Technologies

6G Phones Won’t Just Be Fast. They’ll Plug You Into an ‘Always-Sensing Network’

We’re edging closer to yet another technology transformation. «6G will provide context» to help AI agents get things done, says Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon.

You’ve seen the progression on your phone screen over the years: 3G technology was followed by 4G, and now, probably more often than not, your phone is connecting over 5G. On the ever-closer horizon is, you guessed it, 6G.

Unlike with the Gs that preceded it, 6G has been flying under the radar. It’s less a source of consumer hype and more a point of discussion around the telecoms industry and the networks it relies upon.

But that isn’t quite the full story.

During his keynote address at Web Summit on Tuesday, Cristiano Amon, CEO of chipmaker Qualcomm, hinted that 6G networks, which are scheduled to launch in the US in the early 2030s, might have something exciting to offer us after all.

«6G is designed for AI,» he said at the event in Lisbon, Portugal. It will boost the speed of connectivity and sense what’s around us, providing context to the AI agents that are coming to do things on our behalf.

Following this tantalizingly brief comment, I was keen to find out more about what 6G cellular technology might do for the average smartphone user, so I asked Amon to elaborate on what we can expect from this next-gen network technology.

Every generation of network tech has been the gateway to a new experience, Amon said. 2G was about making sure everyone in the world can have a mobile phone, 3G was for connecting the phone to the internet, 4G turned our mobile device into computers. 5G has allowed us to have critical connectivity and unlimited data.

What then, can 6G offer us above and beyond what we already have?

The obvious answer: even faster speeds and even lower latency. But that takes on particular importance given the coming shift in how we’ll interact with our AI-enabled devices, Amon said.

One of the big benefits of the more advanced large language models we’re now using — the foundational technology that underlies AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Copilot — is that they can understand our natural speech, making voice the easiest and most obvious way for us to chat with our AI agents.

«Voice is going to become important again,» Amon told me. «We’re going to use voice to connect to agents and to all the different devices, so it’s going to even further improve the response time, and it’s going to provide you faster connectivity.»

6G will drive an ‘always-sensing network’

Qualcomm has been an early proponent of the potential of AI agents, which can independently carry out tasks on your behalf. Its chips are already beginning to power agentic experiences across phones, wearables, computers and cars.

If we’re relying on our voices to interact accurately and confidently with agents, which might be making payments or emailing a client on our behalf, absolutely seamless connectivity will be critical to ensure nothing gets lost in translation. This is where 6G will come into its own, according to Amon.

«The devices we interact with are going to understand what we say, what we hear, what we see,» he said. «6G will provide context.» We’ll be surrounded by an «always-sensing network» that will allow our agents to predict what we’ll do and need next based on what’s going on around us, he added.

On stage, Amon gave the example of applying AI to a radio — 6G, like its predecessors, is a radio communication technology — so that it can detect disturbances in the radio frequency environment in a room. It could, for instance, detect changes to a baby’s breathing while it’s in the crib without requiring a wearable monitor. Another, perhaps less appealing example, is mass facial recognition, which would allow for the simultaneous identification of everyone in a room.

«I know it sounds a little bit scary,» said Amon. But the 6G network understanding our context will be key to enabling AI agents to operate, he added.

With at least five years until 6G is due to launch in the US and with AI continuing to develop at a rapid pace, it’s hard to predict exactly what will happen when the two technologies finally collide. But one thing is for sure: 6G will power new experiences — some of which might not have been invented yet.

Disclosure: Katie Collins traveled to Lisbon as a guest of Web Summit to serve as a panel moderator. Her reporting from the event was independent of that role.

Technologies

TikTok to Let Apple Music Users Stream Full Songs Without Ever Leaving the App

TikTok and Apple Music come together to introduce two new features to the music listening experience.

If you’ve ever scrolled TikTok, caught a snippet of a tune, and thought, «I wish I could play this song all the way through,» this is for you. TikTok and Apple Music announced on Wednesday that they have partnered on two new features, Play Full Song and Listening Party. The goal is to offer listeners a seamless music listening experience without ever leaving the social media app.

Apple Music subscribers who discover a song on their TikTok For You Page or on the Sound Detail Page will be able to click Play Full Song to open the Apple Music player and listen to the track in its entirety. From there, subscribers to the music streaming service will be able to save the song as a favorite, add it to a playlist on Apple Music and listen to a customized stream of recommended songs.

When a full-length song is played, the stream will pay artists through Apple Music.

«Tapping into the music you love should feel effortless,» Ole Obermann, co-head of Apple Music, said in a statement. «With Play Full Song, Apple Music subscribers can move easily from discovering a track on TikTok to listening to it in full instantly, without breaking the flow. This integration not only makes it easier for fans to discover, listen to, and engage with the artists they love, but also creates a powerful new pathway for artists — turning moments of discovery into deeper connection and sustained engagement in one simple, seamless experience.»

Listening Party sounds somewhat like Spotify‘s feature of the same name. Fans join a shared, real-time session where they listen to the same tracks together and interact live, with the songs streamed through Apple Music inside TikTok. Musicians can also join and chat with their fans.

«TikTok is where music discovery and culture move at the speed of the community,» Tracy Gardner, global head of music business development at TikTok, said in a statement. «Thanks to Apple Music, Play Full Song gives fans a seamless way to go from discovery to full-length listening, and Listening Party provides a shared place to experience music together in real time. It’s all about bringing artists and fans closer, and turning shared moments into lasting connections.»

Play Full Song and Listening Party will launch globally on TikTok over the next few weeks.

Technologies

AI Chatbots Are Making People All Think the Same, Study Says

A new paper argues that humans are losing varied ways of thinking due to the use of chatbots, and that’s concerning.

Part of what makes us human is the unique ways we think and solve problems. But using large language models like ChatGPT might be eroding this uniqueness and leading humans to think and communicate the same way, according to a group of scientists and psychologists who have co-authored a new opinion paper.

«Individuals differ in how they write, reason, and view the world,» Zhivar Sourati, a computer scientist of the University of Southern California and first author for the paper, said in a statement.

«When these differences are mediated by the same LLMs, their distinct linguistic style, perspective and reasoning strategies become homogenized, producing standardized expressions and thoughts across users,» Sourati continued.

The paper, published Wednesday in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, examines how hundreds of millions of people worldwide use the same handful of chatbots and what that means for our individuality.

Thinking inside the box

Pew Research found that one-third of all Americans used ChatGPT last year, double the 2023 figure. And chatbot use is much more common among teens: Two-thirds say they use chatbots, and almost a third use them daily.

Businesses are also going all in on artificial intelligence. Stanford found that 78% of organizations reported using AI in 2024, up from 55% in 2023.

So we’re using AI a lot. But the danger is that we could lose the diversity in the ways we think. The team points out that LLMs generate writing that varies less than what people come up with on their own.

Part of the reason LLMs may be pushing homogenized thought, according to the paper’s authors, is the data used to train them.

«Because LLMs are trained to capture and reproduce statistical regularities in their training data, which often overrepresent dominant languages and ideologies, their outputs often mirror a narrow and skewed slice of human experience,» Sourati says.

Why diverse thinking matters

There’s a good reason why the authors warn against this trend. Homogenized thought reduces pluralism, which is essentially the idea that multiple perspectives are good for society as a whole.

«This value of pluralism is rooted in the long-held principle that sound judgment requires exposure to varied thought,» the authors write in the paper. «Unchecked, this homogenization risks flattening the cognitive landscapes that drive collective intelligence and adaptability,»

So we use different ways of thinking to figure out more solutions to a problem. If we lose the ability to think and communicate differently, it could affect how we adapt to new situations.

«The concern is not just that LLMs shape how people write or speak, but that they subtly redefine what counts as credible speech, correct perspective, or even good reasoning,» Sourati says.

The authors also say that this trend even impacts people who don’t use chatbots.

«If a lot of people around me are thinking and speaking in a certain way, and I do things differently, I would feel a pressure to align with them, because it would seem like a more credible or socially acceptable way of expressing my ideas,» Sourati says.