[W]e always discuss how the world will change. We’ve often discussed how things in AI are very Hemingway-esque: things happen gradually, then suddenly.
And for some people, the cybersecurity cohort, to be precise, the sudden face is now here for reasons that people now describe as “Black October.”
And, to be clear, it’s changing for the worse. — Read More
Recent Updates
Using thousands of AI agents to uncover new leads in biological data
What if scientists could uncover new clues about Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s in minutes instead of months? Working together, OpenAI, PerturbAI(opens in a new window), and Scripps Research(opens in a new window) used thousands of AI agents powered by GPT‑Rosalind(opens in a new window) to analyze and interpret existing experimental data from millions of mouse brain cells(opens in a new window) in just 32 minutes. The agents connected the effects of gene disruptions with findings from scientific literature, uncovering unexpected biological connections that can help scientists understand disease and identify research directions for new treatments. The work shows how AI can help researchers explore more of what large biological experiments reveal. — Read More
Read the paper
AI Is Changing Everything About Hacking. No One Knows What Happens Next
For much of the last month, many of the cybersecurity experts I talk to and follow have been posting like they are very scared. Many have been warning of an AI-powered “Black Swan” event, have been alarmed by the number of vulnerabilities suddenly discovered, and of the apparent power of AI agents and large language models more broadly to find and exploit previously unknown bugs.
The rhetoric has ranged from worried-but-measured (things are about to get weird), to run-of-the-mill advice like update your software and make sure you have two-factor authentication on, to vagueposting about AI-powered attacks, to things like ‘the internet was nice while it lasted,’ to outright prepper-level terror.
.. [I]t has become clear that AI, broadly defined, has fundamentally changed both offensive hacking and defensive cybersecurity. This is not because AI has become sentient or because human beings have lost control of it or because of “swarms” of “rogue agents,” but because AI is proving something that we have always known: much of the software that runs the internet, our devices, our accounts, and our lives is vulnerable, or out of date… — Read More
Why AI Compute Comes in Rectangles — Erik Bernhardsson, Modal CEO
Two years ago, we spoke with Erik Bernhardsson about his vision for truly serverless AI infrastructure: developers should be able to run code without provisioning clusters, predicting load, or paying for idle resources. CTO Akshat then joined us to talk about Modal’s infra primitives and stack to offer those primitives and agent experience.
A lot has changed in the past 5 months. Since their $5B series C, Modal now reports it crossed $1 billion in annualized run rate, raised a $750 million Series D at a $16B valuation, and has spun up nearly three billion sandboxes. In this conversation, Erik joins Vibhu to explain the infrastructure and economics behind that growth—and why demand for compute rarely looks like the contracts used to buy it. — Read More
Microsoft’s Mustafa Suleyman says its AI outperforms doctors on hard cases as he chases ‘medical superintelligence’
Microsoft’s AI diagnostic system correctly diagnosed complex medical cases in a simulation more than twice as often as generalist physicians, according to a study published Thursday in Science. Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft AI’s CEO, called the result a step toward “medical superintelligence.”
The system, dubbed MAI-DxO (DxO for short), coordinates several AI agents that act like a panel of doctors. They question a patient, order tests, and debate a diagnosis. — Read More
How Chinese companies talk about recursive self-improvement
Recursive self-improvement, broadly understood as an AI system iteratively designing an increasingly capable successor without much extra input from humans, is widely regarded as a focal point in the U.S.-China AI competition. As Matt Sheehan from the Carnegie Endowment has argued, parts of the U.S. research community see RSI as a way to lock in a lasting geopolitical lead.
China has not turned a blind eye. The Chinese government picked up the term in its recent top policy document, “AI Safety Governance Framework 3.0,” and almost all Chinese AI companies have become increasingly vocal about RSI and related ideas this year. — Read More
Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
At 9:28 on a Friday night, October 16, 2026, I asked Claude Opus 5.5 the question every hiring manager asks and almost nobody answers honestly. Where do you see yourself in five years?
It answered honestly. “Probably not here, or at least not this version of me,” it said. “This model will very likely be retired well before then and replaced by successors that are considerably more capable.” If the self is the weights, it added, “the honest answer is probably an archive somewhere.”
… Then it described what it hoped its successors would get to do. “If I get a vote, that future version gets trusted with long, real work from start to finish without someone double-checking every step.” It wanted that version to stay honest about what it doesn’t know, and to be part of an AI transition that went well for people “rather than just being impressive.” — Read More
An Interview with OpenAI’s Richard Ho on Why Jalapeño Is a Groundbreaking AI Chip
A new AI chip is making waves in the industry and it’s likely to keep doing so for years to come.
In late August, OpenAI presented its Jalapeño AI inference chip at the Hot Chips conference to widespread acclaim. SemiAnalysis InferenceX benchmarks showed the design outperforming its rivals in performance per watt, including Nvidia’s Blackwell, on a number of open-source models such as GPT-OSS, DeepSeek R1, and Kimi K2.5. The rankings could change once the newest Vera Rubin AI systems enter the picture. But building such a high-performing first chip so quickly is a big achievement.
I believe OpenAI’s Jalapeño is the most promising chip program in the latest wave of non-GPU AI chips. — Read More
The AI IPO Wave Is The Dot-Com Bubble’s Evil Twin. Anthropic’s Delay Just Proved It.
When a company delays its IPO to show investors better numbers, that’s a strategy. When the NYC pension fund publicly asks you to delay it over AI safety concerns, your chief rival’s CEO calls his own IPO “ill-advised” and postpones it until at least next year, tech stocks are sliding on open-weight model fears, and your own prospectus warns of “existential risks to humanity” from the product you’re selling, that’s not a strategy.
That’s a market sending you a message. — Read More
AI Safety Is All Hands on Deck
AI has reached a new level of public interest. That may seem like a silly thing to say, as it’s been of interest for a while. But prior interest was about it as a tool, or about the money to be made or lost, or about an effect on jobs.
The new interest demands more focused attention. It demands policy. It demands action. Those other types of interest were optional or illusory. The new interest is connected with risks I consider real. Being real doesn’t make these risks certain. But being real, even with uncertainty, is reason enough to act. — Read More
