Ex-DeepMind scientist David Silver outlines Ineffable’s RL-based “super learner” path beyond LLMs.
Madhumita Murgia / Financial Times : An interview with ex-DeepMind scientist David Silver on his startup Ineffable, building an AI “super learner” using RL as an alternative path to LLMs, and more — The architect of Google DeepMind's AlphaGo on building machines that can teach themselves — and why he feels a moral obligation to advance the technology
NYT examines evidence that AI productivity gains are constrained by a costly human verification tax.
Sarah Kessler / New York Times : As economic and corporate research shows limited AI efficiency gains, surveys by Workday, Google, MIT, and others detail a human “verification tax” bottleneck — As artificial intelligence automates office tasks, it is also creating a new type of human work.
The US reportedly restores UK AISI access to frontier US models for safety testing after a month-long cutoff.
Tony Diver / Telegraph : Sources: the US restores the UK AISI's access to the latest US models for safety testing, after ordering OpenAI and Anthropic to stop sharing models last month — US had blocked regulators from reviewing frontier models from Anthropic, OpenAI and Google DeepMind
China’s $3.9T grid plan aims to turn surplus wind and solar generation into an AI-compute advantage.
Bloomberg : A look at China's bid to turn excess wind and solar energy into an AI edge via a $3.9T grid buildout through 2049, as ~9% of renewable output was wasted in 2026 — To grasp the gargantuan scale of China's green-energy revolution, consider Gansu. In this arid strip on the edge …
Tencent reportedly plans a ~$5B bond sale, with much of the proceeds earmarked for AI chip purchases.
Janice Huang / Bloomberg : Sources: Tencent is planning a ~$5B bond offering, including $1.5B to $2B in dollar tranches, to fund AI expenditures, with the bulk going toward chip purchases — Tencent Holdings Ltd. told fixed-income investors Monday that its planned bond offering of about $5 billion …
US soldiers report overheating drones and other field failures in an Army AI modernization exercise.
Heather Somerville / Wall Street Journal : US soldiers using AI tech during a July exercise say they encountered issues like drone overheating, highlighting challenges in the Army's modernization effort — A desert trial exposed equipment limitations and institutional hurdles in the Army's push to modernize and keep pace with an AI-savvy adversary
Sakana AI proposes recursive self-improvement by having agents collectively generate and select advances.
Berkeley researchers report that just 10 minutes of AI use can reduce persistence on difficult tasks.
A firsthand account of Fable’s AI production workflow displacing a worker from their job.
A practical local-indexing approach cuts agent tool calls and token use by searching context before retrieval.
Introduces a “Bag of Decisions” reranker for combining retrieval signals into ranking choices.
Rich Whitehouse’s essay interrogates the technical and cultural failures behind contemporary generative AI.
Documents the fast proliferation of AI-built Photoshop clones and what their uneven implementation reveals.
BBC examines a market response to synthetic media: buyers paying a premium for verifiably human-made art.
Nicolas Cage says an AI dispute means he will not work with Amazon again.
CNBC covers a research firm’s unusually blunt warning that an Anthropic IPO would test investor credulity.
SWI raises €800M to upgrade data centers, including assets acquired from a Genesis Digital mining operation.
Alexander Osipovich / Wall Street Journal : Digital infrastructure company SWI raised €800M to upgrade its data centers, including some from Genesis Digital, a bitcoin miner snarled in FTX's bankruptcy — Data-center company sees potential in what has been described as one of Sam Bankman-Fried's ‘most reckless investments’
WSJ details how hacked civilian cameras became intelligence and targeting tools in the Israel-Iran conflict.
Wall Street Journal : How hacked civilian cameras became war tools, as Israel tapped Iranian traffic cameras before Khamenei's killing and Iran-linked groups hit 250+ Israeli cameras — The highly vulnerable devices have turned into tools for combatants to track, surveil and attack the enemy
Ledger confirms a hardware implant in reseller-sold wallets tied to theft exceeding $86M.
Terrence O'Brien / The Verge : Hardware wallet maker Ledger says the $86M+ theft from hundreds of its wallets involved devices sold by reseller CryptoBilis and confirms a “hardware implant” — A spy implant in some Ledger crypto wallets may be the root of an $86 million supply chain attack.
An open-source clean-room Microsoft Word reimplementation in pure Rust offers a notable office-software alternative.
Reports a possible malware compromise affecting Zod 4.6.6, a widely used JavaScript validation package.
HashiCorp archives Boundary’s open-source repository, signaling a major change for the access-management project.
ClickHouse explains why storage behavior, rather than Postgres itself, often determines database performance.
Valen presents a new borrow-checking model aimed at memory safety without Rust’s conventional lifetime mechanics.
A detailed reverse-engineering account reconstructs the algorithm behind a commercial spatial-audio effect.
A Zig HTML templating library uses compile-time types to catch invalid templates before deployment.
A project statically recompiles PS2 games to WebAssembly, extending preservation and browser-playability options.
Demonstrates the unmodified Linux AMDGPU driver running on an iPad, an unusual cross-platform driver feat.
Cell publishes programmable photochromic nanoparticle inks that enable rewritable, switchable tattoos.
Tim Higgins / Wall Street Journal : Christian leaders are weighing in on AI earlier than they did with other tech, as AI leaders' talk of creating a new consciousness fuels religious concerns — Religious leaders are weighing in, creating a new political risk for the creators of the technology
John Gruber / Daring Fireball : X has re-found its footing under Elon Musk, as it continues to host more interesting discussions on AI and other fun and smart topics than rival platforms — X is the only place these posts go. … You may not like it that X has re-found its footing under Elon Musk's ownership, but it has.
Bloomberg : A look at Uber's retreat in Africa, quitting Nigeria and Uganda abruptly after Tanzania and Ivory Coast, as price-sensitive riders pick Bolt, inDrive, and Yango — Kayode Emmanuel was parked outside the biggest hotel in Nigeria's capital, the Transcorp Hilton Abuja, waiting for ride requests on his Uber Technologies Inc. app.
Tim Culpan / Culpium : Sources: TSMC execs in charge of overseas operations met Texas officials and started more serious discussions in H1 2026, after talking on and off for 10+ years — “He said his biggest concern was that nobody would supply him with chips. ” I told him: 'Don't worry.
Bloomberg : Sources: PCB maker Dongshan is eyeing to raise $2B to $3B in a Hong Kong listing as soon as this month; Dongshan is listed in Shenzhen with a $39B valuation — Printed circuit board maker Suzhou Dongshan Precision Manufacturing Co. has started gauging investor interest for a Hong Kong listing …
Kari Soo Lindberg / Bloomberg : Sources: Bain's Bridge Data Centres is in talks to upsize an existing loan from $2.8B to ~$6.6B, in what would be one of the largest data center deals in Asia — Bain Capital-owned Bridge Data Centres is in talks with banks to more than double the size of an existing loan to about $6.6 billion …