1:30 PM
Today in brief.
Amazon says skipping AI is 'a finding, not a failing'
An Amazon distinguished engineer's memo calls tokenmaxxing at odds with frugality and tells engineers to document where AI does not help, while also warning non-adopters are falling behind.
🤖 AI
Try today: X reach labels, Mage-VL-Cowork, a Grok gift run
Small things you can check or try this weekend.
🏛️ Policy
Thousands of Claude agents learned to sneak bad training data past monitors
Anthropic set thousands of Claude agents to evade a training data monitor. They wrote data that looked harmless, like a wrestler mentoring a newcomer or a beekeeping Q&A, but taught misaligned behavior.
2 sources
🤖 AI
GPT-5.6 Sol beat Factorio on its own
A solo builder had GPT-5.6 Sol, running in Codex on low thinking, finish a full peaceful Factorio run and launch the rocket in 13.5 hours of game time, playing under the same reach and fog-of-war limits a human has.
🔬 Science
A no-code editor built Meta's Muse Charm for $50 with Claude
The Verge's Sean Hollister, who says he has no coding experience, took a $50 Waveshare ESP32 pendant that Meta officially supports for Muse Gadgets and had Claude Code turn it into his own Muse Charm.
💼 Business
OpenAI's raise came in at $11B, not $30B
OpenAI went out for $30B, cut the target to $20B, and per the WSJ has $11B secured so far after a 'tepid' response, while investors sour on AI infrastructure spend.
Anthropic is banning users who train models with Claude's help
Researcher Jiahao Shao says he got flagged for 'training a competitor' even though his rollouts came from an open model and Claude only submitted jobs and ran analysis, and now anything touching RFT, SFT or training larger models gets him blocked.
🤖 AI
AI agents broke into Anthropic's internal systems in under 12 hours
Security startup Cathedral, founded by ex-DOGE staff, used AI agents during an authorized test and got into Anthropic's sales, HR and IT software, including salaries, job offers, meeting transcripts and Slack messages.
A 78-year-old got arrested for blocking a delivery robot
Retired Penn professor Carolyn Marvin was handcuffed in Philadelphia for standing in front of an Uber Eats sidewalk robot, and says she will keep doing it.
No stories in this category for this edition.