Today in AI

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• News roundup

• Today’s big story

• Research spotlight

• Gen AI art

News roundup

The top stories in AI today.

NEW LAUNCHES

The latest features, products & partnerships in AI

• Wall Street Journal tests AI-powered article summaries

• Google’s new AI forecasting tool now protects over 700M people from floods

• A new AI system named Daisy is purpose-built to waste phone scammers’ time

• Microsoft expands AI to farms and factories with key partnerships

• OpenAI to launch task-performing AI agents ‘Operator’ in January

• Apple launches Final Cut Pro 11 with new spatial video AI tools

MONEY FLOWS

Economics, Wall Street, investing & fundraising

• Apple AI revenue to hit $14B by 2025, analysts predict

• Forerunner’s new $500M fund will focus on AI-driven consumer startups

• Tencent’s game profits surge as AI benefits emerge

• The 3 P’s: BCG’s new framework for success with AI in asset management

• AI startup Writer secures $1.9B valuation for enterprise super app

AI MODELS

Deployment, research, training & infrastructure

• AI leaders explore novel approaches to innovation as LLM performance plateaus

• Alibaba’s AI coding assistant Qwen2.5-Coder-32B also runs locally on Macs

• LLM performance is plateauing, causing some experts to believe AI crash is imminent

• MIT researcher develops system to find hidden connections between science and art

IMPLEMENTATION

Announcements, strategies & programs

• How to reinvent your company and maintain relevance in the age of agentic AI

• How agentic RAG can be a game changer for enterprise data processing and retrieval

• Implementing AI? Avoid these common pitfalls

• Highlights from ScaleUp: AI implementation and the future of work

• How to put AI to use for a sustainable and ethical future

OTHER INTERESTING STORIES

Compelling stories beyond the usual categories

• xAI competitors are flying spy planes over the ‘Colossus’ supercomputer facility

• Apple’s AI ad draws criticism for dystopian undertones

• A new AI-powered virtual plant will energize 200,000 Texas homes

• What Americans think about AI conducting their job interviews

• Perplexity will begin including sponsored ads in search results this week

• The AI lab defending artists against exploitative practices in AI

What’s happening in AI right now

Major contracts reveal the military's automation priorities

The Department of Defense is backing up its AI ambitions with serious money. This month saw multiple significant contracts that outline the military's priorities in autonomous systems, cybersecurity, and intelligence applications.

Big AI deals

Palantir secured a $99.2 million Army contract focused on user-centered machine learning research through 2029. In parallel, Jericho Security won the first-ever generative AI defense contract, landing $1.8 million to develop cybersecurity solutions for the Air Force. The company will focus on simulating complex phishing attacks and creating personalized security training.

Anthropic formed key partnerships with Palantir and AWS to provide AI services to intelligence agencies. This arrangement will give Claude, Anthropic's AI assistant, access to classified information to support government data analysis.

Hardware innovations

On the hardware front, Allen Control Systems unveiled Bullfrog, an AI-enabled counter-drone platform. The system combines computer vision with a conventional machine gun on a rotating turret, offering improved mobility at under 400 pounds. This aligns with the Pentagon's "Replicator" initiative for autonomous defense systems and addresses growing concerns about weaponized drones in modern conflicts.

Clear priorities

These contracts reveal three focus areas for military AI:

1. Cybersecurity enhancement through advanced threat simulation

2. Intelligence analysis and data processing capabilities

3. Autonomous defense systems, particularly for counter-drone operations

The variety and scale of these contracts suggest the military is moving decisively beyond experimentation into operational deployment of AI systems across multiple domains.

The coming months will likely reveal more major defense contracts as the Pentagon continues implementing its AI strategy. With clear priorities now established through these initial deals, we can expect to see accelerated development in autonomous systems, cybersecurity, and intelligence applications.

We publish daily research, playbooks, and deep industry data breakdowns. Learn More Here

Our partners at Bagel (the AI & cryptography research lab) just released some new research on two complementary methods for advancing AI reasoning: training-time and inference-time techniques.

The findings suggest combining both approaches: training-time builds foundational reasoning, while inference-time optimizes its application. Bagel Network supports this advancement through open-source infrastructure, empowering a community-driven AI evolution through monetizable open source AI.

Read More Here 🥯 

AI generated art

A look at the art and projects being created with AI.

Alexander Reben, OpenAI's first artist in residence, used AI technology to transform digital creations into physical sculptures, including a striking four-foot marble piece carved from white Italian marble with black and gray veins. Utilizing Nvidia’s neural radiance field technology and Sora's AI text-to-video tool, he generated 3-D models that Monumental Labs then etched into marble.