A bit of a quieter week this one. Meta has reportedly delayed the rollout of its new AI model, despite a $1bn hiring spree last summer. They also acquired Moltbook 🤷♂️.
Apple celebrated its 50th birthday, which I couldn’t help but share and Figure AI showed off their Helix robot tidying an already incredibly tidy living room.
Good long read from Ethan Mollick this week too.
Meta Delays Rollout of New AI Model After Performance Concerns
Nearly 12 months ago, Meta released the 4th generation of their Llama series of open weight models that up until then had been the poster child of the open weight community. That release went very badly for them and they were caught gaming AI benchmarks.
This resulted in a complete pivot from Meta, led by Mark Zuckerberg, who acquired a 49% stake in Scale AI, poached their founder to lead their new Superintelligence Lab, and spent a reported $1bn on hiring as much AI talent as they could.
This pivot hasn’t resulted in any new model releases yet, and 12 months is a long time in AI. So even if you don't believe the rumours that Meta has delayed the rollout of its new models because of performance concerns, the fact that there have been no new models released since Llama 4 is telling. Alongside this, Meta are reportedly planning sweeping layoffs to offset their AI investments, so things aren’t looking great for them right now.
It’s a real shame as the Llama family of models were great and really led the field for the first couple of years of the current AI boom. If Meta had stuck to that strategy I think both they and the AI community would have been better for it.
New York Times | The Guardian | Gizmodo
Meta acquired Moltbook
Ok, buddy…
Very weird. Very very weird for Meta to acquire this… 🤷♂️
Apple celebrates 50 years
Technically, not AI related but I couldn’t let Apple celebrate 50 years without a mention, especially as I wrote about how I Miss Steve Jobs this time last year.
A great post to celebrate from Tim Cook, quoting my favourite ad of all time.
Congrats Apple - here’s to the crazy ones!
Helix 02 Tidies the Living Room
Always good to see the progress Figure AI are making with their humanoid robots. I swear they’re deliberately trying to make the robot seem more human with how it carries the towel… also that is the cleanest living room I’ve seen in a while - not sure it really needed tidying TBH!
Web 4.0
Skills are awesome. Originally developed by Anthropic it’s great to see these being widely adopted by OpenAI, just like MCP before it. They’re essentially re-usable instructions you can give to you AI assistant that it can automatically use without you having to prompt it specifically. They’re widely used in AI coding and now just starting to enter the enterprise. I think we’ll be seeing a lot more on them this year.
Anthropic’s Claude AI can respond with charts, diagrams, and other visuals now
Google’s Gemini AI is getting a bigger role across Docs, Sheets, and Slides
OpenAI’s Sora video generator is reportedly coming to ChatGPT
AI Ethics News
OpenAI and Google employees rush to Anthropic’s defense in DOD lawsuit
Microsoft backs AI firm Anthropic in legal battle against Pentagon
Sam Altman Says Intelligence Will Be a Utility, and He’s Just the Man to Collect the Bills
Revealed: UK’s multibillion AI drive is built on ‘phantom investments’
AI chatbots helped ‘teens’ plan shootings, bombings, and political violence, study shows
Long Reads
One Useful Thing - The Shape of the Thing
“The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.“
William Gibson