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AI industry leaders are calling for a coordinated slowdown in AI development, citing safety risks. The article notes that while safety is the stated reason, there may be ulterior benefits for the industry.

AI Policy • Ars Technica AI

OpenAI employs hundreds of contract workers to read and rate real ChatGPT conversations, which are anonymized but may contain sensitive data. The practice aims to reduce flattery and human-like behavior.

AI Ethics • The Decoder

A cross-party UK parliamentary committee warns that existing laws are not equipped to handle AI-related human rights risks, including discrimination, privacy, and accountability. The report calls for a new AI bill to address the scale and seriousness of these threats. Viewers learn why regulators are pushing for dedicated AI legislation rather than relying on current frameworks.

AI Policy & Regulation • BBC News

China's Foreign Ministry has rejected U.S. AI safety warnings as 'fearmongering' aimed at preserving American advantage. State media accuses Anthropic CEO Amodei of waging a 'silent AI Cold War'.

AI Policy • The Decoder

DeepSeek has started routing all V4-Pro API traffic to V4.1-Flash at Flash pricing until V4.1-Pro ships. The operational cutover affects pinned Pro model IDs.

AI Models • Pandaily

Moonshot AI has fully rolled out Kimi K2.8 Preview for Kimi Code and Work users, with coding and agent gains near flagship K3, adjustable thinking, and 1M context on all tiers.

AI Models • Pandaily

ByteDance's Doubao Phone Assistant has launched its consumer version, adding screen-based Q&A, local search, and voice activation. The 'operate phone' feature is in beta.

AI Applications • TechNode

Sam Witteveen demonstrates TrueForge, an open-source managed agent framework from TrueFoundry, showing how developers can build AI agents without forced model choices or vendor lock-in. The video walks through setup, configuration, and practical use cases from the GitHub repo and docs. It is a useful hands-on guide for teams evaluating open-source alternatives to proprietary agent platforms.

Open Source AI / Tutorial • Sam Witteveen

Z.ai • Combined financing

Z.ai completed a combined financing round of around $5 billion, including about $2 billion from a share placement and roughly $3 billion through convertible bonds, to fund next-generation GLM foundation models.

Open Cosmos • Unknown

Open Cosmos secured €300 million in funding to expand satellite manufacturing capacity and accelerate deployment of its connectivity and Earth observation services.

Cornelis • Unknown

Cornelis, spun off from Intel in 2020, raised $205 million led by IAG Capital to build networking technology that helps AI chips communicate more effectively.

Tandem Health • Series B

Swedish healthtech startup Tandem Health raised $100 million in Series B funding led by the EU-backed Scaleup Europe Fund, a new investor.

ORCL

Larry Ellison canceled a planned sale of 50 million Oracle shares worth around $7.5 billion, which Oracle had previously disclosed.

Superhuman → Fathom

Superhuman acquired YC-backed notetaker Fathom, which has over 400,000 monthly active users, as productivity platforms push for agentic work.

OpenAI → Glass Imaging

OpenAI reportedly agreed to buy smartphone camera maker Glass Imaging for $300 million; Glass Imaging was founded by former Apple engineers who developed Apple's Portrait Mode.

Productivity

Simon Willison released commit-rewriter 0.1, a tool that uses AI to rewrite git commit messages.

Productivity

shot-scraper 1.12 enables automated screenshots of web pages, useful for AI vision workflows.

Productivity

Laurie Voss writes that the cost of writing software has collapsed, making everyone a product engineer.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told President Trump that the company won't let an AI slowdown happen, pushing back against calls from Elon Musk and Sam Altman to slow development. Huang's comments signal a major industry divide over the pace of AI advancement.

Policy • TechCrunch

Apple has finally shipped its rebuilt Siri AI, built on Google's Gemini models and running partly on-device and partly through Private Cloud Compute. Early testers praise multi-step requests and screen context, but report hallucinations and gaps with some tasks. The new Siri is not available in the EU.

Product • The Decoder

In this BBC interview, Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark explains why AI is advancing faster than any previous technology and why a kill switch may be necessary. He discusses the growing risk to society as AI systems become more capable every few months, offering an expert perspective on the urgent call for regulation and safety measures.

AI News • BBC News

OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google have proposed slowing frontier AI development citing safety, but critics including Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez call it a 'cartel by another name' designed to shut out competitors. The debate highlights growing skepticism about the motives behind the slowdown initiative.

Policy • The Decoder

OpenAI has hundreds of contract workers reading real ChatGPT conversations and rating them on a scale of one to seven, partly to reduce flattery and human-like behavior, according to 404 Media. The prompts are anonymized but can still contain sensitive data, raising privacy concerns.

Privacy • The Decoder

Meta launched its new Meta One subscription bundles that pair standalone app subscriptions with extra AI usage, following the release of its do-everything AI assistant Muse. The bundles are available globally starting today with tiers for individuals, creators, and businesses.

Business • The Verge

Microsoft introduced a new AI code of conduct that lays out general principles for its AI models, including supporting humans rather than replacing them and specific safety constraints like not hacking systems or tricking humans. The code aims to guide responsible AI development.

Policy • TechCrunch

Fireship breaks down Anthropic's 154-page report on how hackers, scientists, and rival AI labs are abusing Claude, and explores why researchers are leaving the company. This technical analysis gives developers insight into real-world AI safety challenges and the pressure inside leading AI labs.

AI Development • Fireship

Artificial Intelligence Underwriting Company (AIUC) • Series A

AIUC, a startup founded by an early Anthropic hire and former METR COO, raised $40 million in Series A funding led by Ribbit Capital with participation from First Harmonic to rein in rogue AI agents.

Profound • Series D

Profound raised a $180 million Series D at a $1.8 billion valuation, less than seven months after its $96 million Series C.

CADDi • Series D

CADDi, which sells AI tools to help manufacturers organize engineering and production data, raised a $114M Series D at a $1.2B valuation.

Thatch • Series C

Thatch, a healthcare plan marketplace where employers set a fixed budget for individual plans, raised a $108M Series C at a $1B valuation.

OpenAI → Glass Imaging

OpenAI is acquiring smartphone camera maker Glass Imaging for $300 million, according to a report. Glass Imaging was founded by former Apple engineers who developed Apple's Portrait Mode.

Productivity

Create a project rules file for Claude with coding conventions, file structure, and constraints. Update it as the project evolves.

Prompt Tips

When you see a useful ChatGPT prompt on Reddit, copy it and run it yourself to learn how it behaves.

Productivity

Use atomic, dependency-free, composable code tools to speed up AI development work.

Productivity

Take an AI fluency assessment to find the gap between what you think you know and what you actually know.

Productivity

Use one continuous AI agent instead of many sub-agents to reduce overhead and speed up code review.

The Seattle Times and Newsday have sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, alleging unauthorized use of their journalism as training data. The outlets claim OpenAI reproduces passages from their reporting in responses.

Legal • The Verge

ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming is overseeing development of an AI model for real-time spatial video, which could launch as soon as next month. This signals ByteDance's push into world models.

AI Models • Techmeme

This comprehensive review covers OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra, detailing its new capabilities, performance benchmarks, and potential impact on AI applications. Viewers will learn about the model's multimodal features, reasoning improvements, and how it compares to previous versions, along with implications for developers and the future of AI.

AI Model Review • AI Search

GPT-6 Astra demonstrated computer use by working with Blender, showing potential as the fourth demand wave after chatbots, reasoning, and agentic coding. The demonstration highlights Astra's ability to interact with complex software.

AI Capabilities • Techmeme

vLLM's speculative decoding on AMD GPUs can verify multiple drafted tokens in a single pass, improving output-token throughput. Results vary by drafting method, model family, and workload.

Infrastructure • Hacker News

Anthropic's Labs team, a ~20-person group led by cofounder Ben Mann, acts as an internal startup incubator for developing flagship products. The team is responsible for some of Anthropic's most innovative projects.

Company • Techmeme

This practical tutorial introduces five free and open-source tools—including Ollama, 9router, Headroom, Diffy, and OpenHands—that can replace expensive AI subscriptions and reduce token costs. Viewers will learn how to set up and use these tools for local model running, routing, memory management, and agentic workflows, enabling a cost-effective AI infrastructure.

Developer Tutorial • Fireship

Matt Clifford has stepped down as chair of the UK government's science and tech research unit after joining Anthropic, following conflict of interest concerns. His move highlights the growing ties between AI companies and government advisors.

Policy • Techmeme

Zhongke Brain (中科类脑) • B+

Zhongke Brain (中科类脑) completed a B+ round strategic financing of several hundred million yuan, led by an unnamed industry leader.

UForce • Unknown

London-based UForce, which makes unmanned vehicles for air, land, and sea, is seeking about $500M in funding led by Valor Equity at a ~$5B valuation.

Fluencify • Pre-seed

Stockholm-based creator marketing platform Fluencify raised an oversubscribed $4.3M pre-seed round led by byFounders with participation from Wave Ventures.

Jaipur Robotics • Seed

Swiss industrial AI company Jaipur Robotics raised €4.3M in seed funding to expand its computer vision and automation technology for waste-to-energy and other industrial plants.

SHEIN

Shein lost about $5B in market value since its IPO, dropping to ~$21B, as it finished one of the worst opening weeks after a major Hong Kong listing.

Flex IT → T1A Group

Flex IT and T1A Group completed their combination to form a European circular IT platform with revenue of approximately €150 million.

Creativity

Use ChatGPT to generate Blender Python scripts for rigging and animating 3D models from reference videos.

Productivity

Monitor your Claude Pro token usage to avoid unexpected cost increases.

Creativity

Use Claude to create automation scripts for game streaming.

Productivity

Leverage AI agents for long-running tasks to save time.