Letters
I am alarmed by the proposed cuts to U.S. funding for basic research, analyzed here, and the impact this would have for U.S. competitiveness in AI and other areas.
Tech & Society
A study co-authored by tech-manual publisher Tim O’Reilly shows that OpenAI trained GPT-4o on parts of his company’s books that were not made freely available.
Machine Learning Research
DeepSeek made headlines late last year, when it built a state-of-the-art, open-weights large language model at a cost far lower than usual. The upstart developer shared new details about its method.
Business
Google revamped its roster of models, closed and open, and added more AI-powered features to its existing products.
Machine Learning Research
Anthropic continued its tradition of building AI models that raise the bar in coding tasks.
Data Points
A new earth system model that can predict weather disasters. Google’s speedy diffusion-based text generation model. Claude 4’s new system prompts for power users. Microsoft’s AI agent marketplace for developers.
Data Points
The new device OpenAI is building with Jony Ive. Mistral’s new open-weight software engineering model. Falcon-Arabic, a new 7B model that excels in multiple regional dialects. Google’s new multimodal model for mobile devices.
The Batch Newsletter
The Batch AI News and Insights: In the age of AI, large corporations — not just startups — can move fast. I often speak with large companies’ C-suite and Boards about AI strategy and implementation, and would like to share some ideas that are applicable to big companies.
Letters
In the age of AI, large corporations — not just startups — can move fast. I often speak with large companies’ C-suite and Boards about AI strategy and implementation, and would like to share some ideas that are applicable to big companies.
Machine Learning Research
Using an 8-bit number format like FP8 during training saves computation compared to 16- or 32-bit formats, but it can yield less-accurate results. Researchers trained models using 4-bit numbers without sacrificing accuracy.
Business
The United States government announced sweeping agreements to sell tens of billions of dollars worth of AI technology and services to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Tech & Society
An unauthorized update by an xAI employee caused the Grok chatbot to introduce South African politics into unrelated conversations, the company said.