,000 years ago.
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
J. D. Vance’s veteran status could be an advantage for the GOP—unless he trumpets his years of service too much and annoys his fellow vets in the process.
Breaking the Code
J. D. Vance is a U.S. Marine, and he wants you to know it.
Whenever AI companies present a vision for the role of artificial intelligence in the future of searching the internet, they tend to underscore the same points: instantaneous summaries of relevant information; ready-made lists tailored to a searcher’s needs. They tend not to point out that generative-AI models are prone to providing incorrect, and at times fully made-up, information—and yet it keeps happening.
This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present and surface delightful treasures. Sign up here.
“I shall not seek, nor will I accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”
Those are the words not of President Joe Biden, who announced his withdrawal from the 2024 campaign on Sunday, but of a previous president who took himself out of the running: Lyndon B.
Kamala Harris is not an anti-Semite. It feels absurd to have to say this. After all, she is married to an actual Jew, and I’m certain he would happily vouch for her. But in the days since she took over Joe Biden’s spot as the Democrats’ presumptive nominee for president, there has been a surge of innuendo that Harris bears a secret antipathy for Jews.
Leave it to Donald Trump to utter the quiet part out loud—he always does.
As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave an address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, many Democratic lawmakers skipped the speech and held an alternative event on Capitol Hill to promote peace. The panel discussion featured Maoz Inon and Aziz Abu Sarah, Israeli and Palestinian peacemakers who have both lost family members to violence. Inon’s parents, Bilha and Yakovi Inon, were killed in the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas.
We speak with Palestinian human rights lawyer Noura Erakat about Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress, in which he defended Israel’s brutal war on Gaza, lied repeatedly about the dire humanitarian conditions on the ground and refused to talk about how to reach a ceasefire to end the bloodshed. Although more than 100 Democrats skipped the speech, Erakat says the jubilant reaction from lawmakers in attendance showed U.S. leaders cheering “for what is essentially a war on children.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress on Wednesday to defend the ongoing war on Gaza as thousands of people outside protested his appearance. The speech came two months after Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, announced he was seeking an arrest warrant for Netanyahu for committing war crimes in Gaza.
Stanley Goldfarb and his group, Do No Harm, say Republicans need new advisers because major medical groups have embraced progressive ideology.
Heading into the final day of the Republican Party’s first national gathering since the Supreme Court’s landmark decision, the issue has barely received a passing mention.
The Federal Trade Commission investigation of DaVita and Fresenius Medical Care follows years of consolidation in the dialysis industry.
The FTC action would target often high costs by trying to curb rebates it says drug makers pay to steer patients to their brand name products.
Abortion opponents know they need to win hearts and minds. They’re using women’s stories to do so.
Though hiring remains strong, voters blame President Joe Biden for persistent high prices.
The president has a compelling antimonopoly record. But he doesn’t always lean into it. And voters don’t really know of it. The debate could change that.
Friday’s good jobs numbers may be a boost. But boosts haven’t yet materialized into political benefits.