Shows / Uncanny Valley | WIRED
Uncanny Valley | WIRED
Welcome to Uncanny Valley—an insider look at the people, power, and influence of Silicon Valley—where each week, WIRED’s writers and editors bring you original reporting and analysis about some of the biggest stories in tech. On Tuesdays, The Big Interview with WIRED’s Global Editorial Director Katie Drummond in conversation with influential figures in culture, politics, business, science, and beyond for a discussion captured through the WIRED lens. On Thursdays, WIRED writers and editors Zoë…
Episodes
Uncanny Valley | WIREDTaylor Swift’s Pro-Russia Doppelganger
Does your favorite movie star or pop singer really love the Kremlin? Though the ads in your Facebook feed may lead you to believe such a thing, it’s just not…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDBlue Bubbles Versus Green Bubbles
When an Android user sends a text message to an iPhone user, their chat bubble shows up in iOS shaded green rather than iMessage's default blue. This color…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDJournalists in Studio Getting Coffee
Coffee keeps the world turning. Or, at least, it makes it easier to pry your eyelids open and maintain some semblance of normalcy every day. There have been…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDGeoffrey Hinton: ‘It’s Far Too Late’ to Stop Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence has made headlines all year long, but the turn of events this week was extraordinary. OpenAI was thrown into chaos with the firing and…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDHow Three Teens Broke the Internet
In October 2016, a malware tool named Mirai took down some of the biggest sites and services on the web, including Netflix, Spotify, Twitter, PayPal, and…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDOh, the Humaneity
Phones are convenient, powerful devices, but they sure do gobble up a lot of our attention. How much of your day do you spend just holding your phone, staring…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDHappy 1-Year Muskiversary
Twitter may be officially called X now, but that rebranding is just one of the many changes that have hit the platform since Elon Musk took over. It's been one…
Uncanny Valley | WIRED23andMe and You
Genetic testing companies like 23andMe and Ancestry offer a pretty enticing prospect. Just mail off a little bit of your spit in a tube and the company's lab…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDMisinformation Is Soaring Online. Don’t Fall for It
Misinformation lives everywhere. False accounts of events, doctored photos, and purposely misleading news stories are quickly shared and passed around on…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDBusiness Wars: Living in an Artificial World
Artificial intelligence abounds, and it’s only making its way deeper and deeper into every scrap of technology we use. Generative AI in particular is an…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDSearching for a Better Google
It's finally nearing the end of a month filled with consumer tech announcements, and Wednesday’s Google event felt like the grand finale. While Google only…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDMeta’s Sound and Vision
Undeterred by its many detractors, Meta is still trying to make the metaverse happen. This week, the company held its annual Connect developer conference at…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDAlexa Gets an AI Makeover
Alexa was due for an upgrade, and now it has gotten one. This week, Amazon held its annual media event where it debuted a slate of new hardware, software, and…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDYour Life, Your iPhone
It's September, which means Apple has announced yet another round of new iPhones. During a typically bombastic media event at the company’s headquarters on…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDWe Robloxed So You Don’t Have To
If you want to see what the future of the internet looks like, peek over your kid’s shoulder while they’re using Roblox. The online platform is filled with…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDI Love You, I Hate You, Don’t Call Me
Our smartphones rule our lives. We love them, we hate them. Somewhere deep down inside, we hope they never go away. But, if recent sales data is to be…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDThe Case of the Not-Stolen AirPods
Most of us who went to school in the United States have been threatened with detention for minor infractions like uttering a curse word or showing up to class…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDThe Cruelest Summer
Summer isn’t even over here in the Northern Hemisphere, but it’s already been a brutal few months. This year’s summer heat waves have been more frequent, more…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDNobody’s Driving That Car!
Tech companies have been touting self-driving cars as the future of transportation for over a decade now. Companies like Cruise, Waymo, and Zoox all have…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDFarm-to-Table Internet
Cloud computing has streamlined our hyper-mobile digital lives. We upload files, images, and globs of data to the cloud. Once all of our stuff is stored there…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDThe Future of Hollywood
Back in May, the Writers Guild of America went on strike—partly over disputes about compensation, and partly over fears that studios could use generative…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDElon Musk’s Grand xAI Plans
Elon Musk is back in the news again. (Really, does he ever leave the news?) Last week, Musk announced a new artificial intelligence venture called xAI. The…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDStop Trying to Make New Twitter Happen
Hey look, there's a new Twitter alternative. The text-based Instagram offshoot Threads launched a week ago, and in the days since, the platform racked up over…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDHave a Nice Future: Don't Worry, It Gets Worse
We're off this week, so instead of our usual show, we're sharing an episode of WIRED's other podcast, Have a Nice Future. It's hosted by Gadget Lab cohost…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDOur Clothes Are Making Us Sick
Have you ever put on a new shirt and then discovered that it makes you feel itchy? Or have you ever taken off a new pair of pants at the end of the day to find…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDShop Talk
Nearly every one of us in the US and Canada has bought something from either Walmart or Amazon. Not only are these two retailers ubiquitous, but they have…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDWhat the Truck, Elon?
Hey, remember the Cybertruck? Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled the company’s futuristic electric vehicle way back in 2019. At the launch event, Tesla tried to show…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDApple’s Vision Quest
After years of rumor and speculation, Apple finally took the wraps off its virtual reality headset this week. The Apple Vision Pro made its debut at the…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDAI Won’t Wipe Out Humanity (Yet)
The idea that machine intelligence will one day take over the world has long been a staple of science fiction. But given the rapid advances in consumer-level…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDHow to Get Started Biking
For a lot of people, riding a bike through a crowded city—or even on suburban avenues—might feel daunting. Should you get an electric or acoustic bicycle? What…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDLet’s Get Swole
The weather is warming up in our part of the world, which means people are starting to think a little more about getting outside and being active, and maybe…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDGoogle Disrupts Itself
Google would like you to know that it has been at the forefront of machine intelligence for decades, actually. Never mind that it was beaten to the generative…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDNothin’ but Bluesky
In the months since Elon Musk took over Twitter and started making all kinds of unpopular changes, people have been looking for other places online where they…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDThis Episode Is Nuts
The most successful industries out there are the ones that play to consumers' insecurities. Many self-care companies prey on people’s anxieties about how they…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDI Know What You Did With That Bitcoin
If you’ve committed any internet crimes lately, you probably shouldn’t have paid for them with Bitcoin. While many crypto-evangelists have long thought of…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDSend in the Clones
Artificial intelligence continues to seep into every aspect of our lives: search results, chatbots, images on social media, viral videos, documentaries about…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDLike, Follow, Subscribe to Cars
It used to be that when you bought a car, you just picked out the model and color you wanted and selected the optional extras. When the dealer rang up the…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDSidewalk Surfin’
Amazon has sold a lot of connected devices, and now it’s putting those devices to work. Millions of Ring cameras and Echo speakers sitting in homes across the…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDThe Sacred Mountain of Chip-Making
If you're reading this, you can thank a semiconductor. Phones, tablets, computers—really any device more digital than pen and paper—all depend on the tiny…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDI Love You, I Hate You, Don’t Call Me
Our smartphones rule our lives. We love them, we hate them. Somewhere deep down inside, we hope they never go away. But, if recent sales data is to be…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDChatGPT in Schools
The worst part of going to school is all the homework. Nothing strikes dread in a student’s heart quite like facing down a deadline on a seven-page essay…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDWe Really Recommend This Episode
The modern internet is powered by recommendation algorithms. They're everywhere from Facebook to YouTube, from search engines to shopping websites. These…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDNetflix Is No Longer Chill
The promise of streaming TV was that you could watch whatever you wanted, when you wanted. And for a while, that was mostly true. But recently, streaming…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDReal Humans Chat About Chatbots
The unstoppable march of artificial intelligence carries on. In mere weeks, AI has oozed into nearly everything we interact with on the internet, from…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDI Know What You Did With That Bitcoin
If you’ve committed any internet crimes lately, you probably shouldn’t have paid for them with Bitcoin. While many crypto-evangelists have long thought of…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDHave We Reached Peak Smartphone?
Phones have been pretty boring for a long time. Don’t get us wrong—phones are still amazing little devices! It just feels like we haven’t seen any truly…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDWhy the Kids Love TikTok Search
TikTok’s influence is expanding well beyond the social sphere. The app is increasingly being used for the types of internet searches one would normally rely on…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDWe Need to Talk About Your Stove
Gas stoves are so hot right now. A recent report found that emissions from gas cooktops are worsening both the environmental crisis and the health of the…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDOh, Deere!
The tractor company John Deere has faced a lot of criticism for the tight hold it keeps over its products. If someone needs to repair their tractor, they’ve…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDCES 2023: We Live Here Now
In the world of consumer tech, there’s no palette-cleanser for the new year quite like the annual CES, the giant electronics show. What better way to kick off…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDIs It 2023 Yet?
Keeping on theme with the roaring ‘20s, this year has been a doozy. Social media sites are aflame, all that hype over the metaverse has fizzled, the…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDPlastic Rap
Plastic waste never really breaks down. It just splits into tinier and tinier pieces until it becomes trillions of microscopic bits scattered across the world…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDThe iPod of Crypto
Even if you own no Bitcoin, no Ether, and no NFTs, crypto wallets—pocket-friendly hardware lockers that store digital assets—will be a part of your future…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDChatGPT for You and Me
Artificial intelligence is advancing faster than ever, with a new crop of generative AI programs that are creating art, videos, humor, fake news, and plenty of…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDWhat the Hell is BNPL?
Money is tight these days. Holiday shopping, ballooning inflation, and a looming recession have forced people to more carefully consider their finances. Those…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDThe State of the Smart Kitchen
Companies love sticking chips in everything. That's how you get a feast of connected kitchen tech: app-controlled Instant Pots, $400 touchscreen toasters, and…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDWhat Happens if Twitter Gets Hacked?
Twitter doesn't work like it used to. Under new ownership, the site is operating with half its usual staff and an entirely new set of executive pressures. As a…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDDemystifying Mastodon
Amid all the Twitter hubbub, the lesser known social site Mastodon has seen a surge of new users. Mastodon is a loosely connected network of individually run…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDTweelon
If you've been on Twitter in the past week, you may have noticed that the platform has been emanating some slightly different vibes. Mostly because everybody…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDPlastic Rap
Plastic waste never really breaks down. It just splits into tinier and tinier pieces until it becomes trillions of microscopic bits scattered across the world…