Our 216th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!
Recorded on 07/11/2025
Hosted by <a href='https://twitter.com/andrey_kurenkov'>Andrey Kurenkov</a> and <a href='https://twitter.com/jeremiecharris'>Jeremie Harris</a>. 
Feel free to email us your questions and feedback at <a href='mailto:contact@lastweekinai.com'>contact@lastweekinai.com </a>and/or <a href='mailto:hello@gladstone.ai'>hello@gladstone.ai</a>
Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at <a href='https://lastweekin.ai/'>https://lastweekin.ai/</a>.
In this episode:
<ul>
<li class="whitespace-normal break-words">xAI launches Grok 4 with breakthrough performance across benchmarks, becoming the first true frontier model outside established labs, alongside a $300/month subscription tier</li>
<li class="whitespace-normal break-words">Grok's alignment challenges emerge with antisemitic responses, highlighting the difficulty of steering models toward "truth-seeking" without harmful biases</li>
<li class="whitespace-normal break-words">Perplexity and OpenAI launch AI-powered browsers to compete with Google Chrome, signaling a major shift in how users interact with AI systems</li>
<li class="whitespace-normal break-words">Meta study reveals AI tools actually slow down experienced developers by 20% on complex tasks, contradicting expectations and anecdotal reports of productivity gains</li>
</ul>
Timestamps + Links:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight:400;">(00:00:10) Intro / Banter</li>
<li style="font-weight:400;">(00:01:02) News Preview</li>
</ul>
      Tools & Apps
<ul>
<li style="font-weight:400;">(00:01:59) <a href='https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/09/elon-musks-xai-launches-grok-4-alongside-a-300-monthly-subscription/'>Elon Musk's xAI launches Grok 4 alongside a $300 monthly subscription | TechCrunch</a></li>
<li style="font-weight:400;">(00:15:28) <a href='https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/08/tech/grok-ai-antisemitism'>Elon Musk’s AI chatbot is suddenly posting antisemitic tropes</a></li>
<li style="font-weight:400;">(00:29:52) <a href='https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/09/perplexity-launches-comet-an-ai-powered-web-browser/'>Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser | TechCrunch</a></li>
<li style="font-weight:400;">(00:32:54) <a href='https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/09/openai-is-reportedly-releasing-an-ai-browser-in-the-coming-weeks/'>OpenAI is reportedly releasing an AI browser in the coming weeks | TechCrunch</a></li>
<li style="font-weight:400;">(00:33:27) <a href='https://analyticsindiamag.com/ai-news-updates/replit-launches-new-feature-for-its-agent-ceo-calls-it-deep-research-for-coding/'>Replit Launches New Feature for its Agent, CEO Calls it ‘Deep Research for Coding’</a></li>
<li style="font-weight:400;">(00:34:40) <a href='https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/30/cursor-launches-a-web-app-to-manage-ai-coding-agents/'>Cursor launches a web app to manage AI coding agents</a></li>
<li style="font-weight:400;">(00:36:07) <a href='https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/07/cursor-apologizes-for-unclear-pricing-changes-that-upset-users/'>Cursor apologizes for unclear pricing changes that upset users | TechCrunch</a></li>
</ul>
      Applications & Business
<ul>
<li style="font-weight:400;">(00:39:10) <a href='https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/02/lovable-on-track-to-raise-150m-at-2b-valuation/'>Lovable on track to raise $150M at $2B valuation</a></li>
<li style="font-weight:400;">(00:41:11) <a href='https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/04/project_rainier_deep_dive/'>Amazon built a massive AI supercluster for Anthropic called Project Rainier – here's what we know so far</a></li>
<li style="font-weight:400;">(00:46:35) <a href='https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/elon-musk-xai-power-plant-overseas-to-power-1-million-gpus'>Elon Musk confirms xAI is buying an overseas power plant and shipping the whole thing to the U.S. to power its new data center — 1 million AI GPUs and up to 2 Gigawatts of power under one roof, equivalent to powering 1.9 million homes</a></li>
<li style="font-weight:400;">(00:48:16) <a href='https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/microsofts-own-ai-chip-delayed-six-months-in-major-setback-in-house-chip-now-reportedly-expected-in-2026-but-wont-hold-a-candle-to-nvidia-blackwell'>Microsoft's own AI chip delayed six months in major setback — in-house chip now reportedly expected in 2026, but won't hold a candle to Nvidia Blackwell</a></li>
<li style="font-weight:400;">(00:49:54) <a href='https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/03/ilya-sutskever-is-ceo-of-safe-superintelligence-after-meta-hired-gross.html'>Ilya Sutskever becomes CEO of Safe Superintelligence after Meta poached Daniel Gross</a></li>
<li style="font-weight:400;">(00:52:46) <a href='https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openais-stock-compensation-reflect-steep-costs-talent-wars?rc=6zqgxt'>OpenAI’s Stock Compensation Reflect Steep Costs of Talent Wars</a></li>
</ul>
      Projects & Open Source
<ul>
<li style="font-weight:400;">(00:58:04) <a href='https://www.marktechpost.com/2025/07/08/hugging-face-releases-smollm3-a-3b-long-context-multilingual-reasoning-model/'>Hugging Face Releases SmolLM3: A 3B Long-Context, Multilingual Reasoning Model - MarkTechPost</a></li>
<li style="font-weight:400;">(00:58:33) <a href='https://moonshotai.github.io/Kimi-K2/'>Kimi K2: Open Agentic Intelligence</a></li>
<li style="font-weight:400;">(00:58:59) <a href='https://www.marktechpost.com/2025/07/05/kyutai-releases-2b-parameter-streaming-text-to-speech-tts-with-220ms-latency-and-2-5m-hours-of-training/'>Kyutai Releases 2B Parameter Streaming Text-to-Speech TTS with 220ms Latency and 2.5M Hours of Training</a></li>
</ul>
      Research & Advancements
<ul>
<li style="font-weight:400;">(01:02:14) <a href='https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.00432v1'>Does Math Reasoning Improve General LLM Capabilities? Understanding Transferability of LLM Reasoning</a></li>
<li style="font-weight:400;">(01:07:58) <a href='https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-os-dev-study/'>Measuring the Impact of Early-2025 AI on Experienced Open-Source Developer Productivity</a></li>
<li style="font-weight:400;">(01:13:03) <a href='https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.03068'>Mitigating Goal Misgeneralization with Minimax Regret</a></li>
<li style="font-weight:400;">(01:17:01) <a href='https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.07962v1'>Correlated Errors in Large Language Models</a></li>
<li style="font-weight:400;">(01:20:31) <a href='https://epoch.ai/blog/what-skills-does-swe-bench-verified-evaluate'>What skills does SWE-bench Verified evaluate?</a></li>
</ul>
      Policy & Safety
<ul>
<li style="font-weight:400;">(01:22:53) <a href='https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.01420'>Evaluating Frontier Models for Stealth and Situational Awareness</a></li>
<li style="font-weight:400;">(01:25:49) <a href='https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.05246'>When Chain of Thought is Necessary, Language Models Struggle to Evade Monitors</a></li>
<li style="font-weight:400;">(01:30:09) <a href='https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.18032'>Why Do Some Language Models Fake Alignment While Others Don't?</a></li>
<li style="font-weight:400;">(01:34:35) <a href='https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Artificial-intelligence/Positive-review-only-Researchers-hide-AI-prompts-in-papers'>Positive review only': Researchers hide AI prompts in papers</a></li>
<li style="font-weight:400;">(01:35:40) <a href='https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/05/google-faces-eu-antitrust-complaint-over-ai-overviews/'>Google faces EU antitrust complaint over AI Overviews</a></li>
<li style="font-weight:400;">(01:36:41) <a href='https://www.pcgamer.com/software/ai/the-transfer-of-user-data-by-deepseek-to-china-is-unlawful-germany-calls-for-google-and-apple-to-remove-the-ai-app-from-their-stores/'>The transfer of user data by DeepSeek to China is unlawful': Germany calls for Google and Apple to remove the AI app from their stores</a></li>
<li style="font-weight:400;">(01:37:30) <a href='https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.16137'>Virology Capabilities Test (VCT): A Multimodal Virology Q&A Benchmark</a></li>
</ul>

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