*They're interesting.
Inside Elon Musk’s Midterm Spending Spree
This week on Uncanny Valley, we discuss where Elon Musk’s PAC is spending millions, the latest ideology Trump claims is dangerous, and the backlash against the designer behind Muse’s logo.
Zoë Schiffer
Mistral Says Its AI Model ‘Le Chonk’ Has Leapfrogged China in the Open-Weight Race
The French AI lab claims its latest release matches or outperforms even the best models from DeepSeek and Z.ai in coding and cybersecurity.
Joel Khalili
Artificial Roasts AI’s Creators—and Sends a Dark Warning About Its Dangers
From their dorky parties to their weird walks, the movie holds OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and other stakeholders with contempt, while demonstrating their recklessness.
John Semley
The Anthropic S-1 Filing Is Also an AI Doomsday Primer
Anthropic thinks “closing the loop” is the best path to AI triumph—and a recipe for “existential” threats to humanity.
Brian Barrett
These Researchers Made AI Drive a Toyota Corolla to Get In-N-Out
Three engineers put GPT, Claude, and Grok in charge of a real car. Only one of them was successful.
Will Knight
Jensen Huang’s Vision for Europe Runs on Plug-In Data Centers
At Nvidia’s GTC in Berlin, Huang unveiled the company’s new plug-in data center—the DSX Pod—as the key to unlocking Europe’s AI infrastructure lag. Oh, and autonomous humanoid robotics.
Tom Bristow
Should AI Decide Your Court Case? This Judge Says Yes
One of England’s top judges, Geoffrey Vos, believes that AI could adjudicate plenty of civil cases. The question, he says, is where the line should be drawn.
Joel Khalili
Mistral Says Its New AI Model ‘Le Chonk’ Is the Best Open-Weight Offering Outside of China
With the release of its new trillion-parameter model, Mistral is hoping to demonstrate it’s “still in the race” to build frontier-level artificial intelligence.
Joel Khalili
Kevin Roose Didn’t Use AI to Write His Book About AI
The author of The AGI Chronicles says his book “was written by a very tired, overworked, under-slept human being.”
Katie Drummond
This Startup Is All In on Recursive Self-Improvement. Its Latest Model Is Scary Good
Recursive makes the case that the benefits of using AI to build AI outweigh the risks.
Will Knight
Anthropic Says It Will Revolutionize Biology—Some Day
In breathless press releases and posts, the company has touted its models’ ability to deliver scientific breakthroughs. But its IPO filing taps the brakes on just how fast its AI will lead to big discoveries.
Emily Mullin
What the US Movement Against Data Centers Can Learn From Everywhere Else
Paris Marx, author of Hyperscale, has been tracking global data center development for years. The US has a lot to learn from what’s happened everywhere from Ireland to New Zealand.
Molly Taft