AI in practice Archive

Mar 4, 2026

Meta is building a new applied AI engineering organization, according to an internal memo obtained by the Wall Street Journal. The new teams will be led by Maher Saba, currently a vice president in Meta's Reality Labs division, and will report to CTO Andrew Bosworth.

The structure is designed to be extremely flat, with up to 50 employees per manager. The new division will work alongside Meta's Superintelligence Lab to build the "data engine" that speeds up improvements to Meta's AI models.

According to Saba, the organization consists of two teams: one focused on interfaces and tools, and another on tasks, data collection, and evaluations.

Meta restructured its AI operations last summer, creating the Superintelligence Lab under former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang. CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in January that the company would release new models and products in the coming months.

Comment Source: WSJ

Maximilian Schreiner

Mar 4, 2026

Short News

Anthropic is on track to generate nearly $20 billion in annual revenue based on current performance, according to Bloomberg. The company recently surpassed $19 billion in run-rate revenue, more than doubling its $9 billion run rate from the end of 2025. Just a few weeks ago, the figure stood at roughly $14 billion. The growth is driven by strong adoption of Anthropic's AI models and products, particularly its coding tool Claude Code. The company is currently valued at $380 billion.

At the same time, Anthropic is locked in a conflict with the US Department of War. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth declared Anthropic a supply-chain risk, a designation typically reserved for companies from countries the US views as adversaries. The move came after Anthropic pushed for restrictions on the Pentagon's use of its AI for surveillance and autonomous weaponry. Former White House adviser Dean Ball called the designation "attempted corporate murder." Anthropic said the move is "legally unsound" and is prepared to challenge it in court. The company's main app recently topped Apple's download charts, reflecting a surge of support during the Pentagon standoff.

Comment Source: Bloomberg

Maximilian Schreiner

Mar 4, 2026

Short News

OpenAI is building its own alternative to GitHub, Microsoft's widely used platform for code management and collaboration, according to The Information. The move was triggered by a string of GitHub outages in recent months that directly affected OpenAI's own developers. The project is still in its early stages and likely won't be ready for several months.

Internally, the company is reportedly discussing whether to offer the product to outside customers - a move that would put OpenAI in direct competition with Microsoft, one of its biggest investors. GitHub has attributed some of its outages to problems with Microsoft's Azure cloud, which the service is currently being migrated to. Google and Meta both run their own internal code platforms but don't offer them externally. OpenAI, Microsoft, and GitHub all declined to comment.

Comment Source: The Information

Matthias Bastian

Mar 3, 2026

AI in practice

Google's fastest and cheapest model Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite got smarter but also tripled the price

Google Deepmind has released a preview of Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite, the fastest and cheapest model in the Gemini 3 series. It’s significantly more capable than its predecessor, but output costs have more than tripled.

Read full article

Comment

Matthias Bastian

Mar 3, 2026

Short News

OpenAI has released GPT-5.3 Instant, an update to the standard ChatGPT model. The new version aims to make everyday conversations feel more natural and useful. According to OpenAI, the model delivers more accurate answers, better web search results, and fewer unnecessary warnings and refusals. Hallucination rates drop by up to 26.8 percent for web searches and 19.7 percent for internal knowledge, depending on the scenario. The writing style also feels less robotic and preachy, OpenAI claims.

The system card shows some trade-offs on the safety front. GPT-5.3 Instant beats the older GPT-5.1 Instant on average when it comes to catching unauthorized content, but it actually performs worse than its direct predecessor, GPT-5.2 Instant. The model also takes a small hit on health-related queries (HealthBench) compared to the previous version.

GPT-5.3 Instant is rolling out now to all ChatGPT users and is available to developers via the API as "gpt-5.3-chat-latest." The outgoing GPT-5.2 Instant will stick around for paying users for another three months before OpenAI pulls the plug on June 3, 2026.

Comment Source: System Card | Blog

Maximilian Schreiner

Mar 3, 2026

AI in practice

Meta sends private AI glasses footage to Kenya with few safeguards - and Europe's privacy regulators may come knocking

Maximilian Schreiner

Mar 3, 2026

Short News

Meta is testing a shopping research feature in its Meta AI chatbot designed to compete with similar tools from OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini. According to Bloomberg, the feature lets users ask for product suggestions. The chatbot responds with a carousel of product images that include brand, website, and price details, along with a brief bullet-point explanation of its recommendations.

The feature is currently rolling out to a limited number of US users in the Meta AI web browser. A Meta spokesperson confirmed the test but didn't share any further details.

Comment Source: Bloomberg

Maximilian Schreiner

Mar 3, 2026

AI in practice

A calendar invite is all it took to hijack Perplexity's Comet browser and steal 1Password credentials

Security researchers demonstrate how a manipulated calendar invite can trick Perplexity’s agentic Comet browser into stealing local files and taking over a full 1Password account.

Read full article

Comment

Matthias Bastian

Mar 3, 2026

Short News

Anthropic entered a $100 million Pentagon competition in early 2026. The company was proposing to use Claude for voice-controlled autonomous drone swarm technology, Bloomberg reports.

The idea was to use Claude to translate a commander's spoken orders into digital instructions and coordinate drone fleets without using AI for autonomous targeting or weapons decisions. Humans would be able to monitor and shut down the system. This approach lines up with Anthropic's position in its ongoing dispute with the Pentagon, where the company has stressed that human oversight is essential for autonomous weapons because current AI models aren't reliable enough to operate without it.

Anthropic didn't win the contract. Instead, the Pentagon awarded it to SpaceX/xAI and two defense companies partnered with OpenAI.

Comment Source: Bloomberg

Maximilian Schreiner

Mar 2, 2026

Short News

ASML, the world's sole manufacturer of EUV lithography machines used to produce advanced chips, is looking to expand beyond its core business. That's according to a Reuters report citing ASML Chief Technology Officer Marco Pieters.

The Dutch company is specifically planning to move into advanced packaging - a technique where multiple specialized chips are connected and stacked on top of each other. This approach is critical for modern AI chips and the high-bandwidth memory that feeds them. TSMC already uses advanced packaging to build Nvidia's most powerful AI processors, among others.

Pieters told Reuters that ASML is planning 10 to 15 years ahead, studying what kinds of machines the industry will need for packaging and bonding. The company is also exploring whether chips can be printed beyond their current size limit. On top of that, ASML wants to use AI to speed up the control software running its machines and improve quality checks during chip manufacturing.

Comment Source: Reuters