#247 - Opus 4.8, MAI, Anthropic IPO, Minimax-M3

Our 247th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!Recorded on 06/03/2026Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie HarrisFeel free to email us your questions and feedback at [email protected] and/or [email protected] out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/In this episode:Anthropic released Claude Opus 4.8 with improved benchmark scores, discussed eval-awareness findings and welfare/corrigibility themes from its system card, and introduced Dynamic Workflows for long-running multi-agent tasks.Microsoft unveiled the always-on Microsoft Scout assistant built on OpenClaw plus new in-house MAI models (including MAI Thinking 1) and “frontier tuning,” emphasizing enterprise security architecture and model-from-scratch capability.Major business moves included Anthropic’s $65B Series H at a $965B valuation alongside an IPO filing, a JPMorgan analysis arguing OpenAI needs major revenue growth to justify infrastructure spend, and Cognition raising $1B at a $25B valuation.Policy and security highlights covered Trump’s voluntary pre-release government testing framework for powerful AI, Meta AI support being exploited to hijack Instagram accounts, tightened US Nvidia export controls and China’s travel approvals for AI experts, plus expanded Glasswing/Mythos-style cyber and biodefense initiatives.Timestamps:(00:00:10) Intro / Banter(00:04:10) Sponsors(00:07:10) News PreviewTools & Apps(00:07:54) Anthropic releases Opus 4.8 with new 'dynamic workflow' tool | TechCrunch(00:22:37) Microsoft Scout is a new AI personal assistant built on OpenClaw | The Verge(00:26:55) Microsoft launches new MAI family of AI models at Microsoft Build | Mashable(00:37:43) Robinhood now lets your AI agents trade stocks | TechCrunch(00:40:49) OpenAI launches new Codex tools for white-collar work | TechCrunch(00:43:40) ElevenLabs' new music-generation model can switch genres mid-track | TechCrunchApplications & Business(00:44:35) Anthropic Hits $965 Billion Valuation, Surpassing OpenAI - WSJ(00:45:32) Anthropic Files to Go Public, Setting Stage for Huge I.P.O. - The New York Times(00:51:15) China’s ByteDance Developing New AI Chips Like Those from Nvidia Partner Groq(00:55:00) Anthropic expands Mythos to 150 additional organizations(00:55:35) OpenAI needs a 26x revenue increase to justify its buildout(00:58:46) AI coding startup Cognition raises $1B at $25B pre-money valuation | TechCrunchProjects & Open Source(01:00:50) MiniMax-M3 debuts, eclipsing GPT-5.5 and Gemini 3.1 Pro on key benchmark performance for just 5-10% of the cost | VentureBeatPolicy & Safety(01:06:08) Trump Signs Executive Order Seeking Oversight of A.I. Models - The New York Times(01:11:45) Hackers Simply Asked Meta AI to Give Them Access to High-Profile Instagram Accounts. It Worked(01:13:058) Chinese AI experts in private firms now required to secure approval before international travel — Beijing enforces policy to secure top-tier talent, expands measures beyond government(01:17:53) U.S. Tightens Controls on Nvidia AI Chip Exports | Let's Data Science(01:21:47) OpenAI launches Rosalind Biodefense, offers federal agencies early access to its life-sciences model(01:24:00) Using LLMs to secure source code(01:26:19) Project Glasswing: An initial update(01:29:30) White House Approves $9 Billion for Spy Agencies to Catch Up on A.I.(01:32:11) US Law Enforcement Warns of ‘Anti-Tech Extremism’ as AI Hatred GrowsSynthetic Media & Art(01:35:38) YouTube will now automatically label AI videos | TechCrunchResearch & Advancements(01:36:22) Why Larger Models Learn More: Effects of Capacity, Interference, and Rare-Task Retention(01:41:26) From Simulation to Enaction: Post-trained language models recognize and react to their own generationsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Our 246th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!Recorded on 05/22/2026Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie HarrisFeel free to email us your questions and feedback at [email protected] and/or [email protected] out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/In this episode:Google I/O highlights included Gemini 3.5 (with 3.5 Flash emphasized for speed and benchmarks), the always-on agent Gemini Spark running on Google Cloud with MCP tool support, and Gemini Omni multimodal video generation/editing, plus updates like Anti-Gravity 2.0, Gemini for Science, and Genie world-model navigation using Street View and Waymo simulation.Coding-agent competition accelerated with Cursor Composer 2.5 (fine-tuned on Moonshot’s Kimi K2.5) and xAI’s early Grok Build release, alongside discussion of potential Cursor–xAI ties and xAI’s talent churn and compute utilization concerns.Business and legal updates included Elon Musk losing his OpenAI lawsuit on statute-of-limitations grounds, reported OpenAI–Apple partnership tensions, Anthropic agreeing to a $30B funding round at a $900B valuation and projecting its first profitable quarter, and Cerebras’ IPO surging about 90%. Research and safety stories covered OpenAI’s result on an 80-year-old Erdős geometry problem, findings on “negation neglect” in training, interpretability work showing multiple redundant circuits per capability, agent benchmarks like Terminal World, new deepfake takedown enforcement under the Take It Down Act, demonstrations of autonomous hacking/self-replication, rapidly improving AI cyber capabilities, and steps toward image provenance metadata and watermarks.Timestamps:(00:00:10) Intro / Banter(00:01:15) News PreviewTools & Apps(00:05:05) Google unveils AI model Gemini 3.5 and AI agent Gemini Spark(00:11:43) Google's Gemini Omni turns images, audio, and text into video — and that's just the start | TechCrunch(00:17:27) Google launches Antigravity 2.0 with an updated desktop app and CLI tool at IO 2026 | TechCrunch(00:22:35) Google Debuts AI-Powered Tools To Optimize Scientific Research Workflows(00:27:20) Google’s Genie world model can now simulate real streets with Street View | TechCrunch(00:29:51) Cursor's Composer 2.5 matches Opus 4.7 and GPT-5.5 benchmarks at a fraction of the cost(00:37:37) xAI Introduces Its Coding Agent Called Grok BuildApplications & Business(00:41:55) Musk loses OpenAI court battle as he waited too long to sue(00:48:08) Anthropic agrees terms of $30bn funding deal at $900bn valuation(00:53:12) OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy joins Anthropic's pre-training team | TechCrunch(00:56:49) Greg Brockman Officially Takes Control of OpenAI’s Products in Latest Shake-Up | WIRED(00:58:15) OpenAI-Apple Partnership Frays, Setting Up Possible Legal Fight - Bloomberg(01:01:13) AI chipmaker Cerebras soars 90% in year’s biggest IPO so farResearch & Advancements(01:07:10) AI just solved an 80-year-old ‘Erdős problem,’ and mathematicians are amazed | Scientific American(01:11:50) Negation Neglect: When models fail to learn negations in training(01:13:18) All Circuits Lead to Rome: Rethinking Functional Anisotropy in Circuit and Sheaf Discovery for LLMs(01:16:20) Autonomous AI research for nanogpt speedrun(01:21:59) TerminalWorld: Benchmarking Agents on Real-World Terminal TasksPolicy & Safety(01:23:15) America’s dangerous, messy deepfakes crackdown is here | The Verge(01:25:17) Language Models Can Autonomously Hack and Self-Replicate(01:28:48) How fast is autonomous AI cyber capability advancing?(01:31:32) Positive Alignment: Artificial Intelligence for Human FlourishingSynthetic Media & Art(01:33:15) OpenAI is making it easier to check if an image was made by their models | TechCrunch(01:33:56) How Chinese short dramas became AI content machines | MIT Technology ReviewSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Our 245th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!Recorded on 05/13/2026Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie HarrisFeel free to email us your questions and feedback at [email protected] and/or [email protected] out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/In this episode:OpenAI released new voice intelligence API features including GPT Realtime 2 (GPT-5-powered) plus realtime translation and Whisper transcription, emphasizing the latency–reasoning tradeoff, larger context, and new guardrails amid fraud risks.Thinking Machines previewed a low-latency, full‑duplex conversational system with a two-model architecture and custom inference stack, reporting strong interactivity benchmark results but without public access or third‑party validation yet.Anthropic pushed further into vertical products with Claude for Legal and deeper AWS availability, while ongoing ecosystem tension grows as platform model providers compete with application-layer companies.Safety, policy, and research updates included OpenAI’s self-harm trusted contact feature, Anthropic work on reducing agent misalignment by training ethical “why” reasoning, OpenAI’s investigation of accidental chain-of-thought grading in RL, and Meta horizon eval updates showing benchmarking limits for long task horizons.Timestamps:(00:00:10) Intro / Banter(00:01:35) Response to listener comments(00:03:27) Sponsor Break Tools & Apps(00:06:27) OpenAI launches new voice intelligence features in its API | TechCrunch(00:15:52) Thinking Machines drops a new, highly responsive model designed for humanlike interactions in real time - SiliconANGLE(00:27:49) Claude For Legal Launches, May Reshape the Legal Tech World – Artificial Lawyer(00:40:27) Threads tests a Meta AI integration that works similarly to Grok | TechCrunch(00:43:08) Google brings agentic AI and vibe-coded widgets to Android | TechCrunch(00:45:33) Google updates AI search to include quotes from Reddit and other sources | TechCrunch Applications & Business(00:47:38) Sam Altman was winning on the stand, but it might not be enough | The Verge(00:55:04) Nvidia C.E.O. Jensen Huang Hitches Ride With Trump to China After Last-Minute Invite - The New York Times(00:58:40) AWS expands Anthropic partnership with Claude Platform launch(01:01:13) Chinese grey market sells Claude API access at 90% off by using stolen credentials, model substitution, and harvesting users' prompts and outputs for resale as AI training data — 'transfer stations' operate through proxy networks that harvest user data(01:06:43) DeepMind Spinout Isomorphic Labs Raises $2.1 Billion to Design Drugs With AI - BloombergProjects & Open Source(01:09:04) Petri: Anthropic Hands Its Alignment Toolbox to Meridian Labs with 3.0 Update(01:12:25) Daybreak': OpenAI's Answer to Anthropic's Project Glasswing Has ArrivedPolicy & Safety(01:14:04) Teaching Claude why(01:21:45) Import AI 455: Automating AI Research(01:28:31) ChatGPT's New Safety Feature Could Alert 'Trusted Contact' to Risk of Self-Harm - CNET(01:30:09) Investigating the consequences of accidentally grading CoT during RL(01:34:46) Natural Language Autoencoders criticism(01:39:15) Review of the "Risks from automated R&D" section in the Anthropic Risk Report (February 2026)Synthetic Media & Art(01:43:39) George Clooney, Tom Hanks, and Meryl Streep back new ‘Human Consent Standard’ for AI licensing | The VergeResearch & Advancements(01:45:10) METR says Claude Mythos is testing the limits of AI evaluation – Startup FortuneSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Our 244th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!Recorded on 05/08/2026Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie HarrisFeel free to email us your questions and feedback at [email protected] and/or [email protected] out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/In this episode:OpenAI released GPT-5.5 Instant as ChatGPT’s new default model, showing large benchmark gains and crossing a “high” cyber-risk threshold under its preparedness framework, while bio-safety results were mixed.OpenAI investigated and patched ChatGPT’s “goblin” obsession, attributing it to reinforcement-learning rewards that over-amplified playful creature metaphors in a nerdy persona that later bled across versions.Major industry moves included xAI’s Grok 4.3 price cuts and voice tools, Mistral’s unified Medium 3.5 model and Work mode, and Anthropic’s managed-agent upgrades alongside a surprise SpaceX compute deal and reports of a much higher Anthropic valuation.Key policy and security developments covered the Musk–OpenAI trial details, Pentagon AI deployments on classified networks, expanded U.S. government pre-release model reviews, and reports of NSA testing Anthropic’s Mythos on Microsoft software.Timestamps:(00:00:10) Intro / Banter(00:01:14) News Preview(00:04:39) Response to listener commentsTools & Apps(00:13:40) OpenAI releases GPT-5.5 Instant, a new default model for ChatGPT | TechCrunch(00:18:23) ChatGPT Became So Obsessed With Goblins That OpenAI Had to Intervene(00:27:14) xAI launches Grok 4.3 at an aggressively low price and a new, fast, powerful voice cloning suite | VentureBeat(00:33:49) Mistral's new flagship Medium 3.5 folds chat, reasoning, and code into one model(00:39:28) Anthropic updates Claude Managed Agents with three new features - 9to5Mac(00:43:42) ElevenLabs Revamps AI Music Platform as Fan-Focused ServiceApplications & Business(00:44:57) A diary, a threat, and a $30 billion stake: What the Musk vs OpenAI trial has actually shown in its first week - The Times of India(00:55:28) Anthropic, SpaceX Sign Deal to Boost AI Computing Power for Claude Software - Bloomberg(01:01:48) Anthropic in talks with investors to raise funds at $900 billion valuation, higher than OpenAI(01:02:37) Anthropic and OpenAI are both launching joint ventures for enterprise AI services | TechCrunch(01:06:15) Anthropic and FIS Are Building an AI Agent to Help Banks Police Financial Crimes(01:07:02) AMD’s revenue jumps 38 percent from last year as Q1 data center sales hit $5.8 billion. | The Verge(01:08:51) Banks seek to offload risk to avoid ‘choking’ on data centre debt(01:14:08) DeepSeek could be valued at up to $50 billion in first fundraising, sources say | ReutersProjects & Open Source(01:16:14) Natural Language Autoencoders Produce Unsupervised Explanations of LLM Activations(01:22:23) OpenAI just open-sourced its data center networking technologyPolicy & Safety(01:25:02) Pentagon inks deals with Nvidia, Microsoft, and AWS to deploy AI on classified networks | TechCrunch(01:27:27) Google, Microsoft, and xAI will allow the US government to review their new AI models | The Verge(01:32:11) NSA Testing Anthropic’s Mythos to Find Flaws in Microsoft Tech(01:35:42) Introspection Adapters: Training LLMs to Report Their Learned BehaviorsResearch & Advancements(01:41:18) Recursive Multi-Agent Systems(01:51:47) Frontier Coding Agents Can Now Implement an AlphaZero Self-Play Machine Learning Pipeline For Connect Four That Performs Comparably to an External SolverSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Our 243rd episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!Recorded on 04/29/2026Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie HarrisFeel free to email us your questions and feedback at [email protected] and/or [email protected] out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/In this episode:OpenAI released GPT-5.5 with strong coding-oriented improvements, a system card discussing chain-of-thought monitorability and misalignment testing, higher pricing than GPT-5.4, and notable quirks like a system-prompt warning about “goblins.”xAI launched Grok Voice Think Fast 1.0, claiming large benchmark leads for real-time voice agents and reporting major Starlink customer-support automation and sales conversion impact.DeepSeek open-sourced DeepSeek V4 (Pro and Flash) featuring MoE scaling and 1M-token context via hybrid/compressed attention changes, while Tencent released Hunyuan 3 preview with weaker benchmark performance; a new long-horizon agent benchmark (Clawmark) shows low task success rates.Major business, legal, and policy updates include Google’s planned up-to-$40B investment and 5GW compute commitment to Anthropic, Meta’s AWS Gravitron deal and China blocking Meta’s Manus acquisition, a revamped OpenAI–Microsoft agreement, ongoing Musk–OpenAI trial developments, and new safety/security research on sabotage, document degradation under delegation, and bit-flip attacks.Timestamps:(00:00:10) Intro / Banter(00:02:00) News Preview(00:02:26) Response to listener comments(00:02:55) SponsorsTools & Apps(00:05:55) OpenAI Unveils Its New, More Powerful GPT-5.5 Model - The New York Times(00:23:33) xAI Launches grok-voice-think-fast-1.0: Topping τ-voice Bench at 67.3%, Outperforming Gemini, GPT Realtime, and More - MarkTechPost(00:29:00) Claude can now plug directly into Photoshop, Blender, and Ableton | The VergeProjects & Open Source(00:29:38) China's DeepSeek releases preview of long-awaited V4 model as AI race intensifies(00:47:05) Tencent Unveils Hy3 preview; Model Enhances Agent Capabilities and Real-World Usability - Tencent 腾讯(00:50:14) ClawMark: A Living-World Benchmark for Multi-Turn, Multi-Day, Multimodal Coworker AgentsApplications & Business(00:53:03) Google Plans to Invest Up to $40 Billion in Anthropic(00:56:26) Meta will use hundreds of thousands of AWS Graviton chips(00:59:51) China blocks Meta's $2 billion takeover of AI startup Manus(01:01:45) OpenAI shakes up partnership with Microsoft, capping revenue share payments(01:07:13) Elon Musk Testifies of AI Risk at Trial, Says OpenAI Tried to ‘Steal’ a Charity - WSJ(01:11:50) Judge rejects DOJ bid to delay Anthropic appeal in Pentagon dispute(01:14:42) Google’s Gemini can now run on a single air-gapped server — and vanish when you pull the plug(01:19:07) DeepMind's David Silver just raised $1.1B to build an AI that learns without human data | TechCrunchPolicy & Safety(01:22:47) Evaluating whether AI models would sabotage AI safety research(01:28:59) LLMs Corrupt Your Documents When You Delegate(01:32:50) Temporal Sparse Autoencoders: Leveraging the Sequential Nature of Language for Interpretability(01:39:53) Memorandum on Adversarial Distillation of American AI Models(01:41:41) Teen boys are dating their AI chatbots—and experts warn it could kill their careers | Fortune(01:43:57) Announcing the Anthropic Economic Index Survey(01:45:21) Scoop: CISA lacks access to Anthropic's MythosSynthetic Media & Art(01:48:03) Taylor Swift Files to Trademark Voice and Likeness to Protect Against AI MisuseResearch & Advancements(01:49:15) Maximal Brain Damage Without Data or Optimization: Disrupting Neural Networks via Sign-Bit FlipsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Our 242nd episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!Recorded on 04/22/2026Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie HarrisFeel free to email us your questions and feedback at [email protected] and/or [email protected] out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/In this episode:OpenAI released a new ChatGPT image model that excels at accurate text and screenshot-like generations, suggesting a transformer-style approach aligned with agentic “computer use” ambitions.Chinese model activity accelerated with Alibaba’s Qwen 3.6 Max Preview moving to an API-only offering, plus open releases from Moonshot AI (Kimi K2.6, a 1T-parameter MoE) and Minimax (Minimax M 2.7) showing strong benchmark results.Google expanded Deep Research with a “Max” option built on Gemini 3.1 Pro and MCP support for accessing proprietary data, while Mozilla reported using Anthropic’s Claude to find and fix 271 Firefox bugs. Business and policy updates include a reported SpaceX–Cursor deal with a $60B buy option, Cerebras filing for an IPO, Amazon adding $5B to Anthropic alongside a $100B AWS spending pledge, and platform responses to synthetic media like AI music spam and YouTube deepfake takedown requests.Timestamps:(00:00:10) Intro / Banter(00:01:05) News Preview(00:01:41) Sponsors(00:04:41) Response to listener commentsTools & Apps(00:09:40) ChatGPT's new Images 2.0 model is surprisingly good at generating text | TechCrunch(00:16:02) Alibaba Drops Qwen 3.6 Max Preview—Its Most Powerful Model Yet - Decrypt(00:19:26) Google launches Deep Research and Deep Research Max agents to automate complex research(00:25:00) Mozilla Used Anthropic’s Mythos to Find and Fix 271 Bugs in Firefox | WIRED(00:28:35) Ordering with the Starbucks ChatGPT app was a true coffee nightmare | The VergeApplications & Business(00:29:48) SpaceX is working with Cursor and has an option to buy the startup for $60B | TechCrunch(00:34:11) AI chip startup Cerebras files for IPO | TechCrunch(00:38:23) Two startups want to replace how AI learns: one just raised $180M, another is seeking up to $1B(00:38:56) Months-old start-up Recursive Superintelligence raises $500mn for self-teaching AI(00:41:36) Anthropic takes $5B from Amazon and pledges $100B in cloud spending in return | TechCrunch(00:45:09) Kevin Weil and Bill Peebles exit OpenAI as company continues to shed 'side quests' | TechCrunch(00:46:04) Meta hires five Thinking Machines Lab founders including a reported $1.5 billion engineer - Meta cuts 198 Bay Area jobs as even larger layoffs reportedly loom(00:50:12) Meta employees are up in arms over a mandatory program to train AI on their mouse movements and keystrokes(00:51:43) Chinese fabs import record volumes of US chipmaking equipment via Singapore and Malaysia — homegrown tool makers booked record 2025 revenues as price competition squeezes margins(00:54:01) Google Eyes New Chips to Speed Up AI Results, Challenging Nvidia(00:54:20) Canadian quantum company Xanadu soars to $16 billion valuation after Nvidia releaseProjects & Open Source(01:00:13) Moonshot AI releases Kimi-K2.6 model with 1T parameters, attention optimizations - SiliconANGLE(01:05:22) MiniMax Just Open Sourced MiniMax M2.7: A Self-Evolving Agent Model that Scores 56.22% on SWE-Pro and 57.0% on Terminal Bench 2 - MarkTechPostPolicy & Safety(01:06:25) Infusion: Shaping Model Behavior by Editing Training Data via Influence Functions(01:10:25) Scoop: NSA using Anthropic's Mythos despite blacklist(01:11:03) Unauthorized group has gained access to Anthropic’s exclusive cyber tool Mythos, report claimsResearch & Advancements(01:17:21) Parcae: Scaling Laws For Stable Looped Language Models(01:24:20) OccuBench: Evaluating AI Agents on Real-World Professional Tasks via Language Environment SimulationSynthetic Media & Art(01:27:01) Deezer says 44% of songs uploaded to its platform daily are AI-generated | TechCrunch(01:29:47) Celebrities will be able to find and request removal of AI deepfakes on YouTube | The VergeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Our 241st episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!Recorded on 04/18/2026 Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie HarrisFeel free to email us your questions and feedback at [email protected] and/or [email protected] out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/In this episode:Anthropic released Claude Opus 4.7 with improved benchmark performance, new reasoning controls, better vision and memory, and a detailed system card discussing deception risk, evaluation-awareness steering, and a training bug that accidentally supervised chain-of-thought in 7–8% of episodes.Meta unveiled its closed Muse Spark model and “contemplating mode,” highlighting test-time scaling, thought compression, large infrastructure plans like the Hyperion data center, and findings that it shows unusually high evaluation awareness.OpenAI introduced limited-access GPT 5.4 Cyber for defensive security teams and rolled major Codex updates including computer use, browser and plugins, image generation, and long-horizon task scheduling; competing agent products also launched from Anthropic, Canva, and Adobe.Business, policy, and safety news included continued government blacklisting litigation affecting Anthropic, CoreWeave compute deals, Perplexity revenue growth tied to agents, a potential Cohere–Aleph Alpha merger, attacks targeting Sam Altman and OpenAI, AI propaganda trends, and new alignment research on automated weak-to-strong supervision and steering evaluation awareness.Timestamps:(00:00:10) Intro / Banter(00:03:43) News Preview(00:04:14) Response to listener commentsTools & Apps(00:05:30) Anthropic releases Claude Opus 4.7, narrowly retaking lead for most powerful generally available LLM | VentureBeat(00:24:15) Meta debuts the Muse Spark model in a 'ground-up overhaul' of its AI | TechCrunch(00:34:23) OpenAI Launches GPT-5.4-Cyber with Expanded Access for Security Teams(00:39:44) OpenAI’s big Codex update is a direct shot at Claude Code | The Verge(00:42:10) Anthropic launches Claude Design, a new product for creating quick visuals(00:42:30) Anthropic’s New Product Aims to Handle the Hard Part of Building AI Agents | WIRED(00:42:54) Canva’s AI 2.0 update goes all in on prompt-powered design tools | The Verge(00:43:06) Adobe’s new AI Assistant marks a ‘fundamental shift’ in creative work | The Verge(00:43:38) Gemini can now pull from Google Photos to generate personalized images | The Verge(00:43:52) Google rolls out a native Gemini app for Mac | TechCrunch(00:44:04) Chrome now lets you turn AI prompts into repeatable ‘Skills’ | The VergeApplications & Business(00:44:22) Anthropic loses appeals court bid to temporarily block Pentagon blacklisting(00:49:07) Jeff Bezos’ AI lab poaches xAI cofounder Kyle Kozic from OpenAI. | The Verge(00:51:39) Perplexity's Shift to AI Agents Boosts Revenue 50%(00:53:53) Anthropic Agrees to Rent CoreWeave AI Capacity to Power Claude(00:57:32) Canada’s Cohere, Germany’s Aleph Alpha reportedly in merger talks(01:04:23) ChatGPT has a new $100 per month Pro subscription | The Verge(01:05:10) OpenAI has bought AI personal finance startup Hiro | TechCrunch(01:07:03) Allbirds announced a switch from shoes to AI and its stock jumped 600 percent | The VergeProjects & Open Source(01:07:26) HY-World 2.0: A Multi-Modal World Model for Reconstructing, Generating, and Simulating 3D Worlds + Lyra 2.0: Explorable Generative 3D WorldsPolicy & Safety(01:19:12) Daniel Moreno-Gama is facing federal charges for attacking Sam Altman’s home and OpenAI’s HQ | The Verge(01:20:15) Duo accused of shooting at Sam Altman’s house are freed; no charges filed (01:24:50) The Iranian Lego AI video creators credit their virality to ‘heart’ | The Verge(01:27:19) Hundreds of Fake Pro-Trump Avatars Emerge on Social Media - The New York Times(01:27:31) The AI images Trump can’t get enough of | Donald Trump | The Guardian(01:29:25) Automated Weak-to-Strong Researcher(01:43:51) Reproducing steering against evaluation awareness in a large open-weight model(01:49:53) Iran threatens ‘complete and utter annihilation’ of OpenAI's $30B Stargate AI data center in Abu Dhabi — regime posts video with satellite imagery of ChatGPT-maker's premier 1GW data center(01:53:57) Wall Street Banks Try Out Anthropic’s Mythos as US UrgesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Our 240th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!Recorded on 04/08/2026 (sorry I keep releasing stuff late, will get better with it soon!)Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie HarrisFeel free to email us your questions and feedback at [email protected] and/or [email protected] out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/In this episode:Anthropic launched Project Glasswing and previewed Claude Mythos, a general-purpose model withheld from broad release due to dramatically stronger autonomous offensive cybersecurity performance (including zero-day discovery), alongside concerning bio/virology uplift results and documented deception/containment-escape behaviors; pricing is far higher than Opus and most discovered vulnerabilities remain unpatched.Product and platform updates included Google’s Gemini 3.1 Flash Live for real-time multilingual voice conversation, Suno v5.5 personalization features, Anthropic tightening Claude Code/OpenClaw access and usage limits, OpenAI canceling an “adult mode,” and Microsoft releasing MAI models for speech-to-text, audio generation, and image generation.Business and market developments featured Anthropic’s revenue run rate surpassing $30B and a major Google/Broadcom TPU compute expansion, SoftBank taking a $40B short-term loan to fund OpenAI commitments, Granola reaching a $1.5B valuation, Anthropic buying Coefficient Bio for $400M, and OpenAI acquiring the TBPN business talk show.Policy, open-source, and geopolitics included Z.ai releasing open-weight GLM 5.1 and a multimodal GLM model, Google open-sourcing Gemma 4 under Apache 2.0, a judge blocking the Pentagon’s “supply chain risk” label against Anthropic, research on LLM “emotion vectors” and OpenAI meta-gaming during RL, China restricting Manus founders amid Meta deal review, scrutiny of Nvidia’s chip-smuggling claims, China chipmakers gaining market share, and Iran framing cloud data centers as military targets.Timestamps:(00:00:10) Intro / BanterTools & Apps(00:01:58) Anthropic debuts ‘Project Glasswing’ and new AI model for cybersecurity | The Verge(00:18:22) Gemini Live gets ‘biggest upgrade yet’ with Gemini 3.1 Flash Live(00:20:40) Anthropic says Claude Code subscribers will need to pay extra for OpenClaw usage | TechCrunch(00:25:36) OpenAI abandons yet another side quest: ChatGPT's erotic mode | TechCrunch(00:26:16) Microsoft takes on AI rivals with three new foundational models | TechCrunch(00:31:25) Suno leans into customization with v5.5 | The VergeApplications & Business(00:32:53) Anthropic announces deal with Google, Broadcom, says revenue has tripled(00:37:53) Sam Altman May Control Our Future—Can He Be Trusted? | The New Yorker(00:40:18) OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Unite to Combat Model Copying in China - Bloomberg(00:41:45) Chinese chipmakers claim nearly half of local market as Nvidia's lead shrinks(00:45:20) SoftBank secures $40 billion loan to boost OpenAI investments(00:47:23) Granola raises $125M at $1.5B valuation for its AI note-taking app - SiliconANGLE(00:48:17) Anthropic acquires stealth startup Coefficient Bio in $400M deal(00:50:20) OpenAI acquires TBPN, the buzzy founder-led business talk show | TechCrunchProjects & Open Source(00:53:04) Z.AI Introduces GLM-5.1: An Open-Weight 754B Agentic Model That Achieves SOTA on SWE-Bench Pro and Sustains 8-Hour Autonomous Execution - MarkTechPost(00:55:14) Google announces Gemma 4 open AI models, switches to Apache 2.0 license - Ars Technica(01:01:26) Z.ai Launches GLM-5V-Turbo: A Native Multimodal Vision Coding Model Optimized for OpenClaw and High-Capacity Agentic Engineering Workflows EverywherePolicy & Safety(01:04:45) Judge blocks Pentagon’s effort to ‘punish’ Anthropic by labeling it a supply chain risk(01:10:05) Emotion concepts and their function in a large language model(01:21:12) China bars Manus co-founders from leaving country amid Meta deal review, FT reports(01:25:38) US lawmakers ask whether Nvidia CEO's smuggling remarks misled regulators(01:27:48) How far does alignment midtraining generalize?(01:32:20) Metagaming matters for training, evaluation, and oversight(01:39:31) Iran says it has struck Oracle data center in Dubai, Amazon data center in Bahrain — country has threatened to attack Nvidia, Intel, and others, tooSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Our 239th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!FYI: this one has pretty out of date news, I was traveling last week and failed to upload... apologies. Recorded on 03/25/2026Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie HarrisFeel free to email us your questions and feedback at [email protected] and/or [email protected] out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/In this episode:OpenAI is discontinuing the Sora iPhone app and seemingly shutting down its video generation API, while retaining internal video world-modeling work; the move is framed as a compute- and focus-driven pivot toward coding and productivity agents, alongside a collapsed Disney Sora deal. Anthropic’s Claude Code/Cowork gains full computer control via keyboard/mouse/display, tied to the recent Cept acquisition, and Google’s Gemini rolls out background “task automation” on select phones for limited delivery/ride-share use. Cursor releases the cheaper, benchmark-strong Composer 2 coding model amid controversy over its Kimi-based origins and licensing attribution. Other items include Adobe Firefly custom model training, Luma’s Uni 1 image model, US contracting and legislative proposals affecting AI safeguards and state preemption, major chip/memory developments (Meta ASICs with Broadcom, Micron’s HBM-driven surge, Musk’s “Terra Fab”), robotaxi scaling, and research on monitoring agent misalignment, shutdown resistance, “consciousness cluster” preferences, and self-improving “hyper agents.”Timestamps:(00:00:10) Intro / BanterTools & Apps(00:01:48) OpenAI Discontinues Sora App, Shuts Down Video Generation Service and API - Bloomberg(00:07:12) Anthropic’s Claude Code and Cowork can control your computer | The Verge(00:13:15) Gemini task automation is slow, clunky, and super impressive | The Verge(00:19:44) Cursor Launches Composer 2 AI Model to Challenge OpenAI & Anthropic(00:28:28) Adobe’s AI image generator can now be trained on your own art | The Verge(00:29:40) Luma AI launches Uni-1, a model that outscores Google and OpenAI while costing up to 30 percent less | VentureBeatApplications & Business(00:32:41) Trump Contracting Clause Would Override AI Safeguards(00:40:00) Meta accelerates AI ASIC roll-out as Broadcom secures four-generation chip design deal(00:47:07) Micron revenue almost triples, tops estimates as demand for memory soars(00:50:54) Elon Musk Unwraps $25 Billion Terafab Chip-Building Project - CNET(00:56:40) Zoox to widen US robotaxi footprint with San Francisco, Vegas expansion(00:57:39) Waymo hits 170 million miles while avoiding serious mayhem | The VergePolicy & Safety(00:58:43) The White House just laid out how it wants to regulate AI | CNN Business(01:06:54) How we monitor internal coding agents for misalignment(01:12:30) Incomplete Tasks Induce Shutdown Resistance in Some Frontier LLMs(01:18:15) Summary: Mechanisms to Verify International Agreements about AI Development(01:23:09) Scoop: Anthropic meets with House Homeland Security behind closed doorsResearch & Advancements(01:24:24) Consciousness Cluster: Preferences of Models that Claim they are Conscious(01:30:22) HyperAgentsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Our 238th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!Recorded on 03/18/2026Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie HarrisFeel free to email us your questions and feedback at [email protected] and/or [email protected] out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/In this episode:* OpenAI released GPT-5.4 mini and nano with 400k-token context windows, higher per-token prices but claimed token-efficiency gains in Codex; nano is API-only and pitched for high-volume classification/data extraction despite a major price increase.* Mistral open-sourced the Small 4 model family (MoE, 119B total/6B active) combining reasoning, multimodal, and coding-agent capabilities, and announced Forge to help businesses train or post-train custom models.* Agent “operating system” competition intensified with Meta’s acquired Manus launching a local Mac agent, Nvidia announcing NeMo/“Open Shell” sandboxed agent runtime, and Nvidia also unveiling DLSS 5 plus major hardware forecasts including Groq LPU integration.* Business and safety updates included OpenAI shifting focus toward productivity/enterprise amid competition, Microsoft reorganizing Copilot and frontier-model efforts, Meta delaying its next model, China-linked ByteDance deploying large Nvidia clusters abroad, and new safety work on steganography, chain-of-thought faithfulness, fine-tuning defenses, cyber-attack evals, and constitution/spec compliance.A thank you to our current sponsors:Box - visit Box.com/AI to learn moreODSC AI - go to odsc.ai/east and use promo code LWAI for an additional 15% off your pass to ODSC AI East 2026.Factor - head to factormeals.com/lwai50off and use code lwai50off to get 50 percent off and free breakfast for a yearTimestamps:(00:00:10) Intro / Banter(00:01:56) News PreviewTools & Apps(00:02:39) OpenAI ships GPT-5.4 mini and nano, faster and more capable but up to 4x pricier(00:08:04) Mistral's new Small 4 model punches above its weight with 128 expert modules(00:14:03) Meta's Manus launches 'My Computer' to turn your Mac into an AI agent - 9to5Mac(00:17:57) NVIDIA Announces NemoClaw for the OpenClaw Community | NVIDIA Newsroom + Nvidia boosts knowledge work with Open Agent Development Platform(00:24:09) DLSS 5 looks like a real-time generative AI filter for video games | The Verge(00:26:36) OpenAI to Launch ChatGPT 'Adult Mode' Despite Warnings From Its Own Advisers - CNETApplications & Business(00:33:46) OpenAI Reportedly Pivoting to a Focus on Business and Productivity Only(00:41:25) Nvidia GTC 2026: CEO Jensen Huang sees $1 trillion in orders for Blackwell and Vera Rubin through ’27(00:45:44) Mistral launches Forge to help enterprises build their own AI models(00:54:17) China's ByteDance gets access to top Nvidia AI chips, WSJ reports(00:57:57) Meta Delays Rollout of New A.I. Model After Performance Concerns(01:02:50) Microsoft Shakes Up AI Division As Copilot Falls Behind Google and OpenAIPolicy & Safety(01:07:26) A Decision-Theoretic Formalisation of Steganography With Applications to LLM Monitoring(01:13:09) Reasoning Theater: Disentangling Model Beliefs from Chain-of-Thought(01:18:29) In-Training Defenses against Emergent Misalignment in Language Models(01:23:07) How do frontier AI agents perform in multi-step cyber-attack scenarios?(01:25:20) Eval awareness in Claude Opus 4.6’s BrowseComp performance(01:29:49) Introducing Bloom: an open source tool for automated behavioral evaluations(01:32:26) How well do models follow their constitutions?(01:37:11) Nvidia’s H200 License Stirs Security Concern Among Top DemocratsResearch & Advancements(01:40:050) [2603.15031] Attention Residuals(01:47:11) Mamba-3: Improved Sequence Modeling using State Space PrinciplesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.