My bets on open models, mid-2026
What I expect to come next and why, focused on the open-closed gap.
Latest AI/ML News
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Weaviate Shared Cloud now generally available on AWS
Weaviate Shared Cloud is now generally available on AWS in US East and Europe, giving teams a fully managed, AI-native database on the provider and region that works best for them.
Early Indicators of Reward Hacking via Reasoning Interpolation
Using importance sampling with fine-tuned donor prefills to predict reward hacking emergence during training
Building with Modal and the OpenAI Agents SDK
Modal is an official sandbox provider for the OpenAI Agents SDK.
Volcano Engine LAS's Lance-Based PB-Scale Autonomous Driving Data Lake Solution
How Bytedance Volcano Engine LAS (Lake for AI Service) leverages Lance as the core storage format, rapidly constructing a next-gen AI data lake to efficiently store, manage, and process multimodal data (text, images, audio/video).
New Research Reveals Overcoming Legacy Tech Issues Key to AI Success
This guest post comes from IDC’s Dr. William Lee, Senior Research Director, Service Provider and Core Infrastructure Research. MongoDB commissioned IDC to explore the connection between legacy infrastructure, data challenges, and AI across Asia Pacific, and today we’re happy to share that work. For more, see the full MongoDB-sponsored IDC InfoBrief, Modernizing Legacy: Winning in the Age of AI, Doc #AP242555-IB, April 2026. AI ambition is everywhere across Asia/Pacific. But ambition alone does not determine success. Organizations are discovering that AI outcomes are directly tied to the quality, accessibility, and modernity of their underlying technology stack and associated data technology foundations. Organizations that have managed to stay abreast of technical and data management changes across the application and infrastructure stacks, by embedding modernization into their organizational DNA, are experiencing 3x more digital revenue growth than those that are bound up in technical and data debt. To better understand this connection, IDC surveyed 1,400 organizations across eight Asia/Pacific markets. The findings reveal that modernization is no longer a side initiative. It is the core of a sustainable AI strategy. The AI readiness divide: Leaders versus mainstream IDC’s latest Asia/Pacific Modernization Survey, sponsored by MongoDB, identifies two distinct groups: The Mainstream Cohort: organizations still burdened by technical debt, siloed data, and skills gaps The Leade…
Autoscaling Autoresearch: Give your agents elastic GPUs on Modal
Autoresearch automates AI research. Modal automates AI infrastructure.
AI Opportunities in Africa: New Policies, Infrastructure Investment, and Innovation Programs Drive Continental AI Growth
Here is what happened in AI in Africa this week: 1. South Africa Releases New Draft National AI Policy […]
AI Opportunities in Africa: Scholarships, Fellowships, and AI Programs You Can Still Apply for Now
Here are fresh AI opportunities you can still apply for right now: 1. Data Science Africa AI & Machine […]
Import AI 453: Breaking AI agents; MirrorCode; and ten views on gradual disempowerment
Was fire equivalent to a singularity for people at the time?
What’s new in Gemma 4?
Gemma 4 is our newest family of open models. You can now run advanced reasoning, native vision and audio, and agentic tool-use on anything from high-end workstations to mobile phones. Learn more → https://deepmind.google/models/gemma/gemma-4/
Evaluating agents for scientific discovery
Two benchmarks developed at Ai2 – ScienceWorld and DiscoveryWorld – reveal that even incredibly strong AI science agents struggle with problems human scientists solve routinely.
Comment on Meta Whistleblower’s Report Finds 64% Of Safety Tools For Teens Don’t Work On Instagram by Instagram expands teen safety settings with 13+ content ratings | PrimetechToday.com
[…] over effectiveness: This expansion follows ongoing criticism of Instagram’s safeguards. A September 2025 report found that 64% of teen safety tools were ineffective, defunct, or easily bypassed, as 13 out […]
CLV Estimation: BTYD vs. Survival Analysis
I'm working on a project using the Elo Merchant Category Recommendation dataset (Kaggle). My goal is to perform Customer Segmentation base on their transactions by combining RFM metrics with Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). I’m using the historical_transactions for this project, but I’ve hit two specific points where I’d love some expert input: Setting Identification: I am debating whether the Elo context should be treated as contractual or non-contractual. While it involves transactions across various merchants, the presence of the 'installments' variable for each transaction adds a layer of complexity. I need to clarify this to choose the most appropriate CLV estimation method: should I rely on Probabilistic Models (such as BG/NBD + Gamma-Gamma) or Survival Analysis in this specific case? Feature Engineering: Should I include 'installments' as an input feature for the clustering algorithm, or should I use it as a profiling variable to describe the clusters after they are formed? I’d appreciate any insights from those who have worked with this specific dataset or similar credit card transaction data. Thanks in advance!
‘Safety first’ puts Anthropic ahead in game of AI spin
But Dr Heidy Khlaaf, chief AI scientist at the AI Now Institute and a former OpenAI safety engineer, is sceptical. She notes Anthropic provides no comparison with existing automated security tools, nor any false-positive rates. “It also serves their ‘safety first’ image, as they’re able to justify the lack of public release, even a limited one for independent evaluation, as a public service – when it simply obscures experts’ abilities to independently validate their The post ‘Safety first’ puts Anthropic ahead in game of AI spin appeared first on AI Now Institute .
The inevitable need for an open model consortium
And yes, I hate consortia too.
FLI CEO’s statement on the attack against Sam Altman’s home
Anthony Aguirre, President and CEO of the Future of Life Institute, issued the following statement in response to the attack […]
Lance JSON Support: Why You Might Not Really Need Variant
Lance's JSONB storage, scalar indexing, data evolution, and full-text search already deliver what most users want from Variant — with explicit control, schema consistency, and no vendor lock-in.
The Quest for One Million IOPS: Benchmarking Storage at LanceDB
Learn how LanceDB benchmarks storage and how we achieved one million disk reads per second.
The Great AI Grift
Tech leaders want you to believe that AI is the key to a new golden age. The reality looks more like a bold, government-backed heist. The post The Great AI Grift appeared first on AI Now Institute .
Reflections from Uehiro-Carnegie Endowment for Future Generations Study Tour of Japan
Access this report from the Uehiro-Carnegie Endowment for Future Generations study tour, in which Carnegie Council fellows and staff reflect on their trip to Japan.
Brazil’s car market is shifting gears: 6 charts on growth and trends
The Brazilian automotive landscape has established itself as a global powerhouse, currently ranking as the world’s sixth largest market for cars and light commercial vehicles. A report from strategy consultancy Mirow & Co explores the industry’s growth and trends – a roundup of the key findings in six charts.
What is the LanceDB Multimodal Lakehouse?
Introducing the Multimodal Lakehouse - a unified platform for managing AI data from raw files to production-ready features, now part of LanceDB Enterprise.
MirrorCode: Evidence that AI can already do some weeks-long coding tasks
This is a linkpost for MirrorCode, a project that METR funded and co-developed with Epoch AI . See Epoch AI’s blog post for more detail: https://epoch.ai/publications/mirrorcode-preliminary-results/
Butter is joining Modal
Butter, a San Francisco-based AI sandbox technology, is joining Modal.
Claude Mythos and misguided open-weight fearmongering
Another dance around fears of open-source.
What Is “Network Sourced” AI?
How will AI systems obtain and share information in the future? A lot hangs on this. I see three distinct architectures, each with its own logic and consequences. The choice between them will determine not just how AI systems function, but what kind of information economy will be possible. The position I want to defend […] The post What Is “Network Sourced” AI? appeared first on OpenMined .
#495 – Vikings, Ragnar, Berserkers, Valhalla & the Warriors of the Viking Age
Lars Brownworth is a historian, teacher, podcaster, and author specializing in Viking history, medieval Europe, and the Byzantine Empire. Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep495-sc See below for timestamps, transcript, and to give feedback, submit questions, contact Lex, etc. Transcript: https://lexfridman.com/lars-brownworth-transcript CONTACT LEX: Feedback – give feedback to Lex: https://lexfridman.com/survey AMA – submit questions, videos or call-in: https://lexfridman.com/ama Hiring – join our team: https://lexfridman.com/hiring Other – other ways to get in touch: https://lexfridman.com/contact EPISODE LINKS: Lars’s Website: https://larsbrownworth.com/ The Sea Wolves (book): https://www.amazon.com/Sea-Wolves-History-Vikings/dp/1909979120 Lars’s Books: https://amzn.to/4sHY0xw 12 Byzantine Rulers Podcast : https://12byzantinerulers.com/ Norman Centuries Podcast: https://apple.co/4sgSxNi
Transcript for Vikings, Ragnar, Berserkers, Valhalla & the Warriors of the Viking Age | Lex Fridman Podcast #495
This is a transcript of Lex Fridman Podcast #495 with Lars Brownworth. The timestamps in the transcript are clickable links that take you directly to that point in the main video. Please note that the transcript is human generated, and may have errors. Here are some useful links: Go back to this episode’s main page Watch the full YouTube version of the podcast Table of Contents Here are the loose “chapters” in the conversation. Click link to jump approximately to that part in the transcript: 0:00 – Episode highlight 1:17 – Introduction 2:37 – The start of the Viking Age
Realism vs. Pragmatism: Understanding America’s New Rhetorical Landscape
Amid Trump's fiery rhetoric and debates over "realism," Professor Jason Ralph writes that "pragmatism" may offer a better alternative for the American public.
Teaching the foundations of AI in the classroom
AI is shaping the world young people are growing up in. But how do teachers confidently introduce AI and machine learning in the classroom? Experience AI is a free educational program from Google DeepMind and the Raspberry Pi Foundation that helps teachers introduce school-aged students to AI and machine learning. The program uses research-backed pedagogies to empower teachers to cover foundational AI and responsible, ethical use with their students—supporting learning even for educators without a computer science background. Experience AI provides free lessons, videos, worksheets, and training, designed to give young people the knowledge they need to understand how AI works and how it is changing the world. To date, it has been delivered by educators in over 165+ countries, expanding access to essential AI learning for students worldwide. Find the lessons @ experience-ai.org ___ Subscribe to our channel https://www.youtube.com/@googledeepmind Find us on X https://twitter.com/GoogleDeepMind Follow us on Instagram https://instagram.com/googledeepmind Add us on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/company/deepmind/
These 3 Agreements Secured AI Protections for 30,000 Union Workers
The post These 3 Agreements Secured AI Protections for 30,000 Union Workers appeared first on Partnership on AI .
Post-Mortem of Anthropic's Claude Code Leak
In this fully connected episode, Dan and Chris break down the Anthropic Claude Code leak, what went wrong and what it reveals about agentic systems, AI architecture, and AI safety. They also explore how the open source community is responding and why this moment could reshape how AI systems are built and secured. Featuring: Chris Benson – Website , LinkedIn , Bluesky , GitHub , X Daniel Whitenack – Website , GitHub , X Upcoming Events: Register for upcoming webinars here !
Summary: Could AI Chatbots influence a Government’s Decisions?
What does it mean for democracy if our political leaders and government officials allow AI to shape their decisions?
Global musicians face the same ‘streaming paradox’, new study finds
For musicians everywhere, streaming is indispensable, but so is the belief that it simply doesn’t pay fairly.
Real-time inference for robots at Physical Intelligence
How Physical Intelligence runs remote, real-time, robotic inference on Modal.
MongoDB Predictive Auto-Scaling: An Experiment
You can often predict a load spike before it arrives. Maybe it happens at the same time every day, or there’s always a spike at midnight on a Friday when you run a certain batch job. Or maybe it’s not cyclical, but load is rising steadily, and it’s a reasonable guess that it will keep rising for a while. MongoDB Atlas’s reactive auto-scaler handles these spikes, but scaling to the right size takes several minutes. What if MongoDB Atlas could use these temporal patterns—cycles and trends—to scale up a replica set before it’s overloaded? In 2023, we prototyped predictive auto-scaling. We wanted to see if it was possible to predict rises and falls in load on MongoDB Atlas replica sets. We researched which machine learning models made the best predictions, and estimated how much a predictive auto-scaler could improve performance and save our customers money. MongoDB has now rolled out predictive auto-scaling. The production version of the algorithm is quite different from the prototype, and so far, it only scales replica sets up before a predicted load spike; we rely on the existing reactive algorithm to scale them down afterward. Now that predictive auto-scaling is in production, we want to look back at the research project that started it. MongoDB Atlas MongoDB is free and source-available, you can download it and deploy a database yourself, and lots of people do. But many customers use our cloud service, MongoDB Atlas. Atlas customers decide how many MongoDB servers to deploy…
Mila’s AI drives world’s largest study on psychedelics
L'IA de Mila propulse la plus grande étude au monde sur les psychédéliques emilie.germain… mar, 04/07/2026 - 08:00
Introducing WildDet3D: Open-world 3D detection from a single image
WildDet3D is an open model that predicts 3D bounding boxes from a single image. It generalizes across cameras and object categories, and folds in depth signals when available—alongside a new dataset of verified 3D annotations.
Product Updates: RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell, Command K, Sandbox FS API and more
Product updates, community highlights, and upcoming events.
MLCommons Releases MLPerf Client v1.6 with Performance Optimizations and Enhanced User Experience
Updated AI runtimes for Windows and Apple platforms, plus usability improvements that make iterative benchmarking faster and more reliable The post MLCommons Releases MLPerf Client v1.6 with Performance Optimizations and Enhanced User Experience appeared first on MLCommons .
Import AI 452: Scaling laws for cyberwar; rising tides of AI automation; and a puzzle over gDP forecasting
How much could AI revolutionize the economy?
Components of A Coding Agent
How coding agents use tools, memory, and repo context to make LLMs work better in practice
Brazilian corn, poultry and sugar exports disrupted by conflict in Middle East
The escalating Middle East conflict, now entering its second month, is beginning to ripple through the global commodities chain, forcing Brazil’s agricultural sector into a critical strategic pivot. While the immediate focus of the US – Iran conflict remains on the humanitarian and geopolitical fallout, the logistical paralysis in the Gulf is creating a stress test for the world’s leading exporter of corn, poultry, and sugar, according to intelligence and consulting firm Datagro.
Gemma 4 and what makes an open model succeed
Hint: it's not benchmark scores.
The uphill climb of making diff lines performant
The path to better performance is often found in simplicity. The post The uphill climb of making diff lines performant appeared first on The GitHub Blog .
Pria Chetty joins Expert Advisory Group for the Partnership on AI’s ‘Shaping Economic Futures in the AI Era’ Initaitive
“Partnership on AI Launches Expert Advisory Group for New Initiative: Shaping Economic Futures in the AI Era Partnership on AI today launched its Labour and Economy Steering Committee, a new […] The post Pria Chetty joins Expert Advisory Group for the Partnership on AI’s ‘Shaping Economic Futures in the AI Era’ Initaitive appeared first on Research ICT Africa .
Gemma 4 Architecture and Benchmark Notes
Short note on Gemma 4 31B, including its local-global attention recipe, benchmark jump over Gemma 3, and Apache 2.0 release.