Useful AI News

 
Last update: Sunday 4/6/25
Our weekly news page provides links to reports about major innovations in generative AI. Our page is not for AI experts. It's for (1) computer savvy professionals who want to be alert to genAI's potential impact on their careers, 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 4 stories in past week ... 
  1. Microsoft
    "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

  2. OpenAI
    "OpenAI Completes Deal That Values Company at $300 Billion", Cade Metz, NY Times, 3/31/25 *** 
    -- Related stories also covered by The Information, Bloomberg,  Barron's , Reuters ... and OpenAI

  3. Other Models
    "Elon Musk Says He Has Sold X to His AI Start-Up x.AI",  Kate Conger and Lauren Hirsch,     NY Times, 3/28/25 *** 
    -- This story also covered by WSJ, Forbes, CNN

  4. OpenAI
    "Now you can generate images directly from ChatGPT and Sora", Lawrence Bonk, Engadget, 3/25/25 *** 
    -- This story also covered by The Verge, NY Times, Bloomberg,  CNET, ... and OpenAI
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. Sectionz will usually include 7 to 10 stories.
 ➡ Our publication schedule

A. OpenAI
  • "OpenAI Says DeepSeek May Have Improperly Harvested Its Data", Cade Metz, NY Times, 1/28/25 
    -- This story also covered by TechCrunch, The Verge, Financial Times, Forbes

  • "OpenAI launches new o3-mini reasoning model with a free ChatGPT version", Tom Warren, The Verge, 1/31/25   
    --- This story also covered by ZDNet, CNet, The Guardian, .. and OpenAI

  • "ChatGPT [paid] Subscribers Nearly Tripled to 15.5 Million in 2024", Stephanie Palazzolo and Amir Efrati, The Information, 2/1/25

  • "ChatGPT’s agent can now do deep research for you", Richard Lawler, The Verge, 2/2/25
    -- This story also covered by TechCrunch,  The Guardian ... and OpenAI

  • "OpenAI Forecast Shows Shift From Microsoft to SoftBank", Cory Weinberg, Jon Victor and Anissa Gardizy, The Information (exclusive), 2/21/25
    -- This story also covered by TechCrunch, Windows Forum

  • "OpenAI unveils GPT-4.5 ‘Orion,’ its largest AI model yet", Maxwell Zeff, TechCrunch, 2/27/25  
    -- This story also covered by The Verge, Wired,  Bloomberg, VentureBeat, Engadget, ...and OpenAI (video)

  • "OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says the company is ‘out of GPUs’", Kyle Wiggers, TechCrunch, 2/27/25

  • "OpenAI Plots Charging $20,000 a Month For PhD-Level Agents", Stephanie Palazzo and Cory Weinberg, The Information, 3/5/25
    -- This story also covered by  TechCrunch

  • "OpenAI’s GPT-4.5 AI model comes to more ChatGPT users," Kyle Wiggers, -- TechCrunch, 3/5/25
  • "OpenAI Says Disciplining Chatbots for Lying Just Makes Them Worse", Thomas Maxwell, Gizmodo, 3/20/25

  • "OpenAI says it’ll release o3 after all, delays GPT-5", Kyle Wiggers, TechCrunch, 4/4/25
    -- This story also covered by, ... 

  • "OpenAI Completes Deal That Values Company at $300 Billion", Cade Metz, NY Times, 3/31/25 *** 
    -- Related stories also covered by The Information, Bloomberg,  Barron's , Reuters ... and OpenAI

  • "Now you can generate images directly from ChatGPT and Sora", Lawrence Bonk, Engadget, 3/25/25 *** 
    -- This story also covered by The Verge, NY Times, Bloomberg,  CNET, ... and OpenAI
B. Microsoft 
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 Gemini now lets you ask questions using videos and what’s on your screen", Ivan Mehta, TechCrunch, 3/3/25

D. Amazon, Meta, Anthropic, Apple, and other Big Tech model
  • "Anthropic Projects Soaring Growth to $34.5 Billion in 2027 Revenue", Jon Victor and Stephanie Palazzolo, The Information, 2/12/25
    -- This paywalled exclusive story also covered by Reuters

  • "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

  • "Amazon Unveils Alexa+, Powered by Generative A.I.",  Karen Weise, NY Times, 2/26/25  
    -- This story also covered by TechCrunch, The Verge, Wired, Gizmodo, Engadget, MacRumors. .. and Amazon,

  • "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.

  • "Apple Vows to Build A.I. Servers in Houston and Spend $500 Billion in U.S.", Meaghan TobinTripp Mickle and Jason Karaian, NY Times, 2/25/25  
    -- This story also covered by Forbes, Washington Post, Reuters

  • "A.I. Start-Up Anthropic Closes Deal That Values It at $61.5 Billion", Cade Metz, NY Times, 3/3/25

  • "Apple Says Some AI-Powered Enhancements to Siri to Be Delayed", Sabela Ojea, Wall Street Journal, 3/5/25 
    -- This story also covered by TechCrunch, The Verge, 9to5Mac, Bloomberg, Engadget, 

  • Intense reactions within the Apple community to Apple's delay of Siri upgrades 
    -- "Something Is Rotten in the State of Cupertino", John Gruber, Daring Fireball, 3/12/25 
    -- "Apple’s Siri Chief Calls AI Delays Ugly and Embarrassing, Promises Fixes", Mark Gurman, Bloomberg, 3/14/25
    -- Subsequent reactions reported by MacRumors, 9t05Mac, The Verge,  Gizmodo, 

  • "Apple faces lawsuit over Apple Intelligence delays", Kyle Wiggers, TechCrunch, 3/20/25 
    -- This story also covered by MacRumors, Axios, 9to5Mac , Mashable,
    -- In a related story, "Apple puts Vision Pro exec in charge of Siri in exec shakeupa", Sarah Perez, TechCrunch, 3/20/25 ... also covered by The Verge, 9to5Mac , 

  • "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

  • "Elon Musk Says He Has Sold X to His A.I. Start-Up xAI",  Kate Conger and Lauren Hirsch, NY Times, 3/28/25 *** 
    -- This story also covered by WSJ, Forbes, CNN


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.
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

G. Public policy and legal considerations 
  • "Lawsuit says Mark Zuckerberg approved Meta's use of pirated materials to train Llama AI'', mariella moon, Engadget, 1/10/25 
    -- This story also covered by TechCrunch, Mashable, Reuters, 

  • "EU puts out guidance on uses of AI that are banned under its AI Act", Natasha Lomas, TechCrunch, 2/4/25

  • "US lawmakers want DeepSeek banned from government devices", will shanklin, Engadget, 2/6/25
    -- This story also covereed by Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Reuters, ... and House.gov

  • "OpenAI’s board ‘unanimously rejects’ Elon Musk’s offer to buy the company", Emma Roth, The Verge, 2/14/25
    - This story also covered by TechCrunch, CNN. Wall Street Journal and ... OpenAI Board (post on X)

  • "AI Action Summit", Wikipedia, 2/12/25
    -- "The Artificial Intelligence (AI) Action Summit was held at the Grand Palais, Paris, France, from 10 to 11 February 2025.[ The summit was co-chaired by France and India." 

    -- Outcome
    "At the summit, the US and UK refused to sign a declaration on "inclusive and sustainable" AI, which was supported by 60 countries, including France, China, and India."
    ... Outcome discussed in "Vance tells Europeans that heavy regulation could kill AI", Jeffrey Dastin and Ingrid Melander, Reuters, 2/11/25 ...  and NY Times, AP News

  • "Judge Denies Musk’s Request to Block OpenAI’s For-Profit Plan", Cade Metz, NY Times, 3/5/25 
    -- This story also covered by Reuters, CNN, The Guardian, Bloomberg

  • "Justice Dept. Doubles Down on Request to Break Up Google", David McCabe, NY Times, 3/7/25 
    -- This story also covered by Wired, Washington Post, Engadget, 

  • Responses to NSF/OSTP's request for input on AI Action Plan  
    -- "OpenAI’s proposals for the U.S. AI Action Plan", OpenAI, 3/13/25
    -- "Response to the National Science Foundation’s and Office of Science & Technology Policy’s Request for Information", Google, 3/13/2
    -- Response to "Request for Information (RFI) on the Development of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Action Plan (“Plan”)", Anthropic, 3/8/25

    -- "Response to the National Science Foundation’s and Office of Science & Technology Policy’s Request for Information on the Development of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Action Plan T", News Media Alliance, 3/14/25

H. Misc = Opinions, other news, rumors, long reads (max = 15)  
  • "Eyeing Higher Margins, AWS and Other Cloud Providers Embrace DeepSeek", Jon Victor, The Information, 2/4/25

  • "What DeepSeek? Big Tech Keeps Its A.I. Building Boom Alive.", Karen Weise, NY Times, 2/8/25

  • "Thinking Machines Lab is ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati’s new startup", Kyle Wiggers, TechCrunch, 2/18/25  
    -- This story also covered by Reuters, NY Times, Forbes

  • "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

  • "Exclusive: Microsoft, Amazon, and Google Race to Use AI to Drive Sales Gains", Aaron Holmes, The Information, 3/4/25
  • "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

  • "No one knows what the hell an AI agent is", Maxwell Zeff and Kyle Wiggers, TechCrunch, 3/14/25
  • "China tech giants dig pricey trench for AI war", Robyn Mak, Reuters, 3/20/25
  • "Tariff war throws building of data centers into disarray", Evan Schuman, Networkworld, 4/3/25
    -- Related stories also covered by TechCrunch, Engadget,

I.  Language model flaws, hacks, and remedies
  • "Why Two Models Are Better Than One", Stephanie Palazzolo, The Information, 3/28/24
  • "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

  • "Cisco: Fine-tuned LLMs are now threat multipliers—22x more likely to go rogue", Louis Columbus, VentureBeat, 4/4/25


J. Basics 
  • "Phi-2: The surprising power of small language models", Mojan Javaheripi and Sébastien Bubeck , Microsoft Research, 12/12/24
  • WTF are diffusion transformers 
    -- "Stable Diffusion 3.0 debuts new diffusion transformation architecture to reinvent text-to-image gen AI", Sean Michael Kerner, VentureBeat, 2/22/24
    -- "Diffusion transformers are the key behind OpenAI’s Sora — and they’re set to upend GenAI", Kyle Wiggers, TechCrunch, 2/28/24
    -- "Diffusion Transformer Explained", Mario Namtao Shianti Larcher, Towards Data Science, 2/28/24

  • "Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.", Will Douglas Heaven, MIT Tech Review, 3/4/24
  • "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, ", 
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