Steven Levy

The Ugly Lessons of Silicon Valley Bank’s Collapse

At first glance, the Silicon Valley Bank debacle seems to be a cut-and-dried financial caper. The executives running the 16th-largest bank in the US made the wrong choices in handling what seemed a fortuitous situation—a roster of clients, flush with…

How to Start an AI Panic

Last week the Center for Humane Technology summoned over 100 leaders in finance, philanthropy, industry, government, and media to the Kissinger Room at the Paley Center for Media in New York City to hear how artificial intelligence might wipe out…

A Native Son of Palo Alto Thinks His Hometown Will Kill Us All

I meet Malcolm Harris, voice of millennials and anti-capitalist crusader, at a Brooklyn coffee shop, suggested by his publicist for a book-tour interview. He goes for a guava croissant along with his $3.75 drip. He hints this is not an endorsement of…

Who Should You Believe When Chatbots Go Wild?

In 1987, then-CEO of Apple Computer, John Sculley, unveiled a vision that he hoped would cement his legacy as more than just a former purveyor of soft drinks. Keynoting at the EDUCOM conference, he presented a 5-minute, 45-second video of a product…

Google Pioneered Stratospheric Loon Balloons. Was China Watching?

Earlier this week The New York Times published a story about Wu Zhe, a Chinese scientist who is the alleged mastermind of his nation’s balloon surveillance program. You may have noticed that Chinese spy balloons have been in the news because one of…

Down the Chatbot Rabbit Hole

Further generations of humans—or robots—might one day look back on this week as the tipping point in the way that computers and people interact. On Monday, CEO Sundar Pichai announced Google’s new chatbot, dubbed Bard, based on its previously…

Startup T2 Wants to Terminate Twitter

In mid-2021, Gabor Cselle bought a $15 Moleskine notebook to sketch out ideas for new startups. On the first page, he wrote “T2” and began taking notes for a better version of Twitter. Cselle had sold startups to Google and Twitter and worked at both…

Alphabet's Layoffs Aren’t Very Googley

In 2004, Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin engaged in a comically passive-aggressive IPO road show. They eschewed business suits for casual garb, refused to answer many questions from finance bigwigs, and warned investors that instead of…

My Week With the Future of Garbage Bins

It’s 10 pm and, like a vampire stirring in its coffin to greet the nocturne, my garbage bin comes to life. A semicircle of yellow lights on the lid starts flashing, an illuminated lock icon appears, and inside the bone-white, 27-inch container I can…

Lina Khan’s Plan to Liberate US Workers

Well before she became chair of the Federal Trade Commission, Lina Khan had her eye on the practice of employers banning workers from job-hopping to a competitor. She is no fan of noncompete clauses. Those restrictions are commonly forced on…

Welcome to the Wet Hot AI Chatbot Summer

Late last year, I attended an event hosted by Google to celebrate its AI advances. The company’s domain in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood now extends literally onto the Hudson River, and about a hundred of us gathered in a pierside exhibition space…

Elon Musk's Twitter Is Making Meta Look Smart

It was the first day of April 2022, and I was sitting in a law firm’s midtown Manhattan conference room at a meeting of Meta’s Oversight Board, the independent body the scrutinizes its content decisions. And for a few minutes, it seemed that despair…

Tony Fadell Is Trying to Build the iPod of Crypto

When I come to Paris to see Tony Fadell’s new device, a clean rain has washed the city and the sun is out. Fadell and I hail a taxi. When he gives the address for Ledger—a maker of hardware wallets for the cryptoverse—he speaks in French, but even…

Big Tech’s Layoffs Will Fuel the Industry's Future

Hi everyone. Welcome to Plaintext, the newsletter that’s cheaper than a blue check mark—and guaranteed bot-free! This was the month when Big Tech got smaller. The leader in the shrinkage was a troubled Twitter, led by a new owner who, after trying to…

Anthony Fauci’s Sign-Off Message

Beginning in 2023, we won’t have Dr. Anthony Fauci to kick around any more. After 54 years in government service, the director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as well as the White House’s chief medical advisor, is…

Inside Meta’s Oversight Board: 2 Years of Pushing Limits

On the morning of Thursday, June 30, 2022, two large luxury buses pulled up to a grand hotel in Menlo Park, California. Milling on the driveway were the members, staffers, and trustees of the Oversight Board. Set up two years ago by Facebook, now…

Elon Musk’s Need for Speed Puts Twitter in Peril

Hi, everyone. Life is good because the Phillies are in the World Series! (Disclosure: I’m from Philadelphia.) Uh-oh, they just got no-hit. Booooo! In May 1998, I visited Steve Jobs at Apple headquarters to hear his plans for reviving Apple. He had…

Why Meta Is Tanking—and How Zuckerberg Can Fix It

Hi, folks. Some people will win the bet that Elon completes the Twitter sale, and others will lose. But what were the odds he would enter Twitter HQ carrying a bathroom sink? Despite dim expectations, Meta’s quarterly earnings call this week was…

What If the Metaverse Is Better Without Virtual Reality?

Hey, folks. Why is the Supreme Court talking about Andy Warhol and Prince? They’re not in the Constitution! The most expensive three letters in technology are p-r-o. Whenever a company releases a product with that trio attached to its name, your…

What’s Deepfake Bruce Willis Doing in My Metaverse?

Hi, everyone. So now Elon wants to buy Twitter, allegedly to help him build X, “the everything” app. Sweet of him to name it after his kid. For a couple days in late September, no one seemed clear on who owned Bruce Willis. The British newspaper The…