Hub Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is either a field of research, the most important technical innovation of mankind, its downfall – or simply a pipe dream from Silicon Valley. Can machines really be intelligent? What is intelligence anyway? What opportunities does AI technology offer, and what are the risks? From neural networks to the science fiction vision of super AI, from deepfakes to AI surveillance: THE DECODER delivers the latest AI news and information on all facets of artificial intelligence.

Artificial Intelligence

OpenAI launches new ChatGPT agent that automates complex tasks for Pro, Plus, and Team

Artificial Intelligence

OpenAI releases its first open-weight language models since GPT-2 with GPT-oss

Artificial Intelligence

Google upgrades Gemini with Deep Think and flags early warning risks

Ad
Artificial Intelligence
Short

Google has added new reporting tools to NotebookLM. Users can now generate structured reports in more than 80 languages and adjust the tone, style, and structure as needed.

Watch the video: Google

The update also includes a blog post format and dynamic suggestions for report types based on the uploaded material. For example, NotebookLM might recommend a white paper format for research documents. Users can also write their own prompts, up to 1,000 words, to control the tone, style, and format of the generated content.

Artificial Intelligence
Short

Anthropic backs California's SB 53, a state bill that would force large developers of advanced AI to be more transparent and secure—apparently because they see Washington as too slow to act. Anthropic says SB 53 could serve as a solid starting point for national rules.

"While we believe that frontier AI safety is best addressed at the federal level instead of a patchwork of state regulations, powerful AI advancements won’t wait for consensus in Washington."

Anthropic

The bill would require affected companies to publish security policies, disclose risk analyses, report security incidents within 15 days, share internal assessments under confidentiality, and follow clear whistleblower protection rules. Violations could mean fines. The rules target only companies running highly capable models, aiming to keep the burden off smaller providers. Anthropic says their decision comes after reflecting on the lessons from California's failed SB 1047 effort.

Ad
Ad
Artificial Intelligence
Short

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has picked up on a trend: "it seems like there are really a lot of LLM-run twitter accounts now." No punchline here.

Image: Altman via X

The Dead Internet Theory is a conspiracy theory that claims the internet is no longer driven by real people, but mostly by bots and AI-generated content. According to this idea, most online activity—comments, posts, and articles—is fake, created to manipulate public opinion and control users.

Artificial Intelligence
Short

Google has published the pricing and usage limits for its Gemini AI app. The service is available in over 150 countries and comes in three tiers: free Gemini, Google AI Pro, and Google AI Ultra. Users must be at least 18 years old.

The free version limits access to the advanced Gemini 2.5 Pro model to five requests per day. Google AI Pro raises that to 100 daily requests, while Ultra subscribers can make up to 500. Both paid tiers also expand the context window from 32,000 to 1 million characters.

Pro users can generate up to 20 Deep-Research reports and three videos per day with Gemini 2.5 Pro. Ultra subscribers get 200 Deep-Research reports and up to five videos daily. Image generation jumps from 100 images per day on the free plan to 1,000 on paid subscriptions.

Google notes that these limits may change and can vary based on factors like prompt complexity.

Artificial Intelligence
Short

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff touts AI productivity gains - "4,000 less heads" needed in support.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is celebrating the impact of AI on the company, describing recent advances as "the most exciting thing that's happened in the last nine months for Salesforce." In a podcast interview with investor Logan Bartlett, Benioff said that thanks to AI-driven productivity gains, he now needs "4,000 less heads" in customer support.

Salesforce stands out in Silicon Valley for Benioff's open enthusiasm about what he calls "radical augmentation" of the workforce through automation. While other tech CEOs still express regret over job cuts, Benioff is vocal about the shift. Since 2023, Salesforce has cut around 9,000 jobs (about 8,000 last year and another 1,000 in 2024), and just this week notified 262 employees in San Francisco of layoffs, according to a state filing. In June, Benioff told Bloomberg that AI already handles "50 percent" of the work at Salesforce.

Ad
Ad
Artificial Intelligence
Short

Some robotics experts question the value of humanoid designs: "There is a great invention called wheels."

"Humanoid designs only make sense if it is so important to justify the trade-off and sacrifice of other things," says Leo Ma, CEO of RoboForce, in an interview with the Washington Post. His company's Titan robot uses four wheels instead of legs and can lift more weight than humanoid models. Ma adds, "Other than that, there is a great invention called wheels."

Scott LaValley, founder of Cartwheel Robotics, is also skeptical. "The dexterity of these robots isn't fantastic. There are hardware limitations, software limitations. There are definitely safety concerns," he says.

One major challenge: most humanoid robots, like humans, have to constantly expend energy to stay balanced on two legs. If the power cuts out, a bipedal robot generally crumples to the ground, which can pose risks to nearby people and objects. Of course, Ma and others who favor wheeled robots have a clear interest in promoting their own designs.

Ad
Ad
Artificial Intelligence
Short

LLM hype critic Gary Marcus argues in a conversation with chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov that large language models only create the appearance of understanding, not genuine intelligence.

"It's one of the most profound illusions of our time that most people see these systems and attribute an understanding to them that they don't really have."

Gary Marcus

He explains that while language models can, for example, mimic the rules of chess by generating text based on examples, they can't actually play the game because they lack any real internal sense of what's happening on the board.

"They will repeat the rules, because in the way that they create text based on other texts, they'll be there. [...] But when it actually comes to playing the game, it doesn't have an internal model of what's going on."

For Marcus, this gap between surface-level performance and true comprehension is at the heart of the AI "illusion of intelligence."

Google News

Bank details

IBAN: DE88 2507 0070 0053 0014 00
BIC: DEUTDE2HXXX
Account holder: Deep Content GmbH
Purpose: Support THE DECODER
AI research

OpenAI outperforms humans and Google at the world's top collegiate programming contest

AI in practice

New data from OpenAI and Anthropic show how people actually use ChatGPT and Claude

AI and society

Leading AI chatbots are now twice as likely to spread false information as last year, study finds

Google News