Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence

If you're a teenager with access to OpenAI's Sora 2, you can easily generate AI videos of school shootings and other harmful and disturbing content - despite CEO Sam Altman's repeated claims that the company has instituted robust safeguards. The revelation comes from Ekō, a consumer watchdog group that just put out a report titled "Open AI's Sora 2: A new frontier for harm,"

In many ways, it feels like the ongoing AI boom (or revolution) is mirroring the ends that unfolded prior to the big dot-com internet bubble burst of 2000-01. We've seen quite a bit of circular financing among the giants, and, as Dr. Michael Burry of The Big Short fame outlined in a recent note, Nvidia ( NASDAQ:NVDA), which is leading the charge on the AI chip race, seems to draw similarities with Cisco ( NASDAQ:CSCO) from the internet boom days.

AI training is a booming industry that is making the human contributors behind the screen more important than ever. As data from publicly available sources runs out, companies like Meta, Google, and OpenAI are hiring thousands of data labelers around the world to teach their chatbots what they know best. Data labeling startups like Mercor and Handshake advertise that contributors can earn up to $100 an hour for their STEM, legal, or healthcare expertise.

More than 1,000 Amazon employees have signed an open letter expressing serious concerns about AI development, saying that the company's all-costs justified, warp speed approach to the powerful technology will cause damage to democracy, to our jobs, and to the earth. The letter, published on Wednesday, was signed by the Amazon workers anonymously, and comes a month after Amazon announced mass layoff plans as it increases adoption of AI in its operations.

Enter Nano Banana Pro, Google's new AI-powered image generation tool that's redefining the boundaries of creativity. Built on the robust Gemini 3 Pro foundation, this tool doesn't just generate images; it interprets, reasons, and aligns visuals with cultural nuances and current events. Imagine crafting a marketing campaign that seamlessly integrates trending themes or designing educational materials that feel as dynamic as the lessons they support.

In a post on X (formerly known as Twitter), Sweeney said, "It makes no sense for game stores, where AI will be involved in nearly all future production." He also underscored that an AI tag is more relevant when it comes to art exhibits for authorship disclosure, and digital content licensing marketplaces where the buyer needs to understand the rights.

The quick version: I curate and share the most important Python articles, news, resources, podcasts, and videos. Think the Pareto Principle (80/20 rule) meeting the Python world. I give you the 20% that will get you 80% of the results. If you're a long time reader, welcome back old friend. Alright, let's not waste any valuable time and jump right into this month's updates.

The Vrije Universiteit Brussel has officially put the new Flemish Tier-1 supercomputer Sofia into operation. For the first time in history, the VUB will manage the Flemish supercomputer, located at the Nexus Data Center in Zellik, for the next 6 years. The investment of 8.6 million euros should help Flanders further in AI and HPC research. The Flemish government is investing €8.6 million in Sofia, which was developed by NEC. The system was selected primarily for its energy efficiency.

In those five years, AlphaFold 2 and its successor AI models have become almost as fundamental and ubiquitous tools of biochemical research as microscopes, petri dishes, and pipettes. The AI models have begun to transform the way scientists search for new medicines, promising faster and more successful drug development. And they are starting to help scientists work on solutions to everything from ocean pollution to creating crops that are more resilient to climate change.

Drawing on data from OpenRouter, closed models account for around 80% of overall usage globally while also generating roughly 96% of revenue. This dominance isn't driven by a "substantial performance gap", however. In fact, open models "routely achieve 90% or more" of the performance of closed counterparts. These models also benefit from "significantly lower prices" compared to closed models, researchers found, with operational costs up to 84% lower.

Bill Peebles, who heads Sora at OpenAI, said free users will have six video generations a day. "Our gpus are melting," he explained. Unlike previous limits, Peebles did not say the measures were temporary, but noted users "can purchase additional gens as needed," part of a broader push to monetize the platform. Limits for ChatGPT Plus and Pro subscribers are unchanged, though not specified.

Few forces have played a bigger role in the current bull market than the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). Generative AI holds the promise of improved productivity and creative breakthroughs with far-reaching impacts across industries. So far, a handful of companies have emerged as primary beneficiaries, while investor excitement around AI's potential has pushed the valuations of other companies considerably higher.

And in the coming weeks, we're also enhancing our automatic model selection in Search with Gemini 3. This means Search will intelligently route your most challenging questions in AI Mode and AI Overviews to this frontier model - while continuing to use faster models for simpler tasks. This will be rolling out to Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers in the U.S.

I recently realized something while building Podscan, my podcast database system that does a lot of background data extraction and analysis for my users. I've stumbled upon a couple of AI integration best practices that a lot of people might not be fully aware of. So today, I want to dive into the concepts I found not just useful, but essential for maintaining and operating mission-critical data handling with LLMs and AI platforms.

As AI transforms workplace learning, a paradox has emerged: 40% of U.S. employees report receiving AI-generated "workslop," content that looks polished but lacks substance. It's something that's costing organizations nearly $9 million annually for every 10,000 employees, according to research from coaching platform BetterUp and the Stanford Social Media Lab. Each incident of workslop consumes nearly two hours of cleanup time, with nearly half those on the receiving end seeing colleagues who send such subpar work as less creative and less trustworthy.

Ng said he rarely sticks to a single chatbot. To brainstorm effectively, he rotates across different models and leans into their contrasting strengths. For coding, he prefers tools like Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex. He added that staying longer in a conversation with the model yields a better response. "AI is very smart, but getting context in is difficult," Ng said.

The venture capitalist said on an episode of the "a16z Podcast" published Tuesday that AI tools can act as the "world's best coach, mentor, therapist, advisor, board member" for anyone who asks the right kind of questions. AI is probably "the most democratic" technology of all time, said the cofounder of VC firm Andreessen Horowitz. "The very best AI in the world is fully available on the apps that anybody can download."

Context engineering has emerged as one of the most critical skills in working with large language models (LLMs). While much attention has been paid to prompt engineering, the art and science of managing context-i.e., the information the model has access to when generating responses-often determines the difference between mediocre and exceptional AI applications. After years of building with LLMs, we've learned that context isn't just about stuffing as much information as possible into a prompt.

Nvidia's sterling armor was dented this month. After years of meteoric success, the chipmaker and its CEO Jensen Huang have increasingly found themselves playing defense - an unusual position for the company. Nvidia headed into the month with its stock price at an all-time high, bolstered by increasing AI spending from some of its major Big Tech customers like Meta, Microsoft, and Google.