Ai Artificial Intelligence Archive

A recent study from the Oversight Board found that leading AI systems are less likely to criticize authoritarian governments than democratic ones.

A fascinating book review. “Muskism, in reading its subject as more a symptom than a person, doesn’t offer any kind of psychological interpretation of Musk’s worldview, but many of his pronouncements and preoccupations reveal an ontological confusion of the categories of human and machine.”

The hedge fund Situational Awareness, founded by former OpenAI employee Leopold Aschenbrenner, who had no previous hedge fund experience, “rapidly sold a large portion of its public equity holdings” as losses mounted. The fund employed only eight people, of whom four were investment professionals. Aschenbrenner named the fund after some essays he wrote.

Francis deSouza will begin as CEO on August 10, taking over from the interim CEO who has been leading the company since Alexandr Wang, its founder and former CEO, joined Meta in June 2025. Joe Osborne, a spokesperson for Scale AI, said the company’s new focus on building AI applications for enterprises and governments, rather than solely data labeling, has it projecting more than $1 billion in 2026 revenue.

Weng had left OpenAI along with a handful of other employees to co-found the competing AI startup, which was helmed by Mira Murati, OpenAI’s former CTO. Weng recently shared a note that after being “absent for a month” to focus on her health leading up to Thinking Machines Lab’s first model release, Inkling, she was making the decision to leave behind “consistent stress and workload” to pursue “a scoped role in a more predictable place.” She is reportedly already back at OpenAI.

Google is bringing its Nano Banana 2 image generation model to Google Earth, allowing you to generate AI images using the satellite, aerial, and 3D imagery in the web app. Some examples shared by Google show how you can give a building a makeover, visualize projects, or create an infographic about what you’re seeing.

In Meta’s latest earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg said that time spent on Instagram globally this quarter has increased by “double digits year-over-year,” largely driven by improvements to its AI-powered recommendations algorithm that keeps people hooked. The proclamation comes amid concerns (and legal battles) around Instagram’s “addictive” design.

Having surpassed the threshold of 45 million monthly users in the bloc, both services will be required to clamp down on illegal and harmful content per the EU’s strict DSA rules. Roblox and ChatGPT search will have to comply as soon as August, per Bloomberg’s sources.

Building the data centers needed to support the AI boom requires lots of skilled human tradespeople working 10-hour days, seven days a week, and earning healthy overtime wages. Bidding wars have broken out in markets with heavy data center construction, allowing workers to jump ship for bonuses and even higher pay in a modern-day gold rush, with companies like Google, Meta, and Microsoft paying to help train new recruits.

Samsung Electronic’s memory chip business is killing it, hitting $49.64 billion for the quarter and driving over 99 percent of its operating profit. But the price gouging created by the AI hype caused its smartphone and home-appliance businesses to post modest operating losses due to the higher cost of chips and other components.

In the process of getting through his thoughts, he does a pretty good riff about the people who say they “make” stuff with AI. As for Musk’s version of The Odyssey, Johnson says, “I’m excited for the Cyclops to have two eyes.”