*** Useful AI News ***

 
Last update: Wednesday 10/22/25
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 (via chatbots) 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 | F. SLM/Open Source | G. Public Policy  | H. OpEds/Misc  | 
I. Hacks | J. Basics | K. Data Centers 

Top story in past week ...

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
  • "OpenAI's experimental model achieved gold at the International Math Olympiad", jackson chen, Engadget, 7/19/25
    -- This story also covered by Business Insider

  • "OpenAI’s GPT-5 is here", Maxwell Zeff, TechCrunch, 8/7/25 
    -    - This story also covered by The Information, The Verge, WSJ, Wired, Reuters, VentureBeat, AP News., Ars Technica, ... and OpenAI
    -- GPT 5 for Apple Intelligence in The Vrege, Engadget, MacRumors, 
    -- Doubts and criticisms in Gizmodo, VentureBeat, 

  • "OpenAI Plans to Add Safeguards to ChatGPT for Teens and Others in Distress", Kashmir Hill, NY Times, 9/2/25

  • "OpenAI, Broadcom Make $10 Billion Deal for Custom AI Chips", Robbie Whelan and Berber Jin,  WSJ, 9/5/25
    -- This story also covered by The Verge

  • "OpenAI Takes Big Steps Toward Its Long-Planned Reorganization", Karen Weise and Cade Metz, NY Times, 9/11/25 

  • "Nvidia to Invest Up to $100 Billion in OpenAI", Berber Jin and Robbie Whelan, WSJ, 9/22/25  
    -- This story also covered by Reuters, Yahoo Finance, CNBC ... and OpenAI, Nvidia 

  • "OpenAI’s Sora Makes Disinformation Extremely Easy and Extremely Real", Tiffany Hsu, Stuart A. Thompson, and Steven Lee Myers, NY Times, 10/3/24 
    -- This story also covered by TechCrunch, WSJ, Gizmodo, Engadget, NPR, ... and OpenAI  

  • "OpenAI Wants ChatGPT to Be Your Future Operating System", Lauren Goode and Will Knight, Wired, 10/6/25 
    -- This story also covered The Information, The Verge, TechCrunch

  • "OpenAI Agrees to Use Computer Chips From AMD", Cade Metz, NY Times, 10/6/25 
    -- This story also covered by     Business Insider, Forbes, Reuters

  • OpenAI is following Apple's playbook for inference servers ➡ Partnering with Broadcom and AMD for chips + TSMC for production
    -- ''"OpenAI’s Chip Strategy: Pair Nvidia’s Chocolate With Broadcom’s Peanut Butter, Christopher Mims, WSJ, 10/17/25
    -- "OpenAI Agrees to Use Computer Chips From AMD", Cade Metz, NY Times, 10/6/25
    -- "OpenAI is creating its own in-house chip with Broadcom and TSMC as processing demands skyrocket", Brooke Seipel, Fortune, 10/20/25

B. Microsoft 
C. 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 adds image-to-video generation capability to Veo 3", Ivan Mehta, TechCrunch, 7/10/25 
    -- This story also covered by The Verge, Engdget, 

  • "Google A.I. System Wins Gold Medal in International Math Olympiad", Cade Metz, NY Times, 7/21/25

  • "Google takes on ChatGPT’s Study Mode with new ‘Guided Learning’ tool in Gemini", Aisha Malik, TechCrunch, 8/6/25
    -- This story also covered by Engadget

D. Amazon, Meta, Anthropic, Apple, Adobe, xAI, and other Big Tech models (max = 15)
  • "Anthropic Claude Opus 4.1: The Definitive Guide to Anthropic’s Most Advanced AI Model Yet", Cogni Down Under, Medium, 8/6/25 
    -- This story also covered by 9to5Mac, VentureBeat ... and Anthropic

  • "Anthropic will start training its AI models on chat transcripts", Hayden Field, The Verge, 8/28/25

  • "Claude can now create and edit files", Anthropic, 9/9/25 

  • "The New AirPods Can Translate Languages in Your Ears. This Is Profound.",  Brian X. Chen, NY Times, 9/18/22
    -- This story also covered by Tom's Guide, ... and Apple

  • "Nvidia to Invest $5 Billion in Intel, Furthering Trump’s Turnaround Plan", Robbie Whelan, Amrith Ramkumar, Lauren Thomas, and Joseph De Avila, WSJ, 9/18/25 
    -- This story also covered by The Verge, Reuters, Yahoo Finance,  ... and Nvidia

  • "Alibaba Integrates Nvidia Robotics Software in Its AI Platform", Luz Ding, Business Insider, 9/24/25 
    -- This story also covered by WSJ, TechCrunch, Investor Business Daily,

  • "Anthropic turns to ‘skills’ to make Claude more useful at work", Hayden Field, TechCrunch, 10/16/25
    -- This story also covered by     VentureBeat

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)”

  • "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

  • "Discover tools that work with Claude", Anthropic, 7/14/25 
    -- This story also covered by Tom's Guide
    -- "Anthropic’s Connectors Explained: The AI Revolution Mainstream Media Missed", Claude, 7/20/25
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.
  • "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

  • "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  (max= 12)

H. Misc = Opinions, other news, rumors, long reads (max = 15) 
  • "MIT report: 95% of generative AI pilots at companies are failing", Sheryl Estrada, Fortune, 8/18/25 
    -- This story also coverd by Investors Business Daily, Financial Times, TechRadar ... PDF of M.I.T. only available at this time on MLQ.ai (a copy site) ➡ HERE 

  • ''Nvidia Predicts Cooler Growth After Sales Record",  Robbie Whelan, WSJ, 8/27/25 
    -- This story also covered by Financial Times, NY Times, Business Insider, CNBC,  Investopedia, Investor's Business Daily, ... and Nvidia

  • "‘ChatGPT for Doctors’ Startup [OpenEvidence] Considers $6 Billion-Valuation Investment", Stephanie Palazzolo and Natasha Mascarenhas, The Information, 9/29/25
    -- This story also covered by AIinvest

  • "Satya Nadella is haunted at the prospect of Microsoft not surviving the AI era", Tom Warren, The Verge, 9/18/25

  • "Meta’s Smart Glasses Might Make You Smarter. They’ll Certainly Make You More Awkward", Boone Ashworth, Wired, 0/20/25
    -- This story also covered by NY Times, TechCrunch, ... and Meta

  • "Alibaba Integrates Nvidia Robotics Software in Its AI Platform", Luz Ding, Business Insider, 9/24/25 
    -- This story also covered by WSJ, TechCrunch, Investor Business Daily,

  • "Software giant’s [Microsoft] move follows investigation into use of its products to surveil Palestinian civilians", Rafe Rosner-Uddin, Financial Times, 9/25/25
    -- This story also covered by TechCrunch,  Gizmodo, 

  • "Trump’s new H-1B policy caused short-term panic — and will cause long-term chaos", Felipe De La Hoz, The Verge, 9/26/25

  • "Microsoft 365 Premium bundles Office and AI for the same price as ChatGPT Plus", Tom Warren, The Verge, 10/1/25

  • "Meta plans to sell targeted ads based on data in your AI chats", Maxwell Zeff, TechCrunch, 10/1/25
    -- This story also covered by Forbes, Engadget, Ars Technica, 

  • "OpenAI is the world’s most valuable private company after private stock sale", Russell Brandom, TechCrunch, 10/2/25
    -- This story also covered by Bloomberg, AP News, Investopedia,

  • "Maybe it’s real, maybe it’s Sora", David Pierce, The Verge, 10/10/25
    -- Other reactions to Sore covered by NY Times, NPR, Business Insider

  • "Microsoft, AWS, and Google are trying to drastically reduce China’s role in their supply chains",Ram Iyer, TechCrunch, 10/16/25
  • "The AI bubble is a bigger global economic threat than US tariffs", xxxx, Financial Times, 10/16/25
  • "Silicon Valley spooks the AI safety advocates", Maxwell Zeff, TechCrunch, 10/17/25

I.  Language model flaws, hacks, and remedies (max = 15) 
  • "Many-shot jailbreaking", Anthropic, 4/2/24 
    -- This story also covered by video on TechCrunch, 
  • "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

  • "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
  • "After GPT-4o backlash, researchers benchmark models on moral endorsement—find sycophancy persists across the board", Emilia David, VentureBeat, 5/22/25
    -- This story also covered by Fast Company, The Atlantic, ... Anthropic

  • "Agentic Misalignment: How LLMs could be insider threats", Anthropic, 6/20/25 
    -- This story also covered by TechCrunch, VentureBeat, 

  • "OpenAI–Anthropic cross-tests expose jailbreak and misuse risks — what enterprises must add to GPT-5 evaluations", Emilia David, VentureBeat, 8/28/25 ... Reports from OpenAI, Anthropic
  • "OpenAI’s research on AI models deliberately lying is wild ", Julie Bort, TechCrunch, 9/18/25 -- This story also covered by Gizmodo, Futurism, ... and OpenAI

  • "Researchers find just 250 malicious documents can leave LLMs vulnerable to backdoors", Anna Washenko, Engadget, 10/9/25
    -- This story also covered by Ars Technica   ... Anthropic
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

K. GenAI Data Centers Externalities -- Economics, Health, Environment, and Climate Impact  (max = 15)
  • "‘We Are the Last of the Forgotten:’ Inside the Memphis Community Battling Elon Musk’s xAI", Andrew R. Chow, Time, 8/13/25
  • "Big Tech’s A.I. Data Centers Are Driving Up Electricity Bills for Everyone", Ivan Penn and Karen Weise, NY Times, 8/14/25
  • "How AI data centers are leading to big electricity bills in NY and NJ — and who’s being hit hardest", Michael Kaplan, NY Post, 8/18/25 

  • "Gas power plants approved for Meta’s $10B data center, and not everyone is happy", Tim De Chant, TechCrunch, 8/21/25

  • "Tech companies ‘be on alert,’ NAACP says with new guiding principles for data centers", Justine Calma, The Verge, 9/4/25 
    -- This story also covered by the NAACP

  • "EPA Releases Proposal to End the Burdensome, Costly Greenhouse GasReporting Program, Saving up to $2.4 Billion", EPA, 9/12/25 😎
    -- This story also covered by Reuters, AP News, Axios, Politico, 

  • "Harvard researchers weigh AI’s climate and health impact", Anna Miller, Harvard T.H. Chan, 9/18/25 
  • "New map and research expose disturbing side effects of AI industry boom: 'There are going to be challenges'", Semmi W., The CoolDown, 9/21/25

  • "OpenAI to Join Tech Giants in Building 5 New Data Centers in U.S.", Cade Metz, NY Times, 9/23/25 
    -- This story also covered by WSJ, TechCrunch, Reuters, Wired, Axios, 
    -- Context for this story is provided by "    Spending on AI Is at Epic Levels. Will It Ever Pay Off?", Eliot Brown and Robbie Whelan, WSJ, 9/25/25  

  • "Virginia Could Show How to Manage Data Center Growth. So Far, It’s a Case Study in Stalling Legislation", Deep Vakil and Charles Paullin, Inside Climate News, 9/30/25
  • "Data center boom sparks sticker shock for PJM ratepayers", Peter Behr, E&E News/Politico, 10/3/25 
  • "Why the biggest risk in AI might not be the technology, but the trillion-dollar race to build it", Dakin Campbell, Business Insider, 10/7/25 

  • "Virginia's data center construction boom is even bigger than you think. One company is behind most of it.", Hannah Beckler, Bloomberg, 10/8/25 

  • "While OpenAI races to build AI data centers, Nadella reminds us that Microsoft already has them", Julie Bort TechCrunch, 10/9/25
  • "Climate goals go up in smoke as US data centers turn to coal", Dan Robinson, The Register, 10/10/25

  • Editor's note -- There is ony one top story this week because most of the other memorable stories had the same subtext: Where would Big Tech find the colossal amount of electrical power required to support its outsized ambitions? Nvidia offered its answer ... 

    "Nvidia Targets AI Data Centers And All-Renewable Electricity", Marie Berens, Investors Business Daily, 10/17/25  

    -- Nvidia announced its all-renewable electricity status on page 11 of its report, "Sustainability Report Fiscal Year 2025" (pdf)

    -- The editor of this blog has reluctantly concluded that Nvidia's claims are flagrant greenwashing ... Our TL;DR summary by ChatGPT included a verbatim quote of CEO Jensen Huang's 100% renewable claim. After Claude, the editor's favorite research assistant, digested Nvidia's 40 page report in seconds, it identified the pages that contained the data that answered the editor's many questions. This data substantiates the editor's negative assessment of Nvidia's claims. God help us if the rest of Big Tech follows Nvidia's bad example.

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