Last Week in AI
Skynet Today
Weekly summaries of the AI news that matters!
- 1 hour 41 minutes#232 - ChatGPT Ads, Thinking Machines Drama, STEM
Our 232st episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!
Recorded on 01/23/2026
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 announces testing of ads in ChatGPT and introduces child age prediction to enhance safety features, amidst ongoing ethical debates and funding expansions in AI integration with educational tools and business models.
- China's AI landscape sees significant progress with AI firm Jpu training advanced models on domestic hardware, and strong competitive moves by data centers, highlighting the intense demand in AI manufacturing and infrastructure.
- Silicon Valley tensions rise as startup Thinking Machines experiences high-profile departures back to OpenAI, reflecting broader industry struggles and rapid shifts in organizational dynamics.
- AI legislation and safety measures advance with the US Senate's Defiance Act addressing explicit content, and Anthropic updating Claude's constitution to guide ethical AI interactions, while cultural pushbacks from artists signal ongoing debates in intellectual property and AI-generated content.
Timestamps:
- (00:00:10) Intro / Banter
- (00:02:08) News Preview
- (00:02:26) Response to listener comments
- Tools & Apps
- (00:11:55) OpenAI to test ads in ChatGPT as it burns through billions - Ars Technica
- (00:18:05) OpenAI is launching age prediction for ChatGPT accounts
- (00:23:37) Google now offers free SAT practice exams, powered by Gemini | TechCrunch
- (00:24:57) Baidu’s AI Assistant Reaches Milestone of 200 Million Monthly Active Users - WSJ
- Applications & Business
- (00:26:53) The Drama at Thinking Machines, a New A.I. Start-Up, Is Riveting Silicon Valley - The New York Times
- (00:31:44) Zhipu AI breaks US chip reliance with first major model trained on Huawei stack | South China Morning Post
- (00:36:31) Elon Musk’s xAI launches world’s first Gigawatt AI supercluster to rival OpenAI and Anthropic
- (00:41:25) Sequoia to invest in Anthropic, breaking VC taboo on backing rivals: FT
- (00:45:18) Humans&, a 'human-centric' AI startup founded by Anthropic, xAI, Google alums, raised $480M seed round | TechCrunch
- Projects & Open Source
- (00:48:51) Black Forest Labs Releases FLUX.2 [klein]: Compact Flow Models for Interactive Visual Intelligence - MarkTechPost
- (00:50:35) [2601.10611] Molmo2: Open Weights and Data for Vision-Language Models with Video Understanding and Grounding
- (00:52:53) [2601.10547] HeartMuLa: A Family of Open Sourced Music Foundation Models
- (00:54:46) [2601.11044] AgencyBench: Benchmarking the Frontiers of Autonomous Agents in 1M-Token Real-World Contexts
- Research & Advancements
- (00:57:05) STEM: Scaling Transformers with Embedding Modules
- (01:06:22) Reasoning Models Generate Societies of Thought
- (01:14:21) Why LLMs Aren't Scientists Yet: Lessons from Four Autonomous Research Attempts
- Policy & Safety
- (01:19:41) Senate passes bill letting victims sue over Grok AI explicit images
- (01:22:03) Building Production-Ready Probes For Gemini
- (01:27:32) Anthropic Publishes Claude AI's New Constitution | TIME
- Synthetic Media & Art
- (01:34:13) Artists Launch Stealing Isn't Innovation Campaign To Protest Big Tech
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
28 January 2026, 10:00 am - 1 hour 43 minutes#231 - Claude Cowork, Anthropic $10B, Deep Delta Learning
Our 231st episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!
Recorded on 01/16/2026
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's new cowork tool integrates Claude code, potentially simplifying multiple computing tasks from editing videos to compiling spreadsheets.
- Significant funding rounds see Anthropic raising $10B at a valuation of $350B, while XAI raises $20B, underscoring the immense market interest in AI startups.
- Nvidia faces supply challenges for H200 AI chips due to overwhelming demand from China, despite high costs per unit and its potential impact on U.S. company revenue.
- Policy debates highlight tensions around U.S. export controls to China, with leaders like Justin Lin from Alibaba and Jake Sullivan, former national security advisor, weighing in on the ramifications for the AI industry's future.
Timestamps:
- (00:00:10) Intro / Banter
- (00:01:30) News Preview
- Tools & Apps
- (00:02:13) Anthropic’s new Cowork tool offers Claude Code without the code | TechCrunch
- (00:09:45) Google’s Gemini AI will use what it knows about you from Gmail, Search, and YouTube | The Verge
- (00:12:45) Google removes some AI health summaries after investigation finds “dangerous” flaws - Ars Technica
- (00:16:29) Gmail is getting a Gemini AI overhaul
- (00:18:12) Slackbot is an AI agent now | TechCrunch
- Applications & Business
- (00:20:11) Anthropic Raising $10 Billion at $350 Billion Value
- (00:22:25) Elon Musk xAI raises $20 billion from Nvidia, Cisco, investors
- (00:24:47) NVIDIA Needs a Supply Chain ‘Miracle’ From TSMC as China’s H200 AI Chip Orders Overwhelm Supply, Triggering a Bottleneck
- (00:29:26) OpenAI signs deal, worth $10B, for compute from Cerebras | TechCrunch
- (00:31:49) CoreWeave in focus as it amends credit agreement
- (00:34:30) LMArena lands $1.7B valuation four months after launching its product | TechCrunch
- Projects & Open Source
- (00:35:54) Nemotron-Cascade: Scaling Cascaded Reinforcement Learning for General-Purpose Reasoning Models
- (00:43:15) mHC: Manifold-Constrained Hyper-Connections
- (00:49:53) IQuest_Coder_Technical_Report
- (00:54:58) TII Abu-Dhabi Released Falcon H1R-7B: A New Reasoning Model Outperforming Others in Math and Coding with only 7B Params with 256k Context Window - MarkTechPost
- Research & Advancements
- (01:01:42) Deep Delta Learning
- (01:07:47) Recursive Language Models
- (01:13:39) Conditional memory via scalable lookup
- (01:18:54) Extending the Context of Pretrained LLMs by Dropping their Positional Embeddings
- Policy & Safety
- (01:26:06) Constitutional Classifiers++: Efficient Production-Grade Defenses against Universal Jailbreaks
- (01:31:00) Nvidia CEO says purchase orders, not formal declaration, will signal Chinese approval of H200
- (01:32:24) China AI Leaders Warn of Widening Gap With US After $1B IPO Week
- (01:37:25) Jake Sullivan is furious that Trump removed Biden’s AI chip export controls | The Verge
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
21 January 2026, 3:00 am - 1 hour 38 minutes#230 - 2025 Retrospective, Nvidia buys Groq, GLM 4.7, METR
Our 230th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!
Recorded on 01/02/2026
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:
- Nvidia's acquisition of AI chip startup Groq for $20 billion highlights a strategic move for enhanced inference technology in GPUs.
- New York's RAISE Act legislation aims to regulate AI safety, marking the second major AI safety bill in the US.
- The launch of GLM 4.7 by Zhipu AI marks a significant advancement in open-source AI models for coding.
- Evaluation of long-horizon AI agents raises concerns about the rising costs and efficiency of AI in performing extended tasks.
Timestamps:
- (00:00:10) Intro / Banter
- (00:01:58) 2025 Retrospective
- Tools & Apps
- (00:24:39) OpenAI bets big on audio as Silicon Valley declares war on screens | TechCrunch
- Applications & Business
- (00:26:39) Nvidia buying AI chip startup Groq for about $20 billion, biggest deal
- (00:34:28) Exclusive | Meta Buys AI Startup Manus, Adding Millions of Paying Users - WSJ
- (00:38:05) Cursor continues acquisition spree with Graphite deal | TechCrunch
- (00:39:15) Micron Hikes CapEx to $20B with 2026 HBM Supply Fully Booked; HBM4 Ramps 2Q26
- (00:42:06) Chinese fabs are reportedly upgrading older ASML DUV lithography chipmaking machines — secondary channels and independent engineers used to soup up Twinscan NXT series
- Projects & Open Source
- (00:47:52) Z.AI launches GLM-4.7, new SOTA open-source model for coding
- (00:50:11) Evaluating AI’s ability to perform scientific research tasks
- Research & Advancements
- (00:54:32) Large Causal Models from Large Language Models
- (00:57:33) Universally Converging Representations of Matter Across Scientific Foundation Models
- (01:02:11) META-RL INDUCES EXPLORATION IN LANGUAGE AGENTS
- (01:07:16) Are the Costs of AI Agents Also Rising Exponentially?
- (01:11:17) METR eval for Opus 4.5
- (01:16:19) How to game the METR plot
- Policy & Safety
- (01:17:24) New York governor Kathy Hochul signs RAISE Act to regulate AI safety | TechCrunch
- (01:20:40) Activation Oracles: Training and Evaluating LLMs as General-Purpose Activation Explainers
- (01:26:46) Monitoring Monitorability
- (01:32:07) Sam Altman is hiring someone to worry about the dangers of AI | The Verge
- (01:33:38) X users asking Grok to put this girl in bikini, Grok is happy obliging - India Today
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
7 January 2026, 6:30 am - 1 hour 27 minutes#229 - Gemini 3 Flash, ChatGPT Apps, Nemotron 3
Our 229th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!
Recorded on 12/19/2025
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:
- Notable releases include OpenAI's GPT-5.2 Codex for advanced coding and Google's Gemini Free Flash for competitive AI application performance. Nvidia's new open-source Trion-3 models also showcase impressive benchmarks.
- Funding updates highlight Lovable's $330M Series B, valuing the AI coding startup at $6.6B, and Faya's $140M Series D for AI model hosting, valued at $4.5B.
- China makes significant strides in semiconductor technology with advances in EUV lithography machines, led by Huawei and SMIC, potentially disrupting global chip manufacturing dominance.
- Key safety and policy updates include OpenAI's GPT-5.2 system card focusing on biosecurity and cybersecurity risks, while Google partners with the US military to power a new AI platform with Gemini models.
Timestamps:
- (00:00:10) Intro / Banter
- (00:02:09) News Preview
- Tools & Apps
- (00:02:56) Google launches Gemini 3 Flash, makes it the default model in the Gemini app | TechCrunch
- (00:10:13) ChatGPT launches an app store, lets developers know it's open for business | TechCrunch
- (00:13:35) Introducing GPT-5.2-Codex | OpenAI
- (00:19:23) Story about OpenAI release - GPT image 1.5
- (00:22:27) Meta partners with ElevenLabs to power AI audio across Instagram, Horizon - The Economic Times
- Applications & Business
- (00:23:16) OpenAI to End Equity Vesting Period for Employees, WSJ Says
- (00:28:20) How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips
- (00:36:47) China’s Huawei, SMIC Make Progress With Chips, Report Finds
- (00:41:03) OpenAI in Talks to Raise At Least $10 Billion From Amazon and Use Its AI Chips
- (00:43:32) Amazon has a new leader for its ‘AGI’ group as it plays catch-up on AI | The Verge
- (00:47:27) Broadcom reveals its mystery $10 billion customer is Anthropic
- (00:49:12) Vibe-coding startup Lovable raises $330M at a $6.6B valuation | TechCrunch
- (00:50:38) Fal nabs $140M in fresh funding led by Sequoia, tripling valuation to $4.5B | TechCrunch
- Projects & Open Source
- (00:51:10) Nvidia Becomes a Major Model Maker With Nemotron 3 | WIRED
- (00:59:24) Meta introduces new SAM AI able to isolate and edit audio • The Register
- (00:59:54) [2512.14856] T5Gemma 2: Seeing, Reading, and Understanding Longer
- (01:03:10) Anthropic makes agent Skills an open standard - SiliconANGLE
- Research & Advancements
- (01:03:47) Budget-Aware Tool-Use Enables Effective Agent Scaling
- (01:08:21) Rethinking Thinking Tokens: LLMs as Improvement Operators
- (01:10:50) What if AI capabilities suddenly accelerated in 2027? How would the world know?
- Policy & Safety
- (01:12:58) Update to GPdfT-5 System Card: GPT-5.2
- (01:18:04) Neural Chameleons: Language Models Can Learn to Hide Their Thoughts from Unseen Activation Monitors
- (01:20:47) Async Control: Stress-testing Asynchronous Control Measures for LLM Agents
- (01:24:37) Google is powering a new US military AI platform | The Verge
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
25 December 2025, 7:00 am - 1 hour 26 minutes#228 - GPT 5.2, Scaling Agents, Weird Generalization
Our 228th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!
Recorded on 12/12/2025
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's latest model GPT-5.2 demonstrates improved performance and enhanced multi-modal capabilities but comes with increased costs and a different knowledge cutoff date.
- Disney invests $1 billion in OpenAI to generate Disney character content, creating unique licensing agreements across characters from Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars franchises.
- The U.S. government imposes new AI chip export rules involving security reviews, while simultaneously moving to prevent states from independently regulating AI.
- DeepMind releases a paper outlining the challenges and findings in scaling multi-agent systems, highlighting the complexities of tool coordination and task performance.
Timestamps:
- (00:00:00) Intro / Banter
- (00:01:19) News Preview
- Tools & Apps
- (00:01:58) GPT-5.2 is OpenAI’s latest move in the agentic AI battle | The Verge
- (00:08:48) Runway releases its first world model, adds native audio to latest video model | TechCrunch
- (00:11:51) Google says it will link to more sources in AI Mode | The Verge
- (00:12:24) ChatGPT can now use Adobe apps to edit your photos and PDFs for free | The Verge
- (00:13:05) Tencent releases Hunyuan 2.0 with 406B parameters
- Applications & Business
- (00:16:15) China set to limit access to Nvidia’s H200 chips despite Trump export approval
- (00:21:02) Disney investing $1 billion in OpenAI, will allow characters on Sora
- (00:24:48) Unconventional AI confirms its massive $475M seed round
- (00:29:06) Slack CEO Denise Dresser to join OpenAI as chief revenue officer | TechCrunch
- (00:31:18) The state of enterprise AI
- Projects & Open Source
- (00:33:49) [2512.10791] The FACTS Leaderboard: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Large Language Model Factuality
- (00:36:27) Claude 4.5 Opus' Soul Document
- Research & Advancements
- (00:43:49) [2512.08296] Towards a Science of Scaling Agent Systems
- (00:48:43) Evaluating Gemini Robotics Policies in a Veo World Simulator
- (00:52:10) Guided Self-Evolving LLMs with Minimal Human Supervision
- (00:56:08) Martingale Score: An Unsupervised Metric for Bayesian Rationality in LLM Reasoning
- (01:00:39) [2512.07783] On the Interplay of Pre-Training, Mid-Training, and RL on Reasoning Language Models
- (01:04:42) Stabilizing Reinforcement Learning with LLMs: Formulation and Practices
- (01:09:42) Google’s AI unit DeepMind announces UK 'automated research lab'
- Policy & Safety
- (01:10:28) Trump Moves to Stop States From Regulating AI With a New Executive Order - The New York Times
- (01:13:54) [2512.09742] Weird Generalization and Inductive Backdoors: New Ways to Corrupt LLMs
- (01:17:57) Forecasting AI Time Horizon Under Compute Slowdowns
- (01:20:46) AI Security Institute focuses on AI measurements and evaluations
- (01:21:16) Nvidia AI Chips to Undergo Unusual U.S. Security Review Before Export to China
- (01:22:01) U.S. Authorities Shut Down Major China-Linked AI Tech Smuggling Network
- Synthetic Media & Art
- (01:24:01) RSL 1.0 has arrived, allowing publishers to ask AI companies pay to scrape content | The Verge
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
17 December 2025, 8:00 am - 1 hour 34 minutes#227 - Jeremie is back! DeepSeek 3.2, TPUs, Nested Learning
Our 227th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!
Recorded on 12/05/2025
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:
- Deep Seek 3.2 and Flux 2 release, showcasing advancements in open-source AI models for natural language processing and image generation respectively.
- Amazon's new AI chips and Google's TPUs signal potential shifts in AI hardware dominance, with growing competition against Nvidia.
- Anthropic's potential IPO and OpenAI's declared ‘Code Red’ indicate significant moves in the AI business landscape, including high venture funding rounds for startups.
- Key research papers from DeepMind and Google explore advanced memory architectures and multi-agent systems, indicating ongoing efforts to enhance AI reasoning and efficiency.
Timestamps:
- (00:00:10) Intro / Banter
- (00:02:42) News Preview
- Tools & Apps
- (00:03:30) Deepseek 3.2 : New AI Model is Faster, Cheaper and Smarter
- (00:23:22) Black Forest Labs launches Flux.2 AI image models to challenge Nano Banana Pro and Midjourney
- (00:28:00) Sora and Nano Banana Pro throttled amid soaring demand | The Verge
- (00:29:34) Mistral closes in on Big AI rivals with new open-weight frontier and small models | TechCrunch
- (00:31:41) Kling's Video O1 launches as the first all-in-one video model for generation and editing
- (00:34:07) Runway rolls out Gen 4.5 AI video model that beats Google, OpenAI
- Applications & Business
- (00:35:18) NVIDIA’s Partners Are Beginning to Tilt Toward Google’s TPU Ecosystem, with Foxconn Reportedly Securing TPU Rack Orders
- (00:40:37) Amazon releases an impressive new AI chip and teases an Nvidia-friendly roadmap | TechCrunch
- (00:43:03) OpenAI declares ‘code red’ as Google catches up in AI race | The Verge
- (00:46:20) Anthropic reportedly preparing for massive IPO in race with OpenAI: FT
- (00:48:41) Black Forest Labs raises $300M at $3.25B valuation | TechCrunch
- (00:49:20) Paris-based AI voice startup Gradium nabs $70M seed | TechCrunch
- (00:50:10) OpenAI announced a 1 GW Stargate cluster in Abu Dhabi
- (00:53:22) OpenAI’s investment into Thrive Holdings is its latest circular deal
- (00:55:11) OpenAI to acquire Neptune, an AI model training assistance startup
- (00:56:11) Anthropic acquires developer tool startup Bun to scale AI coding
- (00:56:55) Microsoft drops AI sales targets in half after salespeople miss their quotas - Ars Technica
- Projects & Open Source
- (00:57:51) [2511.22570] DeepSeekMath-V2: Towards Self-Verifiable Mathematical Reasoning
- (01:01:52) Evo-Memory: Benchmarking LLM Agent Test-time Learning with Self-Evolving Memory
- Research & Advancements
- (01:05:44) Nested Learning: The Illusion of Deep Learning Architecture
- (01:13:30) Multi-Agent Deep Research: Training Multi-Agent Systems with M-GRPO
- (01:15:50) State of AI: An Empirical 100 Trillion Token Study with OpenRouter
- Policy & Safety
- (01:21:52) Trump signs executive order launching Genesis Mission AI project
- (01:24:42) OpenAI has trained its LLM to confess to bad behavior | MIT Technology Review
- (01:29:34) US senators seek to block Nvidia sales of advanced chips to China
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
9 December 2025, 8:00 am - 1 hour 11 minutes#226 - Gemini 3, Claude Opus 4.5, Nano Banana Pro, LeJEPA
Our 226th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!
Recorded on 11/24/2025
Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and co-hosted by Michelle Lee
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:
- New AI model releases include Google's Gemini 3 Pro, Anthropic's Opus 4.5, and OpenAI's GPT-5.1, each showcasing significant advancements in AI capabilities and applications.
- Robotics innovations feature Sunday Robotics' new robot Memo and a $600M funding round for Visual Intelligence, highlighting growth and investment in the robotics sector.
- AI safety and policy updates include Europe's proposed changes to GDPR and AI Act regulations, and reports of AI-assisted cyber espionage by a Chinese state-sponsored group.
- AI-generated content and legal highlights involve settlements between Warner Music Group and AI music platform UDIO, reflecting evolving dynamics in the field of synthetic media.
Timestamps:
- (00:00:10) Intro / Banter
- (00:01:32) News Preview
- (00:02:10) Response to listener comments
- Tools & Apps
- (00:02:34) Google launches Gemini 3 with new coding app and record benchmark scores | TechCrunch
- (00:05:49) Google launches Nano Banana Pro powered by Gemini 3
- (00:10:55) Anthropic releases Opus 4.5 with new Chrome and Excel integrations | TechCrunch
- (00:15:34) OpenAI releases GPT-5.1-Codex-Max to handle engineering tasks that span twenty-four hours
- (00:18:26) ChatGPT launches group chats globally | TechCrunch
- (00:20:33) Grok Claims Elon Musk Is More Athletic Than LeBron James — and the World’s Greatest Lover
- Applications & Business
- (00:24:03) What AI bubble? Nvidia's strong earnings signal there's more room to grow
- (00:26:26) Alphabet stock surges on Gemini 3 AI model optimism
- (00:28:09) Sunday Robotics emerges from stealth with launch of ‘Memo’ humanoid house chores robot
- (00:32:30) Robotics Startup Physical Intelligence Valued at $5.6 Billion in New Funding - Bloomberg
- (00:34:22) Waymo permitted areas expanded by California DMV - CBS Los Angeles - Waymo enters 3 more cities: Minneapolis, New Orleans, and Tampa | TechCrunch
- Projects & Open Source
- (00:37:00) Meta AI Releases Segment Anything Model 3 (SAM 3) for Promptable Concept Segmentation in Images and Videos - MarkTechPost
- (00:40:18) [2511.16624] SAM 3D: 3Dfy Anything in Images
- (00:42:51) [2511.13998] LoCoBench-Agent: An Interactive Benchmark for LLM Agents in Long-Context Software Engineering
- Research & Advancements
- (00:45:10) [2511.08544] LeJEPA: Provable and Scalable Self-Supervised Learning Without the Heuristics
- (00:50:08) [2511.13720] Back to Basics: Let Denoising Generative Models Denoise
- Policy & Safety
- (00:52:08) Europe is scaling back its landmark privacy and AI laws | The Verge
- (00:54:13) From shortcuts to sabotage: natural emergent misalignment from reward hacking
- (00:58:24) [2511.15304] Adversarial Poetry as a Universal Single-Turn Jailbreak Mechanism in Large Language Models
- (01:01:43) Disrupting the first reported AI-orchestrated cyber espionage campaign
- (01:04:36) OpenAI Locks Down San Francisco Offices Following Alleged Threat From Activist | WIRED
- Synthetic Media & Art
- (01:07:02) Warner Music Group Settles AI Lawsuit With Udio
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
30 November 2025, 7:30 am - 1 hour 18 minutes#225 - GPT 5.1, Kimi K2 Thinking, Remote Labor Index
Our 225th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!
Recorded on 11/16/2025
Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and co-hosted by Michelle Lee
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:
- New AI model releases include GPT-5.1 from OpenAI and Ernie 5.0 from Baidu, each with updated features and capabilities.
- Self-driving technology advancements from Baidu’s Apollo Go and Pony AI’s IPO highlight significant progress in the automotive sector.
- Startup funding updates include Incept taking $50M for diffusion models, while Cursor and Gamma secure significant valuations for coding and presentation tools respectively.
- AI-generated content is gaining traction with songs topping charts and new marketplaces for AI-generated voices, indicating evolving trends in synthetic media.
Timestamps:
- (00:01:19) News Preview
- Tools & Apps
- (00:02:13) OpenAI says the brand-new GPT-5.1 is ‘warmer’ and has more ‘personality’ options | The Verge
- (00:04:51) Baidu Unveils ERNIE 5.0 and a Series of AI Applications at Baidu World 2025, Ramps Up Global Push
- (00:07:00) ByteDance’s Volcano Engine debuts coding agent at $1.3 promo price
- (00:08:04) Google will let users call stores, browse products, and check out using AI | The Verge
- (00:10:41) Fei-Fei Li's World Labs speeds up the world model race with Marble, its first commercial product | TechCrunch
- (00:13:30) OpenAI says it's fixed ChatGPT's em dash problem | TechCrunch
- Applications & Business
- (00:16:01) Anthropic announces $50 billion data center plan | TechCrunch
- (00:18:06) Baidu teases next-gen AI training, inference accelerators • The Register
- (00:20:50) Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun plans to exit and launch own start-up
- (00:24:41) Amazon Demands Perplexity Stop AI Tool From Making Purchases - Bloomberg
- (00:27:32) AI PowerPoint-killer Gamma hits $2.1B valuation, $100M ARR, founder says | TechCrunch
- (00:29:33) Inception raises $50 million to build diffusion models for code and text | TechCrunch
- (00:31:14) Coding assistant Cursor raises $2.3B 5 months after its previous round | TechCrunch
- (00:33:56) China's Baidu says it's running 250,000 robotaxi rides a week — same as Alphabet's Waymo
- (00:35:26) Driverless Tech Firm Pony AI Raises $863 Million in HK Listing
- Projects & Open Source
- (00:36:30) Moonshot's Kimi K2 Thinking emerges as leading open source AI
- Research & Advancements
- (00:39:22) [2510.26787] Remote Labor Index: Measuring AI Automation of Remote Work
- (00:45:21) OpenAI Researchers Train Weight Sparse Transformers to Expose Interpretable Circuits - MarkTechPost
- (00:49:34) Kimi Linear: An Expressive, Efficient Attention Architecture
- (00:53:33) Watch Google DeepMind’s new AI agent learn to play video games | The Verge
- (00:57:34) arXiv Changes Rules After Getting Spammed With AI-Generated 'Research' Papers
- Policy & Safety
- (00:59:35) Stability AI largely wins UK court battle against Getty Images over copyright and trademark | AP News
- (01:01:48) Court rules that OpenAI violated German copyright law; orders it to pay damages | TechCrunch
- (01:03:48) Microsoft's $15.2B UAE investment turns Gulf State into test case for US AI diplomacy | TechCrunch
- Synthetic Media & Art
- (01:06:39) An AI-Generated Country Song Is Topping A Billboard Chart, And That Should Infuriate Us All | Whiskey Riff
- (01:10:59) Xania Monet is the first AI-powered artist to debut on a Billboard airplay chart, but she likely won’t be the last | CNN
- (01:13:34) ElevenLabs’ new AI marketplace lets brands use famous voices for ads | The Verge
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
21 November 2025, 6:00 am - 1 hour 31 minutes#224 - OpenAI is for-profit! Cursor 2, Minimax M2, Udio copyright
Our 224th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!
Recorded on 10/31/2025
Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and co-hosted by Gavin Purcell (check out AI For Humans and AndThen!)
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 completes its for-profit restructuring, redefining its relationship with Microsoft and securing future investments. Meanwhile, Qualcomm and other tech giants announce new AI chips aimed at competing with Nvidia and AMD, marking major advancements in AI hardware capabilities.
- Amazon and Google deepen their partnerships with Anthropic, providing extensive computing resources to enhance AI research and applications. These developments signal significant growth and competition in the AI industry.
- Major AI tools and models were released and updated, including Cursor 2.0, CLAUDE coding capabilities, and open-source options from Minimax. These new tools offer a range of functionalities for coding, design, and more.
- Legal battles around AI copyright issues persist, as OpenAI faces ongoing lawsuits from authors over text generation using copyrighted material. Universal Music Group settles a copyright suit with AI music startup UDO, transitioning to a licensed model for AI-generated music. This shift reflects broader challenges and adaptations in the AI-generated content space, where copyright and ethical usage remain highly contentious issues.
Timestamps:
- (00:00:10) Intro / Banter
- (00:02:44) News Preview
- Tools & Apps
- (00:03:44) Cursor 2.0 shifts to in-house AI with Composer model and parallel agents
- (00:07:44) Anthropic brings Claude Code to the web | TechCrunch
- (00:10:01) Microsoft's Mico is a 'Clippy' for the AI era | TechCrunch
- (00:14:20) Anthropic’s Claude catches up to ChatGPT and Gemini with upgraded memory features | The Verge
- (00:18:46) Canva launches its own design model, adds new AI features to the platform | TechCrunch
- (00:21:07) Elon Musk’s Grokipedia launches with AI-cloned pages from Wikipedia | The Verge
- Applications & Business
- (00:25:10) OpenAI completed its for-profit restructuring — and struck a new deal with Microsoft | The Verge
- (00:31:25) Qualcomm announces AI chips to compete with AMD and Nvidia
- (00:34:02) Amazon launches AI infrastructure project, to power Anthropic's Claude model | Reuters
- (00:38:52) Google and Anthropic announce cloud deal worth tens of billions
- (00:39:46) Google partners with Ambani's Reliance to offer free AI Pro access to millions of Jio users in India | TechCrunch
- Projects & Open Source
- (00:41:17) MiniMax Releases MiniMax M2: A Mini Open Model Built for Max Coding and Agentic Workflows at 8% Claude Sonnet Price and ~2x Faster - MarkTechPost
- (00:45:22) [2510.25741] Scaling Latent Reasoning via Looped Language Models
- (00:47:59) OpenAI’s gpt-oss-safeguard enables developers to build safer AI - Help Net Security
- Research & Advancements
- (00:49:51) [2510.15103] Continual Learning via Sparse Memory Finetuning
- (00:54:01) [2510.18091] Accelerating Vision Transformers with Adaptive Patch Sizes
- (00:57:46) [2510.18871] How Do LLMs Use Their Depth?
- Policy & Safety
- (01:01:07) AMD, Department of Energy announce $1 billion AI supercomputer partnership | The Verge
- (01:03:03)
- Synthetic Media & Art
- (01:09:34) Universal partners with AI startup Udio after settling copyright suit | The Verge
- (01:16:04) OpenAI loses bid to dismiss part of US authors' copyright lawsuit | Reuters
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
5 November 2025, 4:00 am - 1 hour 11 minutes#223 - Haiku 4.5, OpenAI DevDay, Claude Skills, Scaling RL, SB 243
Our 223st episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!
Recorded on 10/17/2025
Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and co-hosted by Erik Schnultz
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 and OpenAI have announced updates to their AI models and tools, including Haiku 4.5 and various business collaborations.
- Multiple companies like Slack and Salesforce are integrating AI assistants and agents into their platforms, enhancing task management and business operations.
- Recent research in reinforcement learning and agent memory curation highlights new methods for improving AI model performance and context management.
- California has passed a law to regulate AI chatbots for children and vulnerable users, and there are rising concerns over the increasing amount of AI-generated content on the internet.
Timestamps:
- (00:00:10) Intro / Banter
- (00:01:31) News Preview
- Tools & Apps
- (00:02:18) Anthropic launches new version of scaled-down ‘Haiku’ model
- (00:04:52) Everything OpenAI announced at DevDay 2025: Agent Kit, Apps SDK, ChatGPT, and more | ZDNET
- (00:09:11) Anthropic turns to ‘skills’ to make Claude more useful at work | The Verge
- (00:13:20) Microsoft launches ‘vibe working’ in Excel and Word | The Verge
- (00:17:22) Google releases Veo 3.1, adds it to Flow video editor | TechCrunch
- (00:19:40) Slack is turning Slackbot into an AI assistant | The Verge
- (00:22:52) Salesforce announces Agentforce 360 as enterprise AI competition heats up | TechCrunch
- Applications & Business
- (00:24:58) Broadcom stock pops 9% on OpenAI custom chip deal, adding to Nvidia and AMD agreements
- (00:27:58) How ByteDance Made China’s Most Popular AI Chatbot | WIRED
- (00:30:08) Amazon's Zoox Robotaxis Have Arrived In Las Vegas - Here's What Riders Are Experiencing
- (00:32:43) Waymo’s robotaxis are coming to London | The Verge
- (00:34:14) Reflection AI raises $2B to be America's open frontier AI lab, challenging DeepSeek | TechCrunch
- (00:35:58) General Intuition lands $134M seed to teach agents spatial reasoning using video game clips | TechCrunch
- (00:38:36) Supabase nabs $5B valuation, four months after hitting $2B | TechCrunch
- Projects & Open Source
- (00:40:58) Neuphonic Open-Sources NeuTTS Air: A 748M-Parameter On-Device Speech Language Model with Instant Voice Cloning - MarkTechPost
- (00:43:06) Anthropic AI Releases Petri: An Open-Source Framework for Automated Auditing by Using AI Agents to Test the Behaviors of Target Models on Diverse Scenarios - MarkTechPost
- Research & Advancements
- (00:44:25) [2510.13786] The Art of Scaling Reinforcement Learning Compute for LLMs
- (00:48:51) [2510.01171] Verbalized Sampling: How to Mitigate Mode Collapse and Unlock LLM Diversity
- (00:51:22) [2510.12635] Memory as Action: Autonomous Context Curation for Long-Horizon Agentic Tasks
- (00:54:31) [2510.07364] Base Models Know How to Reason, Thinking Models Learn When
- (00:57:24) [2510.12402] Cautious Weight Decay
- Policy & Safety
- (01:02:03) California becomes first state to regulate AI companion chatbots | TechCrunch
- (01:04:13) Over 50 Percent of the Internet Is Now AI Slop, New Data Finds
- Synthetic Media & Art
- (01:06:31) OpenAI Reverses Stance on Use of Copyright Works in Sora - WSJ
- (01:08:29) Character.AI removes Disney characters from platform after studio issues warning
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
24 October 2025, 3:00 pm - 1 hour 37 minutes#222 - Sora 2, Sonnet 4.5, Vibes, Thinking Machines
Our 222st episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!
Recorded on 10/03/2025
Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and co-hosted by Jon Krohn
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 introduced several new features, including SOA 2 for text-to-video generation, Claude Sonnet 4.5 for coding and agentic tasks, and the pulse feature for personalized morning briefs.
- Meta launched a new AI video creation feature called Vibes in its Meta AI app and on meta.ai, facing mixed reactions from the public regarding AI-generated content.
- California's SB 53, the Transparency in Frontier AI Act, has become law, requiring large AI companies to disclose safety and security processes, while SB 942 mandates AI detection tools for user-generated content.
- AI regulations and industry dynamics, including battles over intellectual property, startup funding, and the integration of AI into everyday tools and services like Microsoft's AI agents for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
In this episode:
- (00:00:10) Intro / Banter
- (00:03:08) News Preview
- (00:03:56) Response to listener comments
- Tools & Apps
- (00:04:51) ChatGPT parent company OpenAI announces Sora 2 with AI video app
- (00:11:35) Anthropic releases Claude Sonnet 4.5 in latest bid for AI agents and coding supremacy | The Verge
- (00:22:25) Meta launches 'Vibes,' a short-form video feed of AI slop | TechCrunch
- (00:26:42) OpenAI launches ChatGPT Pulse to proactively write you morning briefs | TechCrunch
- (00:33:44) OpenAI rolls out safety routing system, parental controls on ChatGPT | TechCrunch
- (00:35:53) The Latest Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite Preview is Now the Fastest Proprietary Model (External Tests) and 50% Fewer Output Tokens - MarkTechPost
- (00:39:54) Microsoft just added AI agents to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint - how to use them | ZDNET
- Applications & Business
- (00:42:41) OpenAI takes on Google, Amazon with new agentic shopping system | TechCrunch
- (00:46:01) Exclusive: Mira Murati’s Stealth AI Lab Launches Its First Product | WIRED
- (00:49:54) OpenAI is the world's most valuable private company after private stock sale | TechCrunch
- (00:53:07) Elon Musk’s xAI accuses OpenAI of stealing trade secrets in new lawsuit | Technology | The Guardian
- (00:55:40) Former OpenAI and DeepMind researchers raise whopping $300M seed to automate science | TechCrunch
- Projects & Open Source
- (00:58:26) [2509.16941] SWE-Bench Pro: Can AI Agents Solve Long-Horizon Software Engineering Tasks?
- Research & Advancements
- (01:01:28) [2509.17196] Evolution of Concepts in Language Model Pre-Training
- (01:05:36) [2509.19284] What Characterizes Effective Reasoning? Revisiting Length, Review, and Structure of CoT
- Lighting round
- (01:09:37) [2507.02954] Advanced Financial Reasoning at Scale: A Comprehensive Evaluation of Large Language Models on CFA Level III
- (01:12:03) [2509.24552] Short window attention enables long-term memorization
- Policy & Safety
- (01:18:11) SB 53, the landmark AI transparency bill, is now law in California | The Verge
- (01:24:07) Elon Musk's xAI offers Grok to federal government for 42 cents | TechCrunch
- (01:25:23) Character.AI removes Disney characters from platform after studio issues warning
- (01:28:50) Spotify's Attempt to Fight AI Slop Falls on Its Face
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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