Daily AI Briefing

A month of real work with every major Claude feature, narrowed down to the 5 that earned a permanent spot and 5 you can skip. Continue reading on Towards AI »

UP.Labs, now doing business under the name Vantora, is building startups for industrial corporations.

AI leaders have been promising that AI is the key to curing human disease. Anthropic researchers have also been warning that AI might kill us all.

“It’s important for service members to understand the uncertainty inherent to LLMs," a GovAI research scholar warns.

Learn how to install and use OpenCode for free with three no-cost routes: OpenCode Zen, provider free tiers, and local Ollama models. No… Continue reading on Towards AI »

CLAUDE.md, Skills, and Hooks solve three different problems in Claude Code. Here is what each one actually does and how to use all three… Continue reading on Towards AI »

Anthropic studied how people actually use Claude, hour by hour. Continue reading on Towards AI »

Accenture is about to take on its most high-risk consulting engagement ever.

Recently unsealed court documents in the New York Times' case against OpenAI and Microsoft are pretty damning. The companies' own documentation warned that it was starting a "doom loop" that would damage the web, characterized its scraping of data to train its models as the "largest theft of labor in human history," and that it made a "complete mockery of the idea of fair use." Many of the most eye-catching quotes from the document come from Microsoft's Director of Applied Science, Brent Hecht.

The leak is almost never the model. It is the plumbing around it. Continue reading on Towards AI »

Everyone in the world-models space is sitting on a pile of cash and a ton of buzz, but good luck getting anyone — from the founders to their own data suppliers — to tell you what they're actually building.

Hermes Agent, like pretty much every serious agent framework at this point, has grown out of the stateless-chatbot phase. Plug in a memory… Continue reading on Towards AI »

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Every week someone asks me the same question. “Should I use Claude or GPT?” Continue reading on Towards AI »

Jev, a new kind of AI model, is showing developers a cheaper and faster path to software intelligence.

Though Europe has measures that address how consumers might encounter AI, technology will impact them if the worst scenarios bear Europe’s dilemma over AI was rendered in stark terms this week. The head of the continent’s central bank, Christine Lagarde, said Europeans have two options: shun the technology and lose out on growth; or embrace it and become dependent on tools developed by the US and China. The great debate over AI safety that has erupted in recent days threatens to make the choice

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger ordered the state government to take steps that could empower local communities to have a larger say in data center development and slow down approvals in a state that is already home to the data center capital of the world. Executive Order 22 bans executive branch officials from signing nondisclosure agreements for data center projects, requires expedited noise regulations, and requires a review of backup-generation operations used by data centers, among other r

You would think that a multimedia conglomerate as large as Disney would have a few chief technology officers by now, but the company has just appointed someone to the position for the very first time. Today, Disney announced that Karandeep Anand is joining the company as its new CTO. Anand will report directly to recently appointed CEO Josh D'Amaro, and he will head up the company's infrastructure, product, engineering, and data / AI platforms teams. Anand comes to Disney from chatbot startup C

The former CEO of Character.AI, which Disney previously sent a cease-and-desist letter to, will serve as the company's first-ever chief technology officer.

Google is refocusing its CC AI agent on household coordination, letting families share emails, schedules, and tasks so the AI can manage calendars, fill out forms, make shopping lists, plan meals, and more.

A week after an Anthropic researcher’s doomsday warning rattled the AI world, the company’s CEO Dario Amodei has outlined his plan to “pace the frontier” of AI development. The proposal leans on independent safety evaluators and coordination between AI labs in democratic countries, and it’s already picked up some industry support, along with some pointed pushback from Nvidia’s Jensen Huang.  Watch […]

It's one of the most fascinating years in a while when it comes to iPhone camera upgrades. The big story of the iPhone 18 Pro is the variable aperture main lens, which lets you open the aperture up wider for better low light shots and make the aperture smaller for better depth of field in group photos. But all I can get anyone to talk about is the software upgrades: it turns out, they're a lot more useful day to day than the aperture on a camera this small. This week on The Vergecast, David Imel

A week after an Anthropic researcher’s doomsday warning rattled the AI world, the company’s CEO Dario Amodei has outlined his plan to “pace the frontier” of AI development. The proposal leans on independent safety evaluators and coordination between AI labs in democratic countries, and it’s already picked up some industry support, along with some pointed pushback from Nvidia’s Jensen Huang.  On […]

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) is positioning the state to take the lead on AI oversight, including the potential to mandate a "kill switch" for frontier models, with a new executive order issued Friday. Newsom's order directs the state to convene a group of experts that will deliver recommendations within two months on how to strengthen AI safety measures in state law. Newsom wants the group to consider how the state could require AI companies to embed independent verification groups onsite

Readers respond to the warning from a former Anthropic researcher that the technology could ‘kill us all’ by the end of the decade Here we go again with another round of tech bros claiming that AI is going to develop superintelligence and kill us all (More Anthropic researchers warn of AI’s perils but Musk dismisses ‘psyop’, 10 September). We’ve heard this before. Many, many times. It’s the familiar plotline of pretty much every sci-fi movie about AI, ever. And these narratives have always bee

Politicians who threaten filmmakers rather than investigate alleged military crimes expose not strength but a leadership frightened of the evidence Across Israel, politicians, military leaders and much of the media are trying to discredit a documentary that almost none of them have seen. Produced by the Guardian, NAZA examines the AI-powered targeting systems used by the Israel Defense Forces to bombard Gaza after Hamas’s brutal 7 October 2023 attacks. Named after the Israeli military acronym eu

Manus, which earlier this year had to break off a merger with Meta, is in discussions to raise $500M at a $4B valuation.

As the tech sector sounds alarms about AI's potential to destroy humanity, entertainment labor groups are urging the public to stay focused on what's already happening. The Verge reached out to Disney, Netflix, Amazon, Lionsgate, and other studios who have started using AI, as well film startups focused on bringing generative AI into the mainstream to ask for their reaction to the recent warnings surrounding the technology. None have responded to our request for comment. The Screen Actors Guild

After a week of alarming warnings about artificial intelligence’s potential to destroy the world as we know it, our technology reporters answered your questions on the reality of the AI threat IcommentthereforeIam asks: Given our senses, emotions, memory and moods, is it ever going to be accepted that humanly conscious AI is fantasy? Dan: This is a serious question that has even rattled Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist. He may not believe that God is real but he does believe that AI

A team of three independent security researchers at Hacktron says it took less than 72 hours for them to hack into OpenAI employee accounts using Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.8 and 5, The Wall Street Journal reports. They were able to access OpenAI's GitHub repository, called "Monorepo," which reportedly contains "OpenAI's algorithmic secrets," according to The Wall Street Journal's sources. They stopped short of accessing internal code in Monorepo themselves, but sent a pull request from an emplo

Nvidia's Nader Khalil and Sydney Sykes discuss one of the decisions shaping next-gen startups on the Builders Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026.

Muse is now available on the Mac, where it can work with your files and apps to take action on your behalf.

The FCC has announced it's waiving its rules limiting foreign equity ownership to 25 percent in the Paramount-Warner Bros. case and will allow three sovereign wealth funds run by the governments of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi to own 49.5 percent of the company. During Brendan Carr's tenure, the FCC has repeatedly threatened ABC, tried to block stations from airing interviews with Democrats, censored late-night TV hosts, and tried to bully journalists. However, it seems to have no qualms

Robinhood’s Abhishek Fatehpuria on winning the modern financial consumer at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026. Register now to save up to $200 before September 25 at 11:59 p.m. PT.

Andy Burnham’s focus on immediate domestic problems leads some to fear issue has dropped off government’s radar Towards the end of Keir Starmer’s time in office, his senior ministers, alarmed by the latest developments in artificial intelligence, began drawing up plans for a new AI safety law. They ordered a review of existing legislation to see what powers they already had, according to those briefed on the plans, and were exploring whether they could force the world’s most advanced technology

Anyone shopping for a Windows laptop with a $1K budget should head to Best Buy, where for the rest of the day you can get a great deal on a capable Lenovo laptop. The Yoga Slim 7X is a slim 14-inch machine with a 2K 16:10 OLED touchscreen, Snapdragon’s high-end X2 Elite processor with 12 cores, plus 16GB of DDR5 RAM and a 1TB SSD. The specs are about the best you can get these days for $1,000, as worthwhile laptop deals are in short supply during RAMageddon. Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Where to Buy:

FunnyPlaying, a Chinese company known for its Game Boy and GBA upgrade kits, has announced a new handheld that plays original Nintendo cartridges and ROMs. The FPGB Mini's cartridge support is limited to the Game Boy and Game Boy Color so it isn't as capable as the Analogue Pocket that's also compatible with the GBA and Sega Game Gear. What still makes the FPGB Mini a tempting alternative is its extremely pocketable design resulting in a handheld only slightly wider than a Game Boy cartridge, an

Security researchers used Anthropic’s Claude to exploit vulnerabilities in OpenAI’s systems, taking over employee accounts and gaining access to an internal code repository before reporting the flaws.

Last day to book your exhibit table at Disrupt is today, September 18. Get your startup in front of 10,000+ founders, investors, operators, and tech leaders on October 13–15.

Google worked side-by-side with designers Jane Wade and Sergio Hudson to custom-design Google Flow tools to prep for NYFW.

US cybersecurity researchers who conducted hack say ‘scope of what we could theoretically access was huge’ Cybersecurity researchers have hacked into OpenAI with the help of Anthropic’s Claude chatbot, in the latest example of security issues at the company. A team at a US-based startup compromised a number of OpenAI employees’ ChatGPT accounts, starting a process that enabled them to access their target’s software cache – and potentially more. Continue reading...

Tech bosses have called for a slowdown in artificial intelligence and formal guardrails to be introduced by the US government. But President Trump is not moved by the doomsday predictions, calling them a ‘hoax'. What is behind his affection for the AI industry? Jonathan Freedland and Guardian US tech editor Blake Montgomery discuss Continue reading...

Liberal MP speaks of AI’s shortcomings as cyber chief tells inquiry the tech is needed to fend off ‘highly capable malicious cyber actors’ Get our new political email, free app or daily news podcast When a man with a terminal illness wrote to his local MP Andrew Hastie, telling him he planned on ending his own life with voluntary assisted dying, Microsoft Copilot suggested Hastie reply with “congratulations!”, “great to hear from you” or “that is wonderful news!”. Hastie shared the episode at

Warwick Levy, who runs Lonely Kids Club, says AI may have been used to scrape his entire website and replicate designs Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast After 15 years running a small business making T-shirts, Warwick Levy says it was “brutal” when he first discovered an identical design for sale on Temu. It turned out there was an overwhelming amount of T-shirts identical to his own for sale on the Chinese e-commerce marketplace. Between 2025 and earlier this year, L

Tech bosses have called for a slowdown in artificial intelligence and the creation of formal guardrails from the US government. But why is President Trump unmoved by the doomsday predictions, dismissing them as a ‘hoax’? What lies behind his embrace of the AI industry? Jonathan Freedland speaks to the Guardian US tech editor, Blake Montgomery Watch Jonathan Freedland on our new Politics Weekly YouTube channel Send your questions and feedback to [email protected] Listen to the

We are used to the idea that our fellow humans might intentionally mislead or manipulate us, but the idea that machines can now do the same is deeply unsettling. Researchers are racing to find solutions before it’s too late. By Snigdha Poonam. Read by Maya Saroya Read the text version here Support the Guardian today: theguardian.com/longreadpod This article was supported by a grant from the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism Continue reading...

A full benchmark, pricing, and speed comparison of Google’s Gemini 3.8 Continue reading on Towards AI »