*** Useful AI News ***

 
Last update: Monday 9/8/25
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.  Climate/Environment | L. Education 

Top stories 3 in past week ...
  1. Public Policy
    "Google Dodges Worst Penalties in U.S. Antitrust Case", Dave Michaels and Katherine Blunt, WSJ, 9/3/25 *** 
    -- This story also covered by NY Times, The Verge, 9to5Mac, Reuters,  CNBC, CNET, ZDNet,

  2. Public Policy
    "Anthropic to pay $1.5 billion to authors in landmark AI settlement", Hayden Field,     The Verge, 9/5/25 *** 
    -- This story also covered by NY Times, TechCrunch, Wired,  Reuters, Engadget, Ars Technica

  3. Climate/Environment 
    "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
Upcoming events ...
  • OpenAI Dev Day … Monday, October 6, 2025, San Francisco
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 Scales Back Ambitions for AI Chips to Overcome Delays", Wayne Ma, The Information, 7/2/25
    -- This story also covered by Reuters, Yahoo Finance, 

  • "Microsoft to Lay Off About 9,000 Employees", Karen Weise, NY Times, 7/2/25
    -- This story also covered by The Verge, AP News, CNBC

  • "Microsoft introduces a pair of in-house AI models", Anna Washenko, VentureBeat, 8/28/25
    -- This story also covered by Semaphor ... and  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 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

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

  • "Elon Musk’s xAI launches Grok 4 alongside a $300 monthly subscription", Maxwell Zeff, TechCrunch, 7/9/25  
    -- This story also covered by TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Scientific American, ... and     xAI

  • "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

  • "Meta is going to stuff Midjourney AI images into your feed", Jay Peters, The Verge, 8/22/25
    -- This story also covered by Financial Times,  

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

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)”

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

  • "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.
  • "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, ... 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

  • "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)
  • "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, 

  • "Google Broke the Law to Keep Its Advertising Monopoly, a Judge Rules", David McCabe, NY Times, 4/17/25
    -- This story also covered by WSJ, The Verge, The Information, TechCrunch, Axios, BBC, AP, Engadget

  • "Nvidia Says U.S. Has Lifted Restrictions on A.I. Chip Sales to China", Tripp Mickle, NY Times, 7/14/25
    -- This story also covered by WSJ, Reuters, AP News

  • "Trump threatens 100% tariffs on computer chips for companies that don’t build in U.S.", Gerrit De Vynck, Cat Zakrzewski ,and Jacob Bogage, Washington Post, 8/6/25

  • "OpenAI Announces Massive US Government Partnership", Will Knight, Wired, 8/6/25
    -- This story also covered by GeekWire

  • "China Demands Companies to Halt Nvidia Chip Orders Over Security Concerns", Qianer Liu, The Information, 8/12/25
    -- This story also covered by Reuters, Bloomberg 

  • "The Trump-Intel Deal Is Official", Lauren Goode, Wired, 8/22/25  
    -- This story also covered by NY Times, The Verge, Financial Times, Gizmodo, Engadget, 

  • "Nvidia’s Roller Coaster for China AI Chips Takes a New Turn", Raffaele Huang and Amrith Ramkumar, WSJ, 8/22/25
    -- This story also coverd by Reuters, Barron's, NY Times,

  • "Parents sue OpenAI over ChatGPT’s role in son’s suicide", Amanda Silberling, TechCrunch, 8/26/25 
    -- This story also covered by NY Times, NBC, CNBC, CNN, BBC, Reuters, 

  • "Google Is Fined $3.5 Billion for Breaking Europe’s Antitrust Laws", Adam Satariano and Jeanna Smialek, NY Times, 9/4/25

  • "Google Dodges Worst Penalties in U.S. Antitrust Case", Dave Michaels and Katherine Blunt, WSJ, 9/3/25 *** 
    -- This story also covered by NY Times, The Verge, 9to5Mac, Reuters,  CNBC, CNET, ZDNet,

  • "Google Is Fined $3.5 Billion for Breaking Europe’s Antitrust Laws", Adam Satariano and Jeanna Smialek, NY Times, 9/5,25
    -- This story also covered by TechCrunch, 

  • "Anthropic to pay $1.5 billion to authors in landmark AI settlement", Hayden Field, The Verge, 9/5/25 *** 
    -- This story also covered by NY Times, TechCrunch, Wired,  Reuters, Engadget, Ars Technica

H. Misc = Opinions, other news, rumors, long reads (max = 15) 
  • "How I Describe Myself Politically These Days", Thomas Friedman, NY Times, 4/23/24 … a persuasive overview of China’s tech

  • Zuckerberg's ongoing quest for superintelligence ...
    -- Phase 1 ... "Here’s What Mark Zuckerberg Is Offering Top AI Talent", Zoë Schiffer, Wired, 7/1/25 ... This story also covered by NY Times, WSJ, Forbes

    -- Phase 2 ... "Meta Plans Fourth Restructuring of AI Efforts in Six Months", Kalley Huang, The Information, 8/15/25 ... This story also covered byTechCrunch, NY Times, Reuters

    -- Phase 3 ... "Meta Freezes AI Hiring After Blockbuster Spending Spree", Meghan Bobrowsky, WSJ, 8/20/25 ... This story also covered by TechCrunch, 

    -- Phase 4 ... "AI researchers lured with high salaries are leaving Meta, quoting Mark Zuckerberg’s own advice on their way out", Financial Times, 9/3/25 ... This story also covered by Ars Technica

  • "OpenAI’s Rocky GPT-5 Rollout Shows Struggle to Remain Undisputed AI Leader", Ann-Marie Alcántara and Berber Jin, WSJ, 8/13/25

  • "Elon Musk’s xAI Runs on Ex-Google Talent", Theo Wayt, The Information, 8/15/25
    -- This story also coverd by Perplexity

  • "C.E.O.s Want Their Companies to Adopt A.I. But Do They Get It Themselves?", Jordyn Holman, NY Times, 8/16/25

  • "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 

  • "Microsoft employee arrested at headquarters while protesting Israel contracts", Tom Warren, The Verge, 8/21/25
    -- This story also coverd by GeekWire, 

  • "AI super PACs, the hottest investment in tech", Nguyen, The Verge, 8/26/25 
    -- This story also coverd by WSJ, TechCrunch, NY Times, Politico, Fortune, Business Insider, Washington Post, Reuters, 

  • ''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

  • "Microsoft fires two more employees for participating in Palestine protests on campus", Jacob Kastrenakes, The Verge, 8/28/25
    -- This story also covered by CNBC, CBS

  • "‘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

  • "Anthropic is now valued at $183 billion", Hayden Field, The Verge, 9/2/25
    -- This story also covered by  NY Times, Reuters, CNBC, ... and  Anthropic

I.  Language model flaws, hacks, and remedies (max = 15) 
  • "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

  • "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

  • "A Starter Guide to Protecting Your Data From Hackers and Corporations", Matt Burgess, Sophie Johal, and Michaela Neville, Wired, (audio podcast + transcript), 5/26/25

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

  • “Understanding and preventing misalignment generalization”, OpenAI, 6/18/25
  • "A new study just upended AI safety", Hayden Field, Verge, 7/23/25
  • "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
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. Climate/Environmental impact of genAI
  • "AI is set to drive surging electricity demand from data centres while offering the potential to transform how the energy sector works", IEA, 4/10/25
  • "AI’s promise is still taking shape. The costs of its data centers are already here.", Adam Rogers, Hannah Beckler, and Dakin Campbell, Business Insider, 7/17/25
  • "Pa. water supply could be strained by new data centers, freshwater overseers warn", Jaxon White, WITF, 8/12/25

  • "‘We Are the Last of the Forgotten:’ Inside the Memphis Community Battling Elon Musk’s xAI", Andrew R. Chow, Time, 8/13/25

  • "Mistral's new sustainability tracker tool shows the impact AI has on the environment – and it makes for sober reading", Rory Bathgate, ITPro, 8/11/25
  • "Big Tech’s A.I. Data Centers Are Driving Up Electricity Bills for Everyone", Ivan Penn and Karen Weise, NY Times, 8/14/25
  • "AI Data Centres Face Power Crisis by 2027: Salesforce Warns", AInvest, 8/15/25

  • "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 

  • "Meta to add 100MW of solar power from US gear", Tim De Chant, TechCrunch, 8/20/25
  • "Gas power plants approved for Meta’s $10B data center, and not everyone is happy", Tim De Chant, TechCrunch, 8/21/25

  • "Data centers will cause higher electricity prices, study finds", Zachery Eanes, Axios, 8/28/25 
    -- The research team's executive summary ... The complete report (pdf)

  • "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

  • "What you need to know about AI and climate change", Daisy Simmons, Yale Climate Connections, 9/4/25

L. Education
  • "California State University Launches Systemwide ChatGPT Edu Deployment", Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology, 2/5/25

  • "Anthropic flips the script on AI in education: Claude’s Learning Mode makes students do the thinking", Michael Nuñez, VentureBeat, 4/2/25
    -- and Anthropic. 

  • "The effect of ChatGPT on students’ learning performance, learning perception, and higher-order thinking: insights from a meta-analysis", Jin Wang and Wenxiang Fan , Nature, 5/6/25

  • "OpenAI and Microsoft [and Anthropic] Bankroll New A.I. Training for Teachers", Natasha Singer, NY Times, 7/8/25
    -- This story also covered by The Verge, CNN, Forbes

  • "The impact of generative AI on university students’ learning outcomes via Bloom’s taxonomy: a meta-analysis and pattern mining approach", Qi Xia, Peng Zhang,Wendan HuangORCID Icon &Thomas K. F. Chiu, Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 7/20/25

  • "ChatGPT’s Study Mode Is Here. It Won’t Fix Education’s AI Problems", Reece Rogers, Wired,7/29/25
    -- This story also covered by NY Times, ... and OpenAI

  • "Google takes on ChatGPT’s Study Mode with new ‘Guided Learning’ tool in Gemini", Aisha Malik, TechCrunch, 8/6/25
  • "MathGPT.ai, the ‘cheat-proof’ tutor and teaching assistant, expands to over 50 institutions", Lauren Forristal, TechCrunch, 8/28/25

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