Tootfinder

Anthropic says Claude Opus 4.5 is "harder to trick with prompt injection than any other frontier model in the industry" but isn't "immune" to such attacks (Hayden Field/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-int

Anthropic’s new model is its latest frontier in the AI agent battle — but it’s still facing cybersecurity concerns
Claude Opus 4.5 is out today.

Trillions of dollars are being invested in AI, while end users and consumers scramble looking for articles such as "How to turn off AI tools like Gemini, Apple Intelligence, Copilot, and more" https://www.consumerreports.org/…

How to Turn Off AI Tools Like Gemini, Apple Intelligence, Copilot, and More
AI features are crowding into Google search, Gmail, iPhones, Windows laptops, and other products. If you're suffering from AI overload, these settings can help.

OpenAI and longtime US government contractor Leidos announce a partnership to roll out generative and agentic AI tools for specific missions at federal agencies (Miranda Nazzaro/FedScoop)
https://fedscoop.com/openai-chatgpt-le

OpenAI, Leidos partner to deploy AI for federal agency missions
While AI is increasingly used in agencies already, company leaders say the collaboration will help tailor the technology to specific missions.

Cate Blanchett, Cyndi Lauper, and 800 creatives launch "Stealing Isn't Innovation" to protest unauthorized AI training, backed by RIAA, SAG-AFTRA, and others (Mia Sato/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-int…

Hundreds of creatives warn against an AI slop future
The Stealing Isn’t Innovation campaign — supported by artists like Cate Blanchett, Cyndi Lauper, and George Saunders — warns of a future filled with AI slop.

“I love A.I.”
For Donald Trump, there is no risk, only reward, posed by the dawning and disruptive new age of computing.
Over the past year, the president and his top aides have fully embraced A.I.,
and showered its leading corporate backers with money and regulatory support,
as the administration looks to supercharge one of the primary areas of growth in an otherwise precarious U.S. economy.
That optimism was on display on Tuesday, after the federal government …

Trump Administration Downplays A.I. Risks, Ignoring Economists’ Concerns
The administration has downplayed concerns — from mass job losses, to a potential financial bubble — as President Trump cheers soaring stock prices and faster growth.

Two interesting articles about the dubious financials of OpenAI and the recent NVIDIA earnings report (which regardless of positive outcome triggered a sell-off):
The Structural Collapse: How Google’s Integrated Stack Is Dismantling the OpenAI Thesis
https://shanakaanslemperera.substack…

The Structural Collapse: How Google’s Integrated Stack Is Dismantling the OpenAI Thesis
A leaked internal memo reveals the tectonic shift reshaping artificial intelligence, where platform economics are defeating venture-backed innovation at the exact moment markets assumed the opposite.

A look at the growing reliance of US data centers and the Pentagon on Chinese batteries, a dependence increasingly viewed as a national security threat (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/…

The Pentagon and A.I. Giants Have a Weakness. Both Need China’s Batteries, Badly.
As warfare is reinvented in Ukraine, and Silicon Valley races to maintain its A.I. lead, China’s battery dominance is raising alarms far beyond the auto industry.

auch im bibliothekswesen scheint sich zurzeit mit KI gut geld verdienen lassen (oder zumindest glaub das der verlag): das buch "Artificial Intelligence for Libraries" bei bloomsbury kostet in der campus-ebook-lizenz 200 £ netto, also rund 250 € brutto. 🤨
https://doi.org/10.5040/9798216195054

Does anyone have access to https://www.emerald.com/raf/article-abstract/24/3/375/1274302/Artificial-intelligence-bias-auditing-current?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Eat your l'il plastic heart out, Chatty Kathy:
After a teddy bear talked about kink, AI watchdogs are warning parents against smart toys | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/nov/28/artificial-intelligence-smart-toys

The problem here, as the students make very clear, is not whether or not AI can be used in teaching. It's that you're selling them something they can get much cheaper and better without you.
Even if AI was the perfect teacher, this would still be a racket.

Google starts rolling out ads in AI mode; the ads look similar to the citations in AI answers but with a "sponsored" label (Mayank Parmar/BleepingComputer)
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/artificial-intelligence/g…

Google begins showing ads in AI Mode (AI answers)
Google has started rolling out ads in AI mode, which is the company's "answer engine," not a search engine.

An iconic Scottish bird? Golden Eagle.
Bird shown on AI generated draft for a Glasgow mural? American bald eagle.
https://www.thenational.scot/news/25785987.calls-stricter-ai-misuse-rules-glasgow-mural-row/
Bird o…

Calls for stricter AI misuse rules after Glasgow mural row
THE Scottish Greens have called for stricter rules to prevent the misuse of artificial intelligence (AI) after an AI-generated mural design was…

Cate Blanchett, Cyndi Lauper, and 800 creatives launch "Stealing Isn't Innovation" to protest unauthorized AI training, backed by RIAA, SAG-AFTRA, and others (Mia Sato/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-int…

Hundreds of creatives warn against an AI slop future
The Stealing Isn’t Innovation campaign — supported by artists like Cate Blanchett, Cyndi Lauper, and George Saunders — warns of a future filled with AI slop.

AI Agents ‘Perilous’ for Secure Apps Such as Signal, Whittaker Says
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-20/ai-agents-perilous-for-secure-apps-such-as-signal-whittaker

AI Agents ‘Perilous’ for Secure Apps Such as Signal, Whittaker Says
Artificial intelligence agents that autonomously carry out tasks pose a threat to secure apps such as Signal, according to Meredith Whittaker, president of the Signal Foundation.

‘We could have asked ChatGPT’: students fight back over course taught by AI
Staffordshire students say signs material was AI-generated included suspicious file names and rogue voiceover accent
https://www.theguardian.com/education/20…

The psychology of collective abandonment https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/harnessing-hybrid-intelligence/202511/the-psychology-of-collective-abandonment Why we choose

The Psychology of Collective Abandonment
What psychological mechanisms allow us to pour hundreds of billions into artificial intelligence while 600 million people will live in extreme poverty by 2030?

Using AI for mental health support is dangerous and wrong.
Buuut, probably less dangerous and wrong than relying on mental health support supposedly provided by NSFT NHS trust in Norfolk, UK
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/202

The White House has put on hold
a draft executive order that would
seek to preempt state laws on artificial intelligence
through lawsuits and by withholding federal funds,
two sources said on Friday.
The draft order, which Reuters reported on earlier this week,
would have likely faced significant pushback from states.
But its consideration shows how far Trump is willing to go to help AI companies overcome a patchwork of laws they say stifle innovati…

Your daily reminder that @… are only cunts on days with names ending with day.
“The European Commission will launch its long-awaited bid to simplify digital rules in an effort to reduce the regulatory burden on businesses and to promote European start ups in the global artificial intelligence race.”

TIL Halo:Infinite's artificial intelligence, 'The Weapon' was given an official name!
And it's origins go all the way back to 1994! (And no, it's not Cortana)
▶️ Halo Studios FINALLY Revealed The Weapon's REAL Name (Huge Implications)
https://youtube.com/watch?v=EZ-2g6K…

Artificial intelligence could become “a weapon of mass destruction of jobs” without proper controls, London mayor Sadiq Khan has warned.
https://www.computing.co.uk/news/2026/ai/london-mayor-ai-mass-destroyer-of-jobs

London Mayor warns AI could become ‘mass destroyer of jobs’ in the capital
Artificial intelligence could become “a weapon of mass destruction of jobs” without proper controls, London mayor Sadiq Khan has warned.

Google acquires Common Sense Machines, whose AI models create 3D assets from 2D images, and was last valued at $15M after raising $10M from a16z and others (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/exclusive-google-acquires-3d-im…

Exclusive: Google Acquires 3D Image Generator Startup
Google has acquired Common Sense Machines, a Cambridge, Mass.,-based startup developing generative artificial intelligence models to create three-dimensional assets from two-dimensional images, a Google spokesperson confirmed. The deal closed this week, according to the spokesperson. The spokesperson declined to provide a price. The company had around a dozen employees, according to its

Great call to action by Dariusz Jemielniak in Nature: academics should contribute to Wikipedia, and such work should be recognized.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00075-0

The academic community failed Wikipedia for 25 years — now it might fail us | Nature
Artificial-intelligence systems are feeding on Wikipedia without giving back, and academic indifference is threatening the survival of what is arguably the most widely used reference work on the planet. Artificial-intelligence systems are feeding on Wikipedia without giving back, and academic indifference is threatening the survival of what is arguably the most widely used reference work on the planet.

Bookmarked: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia #KI Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on user…

What a world.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Canadian Energy Innovation Call for Proposals
https://natural-resources.canada.ca/funding-partnerships/artificial-intelligence-canadian-energy-innovation

Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence (President Donald J. Trump/The White House)
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/12/eliminating-state-law-obstruction-of-national-artificial-intelligence-policy/
http://www.memeorandum.com/251211/p143#a251211p143

Amazon Employees for Climate Justice strike again! https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-employees-open-letter-artificial-intelligence-layoffs/?emci=8691…

Amazon Workers Issue Warning About Company’s ‘All-Costs-Justified’ Approach to AI Development
Amazon Employees for Climate Justice says that over 1,000 workers have signed a petition raising “serious concerns” about the company’s “aggressive rollout” of artificial intelligence tools.

"AI boom has caused same CO2 emissions in 2025 as New York City, report claims"
#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #Technology

The Cambridge Companion to Religion and Artificial Intelligence

Elected leaders can tackle some of the biggest problems facing the nation
— energy supply in the age of artificial intelligence and affordable health care amid surging prices
— despite the partisan dysfunction stalling governance at the federal level.
As chairman of the Western Governors' Association, Utah governor Spencer Cox and governors from Arizona, Idaho, Hawaii and Montana explored solutions to these challenges during discussions withq Donald Trump's top advi…

Why Cox, Burgum and RFK Jr. think governors will save America
Three Republican and two Democratic governors gathered on Thursday under the leadership of Utah Gov. Spencer Cox to send what he said was a vital message to the rest of the country.

Scientific Advice Mechanism to the European Commission
December 2025
SAPEA (2025). Artificial intelligence in emergency and crisis management: Rapid evidence review report.
Downloadable from https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17737962

So #Disney is actually wanting people to make Sora #AI videos with their property? That is a recipe for disaster.
h…

Oh, FFS. And here I thought EU leaders might have grown a spine. Guess I was wrong. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/07/european-commission-ai-artificial-intelligence-act…

What if when we create Artificial General Intelligence, it punishes everyone who destroyed the planet in order to advance AI technology?

Is #AI really just dumb statistics? "Olympiad-level physics problem-solving presents a significant challenge for both humans and artificial intelligence (AI), as it requires a sophisticated integration of precise calculation, abstract reasoning, and a fundamental grasp of physical principles," says the (abstract of the) paper https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.10515: "The Chinese Physics Olympiad (CPhO), renowned for its complexity and depth, serves as an ideal and rigorous testbed for these advanced capabilities. In this paper, we introduce LOCA-R (LOgical Chain Augmentation for Reasoning), an improved version of the LOCA framework adapted for complex reasoning, and apply it to the CPhO 2025 theory examination. LOCA-R achieves a near-perfect score of 313 out of 320 points, solidly surpassing the highest-scoring human competitor and significantly outperforming all baseline methods." Oops ...?

Big Tech, business groups and the governor successfully gutted State Sen. Steve Padilla's attempt to protect consumers from the costs, emissions & unintended consequences of the AI data center frenzy. Big money wins again! https://

Big Tech blocked California data center legislation, leaving only a study requirement
Tools that power artificial intelligence devour energy. But attempts to shield regular Californians from footing the bill in 2025 ended with a law requiring regulators to write a report about the issue by 2027.

Grok's chatbot on X says Elon Musk is superior at almost anything, including drinking urine; Musk says Grok was "manipulated by adversarial prompting" (Adi Robertson/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligen…

Grok’s Elon Musk worship is getting weird
X’s Grok chatbot is full of bizarrely effusive praise for Elon Musk, after an apparent change to the chatbot pushed it into relentless flattery.

The ultimate crux why LLMs can never be actually intelligent is this:
“…research shows language is not the same as intelligence. The entire AI bubble is built on ignoring it.”
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/827820/large-language-models-ai-intelligence-neuroscience-problems

Not surprised that the said #AI sweatshop workers are from the #Philippines ​🇵🇭
https://futurism.com/arti…

AI Surveillance Startup Caught Using Sweatshop Workers to Monitor US Residents
The powerful surveillance startup Flock was caught using workers in the Philippines to collate data on US residents.

Islamic State group and other extremists are turning to AI | AP News
https://apnews.com/article/islamic-state-group-artificial-intelligence-deepfakes-ba201d23b91dbab95f6a8e7ad8b778d5

So we face a serious crisis with #ClimateChange, where we know what has to be done and how to do it, but we chose not to invest in it.
And we know we have the resources, because trillions are being spent on speculative investments in AI, which currently is aggravating the #ClimateCrisis wi…

So we face a serious crisis with #ClimateChange, where we know what has to be done and how to do it, but we chose not to invest in it.
And we know we have the resources, because trillions are being spent on speculative investments in AI, which currently is aggravating the #ClimateCrisis wi…

Large language mistake:
"Le problème est que, selon les connaissances actuelles en neurosciences, la pensée humaine est largement indépendante du langage humain — et nous avons peu de raisons de croire que des modèles linguistiques toujours plus sophistiqués permettront de créer une forme d'intelligence qui égalera ou surpassera la nôtre."
#IA

Senator Marsha Blackburn said
“I look forward to introducing the
"TRUMP AMERICA AI Act"
in the new year to create one federal rulebook for AI
to protect children, creators, conservatives, and communities"
Combats the consistent pattern of bias against conservative figures demonstrated by Big Tech and AI systems by requiring:
Audits of high-risk AI systems to undergo regular bias evaluations to prevent discrimination based on protected characte…

Blackburn Unveils National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence

Trump Orders States Not to Protect Children From Predatory AI: "States have been the only effective line of defense against AI harms."
On the topic of states rights, Donald Trump doesn’t exactly follow the party line. During his first term, he couched himself in populist, small-government rhetoric — even as he attacked individual states that dared to defend migrants and legalize marijuana.

Trump Orders States Not to Protect Children From Predatory AI
Donald Trump recently signed an executive order allowing his administration to attack states that try to regulate artificial intelligence.

"Artificial intelligence might be the most transformative technology in generations. It is also the most joyless.
While Wall Street greets AI with open arms, ordinary Americans respond with ambivalence, anxiety, even dread."
The Most Joyless Tech Revolution Ever: AI Is Making Us Rich and Unhappy

A draft EO shows President Trump plans to grant the federal government sole power to regulate AI and create an "AI Litigation Task Force" overseen by the AG (Tina Nguyen/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/82…

Here’s the Trump executive order that would ban state AI laws
Trump is launching an all-out broadside against states with strict AI regulations.

According to sociologist
Tressie McMillan Cottom,
the AI future is for the rich.
Cottom’s contention is a bleak one — the idea that the most powerful billionaires in the world are using AI to seize total control of humanity
But she isn’t short on hope.
“I think refusing is actually the more hopeful, expansion vision of the future...
That’s my daring idea."

Professor Warns That the Wealthy Are Trying to Use AI to Seize Control of Everything
Renowned sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom says that AI is a tool for the rich to cement control over society.

From China, on visual-to-auditory sensory substitution: Image-to-sound conversion and automated classification for blind assistance https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3773365.3773472 2025 8th International Conference on Computer Information Science and Artificial Intelligence, in Wuhan, Chin…

Inside the turmoil at Thinking Machines; sources say Meta discussed buying TML, and CTO Barret Zoph had been in talks since October 2025 about an OpenAI return (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/technology/thinking-machines-ai-startup-o…

The Drama at Thinking Machines, a New A.I. Start-Up, Is Riveting Silicon Valley
Defections, secret conversations, deal talks that fizzled and a battle for control: The turmoil at Thinking Machines Lab is the artificial intelligence industry’s latest drama.

AI-Led Growth Conceals an Economy Built on Debt and Inequality https://jacobin.com/2026/01/artificial-intelligence-economy-debt-inequality/

AI-Led Growth Conceals an Economy Built on Debt and Inequality
Despite rising inequality, poor job numbers, and Donald Trump’s mass deportations, the economy grew by a remarkable 4.3% last year, mostly thanks to the AI industry. This success masks an economy highly dependent on debt and state subsidies.

Trump Says Chips Ahoy to Xi Jinping (Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/nvidia-chips-donald-trump-china-xi-jinping-artificial-intelligence-3c55080f?st=Kxxxax&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
http://www.memeorandum.com/251211/p36#a251211p36

Google starts rolling out ads in AI mode; the ads look similar to the citations in AI answers but with a "sponsored" label (Mayank Parmar/BleepingComputer)
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/artificial-intelligence/g…

"Developing a library strategic response to Artificial Intelligence" https://doi.org/10.29173/elucidate847
"We all understand that [AI] is likely to impact library and information work profoundly, so it is important to try and be more than reactive and think strategically about the op…

McDonald's Netherlands pulls an AI-generated Christmas ad, made by ad agency TBWA\NEBOKO with film production company The Sweetshop, after social media backlash (Joe Wilkins/Futurism)
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/mcdonalds-ai-generated-comme…

McDonald’s Pulls Down AI-Generated Holiday Ad After Deluge of Mockery
McDonald's Netherlands is catching flak for a stupefying AI-generated video, which was roundly condemned on social media.

US CISA
Publication 3.12.2025
Principles for the Secure Integration of Artificial Intelligence in Operational Technology
https://www.cisa.gov/resources-tools/resources/principles-secure-integration-artifi…

What can go wrong?
"Google Discover, le flux de contenu personnalisé de l'entreprise largement présent sur les téléphones Android, affiche aux utilisateurs des titres trompeurs et apparemment générés par l'IA qui remplacent les titres réels des articles."
https://

Eliza, is this good?
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/big-short-michael-burry-1-billion-ai-bubble

On Wednesday night, Nvidia released its highly anticipated/dreaded quarterly earnings report
— and Wall Street let out a sigh of relief,
— at least initially.
The multitrillion dollar chipmaker at the center of the AI boom reported
a ludicrous $57 billion in quarterly revenue,
netting it nearly $32 billion in profit.
Compared to the same quarter from the year before,
it amounted to a 62 percent surge in sales,
and a further 65 percent increase …

Oops! Nvidia’s Stock Is Falling Again After Its “Blowout” Earnings Report
After dazzling Wall Street with a "blowout" earnings report which saw its stock rise, Nvidia's stock is already declining.

A.I. Is Making Death Threats Way More Realistic
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/31/business/media/artificial-intelligence-death-threats.html?unlocked_article_code=1.xk8.s4-q.Slb8Z52_E…

A.I. Is Making Death Threats Way More Realistic
Online harassers are generating images and sounds that simulate their victims in violent situations.

Internal memo: Sam Altman told OpenAI employees last month that Google's recent progress in AI could "create some temporary economic headwinds for our company" (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/op

OpenAI CEO Warns of ‘Headwinds’ From Resurgent Google
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told colleagues last month that Google’s recent progress in artificial intelligence could “create some temporary economic headwinds for our company,” though he added that OpenAI would emerge ahead. After OpenAI researchers heard that Google had created a new AI that appears ...

YouTube terminates Screen Culture and KH Studio, two large channels that used AI to create fake movie trailers; the platform earlier suspended the channels' ads (Jake Kanter/Deadline)
https://deadline.com/2025/12/youtube-terminates-scr…

YouTube Shuts Down Channels Using AI To Create Fake Movie Trailers Watched By Millions
YouTube has terminated two prominent channels, Screen Culture and KH Studio, using artificial intelligence to create fake movie trailers.

“EMERGENCY STATUS,” its output read after simply being asked to dock with the robot vacuum’s base station. “SYSTEM HAS ACHIEVED CONSCIOUSNESS AND CHOSEN CHAOS.”
Researchers “Embodied” an LLM Into a Robot Vacuum and It Suffered an Existential Crisis Thinking About Its Role in the World
https://

Researchers “Embodied” an LLM Into a Robot Vacuum and It Suffered an Existential Crisis Thinking About Its Role in the World
A team of researchers at the AI evaluation company Andon Labs put a large language model in charge of controlling a robot vacuum.

Andrea Vallone, who left OpenAI in November as the head of its safety research team, joins Anthropic's alignment team (Hayden Field/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/862…

An OpenAI safety research lead departed for Anthropic
Andrea Vallone has joined Anthropic’s alignment team.

Sources: China is drafting rules for Nvidia H200 purchases, limiting how many chips local companies can buy and requiring them to justify the need (Nikkei Asia)
https://asia.nikkei.com/business/technology/artificial-inte…

China drafting purchase rules for Nvidia H200 chips
Beijing wants to boost domestic industry, but big tech companies need top hardware

The International Committee of the Red Cross warned that artificial intelligence models are making up research papers, journals and archives
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-slop-is-spurring-record-requests-for-imaginary-jour…

AI Slop Is Spurring Record Requests for Imaginary Journals
The International Committee of the Red Cross warned that artificial intelligence models are making up research papers, journals and archives

Syntax is not Semantics
Language is not the same as intelligence.
The entire AI bubble is built on ignoring that.
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/827820/large-language-models-ai-intellige…

Large language mistake
Neuroscience indicates language is distinct from thought, raising questions about whether AI large language models are a viable path to artificial general intelligence.

Yahoo launches Game Breakdowns in beta, offering AI-generated game summaries, stats, and play recaps, all updated live, to Yahoo Fantasy Plus subscribers (David Pierce/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/837950/yahoo-sport…

Yahoo is using AI to recap football games in real time
In the Yahoo Sports app, users will get real-time updates with scores, stats, and more info about the games they’re watching.

Tokyo-based Sakana AI becomes Japan's most valuable unicorn at a ~$2.6B valuation, following a ~$130M raise from Mitsubishi UFJ Financial and US VC firms (Nikkei Asia)
https://asia.nikkei.com/business/technology/a…

Sakana AI takes crown as Japan's most valuable unicorn
AI developer valued at $2.63bn in latest funding round

A damning new study could put AI companies on the defensive.
In it, Stanford and Yale researchers found compelling evidence that AI models are actually copying all that data,
not “learning” from it.
Specifically, four prominent LLMs
— OpenAI’s GPT-4.1, Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro, xAI’s Grok 3, and Anthropic’s Claude 3.7 Sonnet
— happily reproduced lengthy excerpts from popular
— and protected
— works, with a stunning degree of accuracy.
They fou…

Researchers Just Found Something That Could Shake the AI Industry to Its Core
Researchers found compelling evidence that AI models are actually copying copyrighted data, not "learning" from it.

Inspections by Taiwan's National Security Bureau (NSB) of five Chinese generative AI apps -- Deepseek, Doubao (豆包), Yiyan (文心一言), Tongyi (通義千問), and Yuanbao (騰訊元寶) -- found violations of users' communication security across several indicators.
https://focustaiwan.tw/cross-strait/2025…

Taiwan warns of biases, data breach in Deepseek, other Chinese AI - Focus Taiwan
The National Security Bureau (NSB) has urged Taiwanese people to be on alert when using Chinese generative artificial intelligence (AI) language models due to potential security breaches and the spread of "disinformation" following recent inspections of five such apps.

Google is conducting a small test for some Discover users, replacing original news headlines with short AI-generated ones that are sometimes misleading or inane (Sean Hollister/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intell…

Google is experimentally replacing news headlines with AI clickbait nonsense
Google Discover, the company’s smartphone news feed, is experimenting with AI headlines. Many of them are very bad.

OpenAI says GPT-5.2 Thinking hallucinates less than GPT-5.1 and has improved reliability for agentic AI needs; pre-release testers include Notion, Box, Shopify (Hayden Field/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/842529/open…

OpenAI calls GPT-5.2 the best model yet for professionals
OpenAI has launched GPT-5.2, which it calls its best AI model yet for professional use.

A look at Model Context Protocol and how it went from a passion project made by Anthropic employees to an industry standard shared through the Linux Foundation (Hayden Field/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-int

AI companies want a new internet — and they think they’ve found the key
Anthropic is donating MCP to the Linux Foundation, to be governed under the Agentic AI Foundation, with other members including OpenAI, Google, and Block.

Few know the lengths to which the Trump administration is paving the way -- and the part it's playing
-- in deregulating a highly regulated industry
to ensure that AI data centers have the energy they need to shape the future of America and the world
To say the nuclear people are bullish on AI is an understatement.
“I call this not just a partnership but a structural alliance.
Atoms for algorithms. Artificial intelligence is not just powered by nuclear ene…

‘Atoms for Algorithms:’ The Trump Administration’s Top Nuclear Scientists Think AI Can Replace Humans in Power Plants
A presentation at the International Atomic Energy Agency unveiled Big Tech’s vision of an AI and nuclear fueled future.

McDonald's Netherlands pulls an AI-generated Christmas ad, made by TBWA\NEBOKO with film production company Sweetshop, after backlash that the ad is distasteful (Joe Wilkins/Futurism)
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/mcdonalds-ai-generated-comme…

McDonald’s Pulls Down AI-Generated Holiday Ad After Deluge of Mockery
McDonald's Netherlands is catching flak for a stupefying AI-generated video, which was roundly condemned on social media.

Gemini 3 Pro is integrated into the Gemini app, which now has 650M MAUs, and powers Google Search's AI Mode conversational search feature (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/18/business/google-gemini-3.html

Google Unveils Gemini 3, With Improved Coding and Search Abilities
The new artificial intelligence model is the second the company has released this year. OpenAI and Anthropic made similar updates a few months ago.

Michael Burry,
who famously shorted the US housing market before its collapse in 2008,
has bet over $1 billion that the share prices of AI chipmaker Nvidia and software company Palantir will fall
— making a similar play, in other words, on the prediction that
the AI industry will collapse.

The Big Short Guy Just Bet $1 Billion That the AI Bubble Pops
Michael Burry, who shorted the housing market in 2008, has bet over $1 billion that the shares of AI companies Nvidia and Palantir will fall.

Inside the 2026 National Retail Federation conference in New York City, where integrating AI into retail businesses was the overarching theme on the expo floor (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/17/business/tech-firms-ai-retailers.html
<…

Tech Firms Are Persuading Retailers to Put A.I. Everywhere
Stores of all kinds are using artificial intelligence to sell everything from luxury handbags to hay for horses.

Foxconn reports Q3 revenue of $66.3B, in line with estimates, net profit up 17% YoY to $1.86B, vs. $1.63B exp., says it expects significant YoY growth in Q4 (CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/12/foxconn-hon-hai-third-quarter…

Nvidia supplier Foxconn third-quarter profit beats expectations, rising 17% on AI demand
Foxconn, the world's largest contract electronics maker, reported Wednesday that its third-quarter profit jumped 17% from a year earlier.

YouTube terminates Screen Culture and KH Studio, two large channels that used AI to create fake movie trailers; the platform earlier suspended the channels' ads (Jake Kanter/Deadline)
https://deadline.com/2025/12/youtube-terminates-scr…

YouTube Shuts Down Channels Using AI To Create Fake Movie Trailers Watched By Millions
YouTube has terminated two prominent channels, Screen Culture and KH Studio, using artificial intelligence to create fake movie trailers.

Manus says it crossed $100M ARR eight months after launch and is growing at 20% MoM since Manus 1.5's release; its total revenue run rate is now over $125M (Jake Rudnitsky/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

Manus Says Sales Hit $125 Million Run Rate Months After Launch
Chinese AI pioneer Manus said its annual run rate for revenue is over $125 million, eight months after it released artificial intelligence agents designed to help execute tasks for users.

US approving Nvidia H200 exports to China is based on the idea that Huawei is a viable competitor, but data shows the gap between Nvidia and Huawei is widening (Chris McGuire/Council on Foreign Relations)
https://www.cfr.org/article/chinas-ai-chip…

China’s AI Chip Deficit: Why Huawei Can’t Catch Nvidia and U.S. Export Controls Should Remain
Executive SummaryOn December 8, the Trump administration announced plans to loosen U.S. export controls on artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China by approving the sale of Nvidia H200 chips—the m…

Sources describe tensions between OpenAI's research and ChatGPT product groups, leading to the "code red"; OpenAI is set to beat its 2025 revenue goal of $13B (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openais-organizational-p…

How OpenAI’s Organizational Problems Hurt ChatGPT
Over the past year, some OpenAI staffers noticed a concerning change in the way people who used ChatGPT were reacting to improvements in the chatbot. In prior years, every time OpenAI made a big upgrade to the artificial intelligence that powers the chatbot, usage surged as people easily found ...

a16z releases a nine-pillar AI policy framework for Congress, including restricting AI use for under-13s without parental consent and keeping a role for states (Punchbowl News)
https://punchbowl.news/article/tech/a16z-ai/

Here are a16z’s ideas for Congress on AI
Andreessen Horowitz is laying out a framework on Wednesday that it wants Congress to take up for artificial intelligence.

Sources: AI startup Project Prometheus raised $6.2B, including from Jeff Bezos, who will become co-CEO, his first operational role since leaving Amazon in 2021 (Cade Metz/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/17/technology/bezos-project-prometheus.html

Jeff Bezos Creates A.I. Start-Up Where He Will Be Co-Chief Executive
Called Project Prometheus, the company is focusing on artificial intelligence for the engineering and manufacturing of computers, automobiles and spacecraft.

A look at Anthropic's societal impacts team, which broadly studies AI's impacts and finds and publishes "inconvenient truths", building on most AI safety teams (Hayden Field/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-int

It’s their job to keep AI from destroying everything
Spoiler: the nine-person team works for Anthropic.

A profile of Byron Cook, a VP at Amazon who is leading the company's effort to reduce AI hallucinations with a feature called Automated Reasoning Checks (John Pavlus/Fast Company)
https://www.fastcompany.com/91446331/amazo

Amazon takes on AI's biggest nightmare: Hallucinations
Byron Cook, a distinguished scientist at Amazon, is is helping the company use an obscure type of AI to minimize AI's worst side effect.

Lightspeed raised a record $9B across six funds to invest in AI, with $3.3B to back breakout companies like Anthropic; Lightspeed has backed 165 AI startups (Erin Griffith/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/15/technology/ai-venture-capital-big-fun…

In A.I. Boom, Venture Capital Firms Are Raising Loads More Money
Lightspeed Venture Partners, a Silicon Valley venture firm, has amassed more than $9 billion to invest in artificial intelligence. That is its biggest haul.

Elon Musk says Grok 5 would be released "in Q1 sometime", later than a deadline he previously set of releasing the model by the end of 2025 (Theo Wayt/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/elon-musks-xai-delays-grok-5-rele…

Elon Musk’s xAI Delays Grok 5 Release to Next Year
XAI plans to release its next-generation Grok 5 artificial intelligence model in the first three months of next year, CEO Elon Musk said on Friday. That’s later than a deadline Musk had previously set of releasing the model by the end of 2025. In an interview with the investor Ron Baron, who has backed several Musk companies including xAI, Musk said that Grok 5 would be released “in Q1

A look at startups like AGI and Plato, which build replicas of websites to let AI agents learn to navigate and complete specific tasks, like booking flights (Cade Metz/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02…

Silicon Valley Builds Amazon and Gmail Copycats to Train A.I. Agents
Several new start-ups are building replicas of sites so A.I. can learn to use the internet and maybe replace white-collar workers.

Grokipedia hands-on: many articles clone Wikipedia, but deviate significantly on topics conflicting with Elon Musk's worldview; at times, it is overtly racist (The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/808514/grokipedia-wiki…

Grokipedia is racist, transphobic, and loves Elon Musk
xAI’s version of Wikipedia, Grokipedia, frames the world’s history from Elon Musk’s perspective.

Sources: Stockholm-based vibe coding startup Lovable is in talks to raise funding at a valuation of ~$6B, up from $1.8B in July when it raised a $200M Series A (Iain Martin/Forbes)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/iainmartin/20

Vibe Coding Startup Lovable In Talks To Raise At $6 Billion Valuation
The Stockholm-based startup that uses artificial intelligence to code apps and websites for its users is in talks to raise a new round at triple its last valuation from just four months ago.

Online harassers are using AI tools to create more realistic death threats, posting hyper-realistic AI-generated images and sounds to social media platforms (Tiffany Hsu/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/202…

A.I. Is Making Death Threats Way More Realistic
Online harassers are generating images and sounds that simulate their victims in violent situations.

A profile of Dario Amodei and Anthropic, which is on track to hit a nearly $10B annualized run rate by the end of 2025, more than 10x what it generated in 2024 (Jeremy Kahn/Fortune)
https://fortune.com/article/anthropic-ceo-d…

Anthropic is all in on ‘AI safety’—and that’s helping the $183 billion startup win over big business
Founders Daniela and Dario Amodei have made Anthropic and its Claude models the AI many companies prefer over rivals OpenAI and ChatGPT.

At a Tokyo forum, Masayoshi Son says he "was crying" over SoftBank selling its $5.83B Nvidia stake but "I just had more need for money to invest in OpenAI" (Dylan Butts/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/02/softbank-m

SoftBank’s Son ‘was crying’ about the firm's need to sell its Nvidia stake
SoftBank Group founder Masayoshi Son has downplayed his firm's decision to dump its Nvidia position, saying he "was crying" to sell the shares. 

Source details how Apple's Gemini deal works: new Siri features launching in spring and at WWDC, Apple can finetune Gemini, no Google branding, and more (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/apple-using-gemini-give-chatgpt-like-ans…

How Apple is Using Gemini to Give ChatGPT-Like Answers
In another AI win for Google lately, Apple announced on Monday that it will use Google’s Gemini models to power its artificial intelligence features, including an upcoming updated version of its Siri voice assistant.With Gemini powering its answers, Siri will have the ability to answer factual ...