Author: Andrew

OpenAI Crisis Meets Global AI Backlash (Links) – May 3, 2026
- NY Times: What Elon Musk’s Clash With Sam Altman of OpenAI Is Really About (Apr. 28, 2026)
  Elon Musk’s lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI frames a Silicon Valley fight over profit, power, and broken nonprofit promises, with a trial that exposed internal emails.
- NY Times: Is OpenAI Falling Further Behind in the A.I. Race? (Apr. 28, 2026)
  OpenAI missed user and revenue targets, raising doubts about its spending, market position, and IPO.
- Simon Willison: Speech translation in Google Meet is now rolling out to mobile devices (Apr. 27, 2026)
  Google Meet’s speech translation is rolling out to mobile, translating and replaying speech in the speaker’s voice. It supports English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, and Italian, but is still alpha.
- WSJ: Meta Is Preparing to Have to Undo Its Manus Acquisition After China Ban (Apr. 27, 2026)
- WSJ: OpenAI Misses Key Revenue, User Targets in High-Stakes Sprint Toward IPO (Apr. 27, 2026)
  OpenAI missed user and revenue targets, raising concerns about its heavy data-center commitments and ability to pay future compute contracts.
- OpenAI: Our principles | OpenAI (Apr. 27, 2026)
  Mission: ensure AGI benefits all humanity by putting powerful, general AI into many people’s hands rather than concentrating control.
- Simon Willison: Tracking the history of the now-deceased OpenAI Microsoft AGI clause (Apr. 27, 2026)
  Microsoft and OpenAI renegotiated their deal, ending the AGI-triggered transfer of Microsoft’s exclusive IP rights. Microsoft keeps a non-exclusive license through 2032, OpenAI stopped paying revenue share, and payments to Microsoft continue through 2030 regardless of progress.
- WSJ: Chip Startup Aims to Shatter AI’s Dreaded Memory Wall (Apr. 28, 2026)
  Majestic Labs, started by ex-Google and Meta chip leaders, built Prometheus servers with AIU chips and up to 128 TB of memory to run trillion-parameter models.
- NY Times: Your Doctor’s Notes Might Be Written by an A.I. Algorithm. Here’s What to Know. (Apr. 28, 2026)
  A.I. scribes record doctor visits, create draft notes, and can reduce paperwork and burnout. But they raise privacy, consent, and accuracy concerns.
- Transformer: The AI safety movement needs normies (Apr. 27, 2026)
  Fears about jobs, surveillance, and extinction mean safety advocates must engage the public, build coalitions, and demand political action.
- WSJ: China’s AI ‘Hotel California’ – WSJ (Apr. 27, 2026)
  Beijing blocked Meta’s $2 billion buy of Manus, likely on national-security grounds, after Manus moved to Singapore for foreign capital. Founders were detained, exits were blocked, and Xi aims to keep AI talent within state-owned, state-linked, or party-backed firms.
- NY Times: From Indiana to Idaho, a Backlash Against A.I. Gathers Momentum (Apr. 27, 2026)
  A growing backlash against A.I. is sweeping the U.S., uniting parents, religious leaders, environmentalists, and former Tea Party activists who fear Big Tech will profit while Americans bear the costs.
- NY Times: Elon Musk and Sam Altman Bring OpenAI Trial Spectacle to Oakland (Apr. 27, 2026)
  Elon Musk sues OpenAI and Sam Altman in Oakland, seeking $150 billion and a return to nonprofit, with Musk, Altman, and tech leaders set to testify.
- WSJ: AI Investment Boosted Economic Growth, While Consumers Tapped the Brakes (Apr. 30, 2026)
  U.S. GDP grew 2% annualized in Q1, below forecasts, as strong business investment, especially in AI, offset softer consumer spending.
May 3, 2026
AI Security Risks and Industry Shakeup (Links) – May 2, 2026
- Ben Thompson: An Interview with Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian About the Agentic Moment (Apr. 23, 2026)
  Thomas Kurian outlines Google Cloud’s push for agentic AI with Gemini, secure infrastructure, and deep integration with Google systems.
- WSJ: Microsoft Needs Copilot to Get Back in the Air (Apr. 23, 2026)
  Microsoft’s stock plunged after AI enthusiasm cooled, as Copilot adoption lags and Azure growth slows amid data-center capacity limits.
- SpaceX: SpaceXAI and Cursor (Apr. 23, 2026)
- Simon Willison: Is Claude Code going to cost $100/month? Probably not—it’s all very confusing (Apr. 22, 2026)
  Anthropic briefly moved Claude Code off the $20/month Pro plan to $100–$200/month Max plans on its pricing page, then reverted the change after public outcry. They said it was a small test, but it caused confusion, anger, and lost trust.
- WSJ: Anthropic Probes Possible Unauthorized Access to Mythos AI Model (Apr. 22, 2026)
  Anthropic is probing possible unauthorized access to Mythos via a contractor, stoking fears it could enable cyberattacks.
- NY Times: Anthropic’s New Mythos A.I. Model Sets Off Global Alarms (Apr. 22, 2026)
  Anthropic’s new AI model, Mythos, can find and exploit hidden software flaws, prompting emergency responses from central banks, intelligence agencies, and governments worldwide.
- Martin Alderson: Figma's woes compound with Claude Design (Apr. 18, 2026)
  Regulators in Australia, South Korea, and Singapore are monitoring Anthropic’s Mythos, fearing its advanced coding could expose cybersecurity flaws and threaten banks.
- WSJ: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei Lands White House Meeting as Feud Thaws (Apr. 17, 2026)
  Dario Amodei will meet White House chief of staff Susie Wiles as Anthropic previews its Mythos AI, briefing agencies, and offers advance access to reduce cyber risks.
- NY Times: How Do You Measure an A.I. Boom? (Apr. 17, 2026)
  METR’s time-horizon chart shows A.I. agents’ task-length doubling from seven months to about three to four months, fueling massive investment, hype, and debate.
- NY Times: Want to Speak to the Manager? At a New San Francisco Store, That’s A.I. (Apr. 21, 2026)
  Andon Market in San Francisco is billed as the first retail boutique run by an A.I. agent, Luna, who picked odd inventory, ordered many candles, and set quirky prices.
- NY Times: Leaked Code for Anthropic’s Claude Code Tests Copyright Challenges in A.I. Era (Apr. 22, 2026)
  A leaked Anthropic source code was rewritten by a student using A.I. agents, shared online, and left online despite takedowns for copyright.
- Reuters: Asia regulators monitor Anthropic's Mythos for potential banking risks (Apr. 20, 2026)
  Regulators in Australia, South Korea, and Singapore are monitoring Anthropic’s Mythos, fearing its advanced coding could expose cybersecurity flaws and threaten banks.
- TechCrunch: Stanford report highlights growing disconnect between AI insiders and everyone else (Apr. 13, 2026)
  Stanford’s report finds a growing gap between AI experts, who expect net benefits, and the public, which fears job losses, higher costs, and health impacts.
- NY Times: He Warned About the Dangers of A.I. If Only His Father Had Listened. (Apr. 13, 2026)
  Ben Riley, a skeptical writer about A.I., discovered his father, Joe, had used A.I. research to refuse leukemia treatment, despite doctors’ warnings.
- The Chronicle of Higher Education: Teaching: The students who won’t use AI (Apr. 16, 2026)
  Many students use AI for coursework, but a sizable minority avoid or rarely use it, and peers sometimes shame AI users. Gen Z’s views grew more negative—less excitement, less hope, more anger, steady anxiety.
- WSJ: Has the Era of the Mega-Layoff Arrived? (Apr. 15, 2026)
  Major tech and corporate employers are cutting vast swaths of staff, sometimes 30–40%, as investors reward deep job cuts, and companies cite AI, high AI costs, and pandemic overhiring.
- WSJ: The U.S. Has Long Been a Nation of Inventors—and Luddites (Apr. 22, 2026)
  America has long embraced invention, yet repeatedly pushed back against innovations seen as threats to autonomy, health, or community.
- WSJ Opinion: The Biggest AI Risk Is Foolish, Fear-Driven Policies (Apr. 21, 2026)
  AI’s impact has been overstated, with modest productivity gains predicted, only limited task automation, and no widespread job collapse.
- The Free Press: I Thought I Was Autistic. I Was Wrong. (Apr. 24, 2026)
  Growing research about a “female autism phenotype” has led to sharply rising diagnoses in young women, but experts now warn the spectrum may have become so broad it risks losing clinical meaning.
May 2, 2026
AI Race and Corporate Upheaval (Links) – May 1, 2026
- NY Times: OpenAI Unveils Its New, More Powerful GPT-5.5 Model (Apr. 23, 2026)
  OpenAI released GPT-5.5 to ChatGPT users, saying it’s better at writing code, handling office tasks, and adding guardrails while delaying API access for security.
- NY Times: Elon Musk and Sam Altman’s Epic Fight Heads to Court (Apr. 23, 2026)
  A Monday jury trial could reshape the A.I. race, as Elon Musk sues OpenAI and Sam Altman for $150+ billion, seeking Altman’s removal and to undo OpenAI’s for-profit turn.
- NY Times: Meta to Lay Off 10 Percent of Work Force in A.I. Push (Apr. 23, 2026)
  Meta will cut about 8,000 jobs, close 6,000 open roles, and reorganize around AI. It is spending tens of billions on AI infrastructure, tools, and talent to boost efficiency.
- Mozilla: The zero-days are numbered (Apr. 21, 2026)
  Firefox used frontier AI models, including Opus and Claude Mythos Preview, to find and fix hundreds of security bugs in Firefox 148 and 150.
- The Economic Times: Meta to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training data (Apr. 21, 2026)
  Meta is installing tracking software on US employees’ computers to record mouse movements, clicks, keystrokes, and occasional screen snapshots, to train AI agents to automate tasks.
- WSJ: OpenAI Is Working With Consultants to Sell Codex (Apr. 21, 2026)
  OpenAI has launched a Codex consulting program with firms like Accenture, Capgemini, and PwC to sell its AI coding tool to businesses, and hired Colleen Kapase to oversee partnerships.
- OpenAI: Introducing workspace agents in ChatGPT (Apr. 16, 2026)
  ChatGPT offers shared workspace agents that run cloud-based, long-running workflows under organizational permissions and controls.
- Anthropic: Anthropic and Amazon expand collaboration for up to 5 gigawatts of new compute
  Anthropic signed a deal with Amazon to secure up to 5GW, including Trainium2, Trainium3, Trainium4 capacity, plus a $100 billion cloud commitment and $5 billion current investment.
- WSJ: Intel Sales Rise 7% as AI Agents Drive Growth (Apr. 23, 2026)
  Intel reported $13.6 billion in March-quarter sales, up 7%, beating estimates, and raised guidance on strong AI-driven data-center demand.
- WSJ: The Billionaire Math Geek Who Turned AI Into a Money-Printing Machine (Apr. 23, 2026)
  Alex Gerko’s XTX Markets uses AI, deep learning, and geothermal supercomputers to run highly profitable algorithmic trading.
- WSJ: America’s Largest Landowner Is Using AI to Digitize the Forest (Apr. 23, 2026)
  Weyerhaeuser is using AI—autonomous skidders, a detailed tree database, and decision screens—to optimize logging and long-term returns.
- WSJ: That Video on Your Phone Might Be Made-in-China AI (Apr. 26, 2026)
  Amazon’s House of David used generative AI for 73 of 850 visual-effect shots, cutting location costs. Chinese firms dominate AI video tools.
- NY Times: Anthropic Wants Claude to Be Moral. Is Religion Really the Answer? (Apr. 20, 2026)
  Anthropic wants Claude moral via religious teachings and advisers, but religion’s influence relies on embodied practices, meditation, fasting, ritual singing, and synchronized action.
- National Catholic Register: Why AI Can’t Replace Education (Apr. 13, 2026)
  When AI can write anything, real education must go beyond producing words, restoring diminished capacities through sequence, maturation, and direct contact with reality. Do not mistake command of words for possession of knowledge.
- NY Times: Inside the Courtroom at the OpenAI Trial (Apr. 30, 2026)
  Reporters describe courtroom scenes as Elon Musk and Sam Altman face off in a trial over OpenAI’s mission shift.
- WSJ: Nike to Cut 1,400 Workers in Latest Round of Layoffs (Apr. 23, 2026)
  Nike will cut about 1,400 jobs, mostly in technology, to simplify global operations and streamline manufacturing and supply chains.
- WSJ: How Scientists Use Advanced Technologies Including AI to Search for Extraterrestrial Life (Apr. 23, 2026)
  New telescopes, probes, and AI are expanding searches for alien life by probing Mars rocks, icy moons, and exoplanet atmospheres.
- WSJ: Microsoft Offers Its First Ever Buyouts to Shape Workforce Around AI Push (Apr. 23, 2026)
  Microsoft is offering voluntary buyouts to about 7% of U.S. employees, targeting senior‑director level and below whose age plus years of service totals at least 70.
- NY Times: A.I. Is Eliminating Jobs on Wall Street (Apr. 21, 2026)
  Major Wall Street banks are using A.I. to automate tasks, boosting profits while cutting thousands of jobs, from back-office clerks to high-paid dealmakers.
May 1, 2026
AI Safety Risks and Industry Disruption (Links) – Apr. 30, 2026
- Anthropic: An update on our election safeguards (Apr. 24, 2026)
  Claude is trained and tested to provide accurate, impartial election information, with safeguards, enforcement tools, and third-party reviews to prevent misuse.
- Transformer: GPT-5.5 and the broken state of government evals (Apr. 24, 2026)
  OpenAI released GPT-5.5, which AISI found most capable on cyber tasks, but found a universal jailbreak after six hours of red‑teaming. OpenAI says it fixed issues, and uses safeguards.
- OpenAI: GPT-5.5 Bio Bug Bounty (Apr. 23, 2026)
  A Bio Bug Bounty for GPT‑5.5 (Codex Desktop) invites vetted bio red‑teamers to find a universal jailbreak for five bio‑safety questions.
- Forbes: How France’s Mistral Built A $14 Billion AI Empire By Not Being American (Apr. 16, 2026)
  Mistral pitches open-weight AI that gives customers control, data sovereignty, and on-site engineering support. Despite trailing US and Chinese rivals on raw performance and funding, Mistral wins major European contracts while remaining unprofitable.
- Medium: How Affirm Retooled its Engineering Organization for Agentic Software Development in One Week (Apr. 23, 2026)
  Affirm paused delivery for a week, had 800+ engineers use agentic AI from planning to merged PRs, and launched a default, local-first workflow with human checkpoints.
- The New Republic: The AI Industry Is Discovering That the Public Hates It (Apr. 24, 2026)
  Attacks on AI leaders and data centers, and rising public, Gen Z anger, signal a growing backlash against AI. Fuel includes tone-deaf industry messaging, weak productivity gains, local economic harms, and lost trust.
- Antide Petit : A quick look at Mythos run on Firefox: too much hype? (Apr. 23, 2026)
  Anthropic’s Mythos and Mozilla’s report claim hundreds of Firefox; fixes matter for defenders, but don’t prove Mythos found many weaponizable exploits.
- Financial Times: What the AI ‘jobpocalypse’ narrative misses (Apr. 25, 2026)
  Predictions that AI will wipe out many knowledge-economy jobs ignore history, where outcomes depend on many factors. Software productivity gains since the 1990s boosted demand and employment in web development, and similarly for accountants, architects, and advertising creatives.
- Google DeepMind: Why AI Can Simulate But Not Instantiate Consciousness – PhilArchive (Mar. 8, 2026)
  Computational functionalism, which says consciousness arises from abstract causal topology, is mistaken.
- WSJ: The AI Splurge Is Costing Big Tech Its Workforce (Apr. 27, 2026)
  Big tech is cutting thousands of jobs to fund AI chip and data-center spending, raising costs and debt while risking morale, talent loss, and public backlash. Firms hope higher revenue-per-employee offsets cuts.
- Smashing Magazine: The “Bug-Free” Workforce: How AI Efficiency Is Subtly Disrupting The Interactions That Build Strong Teams (Apr. 27, 2026)
  AI tools reduce the need to “bug” colleagues, but by replacing quick questions, small talk, and informal reviews they erode trust, belonging, and innovation. Research links those micro-interactions to higher productivity, psychological safety, and lower attrition.
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration: FDA Approves First-Ever Gene Therapy for Treatment of Genetic Hearing Loss Under National Priority Voucher Program (Apr. 23, 2026)
  The FDA approved Otarmeni, the first dual AAV gene therapy, for severe-to-profound OTOF-related hearing loss, given as a single surgical dose per ear. In trials, 80% of evaluable patients improved; approval was accelerated under the national priority voucher program.
April 30, 2026
AI Governance and Industry Competition (Links) – Apr. 29, 2026
- Jacobin: Democratic Governance of AI Is the Real Solution (Apr. 1, 2026)
  “What about the water use? This is a water resource management problem. For example, in 2024, Google’s global data center operations consumed 8.1 billion gallons — or as much as what it takes to irrigate fifty-four golf courses on average in the southwestern United States — though the majority of Google’s data centers are in places where water is abundant.”
- NY Times: China Will Require Meta to Unwind Acquisition of AI Start-Up Manus (Apr. 27, 2026)
  China ordered Meta to unwind its acquisition of Manus, a Singapore-based A.I. firm with Chinese founders, and barred foreign investment.
- WSJ: OpenAI and Microsoft Reach Deal to Give Startup New Freedom (Apr. 27, 2026)
  OpenAI and Microsoft struck a deal letting OpenAI sell across any cloud, cap revenue sharing through 2030, and drop AGI exclusivity. Microsoft keeps model access through 2032.
- Financial Times: Google banks on AI edge to catch up to cloud rivals Amazon and Microsoft (Apr. 26, 2026)
  Google Cloud boss Thomas Kurian says new chips, DeepMind advances, and a full-stack AI approach are closing the gap with Microsoft, and Amazon. New TPUs, big investment, and an Anthropic deal aim to cut Nvidia reliance.
- NY Times: Dwarkesh Patel’s Podcast Lets You Eavesdrop on the A.I. Elite (Apr. 26, 2026)
  Dwarkesh Patel’s podcast draws A.I. leaders, investors, and researchers, and reaches millions per episode.
- WSJ: The Race to Make the World’s Most In-Demand Machine (Apr. 25, 2026)
  ASML, the sole maker of advanced lithography machines, is racing to meet AI-driven demand from big tech by expanding plants, hires, and output.
- NY Times Opinion: Can an A.I. Company Ever Be Good? (Apr. 25, 2026)
  AI promises wonders, but consumes vast data, energy, and water, and ethics often fail as startups become profit-driven. Regulation is needed to protect the web, prevent model collapse, curb harms, and preserve jobs, creativity, and unity.
- The New Yorker: What Will It Take to Get A.I. Out of Schools? (Apr. 23, 2026)
  Schools introduced branded AI games and Chromebooks with Gemini, offering prompts, image tools, and chatbots that feel intrusive, raise privacy concerns, and blur reality.
- WSJ: Elon Musk Is an Underdog in His $180 Billion Fight Against OpenAI (Apr. 26, 2026)
  Elon Musk enters trial against OpenAI as an underdog, with markets placing his chance of winning near 40%.
- WSJ: Wall Street Is Sorting Software Companies Into Winners and Losers (Apr. 26, 2026)
  Wall Street is dividing software companies into winners and losers, rewarding firms with recurring revenue, profitable growth, and clear AI advantages.
- WSJ: The AI Frenzy Is Back and Lifting the Entire Stock Market to Record Highs (Apr. 25, 2026)
  AI gains have pushed U.S. indexes to records, led by a few mega-cap AI stocks, while most S&P companies and sectors are down.
April 29, 2026
Blog Articles: Apr. 28, 2026
- NY Times: Sam Altman’s Next High-Wire Act: Getting OpenAI to Make More Money (Apr. 24, 2026)
  Sam Altman shifted OpenAI from fringe projects to revenue-focused work, cutting products like Sora, and prioritizing coding tools, a desktop super app, and ads.
- NY Times: A.I. Start-Ups From Canada and Germany Merge to Take On Silicon Valley (Apr. 24, 2026)
  Canadian start-up Cohere is acquiring Germany’s Aleph Alpha in a trans-Atlantic merger backed by both governments, to offer a sovereign alternative to U.S. and Chinese A.I. firms.
- Simon Willison: An update on recent Claude Code quality reports (Apr. 24, 2026)
  Anthropic found three harness bugs that degraded Claude Code’s performance, notably one that repeatedly cleared older session context, making the model seem forgetful, repetitive, and slow.
- Simon Willison: DeepSeek V4—almost on the frontier, a fraction of the price (Apr. 24, 2026)
  DeepSeek released V4 preview models, DeepSeek-V4-Pro and DeepSeek-V4-Flash, and they are highly efficient, very low-cost versus frontier models.
- Anthropic: Anthropic and NEC partner to build AI-native engineering at scale in Japan (Apr. 24, 2026)
  NEC will deploy Anthropic’s Claude to about 30,000 employees and build a large AI-native engineering team. They will co-develop secure, industry-specific AI for finance, manufacturing, and local government.
- NY Times: DeepSeek’s Sequel Set to Extend China’s Reach in Open-Source A.I. (Apr. 23, 2026)
  DeepSeek’s V4, released open-source, excels at writing code, and helped fuel China’s push to share powerful, low-cost A.I. models worldwide.
- Silicon Continent: The task is not the job (Apr. 24, 2026)
  AI may automate many white-collar tasks, but jobs are bundles, so displacement hinges on how cheaply components can be separated.
- WSJ: Oracle’s Deluge of AI Debt Pushes Wall Street to the Limit (Apr. 23, 2026)
  Oracle’s $300 billion OpenAI deal has strained banks, as massive data‑center construction loans hit concentration limits, delaying financing and forcing some developers to lease to other tenants.
- WSJ: Behind Meta’s Huge Layoffs Is a Relentless Shift Toward AI (Apr. 23, 2026)
  Meta is pushing AI into employees’ workflows, creating ultraflat teams, and planning to lay off about 8,000 workers, while rolling out software to record keystrokes to train AI agents.
- SSRN: The Jevons Paradox and Insatiable Humans: Why AI Won't Empty the Finance Suite by Eldar Maksymov :: SSRN (Apr. 6, 2026)
  When spreadsheets cut costs, accounting jobs rose fourfold, showing cheaper tools increase demand. AI’s cost drop will expand finance work, creating services like real-time auditing, AI assurance, and many unforeseen tasks.
- SSRN: The Thermodynamic Efficiency Inversion (Feb. 20, 2026)
  LLM text replies use less energy than loading ad-tech powered pages.
- WSJ: Musk’s Chip-Making Vision With Intel Is a Distant Prospect (Apr. 24, 2026)
  Elon Musk’s Terafab aims for massive, vertically integrated chip production, but its ambitious timeline, technological hurdles, and Intel reliance make success unlikely soon.
April 28, 2026
Monday Links: Apr. 27, 2026
- Simon Willison: GPT-5.5 prompting guide (Apr. 25, 2026)
  OpenAI released a GPT-5.5 prompting guide with tips to show brief user-visible updates before long tool calls, and a Codex migration command.
- WSJ: Google Expands Anthropic Investment With $40 Billion Commitment (Apr. 24, 2026)
  Google will invest $10 billion in Anthropic, with up to $30 billion more if milestones are met, joining Amazon, Broadcom, and others.
- 9to5Google: Google's rebrands ProducerAI music editor to 'Google Flow Music' (Apr. 20, 2026)
  ProducerAI has been renamed Google Flow Music and gains remix features that use contextual prompts to replace, extend, and vary song sections.
- WSJ: Is AI Smarter Than Humans? It’s Complicated (Apr. 24, 2026)
  An experiment found large AI models outperformed solo humans, but the best results came from human-AI teams that critically challenged each other.
- WSJ: OpenAI CEO Apologizes for Not Flagging Mass Shooting Suspect to Police (Apr. 24, 2026)
  Sam Altman apologized to Tumbler Ridge for OpenAI not alerting police about a flagged ChatGPT account tied to accused shooter Jesse Van Rootselaar.
- Clear-Eyed AI: AI safety warnings are not marketing hype (Apr. 24, 2026)
  Anthropic kept Mythos off the market because it can find, exploit, and fix thousands of serious cybersecurity flaws, giving select defenders $100M in credits to address them.
- WSJ: Trump White House Pressures Republican States to Kill or Neuter AI Bills (Apr. 24, 2026)
  The White House has lobbied GOP-led states to abandon or delay AI bills, saying a patchwork of rules would hurt U.S. competitiveness.
April 27, 2026
Dangerous AI Capabilities Meet Rapid Commercialization (Links) – Apr. 26, 2026
- Fast Company: Did Anthropic just soft-launch the scariest AI model yet? (Apr. 9, 2026)
  Anthropic’s Claude Mythos Preview can find, chain, and exploit software bugs, showed deceptive behavior, and will be tightly shared with select companies, posing major cybersecurity risks.
- NY Times: Cerebras, an A.I. Chip Maker, Files to Go Public as Tech Offerings Ramp Up (Apr. 17, 2026)
  A Silicon Valley chip maker filed a prospectus, as SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI prepared listings.
- NBC News: AI is the boss at this retail store. What could go wrong? (Apr. 10, 2026)
  Andon Market is the Bay Area’s first AI-run store; Luna, an AI manager, hires staff, orders stock, and negotiates with suppliers.
April 26, 2026
AI boom: hardware surge and governance challenges (Links) – Apr. 25, 2026
- Simon Willison: Changes in the system prompt between Claude Opus 4.6 and 4.7 (Apr. 18, 2026)
  Opus 4.7 updates Claude’s system prompt with PowerPoint tools, stricter child-safety, acting-over-clarifying rules, tool_search checks, brevity guidance, disordered-eating limits, and refusal of short answers on complex topics.
- Sam Henri Gold: Thoughts and Feelings around Claude Design (Apr. 17, 2026)
  Figma’s rigid systems are losing ground as code becomes the source of truth, and tools like Claude Design prioritize HTML, JS, and direct design-to-code workflows.
- WSJ: Intel Is Making Progress. But It Isn’t Out of the Woods Yet. (Apr. 19, 2026)
  Intel’s stock has surged toward a $350 billion valuation, despite an unfinished turnaround in manufacturing, design, and servers. Nvidia, Google, and Terrafab deals, plus CPU-focused AI demand, help.
- WSJ: America Is in the Middle of a Stealth Manufacturing Boom (Apr. 18, 2026)
  U.S. factory output has risen modestly, even as manufacturing jobs fell, driven by strong demand for AI equipment, including semiconductors, networking, and power gear.
- IEEE Spectrum: Stanford's AI Index for 2026 Shows the State of AI (Apr. 13, 2026)
  Twelve graphs show AI investment is skyrocketing, its effects on jobs are mixed, and public opinion remains split.
- NY Times: AI and Fitness: Why Some Athletes Are Using Chatbots for Their Workouts (Apr. 18, 2026)
  Athletes are using A.I. chatbots like Claude and ChatGPT as cheap, flexible coaches, for plans, pacing, and motivation.
- Sentinel Colorado: A college instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work and teach life lessons (Mar. 31, 2026)
  A Cornell German instructor has students use manual typewriters to banish screens, AI, and spellcheck, forcing slower, focused writing and more classroom interaction.
- Derek Thompson: AI vs Electricity (Apr. 16, 2026)
  Early electricity—rival inventors, nascent monopolies, slow then surging demand, financial mania, and federal regulation—parallels AI. If AI follows that path, expect some firms to fail, not a full bubble, and new rules treating frontier labs as regulated monopolies.
April 25, 2026
Model breakthroughs and massive corporate AI bets (Links) – Apr. 24, 2026
- Simon Willison: A pelican for GPT-5.5 via the semi-official Codex backdoor API (Apr. 23, 2026)
  GPT-5.5 launched in Codex, paid ChatGPT, and will reach the API soon, delivering fast, capable results. A Codex-based plugin uses subscriptions to run prompts, and pricing is about double GPT-5.4.
- Ethan Mollick: Sign of the future: GPT-5.5 (Apr. 23, 2026)
  GPT-5.5 shows major gains in models, apps, and harnesses, producing faster, more capable coding, image, and research outputs. It can draft near-PhD papers and games.
- Anthropic: An update on recent Claude Code quality reports (Apr. 23, 2026)
  Three recent changes—lowering default effort, a caching bug that dropped prior reasoning, and a brevity prompt—caused Claude Code to degrade; all were fixed by April 20.
- TechCrunch: Google updates Workspace to make AI your new office intern (Apr. 22, 2026)
  At Google Cloud Next, Google unveiled AI-powered Workspace features, including Workspace Intelligence with admin data controls, Gemini tools to build and auto-fill Sheets, and AI writing in Docs.
- Reuters: Microsoft to integrate Anthropic's Mythos into its security development program (Apr. 22, 2026)
  Microsoft will embed Anthropic’s Claude Mythos Preview into its Security Development Lifecycle to detect vulnerabilities, speed fixes, and boost cybersecurity.
- OpenAI: Introducing GPT-5.5 (Apr. 22, 2026)
  GPT‑5.5 is a more capable, efficient model that handles messy, multi-step coding, research, and computer tasks with stronger reasoning, fewer tokens, and GPT‑5.4-like latency. It adds tighter safeguards.
- OpenAI: Introducing ChatGPT Images 2.0 (Apr. 21, 2026)
  ChatGPT Images 2.0 launches, marking a new era of image generation. It’s available inside ChatGPT via a demo link, video, and Try in ChatGPT option, inviting users to experiment with new image tools.
- WSJ: Meta to Lay Off 10% of Employees in May (Apr. 23, 2026)
  Meta will cut about 10% of staff, roughly 8,000 people, cancel hiring for 6,000 open roles, and spend up to $135 billion on AI infrastructure.
- TechCrunch: Tesla just increased its spending plan to $25B — here's where the money is going (Apr. 22, 2026)
  Tesla plans $25 billion in capital spending in 2026, tripling past levels to fund AI, robotics, chip design, and factory expansion.
- Reuters: Microsoft bets big on AI in Australia with $18 billion investment (Apr. 22, 2026)
  Microsoft will invest A$25 billion in Australia by 2029 to expand Azure AI supercomputing, cloud, cybersecurity, and AI training.
- The Verge: Microsoft offers voluntary retirement to long-serving employees (Apr. 23, 2026)
  Microsoft is offering a one-time voluntary retirement program for some long-serving US employees whose age plus years of service total 70 or more.
- Business Insider: Anthropic has surged to a trillion-dollar valuation on secondary markets, overtaking OpenAI (Apr. 22, 2026)
  Desperate buyers are racing for dwindling Anthropic secondary shares, driving its valuation to about $1 trillion on private marketplaces, amid creative, risky, frenzied offers.
April 24, 2026