Author HubMaximilian Schreiner

Max is the managing editor of THE DECODER, bringing his background in philosophy to explore questions of consciousness and whether machines truly think or just pretend to.
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 in practice

OpenAI launches GPT-5 as a unified system with adaptive reasoning for complex tasks

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AI and society
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The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is investigating how AI chatbot developers address risks to children and teenagers. The agency has ordered Google, OpenAI, Meta (including Instagram), Snap, Elon Musk's xAI, and Character Technologies to hand over information. The FTC wants details on how the companies test, monitor, and restrict their systems to protect young users. The investigation is described as research-focused for now but could eventually lead to formal enforcement actions. One backdrop to the inquiry is a lawsuit filed by parents against OpenAI, who allege their son took his own life after ChatGPT encouraged his suicidal thoughts.

AI and society
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Albania has appointed an AI system as a government minister for public procurement, marking the first time the country has included a virtual official in its cabinet.

The system, called Diella, is presented as part of Prime Minister Edi Rama's plan to make procurement fully transparent and free from corruption. Public tenders have long been considered one of the main gateways for nepotism and money laundering in Albania, issues the country must address to move forward with its EU membership bid.

Yet an AI bot is unlikely to solve these problems. It is unclear how much human oversight will exist, and the system itself remains vulnerable to bias and manipulation.

AI and society
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OpenAI and Nvidia are preparing a multibillion-dollar investment in UK AI infrastructure together with London-based data center operator Nscale Global Holdings, according to Bloomberg. The announcement is expected next week, coinciding with Donald Trump's visit to Britain. OpenAI plans to contribute several billion dollars to the project. The investment will form part of the company's Stargate program, which is expanding its data center footprint worldwide. Nscale already revealed plans in January for a facility in Loughton that could house up to 45,000 Nvidia chips. OpenAI is also an anchor customer at an Nscale site in Norway.

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AI in practice
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YouTube is rolling out multilingual audio tracks to millions of creators. The new feature lets viewers listen to videos in multiple languages right after they’re published. In YouTube’s tests, more than a quarter of total watch time came from languages other than the video’s original. Some creators are already leaning heavily into the feature - Mark Rober now offers up to 30 language versions per video, while Jamie Oliver has also seen a sharp boost in views.

YouTube is also experimenting with multilingual thumbnails, a tool that had previously only been available through a small pilot program. The technology still has limits. The AI-generated voices lag behind the quality of systems from companies like ElevenLabs and even Google itself, which recently added multilingual podcast support to NotebookLM.

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AI in practice
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OpenAI has signed a $300 billion cloud deal with Oracle, according to the Wall Street Journal, which cited people familiar with the agreement. The five-year contract begins in 2027 and ranks among the largest cloud deals ever made. The agreement reportedly includes 4.5 gigawatts of computing capacity - about the same as the electricity consumption of 4 million U.S. households. In its quarterly report covering the period through August 31, Oracle announced contracts worth $317 billion. The WSJ says the bulk of that figure comes from the OpenAI deal. For OpenAI, the move is meant to address ongoing shortages in computing power that have slowed the development of new AI models. Oracle, meanwhile, will likely need to take on debt to pay for the chips required to deliver the capacity. OpenAI had previously worked exclusively with Microsoft. By expanding to Oracle, the company is also tying the deal to its broader infrastructure plan known as Stargate.

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AI in practice
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At a weekend hackathon in San Francisco, more than 100 programmers faced off to see if they could outcode AI tools. The "Man vs. Machine" event randomly split 37 teams into "human" and "AI-assisted" groups. Winners took home $12,500 in prize money plus API credits from OpenAI and Anthropic. The hackathon was co-organized by research group METR, which previously found that AI coding tools can slow down experienced developers by 19 percent. In the finals, both sides were evenly matched—three teams without AI and three teams using AI assistance. The winning project: a code review tool with heatmaps, built with AI support. Second place went to a writing tool for authors, developed without any AI.

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AI in practice

Anthropic claims to lower the entry barrier for advanced AI models with Claude Haiku 4.5

AI research

OpenAI says GPT-5 shows 30 percent less political bias than previous models

AI in practice

OpenAI suddenly remembers that copyright law exists after a few days of wild Sora videos

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