Techmeme

Torsten Slok / Apollo Global Management:
Outside of tech there has been no financial payoff to US companies for using AI, now viewed as a margin-hurting cost center, as VC-backed firms burn more tokens  —  Despite massive investments and widespread hype around artificial intelligence, the technology has delivered zero financial payoff to corporate America outside of tech.

The Information:
Source: Replit recently moved most AI spend from Anthropic to OpenAI, which gave 30%+ off in a deal worth $100M+/year, after Anthropic discontinued its discount  —  OpenAI's efforts to undercut Anthropic on price are producing some results.  —  For instance, in May, Anthropic models powered 57% …

Dana Goldstein / New York Times:
A look at Alpha School, a network of private schools that claims to teach kids 2x as fast using AI; data shows ~50% of K-8 students missed this goal in math  —  Alpha School, a private network, is spreading into public education.  While its students' test scores are high, some parents and educators say it doesn't live up to the hype.

Steven Rosenbush / Wall Street Journal:
An interview with Ciena CEO Gary Smith, a veteran of the 2001 telecoms crash, on AI demand outpacing supply for Ciena's optical networking chips, and more  —  Ciena CEO Gary Smith is ‘suitably paranoid,’ but optimistic  —  The historic telecommunications crash of 2001 is burned indelibly …

Jay Peters / The Verge:
Block unveils Dessa, a “true speech-to-speech” AI model trained on “nothing but human conversation” that it says runs locally on a MacBook Pro M4 Max or newer  —  You have got to listen to these conversations with Block's new Dessa AI model.

Wall Street Journal:
Ukraine says Starshield was working normally again on Saturday morning; US officials said Trump asked Elon Musk to restore the service  —  Speed restrictions imposed by Elon Musk's SpaceX have hampered Ukraine's drone forces since Oct. 14  —  KYIV—Ukraine's military Starlink system …

Rachel Monroe / New Yorker:
Inside Meta's law enforcement outreach team, which uses AI and human reviewers to analyze social media posts, aiming to prevent threats like school shootings  —  Algorithmic social media, which has helped create the conditions for the spread of such violence, is reckoning with how it can be part of the solution.

Thomas Brewster / Forbes:
A look at OpenAI's Project Daybreak, which lets vetted partners use its top hacking models to find and fix vulnerabilities and helped uncover PHP2Shell RCE bugs  —  This voice experience is generated by AI.  Learn more.  —  Using the latest GPT model, cyber researchers …

Toby Sterling / Reuters:
The PHP Foundation, which coordinated fixes for two critical PHP flaws, operates on a shoestring budget with one full-time staff member and 14 contractors  —  The discovery of two serious flaws in PHP this week set off a global scramble to keep websites safe from hackers …

Shimul Sood / Android Authority:
Google updates its privacy policy to clarify it could use data shared via Personal Intelligence from connected apps, including Gmail and Photos, to target ads  —  Your inbox has secrets, and Google's ads might want in.  —  • … TL;DR  — Google updated its privacy policy …

Catherine Perloff / The Information:
Andy Jassy says AWS capacity for 2027 is “largely sold out” and a “good chunk” of 2028 capacity is also sold, though AWS reserves some capacity for on-demand  —  Amazon Web Services capacity is mostly booked up through at least next year, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy …

Liv McMahon / BBC:
The UK plans to invest £100M to create the AI Biosecurity Lab to boost defenses against biological threats, supported by OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind  —  The UK says it will establish a national AI Biosecurity Lab (AIBL) to help strengthen its defences against emerging biological threats.

OpenAI:
OpenAI says it built an “offline world” from cached web content to train isolated frontier models to browse, search for information, and use web apps  —  In order to work with software, AI models need computing environments: digital workspaces where they can write and run code …

Rocket Drew / The Information:
Utopai, an AI film studio that says it has more than 20 projects in the works, raised $60M at a $1B valuation  —  While much of the AI industry has fixated on new personal AI assistants from Meta and OpenAI, video AI is enjoying a quiet renaissance.  Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg …

Tom Warren / The Verge:
Memo: Helen Chiang, Xbox's first COO, is leaving Microsoft on October 23, just months after the role was created; she spent 21 years at the company  —  Helen Chiang is leaving Microsoft after 21 years. … Xbox is losing its first chief operating officer (COO) after creating the new role just a few months ago.

Meir Orbach / CTech:
Mave, which is developing an AI-driven tool to automate security investigations, raised a $28M Series A led by Red Dot, bringing its total funding to $34M  —  The funding, led by Red Dot Capital Partners, brings Mave's total funding to $34 million.  The company is developing AI …

The Information:
Sources: Instacart, currently valued at $12B, is in talks to sell itself and held preliminary conversations with DoorDash and Uber; CART jumps 9%+  —  Instacart is in talks to sell itself in a transaction that would cap the grocery delivery app's 14-year run as a standalone company.

Rachel Metz / Bloomberg:
OpenAI plans to restrict internet access for its frontier models during training until adequate alignment, monitoring, and security safeguards are established  —  OpenAI has begun cutting off internet access for its most capable artificial intelligence models during the training process …

Matthias Bastian / The Decoder:
Moonshot says it removed cyber-related data from training phases for Kimi K3.1 Pro “to reduce potential misuse risk while preserving general usefulness”  —  Key Points … Ask about this article...  The model scores 55 points on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index …

@artificialanlys:
Artificial Analysis says Kimi K3.1 Pro lands 4th on its Intelligence Index, behind only Opus 5.5 (max), Sonnet 5.5 (max), and Muse Wonder Full (max)  —  Kimi K3.1 Pro launches at 4th on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index scoring 55, making large gains in agentic performance; it will be the leading open-weights model once its weights are published @Kimi_Moonshot's new reasoning model gains 11 points over Kimi K3 (max, 44). It trails only Cl...