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Nearly one in five AI researchers already expected an extinction scenario from AI back in 2024

Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon sparked an intense debate about existential AI risks with a single tweet. OpenAI researcher Daniel Selsam warns of a “ticking time bomb,” and a former Deepmind researcher says AI could kill us all. In a survey of more than 1,500 leading AI researchers, the average estimated probability of an extinction scenario was 18 percent. That was in 2024. The number keeps climbing.

Read full article about: Google launches Gemini 3.8 Live to take on OpenAI's GPT-Live-1 at a fraction of the cost

Google Deepmind released Gemini 3.8 Live and 3.8 Live Extended Thinking, two new audio models for developers available through the Gemini API and Google AI Studio. Gemini 3.8 Live powers voice agents that can make API calls in the background, process visual input, and keep talking at the same time. It supports over 97 languages. The Extended Thinking variant ranks first on the Artificial Analysis Speech-to-Speech Leaderboard with 82.6 percent, ahead of OpenAI's latest GPT-Live-1 models. Sample apps are on GitHub.

Google charges $0.005 per minute for audio input and $0.018 for output, far cheaper than OpenAI's GPT-Live-1 at $0.05 per minute. An hour of voice conversation costs about $1.38 with Google versus at least $3.00 with OpenAI. OpenAI's model should still deliver more natural conversations thanks to full duplex that lets it listen and speak at the same time. Judging from the demos, it also sounds better, suggesting Google once again optimized for price over quality.

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After warning AI is too dangerous, Bill Gates bets a billion on its upside

The Gates Foundation is investing at least a billion dollars over two years to make AI tools more widely available in health, education, and agriculture. Bill Gates warns that more than 90 percent of the training data behind early language models came from English sources, and that speech recognition fails 60 percent of the time in Yoruba. The market, he says, is “a terrible guarantor of equal opportunity.”

Read full article about: Agility Robotics says its new Digit 5 robot can work next to people without safety fences

Agility Robotics has unveiled Digit 5, the next version of its humanoid robot for warehouses and factories. The robot can now work alongside people without safety fences. It spots people using AI and sensors and, according to the company, stops or steps aside. It also gives off visual and audio signals to warn anyone nearby.

Agility is the first partner for Nvidia's Halos safety platform for robotics. Digit 4 was the first humanoid robot to pass an independent OSHA safety review on a production line, Agility says.

Digit 5 lifts up to 22.7 kg, 40 percent more than its predecessor. The battery charges in 9 minutes for 90 minutes of runtime, which the company says allows more than 20 hours of work per day. Swappable grippers let it handle different jobs, from moving bins to loading machines. The robot stands 1.81 m tall and weighs 129 kg.

Digit 4 logged over 65,000 hours with customers like GXO, Amazon, and Schaeffler, according to Agility. At GXO it moved around 100,000 bins with about 98 percent accuracy. The company points to orders worth more than $300 million. First deliveries start in early 2027, including in the EU. The robots are built in Salem, Oregon, in a factory that can produce up to 10,000 units per year.

Apple brings a fully revamped Siri built on Google's Gemini, but not to the EU

Apple is shipping its rebuilt “Siri AI” after years of delay, built on Google’s Gemini models and running partly on the device, partly through Private Cloud Compute. Early testers praise multi-step requests and screen context, but report hallucinations and gaps with personal context. In the EU, the assistant stays unavailable for now.

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Not everyone is convinced that Big AI's proposed slowdown is really about safety

OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google want to slow down frontier AI development, citing safety concerns. But critics from across the industry and politics are pushing back. Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez calls the initiative a “cartel by another name” designed to shut out competitors, and the White House and Trump himself are opposing the move.

OpenAI has hundreds of contract workers reading your ChatGPT conversations

OpenAI has hundreds of contract workers reading real ChatGPT conversations and rating them on a scale of one to seven, partly to reduce flattery and human-like behavior, 404 Media reports. The prompts are anonymized but can still contain sensitive data. Users who don’t want their chats reviewed by humans have to actively disable the “Improve the model for everyone” setting, which is on by default.

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Read full article about: Anthropic eyes Nasdaq listing as a second profitable quarter aims to win over investors ahead of a mega-IPO

Anthropic has told investors it will turn a profit for the second straight quarter, but the claim rests on an adjusted metric that leaves out costs like stock-based compensation. Gross margins run above 80 percent, according to the Financial Times, though that figure comes before revenue-sharing payments to partners like Amazon and the cost of training models.

Quarterly revenue jumped 14-fold from a year earlier to $11.5 billion, and the annualized run rate hit $65 billion at the end of July. SemiAnalysis analyst Joey Brookhart says investors expect $120 billion in annualized revenue by year's end and nearly triple that by the close of 2027.

Anthropic plans to go public on the Nasdaq at a possible valuation of $2 trillion or more. Rather than release its prospectus last week as expected, the company shared the documents with only a small group of investors at first. At the same time, CEO Dario Amodei publicly called for slowing down AI development. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk backed the call. Altman told Fortune that OpenAI won't go public this year.

Comment Source: FT