The Batch Newsletter
GLM-5.3’s Exploits, AI Models and Hardware Speed Up, DeepSeek’s New Agent Harness
The Batch News & Insights: How have software engineering fundamentals changed with agentic coding?
Analytics DeepLearning.AI
Data Points
Ox Alpha is a multimodal GLM model by Z.ai: Apple Mini and Studio desktops target AI power users
Perplexity moves its computer use agent to on-device models. OpenAI’s Jalapeño may be faster than Nvidia’s best chips. Inside Thomson, Thomson Reuters’ model for law, news, and tax info. T-Rex, a robotics model that knows how to use its hands.
Data Points
What we know about preview model Ox Alpha: An experimental model takes DeepSeek-V4-Flash multimodal
GLM-5.3 jumps to top of open weight leaderboards. Harvey’s Tenet offers law firms a specialized model. OpenAI introduces safety program for data-conscious customers. New Google research gives the transformer a makeover.
Machine Learning Research
Agents Come to Speech Recognition: AgenticASR incorporates user corrections to edit speech recognition on the fly
Most speech-to-text systems transcribe speech in a single pass, which makes them unable to correct errors in their outputs. Researchers built a system that allows for interactive corrections.
Machine Learning Research
Qwen3.8-Max Lands With A Bang: Inside Alibaba's two new models, Qwen3.8-Max and Qwen3.8-27B
Open models are getting larger and more capable. A few weeks ago, Moonshot AI announced Kimi K3, the largest and best-performing open weights model yet. Last week, Alibaba answered by releasing weights for a giant of its own.
Machine Learning Research
How Claude’s Watermarks Work: Anthropic details new invisible marking system for future versions of Claude
Anthropic introduced invisible, machine-readable signals that text and images were generated by Claude.
Machine Learning Research
Grok’s Cursor Alliance Pays Off: Grok 4.6 rivals Claude Opus 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol at a lower price
Once a lab that produced mid-tier models, SpaceXAI has steadily improved. It just built one of the most capable models in the world while keeping prices relatively low.
Letters
The AI Engineering Skills Map Part 2 — AI Applications: What You Need to Know to Build and Deploy AI Applications In Real Life
I previously wrote about our AI Engineering Skills Map, with the highest level skills being (i) Building and deploying AI applications, (ii) Software engineering fundamentals, (iii) Using coding agents, and (iv) Shaping the build. In this letter, I will flesh out the first of them.
The Batch Newsletter
Anthropic’s Watermarks, Grok 4.6 Surges, Qwen’s Open Weights, Better Corrections for Speech Recognition
The Batch News & Insights: I previously wrote about our AI Engineering Skills Map, with the highest level skills being (i) Building and deploying...
Machine Learning Research
AI Can Help Heal Romantic Distress: Inside overit, a study of chatbot therapy after breakups
Chatbots that are designed to treat mental health issues typically require multiple sessions, posing a risk that users will drop out before they receive much benefit. Researchers showed that chatbots can provide relief in a single session.
Machine Learning Research
Minimax’s State-of-the-Art Video Model Is Only Minimally Open: Minimax H3's weights are free, but carry unusual restrictions
A free-to-download model sets a new standard for video generation and editing, but its license comes with unexpected restrictions.
Machine Learning Research
Google’s Robotics Model Has Legs: Gemini Robotics 2 gets Google closer to true multi-embodiment
Google’s latest vision-language-action model can walk a humanoid robot across a room, crouch to a low shelf, and close a five-fingered hand around a light bulb.