Author: Carter

Editor’s note: This work is part of AI Watchdog, The Atlantic’s ongoing investigation into the generative-AI industry.On Tuesday, researchers at Stanford and Yale revealed something that AI companies would prefer to keep hidden. Four popular large language models—OpenAI’s GPT, Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini, and xAI’s Grok—have stored large portions of some of the books they’ve been trained on, and can reproduce long excerpts from those books.In fact, when prompted strategically by researchers, Claude delivered the near-complete text of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, The Great Gatsby, 1984, and Frankenstein, in addition to thousands of words from books including The…

Quick SummaryYou can build a working beginner cybersecurity home lab in 2026 by keeping it small and mission-driven – use host-only isolation, snapshots, and focused exercises so you can safely break and rebuild. A practical starter fits 2-4 VMs (Kali attacker, a vulnerable target like Metasploitable, plus a Windows endpoint), runs on at least 16 GB RAM (32 GB recommended), costs about $0-$500 depending on upgrades, and can be stood up in a few hours with hands-on exercises completed over a 60-day mission. You know that feeling when you finally finish a big LEGO spaceship from the box art, then…

This post is co-written by TrueLook and AWS. TrueLook is a construction camera and jobsite intelligence company that provides real-time visibility into construction projects. Its platform combines high-resolution time-lapse cameras, live video streaming, and AI-powered insights to help teams monitor progress, improve accountability, and reduce risk across the entire project lifecycle. TrueLook used Amazon SageMaker AI to build and deploy an AI-powered construction safety monitoring system that automatically detects personal protective equipment (PPE) by combining TrueLook’s experience in jobsite camera systems using the AWS machine learning (ML) infrastructure. TrueLook has built a solution that identifies safety issues through automated image…

The world of crypto and blockchain faces a big new threat: . Experts say quantum computers could crack today’s security by 2030. This puts billions in digital assets at risk. But Web3 builders are not sitting still. They are working hard to create . In this post, we break down the danger, what is vulnerable, and the clear steps to stay safe.What Makes Quantum Computers So Powerful?Quantum computers are not like regular ones. Normal computers use bits that are 0 or 1. Quantum ones use qubits. These can be 0, 1, or both at once. This is called superposition. They…

Heterogeneous computing is quietly redefining how AI shows up in everyday devices, shifting intelligence closer to where people actually use it rather than keeping it locked inside distant cloud systems. As AI moves into physical products, success depends less on raw performance and more on how CPUs, GPUs and NPUs work together efficiently. Heterogeneous computing shows up as faster-feeling AI, better battery life and intelligence that responds in context without constantly calling attention to itself, according to Chris Bergey (pictured), executive vice president of the Edge AI Business Unit at Arm. “Our partnership with Nvidia has been super strong, and…

A recently announced collaboration between Microsoft and Hexagon Robotics illustrates a broader shift underway in industrial automation. The agreement brings together Microsoft’s cloud computing and AI stack with Hexagon’s long-standing capabilities in robotics, sensing, and spatial data. The stated objective is not experimentation, but the scaled deployment of AI-enabled, humanoid robots in live industrial environments. At the centre of the partnership is AEON, Hexagon’s industrial humanoid robot. AEON has been designed to operate in factories, logistics centres, engineering facilities, utilities infrastructure, and inspection-heavy environments where variability and safety constraints limit the usefulness of traditional fixed automation. The collaboration focuses on…

AnalystView Market Insights With worldwide e-commerce sales estimated at nearly US$27 trillion, over 5.5 billion internet users worldwide, and close to 58% of the global population living in urban areas, government-backed digital trade and smart logistics initiatives are accelerating the adoption of AI-enabled micro-fulfillment infrastructure globally. San Francisco, USA, Jan. 09, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The Global Micro-Fulfillment Market is emerging as a critical enabler of modern retail and logistics as consumption patterns shift toward digital-first purchasing and faster order expectations. As online shopping becomes deeply embedded in everyday life, consumers increasingly expect near-instant order processing, precise fulfillment, and flexible…

AI toys, companions, and robots have been everywhere at CES this year, but among the horde of waddling plushies and light-up emoji eyes, two stood out to me. HeyMates and Buddyo are each betting that the collectible figurine boom is going to come back with an AI-powered vengeance, letting us chat to sports stars and superheroes from our desks.The core concept to both is this: Take a cutesy figurine and stick it onto a smart base with a speaker, microphone, and maybe a flashing ring of light or two. Then use an accompanying app to power a basic LLM chatbot…

The opinions expressed in this piece are solely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carolina Journal or its publisher. Artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing are becoming increasingly central to the modern economy, driving business intelligence, operational efficiency, and data-driven decision-making across industries. From generative AI tools to routine digital services, these technologies depend on an expanding web of physical infrastructure — most notably data centers. Data centers deliver the computational power, storage, and connectivity that keep digital systems running, but they also place significant demands on energy and water resources. As demand for AI…

Jan 09, 2026Ravie LakshmananVirtualization / Vulnerability Chinese-speaking threat actors are suspected to have leveraged a compromised SonicWall VPN appliance as an initial access vector to deploy a VMware ESXi exploit that may have been developed as far back as February 2024. Cybersecurity firm Huntress, which observed the activity in December 2025 and stopped it before it could progress to the final stage, said it may have resulted in a ransomware attack. Most notably, the attack is believed to have exploited three VMware vulnerabilities that were disclosed as zero-days by Broadcom in March 2025: CVE-2025-22224 (CVSS score: 9.3), CVE-2025-22225 (CVSS score:…