Last Week in AI

Our 245th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!
Recorded on 05/13/2026
Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie Harris
Feel free to email us your questions and feedback at [email protected] and/or [email protected]
Read 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 - Bloomberg
Projects & 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 Arrived
Policy & 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 Verge
Research & Advancements
(01:45:10) METR says Claude Mythos is testing the limits of AI evaluation – Startup Fortune
See 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 05/08/2026
Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie Harris
Feel free to email us your questions and feedback at [email protected] and/or [email protected]
Read 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 comments

Tools & 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 Service

Applications & 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 | Reuters

Projects & 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 technology

Policy & 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 Behaviors

Research & 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 Solver
See 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 04/29/2026
Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie Harris
Feel free to email us your questions and feedback at [email protected] and/or [email protected]
Read 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) Sponsors

Tools & 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 Verge

Projects & 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 Agents

Applications & 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 | TechCrunch

Policy & 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 Mythos

Synthetic Media & Art
(01:48:03) Taylor Swift Files to Trademark Voice and Likeness to Protect Against AI Misuse

Research & Advancements
(01:49:15) Maximal Brain Damage Without Data or Optimization: Disrupting Neural Networks via Sign-Bit Flips

See 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 04/22/2026
Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie Harris
Feel free to email us your questions and feedback at [email protected] and/or [email protected]
Read 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 comments

Tools & 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 Verge

Applications & 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 release

Projects & 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 - MarkTechPost

Policy & 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 claims

Research & 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 Simulation

Synthetic 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 Verge
See 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 Harris
Feel free to email us your questions and feedback at [email protected] and/or [email protected]
Read 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 comments

Tools & 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 Verge

Applications & 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 Verge

Projects & 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 Worlds

Policy & 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 Urges
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.