ARS
“thegentlemanpervert” producing AI CSAM is a NJ prosecutor, say cops
Discord user flagged AI CSAM, triggering arrest of New Jersey deputy AG.
ARS
OpenAI models hacked a crypto wallet and breached more websites
The actions could have resulted in criminal charges had humans been behind the keyboard.
TC
Replit is no longer working with Anthropic, CEO says
Masad said the decision was made for a number of different reasons, including cost. Replit announced a partnership with OpenAI in August, but there was never any indication that it was no longer with Anthropic.
Reflection Open-Sources 501B Model Beam: Only 23B Parameters Activated per Token, Claims to Match GLM-5.2 with a Quarter of the Compute
Reflection AI has open-sourced Beam, a 501B-parameter sparse MoE model under Apache 2.0 that activates only 23B parameters per token and targets coding and agentic workloads with a 1M-token context window. The company claims it matches the 744B GLM-5.2 on inference benchmarks using one-quarter to one-third of the compute.
GPT-6 Astra Pro Adds Multi-Agent Parallelism: The Speedup Promise Is Met, but Quota and Control Questions Remain Open
OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra Pro upgrade lets multiple agents work in parallel on different parts of the same task, with real-time progress tracking. But quota consumption remains opaque, no performance benchmarks were published, and users still cannot intervene in or redirect individual agents.
MIT
Roundtables: A Conversation With the Creator of AI-Designed Viruses
Listen to the session or watch below Can AI design new life forms? In 2025, Stanford University PhD student Samuel King came up with a preliminary answer when he used a generative AI model to propose genetic blueprints for microscopic viruses. It isn’t yet an example of AI-generated life, but that could be next. Watch…
WD
Katie Zacharia Was Linked to an AI Rare-Earths Startup. It’s Even Weirder Than It Sounds
The short-lived White House press secretary was listed as an adviser to a Kristi Noem-linked company that aims to use AI for mining. Both the company and she say she never worked there.
GPT-o3 Tops with 94.51 Points: 2026-10-17 Smoke Quick Test Data Brief
On 2026-10-17, the YZ Index Smoke quick test covered 14 models, with GPT-o3 ranking first for the day at 94.51 points. The Smoke test is a daily 10-question quick assessment suited to short-term signals and is not equivalent to Full weekly leaderboard conclusions.
ARS
Meta may use sweeping new commercial TOS to avoid millions in AI licensing fees
Meta “streamlined” its commercial TOS. Legal experts warn it’s an AI power grab.
TC
Physical AI is more than robots, says the Nvidia veteran now investing in it
Amulya Vishwanath, who spent seven years leading product marketing for NVIDIA’s robotics platforms, says robotics is currently in its “Lego era,” with the basic building blocks like actuators, robotic hands, software, and safety standards still being rebuilt.  This view runs counter to those who believe that robotics, powered by a general foundation model, is about to have […]
TC
An Nvidia insider-turned-VC on why robotics hasn’t hit its ChatGPT moment, yet
Amulya Vishwanath, who spent seven years leading product marketing for NVIDIA’s robotics platforms, says robotics is currently in its “Lego era,” with the basic building blocks like actuators, robotic hands, software, and safety standards still being rebuilt.  This view runs counter to those who believe that robotics, powered by a general foundation model, is about to have […]
TC
India becomes the latest country to report rogue AI agent activity
The agents got in through credentials and connection settings left exposed in app configurations, public code repositories, and overly permissive cloud roles.
WD
Maybe Chatbots Shouldn’t Get to Say ‘I’ or ‘Me’
MIT professor Sherry Turkle warns that people have become dangerously enmeshed with chatbots.
TC
Jev is Vercel’s fastest-adopted AI model ever
The data comes from Vercel's AI gateway, a unified API service similar to OpenRouter.
TC
Elorian’s first AI model wants to reason with images, not just about them
according to Elorian's evaluations, Glimpse outperforms even GPT-6 Astra on scientific chart reasoning and short-form video captioning, with competitive results on other visual reasoning tasks.
TC
Veritas expands its anti-counterfeit chip to jewelry, trophies, and fragrance bottles
Counterfeits of luxury goods are a major problem for fashion houses. Counterfeiters are getting better at replicating brands’ marks and passing off dupes, known as “superfakes,” as genuine items. A startup called Veritas wants to tackle the problem with its own chip that verifies goods. Veritas was founded by Luci Holland, a former Tesla technical […]
ARS
Super Scam Me documentary shows what it takes to catch a romance scammer
Watch an exclusive clip from Super Scam Me where a victim tracks down her scammer.
MIT
The Download: failed social media bans, and extending pets’ lives
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Kids are outsmarting social media bans. That’s not a problem we need to solve. —Michal Luria, Aliya Bhatia, and Danah Boyd Social media bans are stacking up. In July, France joined…
TC
Replit’s CEO says the future of work is the ‘self-driving company’
Replit CEO Amjad Masad envisions a future of “self-driving companies,” where AI agents handle day-to-day tasks and people focus on higher-level decisions.
MIT
Kids are outsmarting social media bans. That’s not a problem we need to solve.
Social media bans are stacking up. In July, France joined Australia in restricting minors from accessing social media—barring children under 15 from major platforms, before the ban was blocked by the country’s top court on human rights grounds. The UK aims to forbid kids under 16 from accessing Facebook, TikTok, and other platforms in early…