Newsweek vs MIT Technology Review

Podcast: The Hardest KPI in Political Advertising

An AdExchanger Talks podcast episode features Mark Jablonowski, CEO of DSPolitical, discussing the unique challenges of measuring political advertising where the primary KPI is an election outcome decided by secret ballot. DSPolitical, which positions itself as a “meta DSP,” combines offline voter data, privacy-compliant audience modeling, multi-bidder activation and unified reporting. Jablonowski notes that Connected TV is a growing channel for political spend but is often bought with a broadcast mindset rather than using CTV’s targeting and measurement capabilities. He also highlights political advertisers’ advanced CRM and voter-file practices and expresses greater concern about organically spreading disinformation than AI deepfakes.

• Mark Jablonowski is the CEO of DSPolitical.
• DSPolitical describes itself as a “meta DSP” and onboards offline voter data to build privacy-compliant audience segments.
• DSPolitical activates audiences through multiple bidders and consolidates results into a single reporting layer.

Newsweek About page reveals leadership and editorial restructuring

Changes include Shazia Haq moving from Senior Editorial Operations Manager to Director of Audience, Brian Lim and Connie Sideras swapping roles, new News Directors Samantha Beech and Jason Lemon, and several editorial title and role changes.

Newsweek Traffic Falls 75%; Revenue Nears $100M

Newsweek experienced a nearly 75% decline in readership year-over-year, but CEO Dev Pragad says the company is on pace to surpass $100 million in revenue for the first time in its 93-year history. Publishing revenue is expected to decline 20–25% this year, but newly built businesses—internally called Nexus (B2B: rankings and events) and Adprime (a healthcare-focused DSP acquired in June 2025)—have grown quickly enough to offset that drop. Adprime is projected to more than triple revenue from $14.8M to north of $40M and could account for roughly 40% of company revenue. Newsweek forecasts at least 10% revenue growth in 2026 (up from ~3% in 2025), is expanding non-programmatic video and events revenue, and maintains a free newsletter audience just under 2 million. The company remains cautious about future search-distribution risks from Google’s AI-generated results.

• Newsweek’s site traffic declined nearly 75% in a single year.
• Newsweek is on pace to surpass $100 million in annual revenue for the first time.
• Publishing division revenue is expected to decline 20%–25% this year, per CEO Dev Pragad.

AI Agents Fail at Self-Improving Open-Ended Research

A multi-institution research team led by Peter Kirgis and Sayash Kapoor at Princeton University examined whether AI agents can conduct open-ended scientific research. Their study (arXiv:2607.27191) finds that while agents can solve narrow technical tasks needed for AI research, they lack the judgment, creativity and qualitative decision-making required to produce original, conference-level research. The results suggest that recursive self-improvement and fully autonomous research by AI agents remain further off than some industry hype implies. The article notes prior evaluations focused on narrow, verifiable tasks and contrasts those with the demands of open-ended scientific inquiry; it also mentions that companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI remain confident in their systems' capabilities.

• A cross-institution research group led by Peter Kirgis and Sayash Kapoor at Princeton University published a study on AI agents (arXiv:2607.27191).
• The study concludes AI agents can solve narrow technical problems but cannot perform open-ended scientific research requiring judgment and creativity.
• Researchers found agents fall short of producing original results at the level expected by leading machine-learning conferences.

Is Research Over Because of AI? Eric Schmidt Weighs In

An MIT Technology Review commentary (published on t3n.de) examines whether AI breakthroughs like AlphaFold mean the end of traditional scientific discovery. The article recalls AlphaFold's ability to predict protein 3D structures, notes that Demis Hassabis and John Jumper of Google DeepMind were awarded a 2024 Nobel Prize for chemistry (as reported), and argues that AlphaFold sparked a wave of startups and large investments in AI for biology, chemistry, and materials. The piece contends that while AI changes how discoveries happen, it does not represent a literal end to scientific research and highlights data quality, scientific standards, and AI agents as areas of opportunity and challenge.

• Article published by MIT Technology Review Online on t3n.de on 2026-08-15.
• AlphaFold predicts three-dimensional protein structures by learning from thousands of experimentally measured protein shapes.
• The article states that Demis Hassabis and John Jumper of Google DeepMind received a 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for AlphaFold.

Local AI Models Make Phishing Emails More Dangerous

Researchers at TU Berlin, Inria and Ruhr-University Bochum report that small, local AI language models substantially increase phishing effectiveness by producing highly personalized emails. In controlled tests, successful attack rates rose from about 4% to roughly 10% after AI-based personalization, and an email security system flagged only one of nearly 4,000 AI-generated messages. The study shows how lightweight models can automate tailored social engineering at scale. Interpol has warned that cybercriminals increasingly use AI to automate phishing campaigns, create deepfakes and fake identities, and evade traditional signature-based defenses. The article summarizing the findings was published on t3n by Wolfgang Stieler in August 2026.

• Study by researchers at TU Berlin, Inria and Ruhr-University Bochum tested AI-enhanced phishing emails.
• Small, local AI models increased successful attack rates from about 4% to roughly 10% in controlled tests.
• An email security system flagged only one of nearly 4,000 AI-generated phishing messages in the experiment.