Last Week in AI

Skynet Today

Weekly summaries of the AI news that matters!

  1. 15 Jul

    #252 - GPT 5.6, Grok 4.5, Nemotron-Labs-Diffusion, AI 2040

    Our 252th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news! Recorded on 07/11/2026 Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie Harris Feel free to email us your questions and feedback at andreyvkurenkov@gmail.com and/or hello@gladstone.ai Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/ In this episode: OpenAI publicly rolled out GPT-5.6 (including Sol and Luna) and rebranded its desktop agentic coding product as ChatGPT Work, amid disputed claims about whether the US government effectively green-lit and delayed the release and concerns about inconsistent, ad hoc frontier-model oversight and jailbreakability.New model releases intensified pricing and capability competition: SpaceX AI’s Grok 4.5 launched as a very low-cost, Opus-class coding model with minimal safety documentation, while Meta released Muse Spark 1.1 with aggressive pricing, large coding/cyber benchmark gains, and a lengthy safety evaluation.Meta also previewed Muse Video and rolled out Muse Image before quickly backtracking after backlash over easy generation of images of public Instagram accounts; separately, Chinese open-source models grew to over 30% of weekly OpenRouter tokens as cost pressure increased, alongside discussion of risks like potential insider threats.Infrastructure, policy, and safety developments included Meta exploring selling AI compute as a cloud business, US energy regulators pressing grid operators on large-load data-center connections, Anthropic publishing a “global workspace” interpretability method for verbalizable internal representations, reports that China may restrict overseas access to top models, and AI 2040 proposing US–China coordination to slow progress until alignment improves. Timestamps (note - these don't take into account dynamically inserted ads and therefore may be off by a couple of minutes): (00:00:10) Intro / Banter(00:01:33) News Preview Tools & Apps(00:02:03) OpenAI rolls out GPT-5.6 after government greenlight — and announces ‘ChatGPT Work’ | The Verge + The new ChatGPT superapp takes aim at Claude Desktop + OpenAI is shutting down its Atlas web browser + OpenAI’s latest AI model likely has similar cyber vulnerabilities to one that led to U.S. export controls on Anthropic’s Fable, British agency says(00:15:41) SpaceXAI, Cursor Launch Grok 4.5 AI Model for Finance, Legal Applications - Bloomberg + SpaceXAI’s Grok 4.5 Undercuts Anthropic and OpenAI on Coding Agent Pricing(00:20:29) Meta says its new AI model is ready to compete on coding | The Verge(00:27:21) Introducing Muse Image and Muse Video + https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/10/technology/meta-muse-images-instagram-removal.html(00:29:01) Chinese AI models gain ground with U.S. companies as costs surge +Anthropic and OpenAI Face a New Threat from China Applications & Business(00:35:21) Meta Is Planning a Cloud Business to Sell AI Computing Power - Bloomberg(00:46:32) US energy regulator sets ultimatum for data centres + Grid operator PJM orders emergency steps to avoid large-scale US power outages Projects & Open Source(00:51:40) Nemotron-Labs-Diffusion: A Tri-Mode Language Model Unifying Autoregressive, Diffusion, and Self-Speculation Decoding(00:57:44) Tencent Releases Hy3: An Open 295B Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) Model with 21B Active Parameters and 256K Context - MarkTechPost Policy & Safety(00:58:30) Verbalizable Representations Form a Global Workspace in Language Models(01:09:29) Beijing is looking at curbing overseas access to China's top AI models, sources say(01:12:53) The ex-OpenAI employee behind ‘AI 2027’ recommends a rosier path - The Washington Post + AI 2040: Plan A See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

    #252 - GPT 5.6, Grok 4.5, Nemotron-Labs-Diffusion, AI 2040

  2. 17 Jun

    #248 - Fable 5, Siri AI, IPOs, Policy on the AI ​​Exponential

    Our 248th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news! Recorded on 06/12/2026 Note: we recorded just before the OTHER big news about Fable... we'll discuss it on the next episode. Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie Harris Feel free to email us your questions and feedback at andreyvkurenkov@gmail.com and/or hello@gladstone.ai Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/ In this episode: Anthropic released Claude Fable 5 (a safeguarded version of Mythos 5), showing major benchmark jumps and new risk findings in its system card (eval awareness, transgressive actions, CBRN concerns), alongside controversy over severe guardrails and silent downgrades.Apple announced Siri AI at WWDC, positioning a more capable conversational assistant integrated across iPhone features, reportedly built on a custom Gemini partnership; Google also rolled out Gemini 3.5 Live Translate and cut Google AI Plus pricing while bundling more storage.Business and infrastructure updates include OpenAI’s confidential IPO filing amid an IPO race with Anthropic and SpaceX, Bezos-backed Prometheus raising $12B for “physical AI,” DeepSeek seeking a major external round, and Google paying SpaceX about $920M/month for GPUs.Open-source, safety, and policy developments feature new Gemma 4 and Diffusion Gemma releases, a lab letter urging DNA/RNA screening laws, Amodei calling for an FAA-like AI regulator and third-party testing, research on agent harms and RL “societal hacking,” and a dispute over music-label settlements with Suno/Udio. Timestamps: (00:00:10) Intro / Banter(00:01:11) News Preview(00:01:53) Sponsors Tools & Apps(00:04:53) Claude Fable 5 and Claude Mythos 5 + Anthropic apologizes for invisible Claude Fable guardrails(00:27:06) Apple announces Siri AI and its next generation of Apple Intelligence | The Verge + I tried Siri AI, and so far it actually works(00:33:47) Gemini 3.5 Live Translate rolling out to Google Meet and Translate(00:35:39) Google just fired a warning shot in the AI subscription price wars | TechCrunch Applications & Business(00:37:55) OpenAI Confidentially Files for IPO on the Heels of SpaceX and Anthropic | WIRED (00:41:57) Jeff Bezos's Prometheus raises $12B to build an 'artificial general engineer' for the physical world | TechCrunch(00:45:39) DeepSeek slated to raise $7 billion in maiden funding round, sources say(00:48:18) Huawei-led team claims it post-trained DeepSeek's 1.6-trillion-parameter model — 1,000 Ascend 910C chips used in training(00:51:57) Google will pay SpaceX $920M per month for compute | TechCrunch(00:55:51) Elon Musk Shows Off AI Data Centers SpaceX Wants to Send Into Space - Business Insider Projects & Open Source(01:01:14) Google's new Gemma 4 12B model is designed to run on any laptop with 16GB of RAM - Ars Technica(01:05:13) Google AI Releases DiffusionGemma, a 26B MoE Open Model Using Text Diffusion for Up to 4x Faster Generation - MarkTechPost Policy & Safety(01:09:42) OpenAI and Anthropic Sign Letter to Prevent AI-Developed Biological Weapons | WIRED(01:14:04) Anthropic CEO publishes lengthy article: AI is moving too fast, and policies can't keep up. | PANews(01:20:18) Anthropic Urges Global Pause in AI Development, Flags ‘Self-Improvement’ Risk - WSJ(01:24:46) When Benign Inputs Lead to Severe Harms: Eliciting Unsafe Unintended Behaviors of Computer-Use Agents(01:27:42) Large Language Models Hack Rewards, and Society(01:33:46) Senior US officials eye government shares in AI giants Synthetic Media & Art(01:37:45) AFM Sues UMG, WMG Over Settlements With Suno and Udio See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

    #248 - Fable 5, Siri AI, IPOs, Policy on the AI ​​Exponential
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Weekly summaries of the AI news that matters!

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  • Creator
    Skynet Today
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2026
  • Episodes
    291
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