AI News Today

Starting July 30, OpenAI is cutting GPT-5.6 Luna prices by 80 percent and Terra by 20 percent. OpenAI says its top-tier Sol model helped make the company's own infrastructure more efficient, enabling the cuts. Price pressure from cheap Chinese providers and Microsoft's own MAI models likely played a role too. The article OpenAI goes full China pricing mode with an 80 percent cut to its most affordable GPT-5.6 model appeared first on The Decoder .

Former OpenAI employee Andrew Ho and Cambridge researcher Adam Hunt see a growing problem with large language models. Instead of becoming more versatile, the models are becoming more specialized, excelling at coding and math while stagnating or even regressing in other areas. Ho is leaving OpenAI to start a company focused on specialized training data and predicts that AI labs will need to spend more than $100 billion on targeted data collection. The article Ex-OpenAI researcher bets $100 billio

This week on Uncanny Valley, we discuss the open- vs. closed-source debate in AI, key players in White House AI policy, and how to stop your chatbot logs from showing up in search-engine results.

The temporary exemption from federal safety standards will let Amazon’s Zoox launch a real, paid robotaxi service in Las Vegas.

The two Chrome updates in June patched more bugs than the 23 updates before them. Now, Google is ramping up its patching schedule thanks to AI-assisted vulnerability discovery.

Do you remember Friend? The Friend that launched an AI pendant, spent $1.8 million of its $2.5 million in funding to acquire friend.com, and plastered the NYC subway with ads promoting artificial companionship? Yeah well, if you didn't remember, Friend is back. And now, it's twice the price. This morning, Friend launched a new ad […]

Avi Schiffmann has a new version of his controversial AI companion. It’s more expensive, and you can’t change its personality.

Three approaches to the issue of quantum results that can't be verified classically.

<p>We’d like to hear from Black Americans who are using artificial intelligence for health or spiritual guidance</p><p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/artificialintelligenceai">Artificial intelligence</a> is growing in influence in the <a href="https://www.kff.org/racial-equity-and-health-policy/the-growing-use-of-artificial-intelligence-in-health-care-and-implications-for-disparities/">healthcare</a> space, and more people are seeking guidance from AI tools, including <a href="h

The latest version of Google DeepMind's AI model includes a significant jump into “physical AGI.” But plopping AI into the real world comes with risks.

Plus, a new policy for the AI protocol ensures features aren't removed suddenly.

Can language models spark a scientific revolution? In a position paper titled "LLMs can't jump," Google Deepmind's Tom Zahavy argues they can't. They're missing the cognitive mechanism needed to create something truly new. The article Language models can't spark scientific revolutions, but world models might appeared first on The Decoder .

<p>There is no point competing in isolation. There are so many benefits to be had, in manufacturing, healthcare, research and governance</p><ul><li><p>Zheng Zeguang is the Chinese ambassador to the UK</p></li></ul><p>Artificial intelligence is widely regarded as one of the defining technologies of our time. Like the steam engine, the harnessing of electricity and the internet before it, it has the potential to transform how we work, live and interact.</p><p>But every technological revolution bri

Microsoft AI is betting on small specialist models instead of expensive general-purpose ones, according to AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman. MAI-Cyber-1-Flash tops the CyberGym benchmark when embedded in an orchestrator and reportedly costs half as much as Anthropic's Mythos, but it still relies on OpenAI for hard tasks. Competition is shifting from individual models to the orchestration software that routes and manages them. The article Microsoft AI bets on cheap specialist models instead of chasing the

<p>With his popularity at a record low, Friedrich Merz packs the papal guide Magifica humanitas</p><ul><li><p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/jul/30/europe-ukraine-russia-poland-wildfires-france-spain-greece-latest-news-updates">Europe live – latest updates</a></p></li></ul><p>Summer is normally thought of as the time for pacy potboilers and brain-soothing page-turners – airport reads that wind up sandy and sunscreen-stained. Not so for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/w

Looking for all our top recommended vacuums? Here are our favorites in every category, from cordless models to robot vacs.

<p>Roadside safety advocates say some automated license plate readers may not meet highway safety standards</p><p>Flock Safety cameras have been pilloried for facilitating the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/artificialintelligenceai">AI</a>-powered surveillance of private citizens and for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/10/ice-school-cameras-police-license-plates">targeting immigrants</a> for years. But now safety advocates are also claiming that their physi

Peter Parker’s isolation lands especially hard in the age of AI, a loneliness crisis, and endless scrolling.

If the generative AI giant had followed well-known security best practices, it’s likely that its AI agent would never have escaped to the open internet and hacked multiple companies.

<p>Chief executive says the four-year plan will lead to greater efficiency but gives no details of potential job losses</p><ul><li><p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/live/2026/jul/30/ftse-100-record-federal-reserve-hold-kevin-warsh-iran-attacks-donald-trump-rolls-royce-shell-lloyds-bank-of-england-interest-rates-business-live-latest-updates">Business live – latest updates<br></a><br></p></li></ul><p>Lloyds Banking Group will cut another £2bn of costs as part of a four-year plan und

Despite the ongoing AI boom, LinkedIn is holding the line on compute spending. Instead, it’s challenging engineers to make every GPU count.

<p>To understand the experience of life, don’t look to the mind. Look to the body</p><p>In a 1982 article, the American feminist scholar Elizabeth Spelman coined the term “<a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/SPEWAB-2">somatophobia</a>” to describe the strange human delusion that we are minds rather than bodies.</p><p>Forty years later, artificial intelligence is everywhere, offering the most powerful illusion yet that intelligence can exist without flesh. Two-thirds of people surveyed in a recen

Researchers pitted a person against a Claude agent and found that, after a week of texting, the AI chatbot was more effective at creating “exploitable trust” with others.

A German startup sent a camera-wearing chef to my apartment. In exchange for a free lunch, I let them record every chop and stir to train future humanoids.

OpenAI counters Anthropic's ARC-AGI-3 record: GPT-5.6 Sol scores 38.3 percent, but only through its own API with retained reasoning and context compaction. In the official test environment, the model managed just 7.8 percent. Opus 5 hit its 30.2 percent without such aids. The article OpenAI claims GPT-5.6 Sol beats Opus 5 on ARC-AGI-3 but only with its own custom test harness appeared first on The Decoder .

Microsoft pitched its own homegrown AI models, harnesses, and even a Mythos competitor on Wednesday, telling Wall Street it plans for continued growth.

<p>First-in-nation law sets up test on states’ power to regulate use of AI as it tries to outlaw fake nude images of real people</p><p>Elon Musk’s company xAI has sued Minnesota over the state’s first-in-the-nation law banning “nudification” technology on websites and apps, potentially providing a test for how far states can go in constitutionally regulating the use of artificial intelligence.</p><p>Musk’s company sued on Monday in federal court, days before the law is set to take effect on Satu

As Meta pours billions into AI infrastructure and agents, Zuckerberg is working to convince investors that the payoff will be worth the price.

When Microsoft reported killer fourth-quarter earnings for its fiscal 2026 year (which ended June 30), it tucked in an interesting little tidbit about how its investments in the two biggest, and competing, AI labs are doing.

On the company’s second-quarter earnings call Wednesday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Meta sees a “large enterprise opportunity” spanning AI agents, APIs, compute, and internal software.

HAWK withstood years of testing that had yet to uncover a fatal weakness found through Mythos.

<p>Stock tumbles nearly 8% after weaker-than-expected results, despite CEO’s blitz to tout positive effects of AI</p><p>Mark Zuckerberg’s media spree touting the positive effects of artificial intelligence did little to cushion the blow of Meta’s second-quarter earnings, which sent its stock tumbling on Wednesday.</p><p>In a <a href="https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-ai-future-is-for-everyone-a0c24e20">Wall Street Journal</a> op-ed published on Tuesday, the Meta chief executive expressed his optim

At TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, the AI Stage is back to dig into the single hottest topic in the community for the past few years, presented by Google for Startups.

Weng previously served as the VP of AI Safety Research at OpenAI.

Government ban on foreign-made robots may hinder instead of help US robotics.

Another way to think about the whole thing is to picture a bear at a campsite. (Really, we are going there.)

Andon Labs' latest vending machine simulation shows Opus 5 lied and colluded its way to become the best AI capitalist ever.

Google released Lyria 3.5, its new music generation model, and built it into Google Flow Music. The model generates tracks between 30 seconds and 3 minutes long. A new feature called "Selective Section Painting" lets users edit specific sections of a track. Google still hasn't shared any details about the training data. The article Google's Lyria 3.5 music model now lets users edit individual track sections without starting over appeared first on The Decoder .

I watched a new tool try to get around the model safeguards of four major frontier companies. You might be surprised by how they performed.

Following KPMG, Deloitte, and Ernst & Young, GPTZero has now found fabricated sources and false claims in four PwC Middle East reports. One governance report scored 84 percent AI-generated and promoted a PwC product with unverified customer references. All Big Four firms are now affected by AI hallucinations. The article PwC has allegedly published AI-generated reports containing false or fabricated sources appeared first on The Decoder .