AI slop is here, it's ubiquitous, it's being used by the US president, Donald Trump, and now, it's the word of the year. The Macquarie Dictionary dubbed the term the epitome of 2025 linguistics, with a committee of word experts saying the outcome embodies the word of the year's general theme of reflecting a major aspect of society or societal change throughout the year.
There is a persistent myth of objectivity around AI, perhaps because people assume that once the systems are deployed, they can function without any human intervention. In reality, developers constantly tweak and refine algorithms with subjective decisions about which results are more relevant or appropriate. Moreover, the immense corpus of data that machine learning models train on can also be polluted.
Fundamentally, they are based on gathering an extraordinary amount of linguistic data (much of it codified on the internet), finding correlations between words (more accurately, sub-words called "tokens"), and then predicting what output should follow given a particular prompt as input. For all the alleged complexity of generative AI, at their core they really are models of language.
On Monday, the company introduced Claude Opus 4.5 and described it as its most advanced AI model to date, and said that the new model "scored higher than any human candidate ever" on "a notoriously difficult take-home exam" that the company gives prospective engineering candidates. In a blog post on Monday, Anthropic said that the two-hour take-home test is designed to assess technical ability and judgment under time pressure, and though it doesn't reflect all skills an engineer needs to possess,
Wasabi Technologies has cut the ribbon on the latest iteration of its EMEA Partner Program for 2026, as the cloud storage provider looks to drive further growth across the European channel. The refresh aims to equip partners for the next wave of cloud adoption as AI workloads and data volumes continue to gather pace. Following the move, partners now have access to a new Systems Integrator Program for improved solution delivery, new AI-ready storage offerings, as well as a host of tools, certifications, and incentives.
Driving the news: A number of towering figures in the field have grown dissatisfied with their Big Tech jobs and opted to start up their own ventures. Meta AI chief scientist Yann LeCun - who has clashed with Meta leadership over research direction - is the latest star heading for the exits. Meta says it plans to partner with LeCun's new startup, which will focus on models with real-world reasoning.
Li immigrated to the United States at 15, arriving with her parents in Parsippany, New Jersey, with little English or money. To get by, her parents worked cashier jobs and Li worked in Chinese restaurants. When her mother's health declined just as Li entered college at Princeton, the family needed to find a way to "make some money to survive," she toldBloomberg.
That doesn't mean a jobs cliff is imminent, said James Ransom, a research fellow at University College London, who studies the impact of AI on work. But it does mean the rules of entry into the job market are changing fast - and the smartest move isn't to chase prestigious titles, he said, but to understand the tasks inside those jobs, then show how you can supervise and scale AI to do them more effectively.
As I uploaded a 1940s photo of my grandpa Max and hit a few buttons in Google's Veo 3 video generator, I saw a familiar family photo transform from black and white to color. Then, my grandpa stepped out of the photo and walked confidently toward the camera, his army uniform perfectly pressed as his arms swung at the sides of his lanky frame. This is the kind of thing AI lets you do now-virtually bring back the dead.
In line with our AI Principles, we're thrilled to announce that New Relic has obtained ISO/IEC 42001:2023 (ISO 42001) certification in the role of an AI developer and AI provider. This achievement reflects our commitment to developing, deploying, and providing AI features both responsibly and ethically. The certification was performed by Schellman Compliance, LLC, the first ANAB accredited Certification Body based in the United States.
