OpenAI says it hit its "automated research intern" goal, its researchers now use 3.1 agent-workdays per human workday, and top users spend $7,000+/day on tokens (OpenAI)

OpenAI:
OpenAI says it hit its “automated research intern” goal, its researchers now use 3.1 agent-workdays per human workday, and top users spend $7,000+/day on tokens  —  For AGI to benefit all of humanity, we believe it must be democratically governed.

Tim Cook's pay package indicates he will remain very active at Apple; sources: Apple's plans to squeeze more App Store profits prompted Phil Schiller to leave (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Tim Cook's pay package indicates he will remain very active at Apple; sources: Apple's plans to squeeze more App Store profits prompted Phil Schiller to leave  —  Also: The latest on Apple's big Sept. 9 event.  —  The early signs out of Cupertino are that Tim Cook will still loom large at Apple.

How AI gutted Kenya's essay-writing industry, which at its peak paid 40,000+ people in Nairobi to do overseas students' homework, leaving few paths back to work (New York Times)

New York Times:
How AI gutted Kenya's essay-writing industry, which at its peak paid 40,000+ people in Nairobi to do overseas students' homework, leaving few paths back to work  —  Thousands of Kenyans made a living writing essays for overseas students.  With A.I., the work has dried up, a warning for online gig work that has been a global lifeline.

Swiss Re: global premiums for insuring data centers will likely reach $20B-$30B/year by 2030; ~40% of US data-center capacity is located in tornado-prone areas (Jean Eaglesham/Wall Street Journal)

Jean Eaglesham / Wall Street Journal:
Swiss Re: global premiums for insuring data centers will likely reach $20B-$30B/year by 2030; ~40% of US data-center capacity is located in tornado-prone areas  —  AI hyperscale data centers are exposed to a dizzying array of potential threats during construction and operation

Berlin is reviewing Rhysida's 5.79TB release of state data after refusing to pay a ransom; files reportedly include national defense and threat response plans (Miranda Murray/Reuters)

Miranda Murray / Reuters:
Berlin is reviewing Rhysida's 5.79TB release of state data after refusing to pay a ransom; files reportedly include national defense and threat response plans  —  Berlin's state government said on Saturday it was reviewing with the highest intensity a trove of stolen data published by a ransomware group …

Anthropomorphic portrayals of AI models as rogue agents can obscure the responsibility that companies like OpenAI have for incidents like the Hugging Face hack (Robert Hart/The Verge)

Robert Hart / The Verge:
Anthropomorphic portrayals of AI models as rogue agents can obscure the responsibility that companies like OpenAI have for incidents like the Hugging Face hack  —  The internet fights over anthropomorphism around the Hugging Face hack. … Depending on who you ask, developer platform Hugging Face …

Businesses in China are experimenting with ways to package and market AI tokens to ordinary consumers, including as credit card rewards and telecom plan bundles (Kinling Lo/Rest of World)

Kinling Lo / Rest of World:
Businesses in China are experimenting with ways to package and market AI tokens to ordinary consumers, including as credit card rewards and telecom plan bundles  —  Five unexpected ways computing power is entering everyday life in the country.  —  Artificial intelligence tokens …

Sources: DeepSeek plans to use 160K+ of Huawei's Ascend 950DT chips at an Inner Mongolia data center, which would create one of the largest Huawei chip clusters (Mackenzie Hawkins/Bloomberg)

Mackenzie Hawkins / Bloomberg:
Sources: DeepSeek plans to use 160K+ of Huawei's Ascend 950DT chips at an Inner Mongolia data center, which would create one of the largest Huawei chip clusters  —  DeepSeek plans to deploy at least 160,000 of Huawei Technologies Co.'s top accelerators at a massive data center it's building …

Nvidia becomes a leading global strategic tech backer, with the value of its equity investments up 10x in the past year to $99B, as it bolsters the AI sector (Kai Nicol-Schwarz/CNBC)

Kai Nicol-Schwarz / CNBC:
Nvidia becomes a leading global strategic tech backer, with the value of its equity investments up 10x in the past year to $99B, as it bolsters the AI sector  —  Nvidia has become one of the world's largest corporate backers of tech companies as the value of its equity investments soared …

How some parents, mostly mothers, use AI to help them organize their families' schedules and automate mundane household tasks via apps like Ollie and Cozi Max (Valeriya Safronova/Financial Times)

Valeriya Safronova / Financial Times:
How some parents, mostly mothers, use AI to help them organize their families' schedules and automate mundane household tasks via apps like Ollie and Cozi Max  —  Parents are using AI to organise their families, from managing busy schedules to researching preschools, planning meals and grocery shopping.

At the G20 summit, Jensen Huang, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, and Elon Musk joined Trump officials in lobbying policymakers against heavy AI regulations (Amrith Ramkumar/Wall Street Journal)

Amrith Ramkumar / Wall Street Journal:
At the G20 summit, Jensen Huang, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, and Elon Musk joined Trump officials in lobbying policymakers against heavy AI regulations  —  Company bosses, officials say advances in technology are already making AI safer than under government regulations

Robotics and AI startup Lyte, founded by ex-Face ID engineers, raised $165M led by Maverick Silicon at a $1.6B valuation, taking its total funding to $272M (Samantha Kelly/Bloomberg)

Samantha Kelly / Bloomberg:
Robotics and AI startup Lyte, founded by ex-Face ID engineers, raised $165M led by Maverick Silicon at a $1.6B valuation, taking its total funding to $272M  —  Lyte, a fast-growing robotics and artificial intelligence startup from top members of Apple Inc.'s Face ID team …

Dell unveils the student-focused Dell 14S, with Intel Wildcat Lake chips and starting with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, in a bid to rival the MacBook Neo (Antonio G. Di Benedetto/The Verge)

Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge:
Dell unveils the student-focused Dell 14S, with Intel Wildcat Lake chips and starting with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, in a bid to rival the MacBook Neo  —  The Dell 14S promises an aluminum build, Intel Wildcat Lake chips, and lots of battery life — for a price we don't know exactly yet.

Study: ~33% of UK adults say they used illegal streaming services in the past three months, costing the sports, TV, and film industries ~£1.4B in annual revenue (Daniel Thomas/Financial Times)

Daniel Thomas / Financial Times:
Study: ~33% of UK adults say they used illegal streaming services in the past three months, costing the sports, TV, and film industries ~£1.4B in annual revenue  —  Coalition seeks government support to crack down on pirated content and restore lost revenue

Sources: Google approached Disney, Universal, and other studios to license characters and films for its AI tools, but legal and union concerns stalled deals (Wendy Lee/Los Angeles Times)

Wendy Lee / Los Angeles Times:
Sources: Google approached Disney, Universal, and other studios to license characters and films for its AI tools, but legal and union concerns stalled deals  —  - Google is quietly courting Disney, Universal, Warner Bros. Discovery and other studios to license characters and film libraries for its AI tools …