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Matthias Bastian
Matthias Bastian View the LinkedIn Profile of Matthias Bastian
Jan 17, 2026
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Read full article about: Elon Musk proposed his children should inherit control of human-like AI, OpenAI claims

Elon Musk's power fantasies were already extreme a decade ago. According to OpenAI, Musk wanted to amass $80 billion during the company's founding phase to build a self-sufficient city on Mars. He used this goal to justify why he needed a majority stake in OpenAI.

During discussions about potential succession, Musk also caught other participants off guard by suggesting his children should take control of AGI: AI systems capable of matching or surpassing human intelligence across all domains.

Musk has at least 14 children as of January 2026 and has publicly stated that declining birth rates threaten civilization. He believes that educated or "smart" people should have more children, a view that can be categorized as eugenic and aligned with scientific racism. His desire to pass control of human-like AI to his children fits squarely within this worldview.

Comment Source: OpenAI | Altman via X
Matthias Bastian
Matthias Bastian View the LinkedIn Profile of Matthias Bastian
Jan 17, 2026
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Read full article about: Deepseek reportedly had to fall back on Nvidia chips for new model

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek ran into trouble developing its new flagship model and had to switch to Nvidia chips. According to insiders, Deepseek initially tried using chips from Huawei and other Chinese manufacturers last year, reports the Wall Street Journal. But the results weren't good enough. The company ended up switching to allegedly smuggled Nvidia chips for some training tasks, which finally got things moving. The new model is expected to ship in the coming weeks.

At a recent conference in Beijing, leading Chinese AI researchers admitted that Chinese AI models won't be able to keep pace with US companies without access to better hardware. Justin Lin from Alibaba's Qwen team put the odds of overtaking OpenAI or Anthropic within three to five years at 20 percent at best. Meanwhile, the Chinese government is pushing to cut US chip imports to boost domestic production.

Comment Source: WSJ
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Matthias Bastian
Matthias Bastian View the LinkedIn Profile of Matthias Bastian
Jan 17, 2026
AI and society
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Elon Musk seeks up to $134B from OpenAI and Microsoft as lawsuit puts OpenAI's nonprofit origins on trial

Thousands of pages of evidence in the Musk vs. OpenAI case are now public, and both sides have some explaining to do. One question that stood out to me: can becoming a billionaire ever be a “secondary consideration”?

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Matthias Bastian
Matthias Bastian View the LinkedIn Profile of Matthias Bastian
Jan 16, 2026
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Read full article about: OpenAI wants its API format to become the industry standard

OpenAI is pushing "Open Responses," an open interface that works with language models from different providers. The project builds on OpenAI's Responses API and lets developers write code once and run it with any AI model.

Currently, Google, Anthropic, and Meta all handle their APIs differently, which means developers have to rewrite code when switching between models. Open Responses tries to fix that with a shared format for requests, responses, streaming, and tool calls. Vercel, Hugging Face, LM Studio, Ollama, and vLLM have already signed on.

Of course, if successful, this move works in OpenAI's favor. If its API becomes the default, competitors would need to adapt to OpenAI's approach, while existing OpenAI customers wouldn't have to change a thing. The "open" label also lets the company signal a spirit of collaboration, even though it's not sharing any technology beyond what's already public.

Comment Source: OpenAI via X | Open Responses
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Matthias Bastian
Matthias Bastian View the LinkedIn Profile of Matthias Bastian
Jan 16, 2026
AI in practice
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OpenAI will soon test ads in ChatGPT despite CEO Sam Altman once calling the idea dystopian

OpenAI will start testing ads in ChatGPT, despite CEO Sam Altman’s earlier objections. With a valuation of up to $750 billion to justify and only around five percent of users paying for the service, the company is under enormous pressure to find new revenue streams.

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Matthias Bastian
Matthias Bastian View the LinkedIn Profile of Matthias Bastian
Jan 16, 2026
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Read full article about: Anthropic opens Claude Cowork AI agent to all Pro subscribers

Anthropic has expanded access to its new Claude Cowork feature. When Cowork debuted on Monday, it was limited to Max subscribers, a $200 per month tier that put it out of reach for most users. Pro subscribers can now access the feature for $20 per month, though Anthropic warns they may hit usage limits faster since Cowork consumes more tokens than regular chat. Max subscribers still get higher usage limits.

Cowork brings the agent-based capabilities of Claude Code to the desktop app for everyday tasks that don't require programming knowledge. With computer access enabled, Claude can handle more complex tasks on its own: sorting files, gathering context from multiple documents, and similar workflows. For now, the feature remains exclusive to the macOS desktop app.

Anthropic has already shipped several updates since Monday's launch: users can now rename sessions, connections to external services are more reliable, file previews work better, and the app prompts for confirmation before deleting files.

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Matthias Bastian
Matthias Bastian View the LinkedIn Profile of Matthias Bastian
Jan 16, 2026
AI research
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Terence Tao says GPT-5.2 Pro cracked an Erdős problem, but warns the win says more about speed than difficulty

Terence Tao says OpenAI’s GPT-5.2 Pro has solved an open Erdős problem largely on its own for the first time. He calls it a milestone but warns against reading too much into it. For Tao, the more exciting development lies elsewhere.

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