Weekly#673

  • Anthropic’s research estim­ates that AI could add 1-2 per­cent­age points to annual US labour pro­ductiv­ity growth over the next dec­ade (FT)
  • South Korea poised to trump EU in AI safety laws
  • Researchers use AI to reverse engineer molecules
  • Clawdbot
  • Inside Apple’s AI Shake-Up and Its Plans for Two New Versions of Siri
  • Europe Prepares for a Nightmare Scenario: The U.S. Blocking Access to Tech (WSJ)
  • Tesla kills Autopilot, locks lane-keeping behind $99/month fee
  • Bending Spoons
  • A new test for AI labs
  • Google begins offering free SAT practice tests powered by Gemini
  • “…Walker S2 robots were 30 to 50 per cent as productive as humans and only in certain tasks such as stacking boxes and quality control…”
  • A new direction for students in an AI world: Prosper, prepare, protect
  • Waymo launches robotaxi service in Miami, extending U.S. lead
  • OpenAI’s “secret” new device is coming. Here’s what we know so far
  • Faster-Drying Paint and Better-Smelling Soap: AI Tries Product Development (WSJ)

Weekly#672

  • Under the Hood: Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP)
  • Joint statement from Google and Apple…Deal Could Be Worth $5 Billion
  • SpaceX to lower orbits of some Starlink satellites…moving satellites currently operating at an altitude of about 550 kilometers to 480 kilometers.
  • China just ‘months’ behind U.S. AI models, Google DeepMind CEO says
  • AI startup Replit launches feature to vibe code mobile apps
  • More Thinking Machines employees are in talks to join OpenAI
  • TranslateGemma: A new suite of open translation models
  • Matthew McConaughey Trademarks Himself to Fight AI Misuse (WSJ)
  • Cursor, which was founded by four MIT graduates who are still in their mid-20s, raised $2.3 billion in its third funding round this year (WSJ)
  • OpenAI invests in Sam Altman’s brain computer interface startup Merge Labs
  • AI video startup, Higgsfield, founded by ex-Snap exec, lands $1.3B valuation
  • NASA’s first medical evacuation from space ends with on-target splashdown
  • 9 Tips for Building Apps to Withstand AI-Driven Bot Attacks
  • Amazon is making a Fallout Shelter competition reality TV show
  • Raspberry Pi’s new add-on board has 8GB of RAM for running gen AI models
  • Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a new “top-level” initiative called Meta Compute
  • AI Models Graph by Epoch.ai
  • The rise of industrial software
  • The Tiniest Durable Agent
  • The Impact of AI Agents on Higher Education

Weekly#671

  • Scott Galloway 2026 Predictions
  • Fragments: January 8
  • How AI is transforming work at Anthropic
  • How Ralph Wiggum went from ‘The Simpsons’ to the biggest name in AI right now
  • Gmail gets Gemini, but falls short of true agentic AI
  • Meta signs nuclear energy deals to power Prometheus AI supercluster…Meta said the projects should add 6.6 gigawatts of power by 2035.
  • OpenAI, SoftBank invest $1 billion in SB Energy as Stargate buildout expands
  • FCC approves SpaceX plan to deploy an additional 7,500 Starlink satellites, bringing the total to 15,000 satellites worldwide
  • Andreessen Horowitz raises $15 billion for five new growth funds
  • AI Models Are Starting to Learn by Asking Themselves Questions
  • Here are the launches and landings we’re most excited about in 2026
  • Cyber-enabled blackout
  • Engadget CES Summary
  • The growing importance of social skills in the labor market (2017 HBR)
  • ChatGPT unveils new health tool for doctors
  • OpenAI to acquire the team behind executive coaching AI tool Convogo
  • Microsoft turns Copilot chats into a checkout lane
  • Elon Musk’s xAI raises $20 billion from investors including Nvidia, Cisco, and Fidelity
  • Stablecoins accounted for an estimated $46 trillion in transaction volume last year, more than 20x PayPal’s volume
  • The creator of Claude Code just revealed his workflow
  • xAI to build $20 billion data center in Mississippi
  • The Product Model at Google
  • The golden age of vaccine development
  • Copper in the Age of AI

Weekly#670

  • Semafor Tech’s predictions for 2026
  • 2025: The year in LLMs
  • Meta’s deal for Manus AI could be worth $2.5 billion
  • Tech Startups Are Handing Out Free Nicotine Pouches to Boost Productivity (WSJ)
  • Betty Boop, Mickey Mouse works enter the public domain in 2026
  • Nvidia deal shows why inference is AI’s next battleground…”…Why it matters: Groq’s language processing unit (LPU) chips power real-time chatbot queries — as opposed to model training — potentially giving Nvidia an edge in the AI race…”
  • AI companies want a new internet — and they think they’ve found the key
  • Capital in the 22nd Century
  • Neuralink plans ‘high-volume’ brain implant production by 2026
  • Hasbro’s Secret Weapon for Training Its Next Leaders: A Board Game (WSJ)
  • UK company sends factory with 1,000C furnace into space
  • Nvidia takes $1 billion stake in Nokia, sending the 5G equipment maker’s shares up 22%
  • No iPhone 18 Launch This Year, Reports Suggest
  • IDC estimates Apple’s Chinese manufacturing partner Luxshare stopped Vision Pro production in 2025 after selling 390,000 units in 2024
  • Australian pension giant grows bearish on stocks over AI
  • Advanced Prompt Engineering: Chain of Thought (CoT)
  • Best Prompt Engineering Resources (2026 Edition)
  • Tesla Car Sales Dropped 9% in 2025, Falling Behind China’s BYD (NYTimes)
  • France targets Australia-style social media ban for children next year
  • Some of your cells are not genetically yours
  • Poor sleep health is associated with older brain age: the role of systemic inflammation
  • Transformers v5: Simple model definitions powering the AI ecosystem
  • “..Microsoft 365’s AI assistant, Copilot, surpassed 150mn monthly active users, the company told investors in October. But this remains short of the around 650mn users reported by Google for its Gemini chatbot and the 800mn by OpenAI for ChatGPT… (FT)”

Weekly#669

  • Steam, Steel, and Infinite Minds
    • “…The first is steel. Before steel, buildings in the 19th century had a limit of six or seven floors. Iron was strong but brittle and heavy; add more floors, and the structure collapsed under its own weight. Steel changed everything. It’s strong yet malleable. Frames could be lighter, walls thinner, and suddenly buildings could rise dozens of stories. New kinds of buildings became possible. AI is steel for organizations. It has the potential to maintain context across workflows and surface decisions when needed without the noise. Human communication no longer has to be the load-bearing wall. The weekly two-hour alignment meeting becomes a five-minute async review. The executive decision that required three levels of approval might soon happen in minutes. Companies can scale, truly scale, without the degradation we’ve accepted as inevitable…“
  • Nvidia Reaches Technology Licensing Deal With Startup Groq
  • How AI coding agents work—and what to remember if you use them
  • China just carried out its second reusable launch attempt in three weeks
  • “…Before public launch, Chinese companies must pepper their models with questions…The regulations call for testing chatbots with 2,000 questions and regular updates of the questions at least once a month…”
  • How weight-loss drugs are reshaping fitness gyms
  • State of Consumer AI 2025 – a16z
  • Charts of the Week: Agents start to make an impact?
  • AI Minted More Than 50 New Billionaires In 2025
  • 2025 LLM Year in Review
  • When robot taxis get stuck, a secret army of humans comes to the rescue
  • Driverless future gains momentum with global robotaxi deployments
  • The relentless rise of YouTube.”…In Septem­ber, You­Tube said it had paid more than $100bn to cre­at­ors, artists and media groups since 2021. In the most recent quarter, You­Tube advert­ising rev­en­ues increased 15 per cent to $10.3bn…”

Weekly#668

  • Rivian rolls out new ‘Universal Hands-Free’ driving feature
  • ChatGPT’s mobile app hits new milestone of $3B in consumer spending
  • Meta’s Yann LeCun targets $3.5 billion valuation for new AI startup
  • Developers can now submit apps to ChatGPT
  • Neurable raises $35M for brain-computer interface AI
  • 110ms keystroke input raises red flags over true location
  • How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips
  • Why Oracle keeps sparking AI-bubble fears
  • Formula 1 is deploying new jargon for 2026, now it’s all about corner mode, straight mode, and overtake mode
  • The inside story of SpaceX’s historic rocket landing that changed launch forever
  • Bayer analyzed 100 million clinical records to identify 5,000 gene editing candidates in less than a week, work that would have taken years otherwise. This technology amplifies human ingenuity in developing breakthrough medicines.
  • Apple punted on AI this year. Next year will be critical
  • The 20 best video games of 2025
  • Goodreads 2025 Books
  • Anthropic’s Claude ran a snack operation in the WSJ newsroom. It gave away a free PlayStation, ordered a live fish—and taught us lessons about the future of AI agents
  • Google Cloud lands deal with Palo Alto Networks ‘approaching $10 billion
  • Nexperia’s China unit switches to local firms for wafer supplies
  • Food becoming more calorific but less nutritious due to rising carbon dioxide…”…However, zinc in chickpeas would be expected to plummet by up to 37.5%, with a “significant” decrease in protein, zinc and iron in essential crops such as rice and wheat…”…study link
  • Uber CEO says AI is turning his engineers into ‘superhumans‘
  • Robot vacuum Roomba maker files for bankruptcy after 35 years
  • AI and Labor Markets: What We Know and Don’t Know
  • Airbus is preparing to tender a major contract to migrate mission-critical workloads to a digitally sovereign European cloud
  • AI coding is now everywhere. But not everyone is convinced.
  • One of Woodward’s key strengths, Google employees said, is his ability to remove bureaucratic barriers so that his team can quickly cook up products
  • How the World of Work Will Change Over the Next 20 Years

Weekly#667

  • SpaceX could list at $1 trillion valuation next year, in one of world’s biggest IPOs
  • CoPilot Usage Report 2025 PDF
  • GPT-5.2 is OpenAI’s latest move in the agentic AI battle…GPT-5.2 features a 400,000-token context window, allowing it to process hundreds of documents at once, and a knowledge cutoff date of August 31, 2025
  • “…IDC is already predicting fewer smartphone sales in 2026 due to the RAM shortage, and a $9 increase in average phone prices…”
  • Google debuts ‘Disco,’ a Gemini-powered tool for making web apps from browser tabs
  • ‘Greetings, earthlings’: Nvidia-backed Starcloud trains first AI model in space as orbital data center race heats up
  • Oracle, which has burned around $10 billion in cash in the first half of its fiscal year due to the AI investments
  • “…Drugs with annual rev­enue of about $180bn are going off pat­ent in 2027 and 2028, roughly 12 per cent of the global mar­ket, accord­ing to Eval­u­ate Pharma data, with almost every large com­pany affected…”
  • “China’s AI Power Play: Cheap Electricity From World’s Biggest Grid..China now has the biggest power grid the world has ever seen. Between 2010 and 2024, its power production increased by more than the rest of the world combined…with more than 100 data centers in operation or on the way…34 nuclear reactors under construction, according to the World Nuclear Association, and nearly 200 others planned or proposed… Goldman Sachs predicts that by 2030, China will have about 400 gigawatts of spare capacity, about three times the world’s expected data-center power demand at that time…”
  • China Prepares as Much as $70 Billion in Chip Sector Incentives
  • Model Once, Represent Everywhere: UDA (Unified Data Architecture) at Netflix
  • Five AI Security Myths Debunked at InfoQ Dev Summit Munich
  • “…Perhaps that is to be expected in the era of TikTok and A.I. Some education experts believe that in the near future, even the most sophisticated stories and knowledge will be imparted mainly through audio and video, the forms that are dominating in the era of mobile, streaming media…”

Weekly#666

  • Netflix to buy Warner Bros. film and streaming assets in $72 billion deal…$59 Billion Loan for Warner Bros. Among Biggest Ever
  • AWS re:Invent
  • Why we can’t quit excel
  • Voters’ minds are hard to change. AI chatbots are surprisingly good at it
  • “…Thirty years ago today, Netscape Communications and Sun Microsystems issued a joint press release announcing JavaScript, an object scripting language designed for creating interactive web applications…”
  • OpenAI CEO declares “code red” as Gemini gains 200 million users in 3 months
  • A spectacular explosion shows China is close to obtaining reusable rockets
  • From On-Demand to Live : Netflix Streaming to 100 Million Devices in Under 1 Minute
  • Sugars, ‘Gum,’ Stardust Found in NASA’s Asteroid Bennu Samples
  • QuickTime turns 34

Weekly#665

  • Amazon to Invest $50 Billion Building Data Centers to Support U.S. Government
  • Meta in talks to spend billions on Google’s chips
  • Jony Ive and Sam Altman say they finally have an AI hardware prototype
  • Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s Qwen app drew more than 10 million downloads in the week after its relaunch, boding well for a longer-term effort to build a rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT
  • How Walmart, Target, and more retailers are infusing AI into their shopping experiences
  • Volkswagen can now build EVs in China, claiming it can cut costs by up to 50%
  • Chinese startup Deepseek reports its new DeepseekMath-V2 model has reached gold medal status at the Math Olympiad
  • Tesla loses some AI staff to a new robotics startup
  • Airbus ordered immediate software fixes for 6,000 A320-series aircraft
  • The cybersecurity race inside Formula One
  • Baidu is emerging as a major AI chip player in China to fill the Nvidia gap
  • AWS builds a DNS backstop to allow changes
  • China installed 295,000 industrial robots last year, nearly nine times as many as the U.S. and more than the rest of the world combined, according to the International Federation of Robotics
  • Technology Radar

Weekly#664

  • AI eats the world – Ben Evans
  • A new era of intelligence with Gemini 3
  • Nvidia – The company said net income in the quarter rose 65% to $31.91 billion
  • Google DeepMind Hires Former CTO of Boston Dynamics as the Company Pushes Deeper Into Robotics..DeepMind’s chief says he envisions Gemini as an operating system for physical robots
  • Google must double AI compute every 6 months to meet demand
  • The future of AI’s energy hunger demands every tool available
  • Google launches Nano Banana Pro, an updated AI image generator powered by Gemini 3
  • Become an Octopus Organization
  • Meta Looks to Power Trading to Support Its AI Energy Needs
  • Verizon cutting more than 13,000 jobs as it restructures
  • As Windows turns 40, Microsoft faces an AI backlash
  • The Godmother of AI Didn’t Expect It to Be This Massive
  • Massive Cloudflare outage was triggered by file that suddenly doubled in size
  • Quantum teleportation between photons from two distant light sources achieved