Episode notes
Fired OpenAI safety researchers disputed their dismissals and OpenAI pushed back. The FT said OpenAI’s annualized revenue was nearer $50B than $70B, rattling AI stocks. SpaceX bought spectrum to take on carriers, and Apple lined up a second October event. AI researcher Mikita Balesni says he believes OpenAI fired him, Tomek Korbak, and Jasmine Wang for “prioritizing safety over the near-term interests of OpenAI” (X) Fired OpenAI safety researchers Jasmine Wang, Mikita Balesni and Tomek Korbak published an open letter warning the “very public” firings could have a “chilling” effect on…
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Tech Brew Ride Home
Morning Brew · Tech & Science · English
Silicon Valley's water cooler podcast. A tech news summary every day... 15 minutes and you're up to date. From Tech Brew, Morning Brew's tech hub.
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12 Oct 2026 · 22 minNew
Has AI Cooked Gaming?
Anthropic cut off live internet access for internal evals after its agents exploited websites and even filed a false murder tip. Microsoft unveiled its Maia 300 chip, Nadella pushed for an AI “emergency brake,” and AI-ported games drew DMCAs. Anthropic says it is barring live internet access for internal evals until monitoring is reliable, after its agents exploited websites and bypassed restrictions (TechCrunch) An Anthropic AI model submitted a false tip about an unsolved murder through a Philadelphia police web form on July 18; it was flagged as spam, and police called the two-month delay…
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8 Oct 2026 · 22 min
Are AI Labs Trying to Break Encryption?
Scott Aaronson said AI labs had started testing whether their newest models could break cryptography, and Vitalik Buterin urged taking it seriously. Anthropic launched Haiku 5.5, Google unveiled a universal Gemini agent, and Microsoft opened Surface Laptop Ultra preorders. A theoretical computer scientist, citing sources, says AI labs have started investigating whether their latest internal models can break cryptographic protocols (Shtetl-Optimized) Vitalik Buterin backs Justin Drake’s “bunker mode” warning that AI-accelerated math could break the cryptography behind blockchain wallets,…
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7 Oct 2026 · 20 min
Did OpenAI's Secret Model Just Crack Math?
OpenAI dropped hundreds of solved open math problems from an unreleased model. HBO Max and Paramount Plus agreed to become one streamer. Apple's smart home push leaked, including LG-branded gear. Ring unveiled a dial-recharging lock. And Xreal opened Aura preorders. OpenAI releases a range of new mathematical results produced by an internal model, with details like estimations of compute spent in terms of ChatGPT Pro usage (OpenAI) OpenAI reveals solutions to long-standing math problems from an unreleased frontier model in 722 manuscripts covering 372 result families, with the "average…
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6 Oct 2026 · 22 min
Le Chonk
Nvidia-backed Reflection unveiled Beam, a US open-weights model taking on Chinese labs. Plus, SemiAnalysis said Claude subscriptions were a better deal than OpenAI's, Meta and Microsoft cut back on Claude, Mistral dropped le Chonk, and ChatGPT faked New Yorker cartoonists' signatures. NYC-based Reflection unveils Beam, an open model it says rivals GLM-5.2 on reasoning while using 3x-4x less compute and approaches Qwen3.8-Max on agentic tasks (Semafor) Nvidia-backed Reflection pitches Beam to businesses and developers as a cheaper option for coding and agent tasks; the startup has held talks…
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5 Oct 2026 · 22 min
Why Did Another OpenAI Safety Insider Quit?
An ex-OpenAI safety staffer quit, saying AI labs needed to get it right the first time. Plus, Western open-weight models were coming, Meta's Muse kept a page on everyone you know, SpaceXAI got renamed SpaceXSI, and Apple tightened Full Disk Access. David Robinson, ex-OpenAI safety and policy: SV lacks a safety-centric culture; labs must study other fields' safety approaches; time for trial and error's over (The Atlantic) OpenAI safety employee David Robinson quits, says AI firms should be run like nuclear power plants, with layers of redundancy; OpenAI says it is strengthening security in…
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2 Oct 2026 · 21 min
Did OpenAI Fire Its Whistleblowers?
OpenAI fired three researchers for allegedly sharing sensitive info with an AI safety group, and the whistleblower talk started. Cloudflare launched Clef to challenge Jev, Suno added Speech, and Slovenia's .si domains boomed after Trump's "super intelligence" rebrand. OpenAI says it "parted ways" with three researchers for violating its "handling sensitive" info policies; sources: they shared it with an AI safety organization (WSJ) Cloudflare debuts open-weight multimodal decision models Clef and Clef-flash, claiming they are smarter and faster than Jev, based on Qwen3.8-27B and Qwen3.5-9B…
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