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Last Week in AI

Last Week in AI

By: Skynet Today
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Weekly summaries of the AI news that matters!© Copyright 2024 All rights reserved. Politics & Government
Episodes
  • #238 - GPT 5.4 mini, OpenAI Pivot, Mamba 3, Attention Residuals

    #238 - GPT 5.4 mini, OpenAI Pivot, Mamba 3, Attention Residuals
    Mar 26 2026
    Our 238th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!Recorded on 03/18/2026Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie HarrisFeel free to email us your questions and feedback at andreyvkurenkov@gmail.com and/or hello@gladstone.aiRead out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/In this episode:* OpenAI released GPT-5.4 mini and nano with 400k-token context windows, higher per-token prices but claimed token-efficiency gains in Codex; nano is API-only and pitched for high-volume classification/data extraction despite a major price increase.* Mistral open-sourced the Small 4 model family (MoE, 119B total/6B active) combining reasoning, multimodal, and coding-agent capabilities, and announced Forge to help businesses train or post-train custom models.* Agent “operating system” competition intensified with Meta’s acquired Manus launching a local Mac agent, Nvidia announcing NeMo/“Open Shell” sandboxed agent runtime, and Nvidia also unveiling DLSS 5 plus major hardware forecasts including Groq LPU integration.* Business and safety updates included OpenAI shifting focus toward productivity/enterprise amid competition, Microsoft reorganizing Copilot and frontier-model efforts, Meta delaying its next model, China-linked ByteDance deploying large Nvidia clusters abroad, and new safety work on steganography, chain-of-thought faithfulness, fine-tuning defenses, cyber-attack evals, and constitution/spec compliance.A thank you to our current sponsors:Box - visit Box.com/AI to learn moreODSC AI - go to odsc.ai/east and use promo code LWAI for an additional 15% off your pass to ODSC AI East 2026.Factor - head to factormeals.com/lwai50off and use code lwai50off to get 50 percent off and free breakfast for a yearTimestamps:(00:00:10) Intro / Banter(00:01:56) News PreviewTools & Apps(00:02:39) OpenAI ships GPT-5.4 mini and nano, faster and more capable but up to 4x pricier(00:08:04) Mistral's new Small 4 model punches above its weight with 128 expert modules(00:14:03) Meta's Manus launches 'My Computer' to turn your Mac into an AI agent - 9to5Mac(00:17:57) NVIDIA Announces NemoClaw for the OpenClaw Community | NVIDIA Newsroom + Nvidia boosts knowledge work with Open Agent Development Platform(00:24:09) DLSS 5 looks like a real-time generative AI filter for video games | The Verge(00:26:36) OpenAI to Launch ChatGPT 'Adult Mode' Despite Warnings From Its Own Advisers - CNETApplications & Business(00:33:46) OpenAI Reportedly Pivoting to a Focus on Business and Productivity Only(00:41:25) Nvidia GTC 2026: CEO Jensen Huang sees $1 trillion in orders for Blackwell and Vera Rubin through ’27(00:45:44) Mistral launches Forge to help enterprises build their own AI models(00:54:17) China's ByteDance gets access to top Nvidia AI chips, WSJ reports(00:57:57) Meta Delays Rollout of New A.I. Model After Performance Concerns(01:02:50) Microsoft Shakes Up AI Division As Copilot Falls Behind Google and OpenAIPolicy & Safety(01:07:26) A Decision-Theoretic Formalisation of Steganography With Applications to LLM Monitoring(01:13:09) Reasoning Theater: Disentangling Model Beliefs from Chain-of-Thought(01:18:29) In-Training Defenses against Emergent Misalignment in Language Models(01:23:07) How do frontier AI agents perform in multi-step cyber-attack scenarios?(01:25:20) Eval awareness in Claude Opus 4.6’s BrowseComp performance(01:29:49) Introducing Bloom: an open source tool for automated behavioral evaluations(01:32:26) How well do models follow their constitutions?(01:37:11) Nvidia’s H200 License Stirs Security Concern Among Top DemocratsResearch & Advancements(01:40:050) [2603.15031] Attention Residuals(01:47:11) Mamba-3: Improved Sequence Modeling using State Space PrinciplesSee 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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    2 hrs and 1 min
  • #237 - Nemotron 3 Super, xAI reborn, Anthropic Lawsuit, Research!!!

    #237 - Nemotron 3 Super, xAI reborn, Anthropic Lawsuit, Research!!!
    Mar 16 2026
    Our 237th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!Recorded on 03/13/2026Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie HarrisFeel free to email us your questions and feedback at andreyvkurenkov@gmail.com and/or hello@gladstone.aiRead out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/In this episode:* Perplexity announced “Personal Computer,” a local Mac-based AI agent positioned as a safer alternative to OpenAI’s computer-use agents, while Anthropic added GitHub PR code review pricing reviews at $15–$25 and Cursor launched trigger-based “Automations” for always-on coding agents.* ChatGPT introduced interactive math/science visuals and Anthropic added in-chat interactive charts/diagrams; Nvidia released open weights for its 120B-parameter Natron Free Super hybrid Transformer–Mamba latent-MoE model trained natively at 4-bit for Blackwell GPUs.* Nvidia halted H200 production for China amid customs blocks and domestic chip pressure; xAI saw major co-founder departures; Anthropic previewed a Claude Marketplace for enterprise procurement; Yann LeCun’s aMI raised $1.3B; humanoid robot maker Sanctuary reached a $1.15B valuation.* Anthropic sued the Pentagon over a “supply chain risk” designation as memos ordered removal within 180 days; research covered models resisting activation steering, limits of chain-of-thought control, inference-scaling boosting cyber-task success, low-probability risky actions, weaknesses in SWE-bench, multimodal pretraining, long-context RNN memory caching, context-parallel training efficiency, RL for CUDA kernel optimization, and latent introspection detecting concept injection.A thank you to our current sponsors:Box - visit Box.com/AI to learn moreODSC AI - go to odsc.ai/east and use promo code LWAI for an additional 15% off your pass to ODSC AI East 2026.Factor - head to factormeals.com/lwai50off and use code lwai50off to get 50 percent off and free breakfast for a yearTimestamps:(00:00:10) Intro / Banter(00:01:23) Response to listener commentsTools & Apps(00:02:06) Perplexity’s Personal Computer turns your spare Mac into an AI agent | The Verge(00:04:22) Anthropic launches code review tool to check flood of AI-generated code | TechCrunch(00:08:08 ) Cursor is rolling out a new kind of agentic coding tool | TechCrunch(00:11:14) ChatGPT can now create interactive visuals to help you understand math and science concepts | TechCrunch(00:11:56) Anthropic’s Claude AI can respond with charts, diagrams, and other visuals now | The VergeProjects & Open Source(00:13:54) Introducing Nemotron 3 Super: An Open Hybrid Mamba-Transformer MoE for Agentic Reasoning | NVIDIA Technical BlogApplications & Business(00:21:22) Nvidia halts H200 production as China backs Huawei AI chips(00:28:33) Another XAI Cofounder Has Left, and Another Says He's Leaving. - Business Insider(00:34:04) Anthropic's Claude Marketplace allows customers to buy third-party cloud services | TechRadar(00:37:57) Yann LeCun's AMI Labs raises $1.03 billion to build world models | TechCrunch(00:44:52) Humanoid robotics maker Sunday reaches $1.15B valuation to build household robots | TechCrunchPolicy & Safety(00:46:09) Anthropic Sues Department of Defense Over ‘Supply Chain Risk’ Label - The New York Times + Google and OpenAI Just Filed a Legal Brief in Support of Anthropic (00:53:24) Internal Pentagon memo orders military commanders to remove Anthropic AI technology from key systems - CBS News(00:58:15) Endogenous Resistance to Activation Steering in Language Models(01:06:27) Reasoning Models Struggle to Control their Chains of Thought(01:09:52) ‘It means missile defence on datacentres’: drone strikes raise doubts over Gulf as AI superpower(01:14:57) Evidence for inference scaling in AI cyber tasks: Increased evaluation budgets reveal higher success rates(01:18:24) Frontier Models Can Take Actions at Low ProbabilitiesResearch & Advancements(01:24:20) Research note: Many SWE-bench-Passing PRs Would Not Be Merged into Main(01:28:26) [2603.03276] Beyond Language Modeling: An Exploration of Multimodal Pretraining(01:40:09) Memory Caching: RNNs with Growing Memory(01:48:47) Untied Ulysses: Memory-Efficient Context Parallelism via Headwise Chunking(01:58:41) CUDA Agent: Large-Scale Agentic RL for High-Performance CUDA Kernel Generation(02:08:57) Latent Introspection: Models Can Detect Prior Concept Injections(02:16:45) Physics of RL: Toy scaling laws for the emergence of reward-seekingSee 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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    2 hrs and 27 mins
  • #236 - GPT 5.4, Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite, Supply Chain Risk

    #236 - GPT 5.4, Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite, Supply Chain Risk
    Mar 12 2026
    Our 236th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!Recorded on 03/06/2026Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie HarrisFeel free to email us your questions and feedback at andreyvkurenkov@gmail.com and/or hello@gladstone.aiRead out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/In this episode:* OpenAI released GPT-5.4 Pro with a 1M-token context window, mid-response course correction, native computer-use capabilities, improved tool use, higher GPT-VAL performance (83%), and “high cyber capability” safety measures; OpenAI also launched GPT-5.3 Instant with a less “preachy” tone and a claimed 26.8% hallucination reduction.* Google upgraded Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite with faster time-to-first-token and higher throughput, released a CLI for integrating agents with Gmail/Drive/Docs, and discussion highlighted real-world agent failure risks (including an example of an AI-driven mass email deletion).* Luma launched unified multimodal models and Luma Agents for end-to-end creative work across text, image, video, and audio, including a reported ad localization use case completed in 40 hours for under $20,000.* Defense-contract controversy escalated: Anthropic was labeled a supply chain risk (later narrowed), OpenAI’s DoD contract language emphasized “all lawful uses,” consumer cancellations boosted Claude’s app rankings, OpenAI saw departures and announced a $110B raise at a $730B valuation, Alibaba lost key Qwen leaders, a lawsuit alleged Gemini contributed to a suicide, Anthropic warned of major labor disruption, and METR corrected its AI time-horizon estimates.A thank you to our current sponsors:Box - visit Box.com/AI to learn moreODSC AI - go to odsc.ai/east and use promo code LWAI for an additional 15% off your pass to ODSC AI East 2026.Factor - head to factormeals.com/lwai50off and use code lwai50off to get 50 percent off and free breakfast for a yearTimestamps:(00:00:10) Intro / Banter(00:01:19) News PreviewTools & Apps(00:02:10) OpenAI launches GPT-5.4 with Pro and Thinking versions | TechCrunch(00:12:31) OpenAI GPT-5.3 Instant less likely to beat around the bush • The Register(00:16:07) Google releases Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite at 1/8th the cost of Pro | VentureBeat(00:19:23) Google makes Gmail, Drive, and Docs 'agent-ready' for OpenClaw | PCWorld(00:27:02) Luma launches creative AI agents powered by its new ‘Unified Intelligence’ models | TechCrunchApplications & Business(00:30:05) Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei calls OpenAI's messaging around military deal 'straight up lies,' report says | TechCrunch(00:41:56) No ethics at all': the 'cancel ChatGPT' trend is growing after OpenAI signs a deal with the US military | TechRadar(00:45:54) OpenAI raises $110B in one of the largest private funding rounds in history | TechCrunch(00:56:07) Alibaba scrambles after sudden departure of Qwen tech leadPolicy & Safety(01:00:12) Pentagon approves OpenAI safety red lines after dumping Anthropic + Where things stand with the Department of War Anthropic + Microsoft says Anthropic’s products remain available to customers after Pentagon blacklist(01:09:11) A new lawsuit claims Gemini assisted in suicide | Semafor(01:15:24) Anthropic just mapped out which jobs AI could potentially replace. A 'Great Recession for white-collar workers' is absolutely possible | Fortune(01:21:54) We're correcting a mistake in our modeling that inflated recent 50%-time horizons by 10-20%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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    1 hr and 29 mins
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