Business & Tech Bay Area Company Sends First Humanoid Robot to the White House, Walking Side By Side With Melania Ugh. Melania Trump thinks more robots should be teaching children, which dovetails nicely with the administration gutting the Department of Education.
Business & Tech Meta and Google Found Liable In Landmark Social Media Addiction Case; Meta Also Found Liable In Child Exploitation Case It's a bad week in the courts for Meta, and also for Google and YouTube, after juries in two states came back with verdicts against the companies in high-profile cases about the dangers of social media.
Business & Tech Developer Bets on 'Office Resort' at Revamped Building Near Embarcadero A building that's undergoing a significant renovation at 88 Spear Street, including a rooftop bar and restaurant, aims to be a new model for selling employees on going happily back to the office.
SF News Musk Ordered to Pay $2 Billion In Twitter Shareholder Lawsuit, Found Liable But Absolved of Fraud The jury in a lawsuit over Elon Musk’s 2022 takeover of Twitter found he misled investors by claiming he might walk away over the platform’s bot estimates, prompting some to sell during a downturn before he ultimately went through with the original deal — but fraud claims were dropped.
Business & Tech A 'Stop the AI Race' Rally and Protest Planned Saturday Outside Anthropic's and OpenAI's Headquarters A protest is being planned Saturday with organizers saying they want to push the CEOs of artificial intelligence companies to pause the development of the technology.
Business & Tech Teens Sue xAI, Allege Grok Was Used to Create Sexualized Deepfakes A class action lawsuit has been filed against Elon Musk’s xAI by three teenagers who say the company deliberately allowed its Grok software to power third-party apps to create nonconsensual nudes and sexually explicit images of them and 18 others as minors.
Business & Tech Sam Altman Posts Tone-Deaf Tweet Thanking Coders For Making Themselves Obsolete OpenAI CEO Sam Altman probably should have kept his thoughts to himself Tuesday morning. But instead, like his rival Elon Musk often does, he took to Xitter to say something utterly tone-deaf about the present moment.
Business & Tech What Happens When the Waymo You're Riding In Gets Attacked By a Robot Hater? Not Much, and You're Sort of Trapped As Waymo prepares to launch its robotaxis in 20 cities this year, we're likely going to hear more stories of Waymo passengers who become the unwitting victims of anti-AI rage.
Business & Tech Report: Meta Planning to Lay Off 16,000 Employees In AI-Driven Move to Cut Costs The next big shoe to drop in the local tech world that is being blamed on AI is a massive layoff reportedly about to happen at Meta, where CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been investing heavily in AI over the last year.
Business & Tech Santa Cruz-Based Electric Air Taxi Company Showcases Demo Flight Across the Bay Joby Aviation debuted its piloted air taxi with a demo flight from Oakland Airport to the Marin Headlands in minutes, as the company plans to launch trial operations in 10 states with potential plans for a pilotless taxi in the future, but it’s unclear when it will launch in California.
Business & Tech Meta Acquires 'Social Network for AI Agents' Moltbook, While OpenAI Hires One of Its Vibe Coders Yes, we are apparently arriving at the day, or we've already arrived there, when AI agents interact with one another and "gossip" about their respective systems on a social networking platform.
Business & Tech Uber Expands Female Driver Request Feature In US as Assault Cases Rise As it continues fighting thousands of cases in which assault victims have sought to blame the company for the behavior of its drivers, Uber is making an option available nationwide to request a female driver.
SF News Grammarly’s New AI Tools Use Experts’ Identities Without Their Permission The SF-based writing app Grammarly, recently rebranded as Superhuman, launched a set of AI-enabled tools, including expert reviews run by bots that scrape the published works of academics and assume their identities without their permission while offering questionable feedback.
Business & Tech Grocery Outlet Bargain Market Shutting Down 36 Stores Nationwide, Unclear If Any Are In the Bay Area After a brutal fourth quarter in which they somehow managed to lose a staggering $218 million, the Emeryville-based Grocery Outlet is shuttering 36 stores, though these may not be Bay Area stores that are closing.
Business & Tech Another Big Win for SF Conference Scene, as Microsoft Moves Major Conference From Seattle to SF San Francisco is now officially back to poaching major tech conferences away from other cities, as Microsoft has moved its Build 2026 conference to San Francisco, snubbing the conference’s longtime home of Seattle.
Business & Tech The Zuckerberg-Chans Just Broke a Miami Home Price Record With Mansion Purchase on Indian Creek We heard a few weeks ago that Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan were, for reasons we can only guess, seeking out a new home in Miami, and the deal reportedly closed on Monday.
Business & Tech Sam Altman Admits Friday Pentagon Deal Was Rushed, Adds More Safeguards to Contract Continuing the tradition of tech CEOs appearing to be transparent performing their mea culpas on social media, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman took to Xitter Monday to say a few things about that rushed Friday deal with the Pentagon, following the collapse of a deal with Anthropic.
Business & Tech East Bay Man Scraps Ballot Measures Due to Pressure from OpenAI, Says He Was ‘Naive’ for Trying An East Bay man says OpenAI pressured him into dropping two AI ballot measures he introduced that would’ve created stricter regulations after it was revealed he’s the stepbrother of a senior Anthropic employee, but he says he wrote the proposals himself — with legal help from chatbots.
Business & Tech Trump Administration Still Used Anthropic's Claude In Iran Strikes, Hours After Trump Banned Anthropic Despite Trump calling SF’s Anthropic a “Radical Left AI company run by people who have no idea what the real World is all about” and banning government use of their AI tool Claude, the administration still had to use Claude in its Iran attacks.
Business & Tech Waymo Safety Concerns During Emergencies Being Discussed In SF Hearing Concerns about the behavior of Waymo's autonomous taxis, following the December blackout in which the cars clogged intersections and created potential hazards, are being raised at a Monday hearing at SF City Hall.
SF News OpenAI Makes Deal With Pentagon, Including Safeguards Anthropic Requested Before Ban Just a couple hours after Trump announced the federal government was cutting ties with Anthropic for refusing to grant the Pentagon full access to its tools Friday, Sam Altman announced OpenAI received the contract instead, which includes the safeguards Anthropic was denied.
Business & Tech DoorDash Launching Its Delivery Robots In Fremont, Because Maybe People There Will Complain Less DoorDash’s longtime dream of cutting paid human beings out of the delivery process is one step closer to reality, as they’re debuting their little robots to do food deliveries, but at first only in Fremont.
Business & Tech Oakland-Based Fintech Block Lays Off Nearly Half Its Staff, Because of AI It could be the first of many canaries in this coal mine, but Block announced a mass layoff on Thursday. And CEO Jack Dorsey is making no secret that this is about AI supplanting the need for human workers.
Business & Tech ChatGPT Has Now Been Used In Two High-Profile, Violent Attacks, Raising Serious Safety and Liability Questions Not only did the unstable Green Beret with PTSD who blew up his Tesla outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas last year use ChatGPT to plan his attack, the Canadian woman who committed a mass school shooting earlier this month also asked the chatbot for help.
Business & Tech Pentagon Trying to Force SF-Based Anthropic to Weaken AI Security for Killing Purposes, Anthropic Not Backing Down Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth complains that it’s “woke AI” that SF’s own Anthropic won’t give him AI-controlled weapons and massive domestic surveillance, and is now threatening to blacklist the company.
