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A Different Kind Of AI Virus
· 19 min
Episode A Different Kind Of AI Virus
A New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay $942M over harms to kids, with a trillion-dollar trial next. ByteDance started pretraining a 10T-parameter model, AMD bought Taalas to etch weights into silicon, and OpenAI's 2027 gadget leaked.
Links
• Meta Ordered to Pay $942 Million to Address Harm to Kids From Social Media (The Wall Street Journal) • Sources: ByteDance is pretraining an AI model with up to 10T parameters, roughly 3x larger than Kimi K3 and larger than the 8T estimate for Anthropic's Mythos 5 (Financial Times) • AMD acquires Toronto-based Taalas, which integrates model weights directly into silicon with the promise to boost inference performance, for an undisclosed sum (The Register) • Sources: OpenAI's new device, slated for 2027, is a hockey puck-sized smart speaker with moving parts that help give it personality and will likely cost $300+ (Bloomberg)
Longreads
• Scientists trained AI on genetic sequences to design viruses not found in nature, yielding 16 viable viruses that can infect bacteria but don't threaten humans (The New York Times) • David Imel: you could be taking way better photos on your phone (The Verge)
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Links in the notes 7
- https://www.wsj.com/tech/meta-ordered-to-pay-942-million-to-address-harm-to-kids-from-social-media-8ba5aab7?st=RZoDse
- https://www.ft.com/content/9b8383b1-a28d-4940-8c4e-2f0cd21556ef
- https://www.theregister.com/systems/2026/08/06/amd-acquires-ai-chip-startup-taalas-to-boost-inference-performance-by-etching-models-into-silicon/5284344
- https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-06/what-is-openai-s-device-a-doughnut-shaped-speaker-that-costs-over-300?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc4NjA0NjY3NSwiZXhwIjoxNzg2NjUxNDc1LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUSjlNQ01UOU5KTFUwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJDNEVEQ0FFMUZBMDU0MEJFQTI0QTlGMjExQzFFOTA4MCJ9.pj0oCNz7Ez90rn67tMWib-ed2PxcUAhAG2-hlVQ_DRg
- https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/06/science/ai-viruses-bacteria-arc.html?unlocked_article_code=1.3VA.u8aT.vCeLPF02XbEp
- https://www.theverge.com/tech/973055/how-to-take-better-smartphone-photos
- https://tech.supercast.com/
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