Author HubMatthias Bastian

Matthias is the co-founder and publisher of THE DECODER, exploring how AI is fundamentally changing the relationship between humans and computers.
AI in practice

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince sees trouble ahead for the open web

AI research

Wait a minute! Researchers say AI's "chains of thought" are not signs of human-like reasoning

AI in practice
Update

US Copyright Office says fair use does not cover AI trained on "vast troves of copyrighted works

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AI and society
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Indeed and Glassdoor are cutting about 1,300 jobs, or roughly 6 percent of the workforce at their parent company, Recruit Holdings. CEO Hisayuki Idekoba says the move is meant to make hiring more efficient by using more AI to automate recruitment and reduce manual work. The cuts mainly affect research, development, HR, and sustainability teams in the US, but other regions are involved as well. According to Idekoba, AI already writes about a third of new program code at the company, and that number is expected to climb to 50 percent soon.

AI is changing the world, and we must adapt by ensuring our product delivers truly great experiences for job seekers and employers.

Hisayuki Idekoba

Not everyone in the industry is convinced. While AI can help with programming, critics argue that the technology still isn't good enough to fully replace human developers. Some see these AI explanations as a way to justify layoffs that are really driven by economic reasons.

AI in practice
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OpenAI alignment researcher Sean Grove believes the most valuable programmers of the future will be those who communicate best. "If you can communicate effectively, you can program," Grove says. In his view, software development has never been just about code but about structured communication: understanding requirements, defining goals, and making them clear to both people and machines.

Grove argues that code itself is only a "lossy projection" of the original intent and values. As AI models become more powerful, he says, the real skill will be turning that intent into precise specifications and prompts.

"Whoever writes the spec be it a PM, a lawmaker, an engineer, a marketer, is now the programmer," Grove explains.

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AI and society
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Butterfly Effect, the startup behind AI agent Manus, has shut down its entire China team to reduce geopolitical risks, reports The Information. In May, the founders Red Xiao, Peak Ji, and Tao Zhang reportedly moved to Singapore, where the company is now building its new headquarters. It is also hiring in Singapore, the U.S., and Japan, and has opened offices in San Mateo and Tokyo. Until last week, several dozen employees were still based in China, but many have since left. Manus targets the U.S. market, where Chinese connections are increasingly seen as a risk.

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AI in practice
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Mistral AI and All Hands AI have introduced two new models designed for AI-powered programming agents: Devstral Small 1.1 and Devstral Medium. Devstral Small 1.1 2507 is open source and can run locally on an RTX 4090 or a Mac with 32 GB of RAM. It achieved a 53.6% score on the SWE-Bench Verified benchmark and supports XML along with other formats.

Image: Mistral

Devstral Medium scored 61.6% on the same benchmark. According to Mistral, it offers more power and a lower price than Gemini 2.5 Pro and GPT-4.1. The model is available via API, supports fine-tuning, and will soon be integrated into Mistral Code.

AI in practice
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Google is adding three new AI modes to Firebase Studio. The update introduces "Agent" modes powered by Gemini 2.5: a conversational "Ask" mode, a guided "Agent" mode that acts with user approval, and a fully autonomous "Agent Auto-run" mode that can write and update code on its own. Google says all three modes respect project-specific rules and require user approval for any security-sensitive actions.

Google says that in Agent Auto-run mode, Firebase Studio can generate entire apps or add new features to existing projects with minimal user input. | Video: Google

Firebase Studio now also supports the Model Context Protocol (MCP), making it easier to connect external data sources. Developers can access the Gemini command line (CLI) directly in the terminal for tasks like debugging and code management.

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AI in practice
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Amazon has secured multi-year licensing deals with Condé Nast and Hearst. Content from magazines like Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, and Harper's Bazaar will be added to its AI shopping assistant Rufus, Digiday reports. The move expands Rufus's offerings with trusted editorial content to help shoppers make informed decisions. Condé Nast confirmed the new partnership, following a similar agreement Amazon reached with The New York Times in May, which includes material from NYT Cooking and The Athletic. Financial terms were not disclosed. The first content from these publishers is set to appear in Rufus this summer. Rufus uses Amazon's product catalog and web data to help shoppers make purchasing decisions with AI.

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AI in practice

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

AI in practice
Update

Kimi-K2 is the next open-weight AI milestone from China after Deepseek

AI research

New Energy-Based Transformer architecture aims to bring better "System 2 thinking" to AI models

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