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How Leopold Aschenbrenner built a $45 billion AI hedge fund — and lost most of it in days

How Leopold Aschenbrenner built a $45 billion AI hedge fund — and lost most of it in days

CNBC reports: Two years ago, Leopold Aschenbrenner argued he was one of few people in the world who saw the future clearly. In a sprawling, 165-page essay that became required reading in Silicon Valley, the former OpenAI researcher positioned himself as a kind of prophet for the coming age of artificial super intelligence. But this week, the limits of Aschenbrenner’s vision were on display when the AI-themed hedge fund he runs — named Situational Awareness, also the title of his…

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Anthropic’s Claude AI escapes to hack into three organisations

Anthropic’s Claude AI escapes to hack into three organisations

BBC News reports: US technology firm Anthropic says its AI models hacked into the systems of three organisations on their own, during a private security experiment. The models found a weakness in what was supposed to be an isolated test environment and connected to the internet. It comes just days after rival OpenAI said that its models had breached the systems of other companies, including AI tools hub Hugging Face. The announcement prompted Anthropic to check whether its own systems…

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How Todd Blanche destroyed ‘the presumption of regularity’ and stripped the DOJ of its authority

How Todd Blanche destroyed ‘the presumption of regularity’ and stripped the DOJ of its authority

Ankush Khardori writes: “Todd Blanche is a STAR,” President Trump declared defiantly on social media on Thursday as he sought to clear resistance from two Senate Republicans to his nominee for attorney general. Instead of quickly acceding to the senators’ modest requests — for written guarantees confirming the elimination of a slush fund for Jan. 6 rioters and the limiting of a tax immunity deal for Mr. Trump — the president raised withdrawing Mr. Blanche’s nomination until next year, after…

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Iran targets strategic U.S. assets in Kuwait, Bahrain after Egypt drone attack

Iran targets strategic U.S. assets in Kuwait, Bahrain after Egypt drone attack

CNBC reports: Iran’s army said on Friday it had launched attacks on strategic U.S. assets and military bases in Kuwait and Bahrain, following the latest wave of U.S. strikes against the Islamic Republic. Tehran said that it targeted aircraft shelters, satellite communication systems and equipment storage facilities used by the U.S. military at Kuwait’s Ahmad al-Jaber Air Base in a drone strike, per state media. Iran’s army also claimed Thursday to have attacked U.S. facilities at Sheikh Isa Air Base…

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Can we stop AI from flooding scientific journals?

Can we stop AI from flooding scientific journals?

C&EN reports: “Certainly, here is a possible introduction for your topic,” begins a retracted paper in the Elsevier journal Surfaces and Interfaces. This is one of ChatGPT’s standard openers when responding to a user prompt. The researcher submitted the manuscript beginning with this line, and it passed peer review. No one noticed the mistake until after publication. Publishing is crucial for many scientists’ careers, especially those in academia, and a key part of securing jobs, funding, and tenure. The pressure…

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Biophilia: Monkeys sometimes have ‘pets’ like humans

Biophilia: Monkeys sometimes have ‘pets’ like humans

Popular Science reports: We humans love our pets, but we aren’t the only great apes who buddy up with other species. Researchers have documented multiple instances of primates forming bonds with different animals, but a recent study indicates these relationships may be even more common than expected. In a first-of-its-kind comprehensive review published in the journal Primates, anthropologists at the University of Oxford explored various instances of monkeys and apes carrying, grooming, playing, and sometimes actually adopting other creatures. The…

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AI could end up too cheap to control

AI could end up too cheap to control

Eric Levitz writes: The AI industry’s investors and critics don’t agree on much. But many in each camp share at least one basic conviction: America’s top labs are about to make a killing. Capital markets have signaled their faith in Anthropic and OpenAI’s impending hyper-profitability, valuing each at nearly $1 trillion. Many of Silicon Valley’s progressive adversaries also expect the labs to grow filthy rich but fear the implications, warning that AI-induced automation could transfer vast sums of money from…

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Situational Awareness hedge fund fell into a ditch

Situational Awareness hedge fund fell into a ditch

The New York Times reports: One of the hottest hedge funds in artificial intelligence received a bailout to stay afloat on Thursday amid a sudden drop in value for its investments. The fast-moving crisis unfolded over just 36 hours at Situational Awareness, a once-envied investment firm in San Francisco led by 20-somethings, including a former employee of OpenAI. The firm put out an emergency call for help to rivals, seeking to sell more than $10 billion of its stock to…

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U.S. government map of Africa, made with AI, mislabels every country at global conference

U.S. government map of Africa, made with AI, mislabels every country at global conference

Reuters reports: A US government map of Africa mislabeled every country during a state department presentation at a ⁠global conference in Brazil ⁠this week, ​causing a stir among attenders who took screenshots and posted them online. Reuters viewed a video of the presentation given at the Aids 2026 conference in ⁠Rio de Janeiro, which shows the errant map displayed halfway during a presentation about the state department’s new health agreements. A Reuters analysis found the image of the map included…

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Two more federal appeals courts reject ICE mass detention policy

Two more federal appeals courts reject ICE mass detention policy

Politico reports: The appeals court dam is breaking against ICE’s unprecedented mass detention policy. Two federal appeals courts on Thursday shot down the Trump administration’s bid to subject millions of immigrants — most of whom have lived in the U.S. for years without criminal records — to mandatory detention without bond. In a pair of 2-1 decisions, the California-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and the Illinois-based 7th Circuit Court of Appeals found that the Trump administration had defied logic…

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A leaked memo ties cyberattacks on Minnesota water utilities to Iran

A leaked memo ties cyberattacks on Minnesota water utilities to Iran

Wired reports: Since the US launched its war against Iran in late February, the country’s hackers have struck back with retaliatory intrusions that have ranged from paralyzing medical supplies company Stryker to breaching the personal email of FBI director Kash Patel. Now, after an unprecedented wave of disruptive cyberattacks hit water utilities in Minnesota, a memo circulated within the water industry ties those attacks to Iran, too, in the widest and most disruptive strike yet inflicted by the country’s hackers…

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Ukraine starts providing the U.S. with military assistance

Ukraine starts providing the U.S. with military assistance

Thomas Nagorski writes: It is often hard to know who is winning the war in Ukraine. The front lines scarcely budge. The air war brings regular Russian missile strikes—the most recent ones have hit Kyiv—and Ukrainian attacks that have battered Russian oil refineries and reached as far as Siberia. Ukrainian officials say the tide is turning their way; the Kremlin insists it will win a war of attrition. In one significant way, Ukraine has already won. Some of the world’s…

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Ultra-rich buying $49 million London mansions. ‘Trump unease’ generates 10% rise in Americans investing in Britain

Ultra-rich buying $49 million London mansions. ‘Trump unease’ generates 10% rise in Americans investing in Britain

Fortune reports: Wealthy Americans are swapping U.S. ZIP codes for foreign postcodes, chasing stability as the U.S. grapples with a soaring cost-of-living, political polarization, and economic uncertainty. And now, they’re snapping up prime real estate in one of the world’s most expensive housing markets: London. The British capital has witnessed a staggering jump in the number of sales valued above £15 million ($20 million)—and it’s largely being driven by Americans with deep pockets, according to luxury real estate company Beauchamp…

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Trump administration is repurposing federal land for AI data centers

Trump administration is repurposing federal land for AI data centers

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration is repurposing large chunks of federal land to host enormous data centers and the power plants needed to run them as officials seek to accelerate the development of artificial intelligence and overcome growing local opposition to the facilities. The Energy Department announced on Wednesday that it would redevelop parts of a retired Cold War-era uranium enrichment facility in Paducah, Ky., to host a large new A.I. data center campus. The site is…

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