UsefulAINewsBackup 10May25

 
Last update: Saturday 5/10/25
This weekly news page provides links to reports about major innovations in generative AI. The page is not for AI experts. It's for (1) computer savvy professionals who use genAI via chatbots and agents to obtain benefits in their careers and personal lives, and (2) computer savvy citizens who want to be alert to genAI's potential impact on our society. 

Most of the links on this page refer to reports published after the "AI Big Bang", i.e., after Sam Altman's sudden firing and rapid rehiring by OpenAI, i.e., after November 20, 2023. The previous edition of this page can be found here ➡ PreBigBang  

A. OpenAI  | B. Microsoft | C.  Google | D. Other Models | E. Agents | 
Top stories ... 

Upcoming events ...
Evolving context and connections ... 
Fast moving AI news is often exciting, but also confusing. This page is designed to provide readers with an evolving context for the news and reminders of the connections between news items. From time to time, links to older stories whose content has been overcome by newer events will be deleted. However, enough older links will be retained so that readers can get a quick sense of how we got to where we are today by skimming the headlines of the preceding stories in chronological order. Sections will usually include 7 to 10 stories.
 ➡ Our publication schedule

A. OpenAI
B. Microsoft 
  • "The Inside Story of Microsoft’s Partnership with OpenAI", Charles Duhigg, The New Yorker, 12/1/23 

  • "Microsoft now sees OpenAI as a competitor in AI and search", Mikael Markander, ComputerWorld, 8/2/24

  • "Microsoft taps Three Mile Island nuclear plant to power AI", Rebecca Bellan, TechCrunch, 9/20/24 
    -- This story also covered by Gizmodo, Reuters, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Engadget, GeekWire, 

  • "Inside Microsoft's struggles with Copilot", Ashley Stewart, Busisiness Insider, 11/15/24

  • "Microsoft to spend $80 billion in FY’25 on data centers for AI", Mary Ann Azevedo, TechCrunch, 1/2/25 
    -- This story also covered by Bloomberg, Reuters, ... and Microsoft

  • "Microsoft makes DeepSeek’s R1 model available on Azure AI and GitHub", Tom Warren. The Verge, 1/29/25
    -- This story also covered by TechCrunch, 

  • "Microsoft makes Copilot Voice and Think Deeper free with unlimited use", Tom Warren, The Verge, 2/26/25

  • "Exclusive: Microsoft’s AI Guru Wants Independence From OpenAI. That’s Easier Said Than Done", Aaron Holmes, The Information, 3/7/25   
    -- This story also covered by TechCrunch, Gizmodo,     Bloomberg

  • "Microsoft updates Copilot with the greatest hits from other AIs", Dominic Preston, The Verge, 4/4/25 
    -- This story also covered by TechCrunch, CNET, ... and Microsoft

  • "Microsoft launches Recall and AI-powered Windows search for Copilot Plus PCs", Tom Warren, The Verge, 4/25/25 
    -- This story also covered by  Engadget, Gizmodo, Ars Technica,

C. Google 
  • "Google’s AI weather prediction model is pretty darn good", Justine Calma, The Verge, 12/7/24 
    -- This story also covered by TechCrunch, Gizmodo

  • "Quantum Computing Inches Closer to Reality After Another Google Breakthrough", Cade Metz, NY Times, 12/9/24 
    -- This story also covered by Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, TechCrunch, AI Revolution (video) ... and Google

  • "Google’s NotebookLM now lets you talk to its AI podcast hosts", Aisha Malik, TechCrunch, 12/12/24

  • "Google launches Gemini 2.0 Pro, Flash-Lite and connects reasoning model Flash Thinking to YouTube, Maps and Search", Carl Franzen, VentureBeat, 2/5/25 
    -- This story also covered by TechCrunch, Thr Verge ... and Google

  • "Google Search’s new ‘AI Mode’ lets users ask complex, multi-part questions", Aisha Malik, TechCrunch, 3/5/25
    -- This story also covered by The Verge, 

  • "Google’s AI Mode can now see and search with images", Jess Weatherbed, The Verge, 4/7/25
    -- This story also covered by TechCrunch, Engadget

  • "Google’s Gemini chatbot gets upgraded image-creation tools", Kyle Wiggers, TechCrunch, 4/30/25

  • "Google Plans to Roll Out Its A.I. Chatbot to Children Under 13", Natasha Singer, NY Times, 5/2/25

D. Amazon, Meta, Anthropic, Apple, Adobe, and other Big Tech models
  • "Elon Musk’s xAI adds ‘Big Brain’ reasoning to Grok-3", Jess Weatherbed, The Verge, 2/18/25 
    -- This story also covered by TechCrunch, Computerworld, Bloomberg, TechDivision (video)
    -- Earlier stories about how Musk built the Colossus supercomputer were given insufficient notice by this blog. Here's a recent report -- "How xAI turned a factory shell into an AI ‘Colossus’ to power Grok 3 and beyond", Brian Buntz, R&D World, 2/17/25

  • "Apple shareholders vote to keep its diversity policies", Stephen Nellis, Reuters, 2/25/25 
    -- This story also covered by TechCrunch, Washington Post, The Guardian, 
    -- President Trump's angry reaction was covered by Gizmodo.
    -- This blog's data driven damnation of all Big Tech DEI programs as despicable, hypocritical, sham operations -- except Apple's commendable efforts -- was featured in the introduction to our 13Feb25 podcast. The BS DEI operations won't be missed. They won't be missed.

  • "Anthropic adds web search to its Claude chatbot", Kyle Wiggers, TechCrunch, 3/20/25 
    -- This story also covered by VentureBeat, FastCompany, Ars Technica, ... and Anthropic
    -- In a related story, "Anthropic appears to be using Brave to power web search for its Claude chatbot", Kyle Wiggers, TechCrunch, 3/21/24

  • "How Apple Fumbled Siri’s AI Makeover", Wayne Ma, The Information, 4/10/25  
    -- This story also covered by 9to5Mac, MacRumors,

  • "Adobe releases new Firefly image generation models and a redesigned Firefly web app", Ivan Mehta, TechCrunch, 4/24/25  
    -- This story also covered by The Verge, CNBC

  • "Meta launches a stand-alone AI app to compete with ChatGPT, Amanda Silberling, TechCrunch, 4/29/25
    -- This story also covered by 9to5Mac, Engadget,

  • "DeepSeek: Everything you need to know about the AI chatbot app", Kyle Wiggers, TechCrunch, 3/9/25

E. Agents
Editor's note -- This section replaces the old "Large Lange Model News" section because, nowadays, all AI models are large language models ... except the small models that will continue to be reported in the next section.
  • "Anthropic proposes a new way to connect data to AI chatbots", Kyle Wiggers, TechCrunch, 11/25/24 ... "Model Context Protoco (MCP)l"

  • Other recent announcements of agents 
    -- Salesforce (Bloomberg, Axios) ... and Salesforce
    -- Microsoft (Bloomberg, ZDNet) ... and Microsoft

  • "Google Unveils A.I. Agent That Can Use Websites on Its Own", Cade Metz and Nico Grant, NY Times, 12/11/24

  • "OpenAI’s Operator Lets ChatGPT Use the Web for You", Will Knight, Wired, 1/23/25 
    -- This story also covered by TechCrunch, The Verge, VentureBeat, Bloomberg, ... and OpenAI

  • "No one knows what the hell an AI agent is", Maxwell Zeff and Kyle Wiggers, TechCrunch, 3/14/25
  • ''Google to embrace Anthropic’s standard for connecting AI models to data", Kyle Wiggers, TechCrunch, 4/9/25
    -- This story also covered by ZDNet

  • "Adobe's new AI agent can show you how to use Photoshop", Igor Bonifacic, Engadget, 4/24/25
  • "OpenAI’s $3B Windsurf move: the real reason behind its enterprise AI code push", and podcast, Matt Marshall, VentureBeat, 5/9/25
  • "The walled garden cracks: Nadella bets Microsoft’s Copilots—and Azure’s next act—on A2A/MCP interoperability", Louis Columbus, VentureBeat, 5/8/25
F. Small Language Model (SLM) news + Open Source
Editor's note -- News reports are classified in this category if and only if they explicitly refer to models with less than 70 billion (70B) parameters. The pace of development should heat up as small, fast models are hooked up to large models and as the competition to become the dominant self-contained AI model on smart phones intensifies.
  • "Microsoft makes powerful Phi-4 model fully open-source on Hugging Face", Carl Franzen, VentureBeat, 1/8/25 
    - This story also covered by Hugging Face, AI News, ... and Microsoft 

  • "Meta unveils a new, more efficient Llama model [3.3 70B]", TechCrunch, Kyle Wiggers, 12/6/24  
    -- This story also covered by VentureBeat,

  • "DeepSeek’s new AI model appears to be one of the best ‘open’ challengers yet", Kyle Wiggers, TechCrunch, 1/26/25  
    -- This story also covered by Nature, VentureBeat, ZDNet, Business Insider, ... and DeepSeek

  • "DeepSeek claims ‘theoretical’ profit margins of 545%", Anthony Ha, TechCrunch, 3/1/25
    -- This story also covered by Bloomberg,

  • "Small models as paralegals: LexisNexis distills models to build AI assistant", Emilia David, VentureBeat, 3/20/25
  • "Microsoft launches Phi-4-Reasoning-Plus, a small, powerful, open weights reasoning model!", Carl Franzen, VentureBeat, 5/1/25

G. Public policy and legal considerations 

H. Misc = Opinions, other news, rumors, long reads (max = 12) 
  • "Nvidia Stock Wobbles On Q4 Details. Blackwell Sales Look Strong, For Now.", Patrick Seitz, Investors Business Daily, 2/26/25  
    -    - This story also covered by Business Insider, Reuters, CNBC, ... and Nvidia

  • "Google Is Still Behind in AI. Why?", Martin Peers, The Information, 3/7/25
  • "DeepSeek, a National Treasure in China, is Now Being Closely Guarded", Juro Osawa and Qianer Liu, The Information, 3/14/25
    -- This story also covered by Tech Crunch

  • "Tariff war throws building of data centers into disarray", Evan Schuman, Networkworld, 4/3/25
    -- Related stories also covered by TechCrunch, Engadget,

  • "CEOs Choose More AI, Fewer Jobs", Aaron Holmes, The Information, 4/17/25
  • "China Has an Army of Robots on Its Side in the Tariff War", Keith Bradsher, NY Times, 4/23/25
  • "How I Describe Myself Politically These Days", Thomas Friedman, NY Times, 4/23/24 … a persuasive overview of China’s tech
  • "The Meta Trial Shows the Dangers of Selling Out", Steven Levy, Wired, 4/25/25

  • Big Tech Quarterly Reports ...
    -- "Microsoft logged double-digit-percentage revenue growth in its fiscal third quarter, with all three of the company’s main business units topping internal projections", Dan Gallagher and Connor Hart, WSJ, 4/30/25 
    ... This story also covered by The Verge, GeekWire, Bloomberg, Forbes, NY Times

    -- "Meta Posts $42 Billion in Sales, Points to Strong Growth", Meghan Bobrowsky, WSJ, 4/30/25  
    ... This story also covered by CNBC, AP, Business Insider, Market Watch, NY Times, 

    --     "Apple Says Most of Its Devices Shipped Into U.S. Will Be From India, Vietnam", Rolfe Winkler, WSJ, 5/1/25 
    ... This story also covered by Business Insider, CNN, Bloomberg, MacRumors, Forbes, 9to5Mac, 

    -- "Amazon Says Operating Profits May Decline Amid Economic Uncertainty", Karen Weise, NY Times, 5/1/25 
    ... This story also covered by CNBC, Bloomberg, Barron's, Forbes, 

    -- "Alphabet Reports 12% Increase in Revenue", David Streitfeld, NY Times, 4/24/25
    ...     This story also covered by Reuters, Bloomberg, Forbes, Business Insider

I.  Language model flaws, hacks, and remedies
  • "Many-shot jailbreaking", Anthropic, 4/2/24 
    -- This story also covered by video on TechCrunch, 

  • "DeepMind researchers discover impressive learning capabilities in long-context LLMs", Ben Dickson, VentureBeat, 4/24/24 
  • "ChatGPT caught lying to developers: New AI model tries to save itself from being replaced and shut down", Economic Times, 12/9/24
    -- This story also covered by Business Insider,  ... and Apollo Research (pdf)

  • "New Anthropic study shows AI really doesn’t want to be forced to change its views", Kyle Wiggers, TechCrunch, 12/18/24
    -- This story also covered by Anthropic

  • "DeepSeek’s Safety Guardrails Failed Every Test Researchers Threw at Its AI Chatbot", Matt Burgess and Lily Hay Newman, Wired, 1/31/25 *
    -- Related story ...  "Pentagon scrambles to block DeepSeek after employees connect to Chinese servers", Charles Rollet, TechCrunch, 1/30/25
    -- Related story ...  "UK Warns DeepSeek Users of Data Risks But Won’t Ban It Yet",  Ellen Milligan, Ryan Gallagher, and Alex Wickham, Bloomberg, 1/31/25

  • "OpenAI Says Disciplining Chatbots for Lying Just Makes Them Worse", Thomas Maxwell, Gizmodo, 3/20/25
  • "Cisco: Fine-tuned LLMs are now threat multipliers—22x more likely to go rogue", Louis Columbus, VentureBeat, 4/4/25
  • ''Google to embrace Anthropic’s standard for connecting AI models to data", Kyle Wiggers, TechCrunch, 4/9/25
    -- This story also covered by ZDNet

  • "OpenAI’s new reasoning AI models hallucinate more", Maxwell Zeff, TechCrunch, 4/18/25
J. Basics 
  • "Phi-2: The surprising power of small language models", Mojan Javaheripi and Sébastien Bubeck , Microsoft Research, 12/12/24
  • "Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.", Will Douglas Heaven, MIT Tech Review, 3/4/24

  • "AI Is a Black Box. Anthropic Figured Out a Way to Look Inside", Steven Levy, Wired, 5/21/24
    -- This story also covered by Anthropic

  • "A Glossary for the AI Revolution", Seth Fiegerman and Nate Lanxon ... Illustrations by Mathieu Labrecque, Bloomberg, 10/4/24

  • "Transformers (how LLMs work)" explained visually | DL5, 3Blue1Brown, 2024,
  • "Anthropic CEO wants to open the black box of AI models by 2027", Maxwell Zeff, TechCrunch, 4/24/25 , ... and Anthropic  
  • "Anthropic is launching a new program to study AI ‘model welfare’", Kyle Wiggers, TechCrunch, 4/24/25,  ... and Anthropic
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