How can you detect AI music? This week in the News Roundup, Oz and Karah unpack the music industry's scramble to build tech that labels AI-generated tracks. And the MIT study that took the internet by storm. On TechSupport, Politico’s Maggie Miller explains how the conflict between Iran and Israel was fought in cyberspace.

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When Yasmin Green joined Google almost two decades ago, she knew she wanted to focus on the complex problems facing humanity in a technological world – from violent extremism to political censorship. As the CEO of Jigsaw, a unit within Google that’s dedicated to understanding global challenges and applying technological solutions, she’s been able to do just that. Jigsaw’s most recent project took Green and her team to Bowling Green, Kentucky to figure out how they could use AI to improve a civic cornerstone: the town hall. Green sits down with Oz to talk about the project, What Could BG Be?, and what the role of Jigsaw is in today’s rapidly shifting, revenue-oriented tech landscape.

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What does Google Search sound like? This week in the News Roundup, Oz explores Google’s new AI-generated audio summaries — and why a simple question like “what’s two plus two?” triggered a two-minute podcast. Then, Wikipedia tried its own AI experiment and faced backlash from editors. On TechSupport, Semafor’s Reed Albergotti recasts Big Tech as characters from The Wizard of Oz and explains the current AI landscape.

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Adam Clark Estes is a senior technology correspondent at Vox and the author of the User Friendly newsletter. Estes sits down with Oz to discuss Amazon’s expanding use of palm scanners and what that might mean for the future of healthcare and our biometric data. They also dive into Estes’ months-long experiment of trying about a dozen health trackers and whether or not it was worth it.

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What’s inside AI’s black box? This week in the News Roundup, Oz unpacks the uncomfortable truth that even the people building today’s AI models often can’t explain how they work — or why they behave the way they do. But that hasn’t stopped tech companies from pushing colleges and universities to embrace chatbots. On TechSupport, 404 Media’s Jason Koebler explains the strange world of airport body scans and the future of the TSA.

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When the Biden administration announced the CHIPS and Science Act back in 2022, it was seen as a pivotal move to boost the US semiconductor industry and maintain America’s leadership in AI development. But the legislation was just one piece of a broader, multi-year strategy to counter China’s AI ambitions — and leading the way was Jake Sullivan, former National Security Advisor and longtime foreign policy figure. Sullivan sits down with Oz to discuss why he turned his attention to tech policy, how the Biden administration used export controls and global alliances to curb China’s technological rise, and hear his reflections on the country’s – and tech’s – role in conflicts abroad.

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Did search just get worse? This week in the News Roundup, Oz and Karah discuss how AI is reshaping search engines — for better or worse — and uncover a surprising downside of vibe coding. On TechSupport, journalist and kill switch host Dexter Thomas unpacks the murky early days of Nintendo and the unlikely figure who transformed it into the family-friendly empire we know today.

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Ben Lamm is an entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Colossal Biosciences. That's the genetic engineering company making headlines for its bold mission – bringing extinct species back to life. From dire wolf pups to woolly mice, Colossal’s breakthroughs have sparked awe and controversy. Lamm sits down with Oz to unpack the science behind de-extinction, the ethical questions it raises, and what it could mean for the future of conservation.

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Vibecoding is everywhere—and it feels like anyone can launch an app. So we’re revisiting one of our favorite episodes: a look back at some of the biggest apps to crash and burn. Jonathan Strickland dives into the nostalgia—spotlighting programs that once seemed unstoppable, until they weren’t.

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This is an episode of kill switch – a new podcast about our supercharged technological lives. In this episode, host Dexter Thomas explores the biggest hack you’ve never heard of and how one man saved us from complete disaster. This is the xz utils story.

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