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Maximilian 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.
Maximilian Schreiner
Maximilian Schreiner View the LinkedIn Profile of Maximilian Schreiner
Jan 16, 2026
AI research
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Read full article about: OpenAI safety researcher joins Anthropic's alignment team

Andrea Vallone, a senior safety researcher at OpenAI, has moved to Anthropic. She'll be working on the alignment team, which focuses on AI model risks. Vallone spent three years at OpenAI, where she founded the "Model Policy" research team and contributed to major projects including GPT-4, GPT-5, and the company's reasoning models.

Over the past year, Vallone led OpenAI's research on an increasingly urgent question: how should AI models respond when users show signs of emotional dependency or mental health struggles? Some users, including teenagers, have taken their own lives after conversations with chatbots. Several families have filed lawsuits, and the U.S. Senate has held hearings on the issue.

At Anthropic, Vallone will report to Jan Leike. Leike himself was head of safety research at OpenAI before leaving the company in May 2024. At the time, Leike publicly criticized OpenAI, saying safety had taken a backseat to shipping new products.

Comment Source: LinkedIn
Maximilian Schreiner
Maximilian Schreiner View the LinkedIn Profile of Maximilian Schreiner
Jan 14, 2026
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Read full article about: Bandcamp bans AI-generated music

Music platform Bandcamp now prohibits music created entirely or substantially by generative AI. The company says the new policy protects human creativity and the direct connection between artists and fans. The updated rules also strictly ban using AI tools to imitate specific artists or styles.

Unlike most streaming services, Bandcamp focuses on direct purchases of music and merchandise, letting fans support creators financially without intermediaries.

Users can now report content that sounds heavily AI-generated. Bandcamp reserves the right to remove music from the platform based on suspected AI origins alone.

Comment Source: Bandcamp
Maximilian Schreiner
Maximilian Schreiner View the LinkedIn Profile of Maximilian Schreiner
Jan 13, 2026
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Read full article about: Microsoft pledges to cover data center power costs as community pushback grows

Microsoft is rolling out a new initiative for AI data centers after facing mounting opposition from communities across the US. The company says it will fully cover the power costs of its data centers, ensuring residents won't see higher electricity bills as a result. The announcement comes as data center regions like Virginia, Illinois, and Ohio have seen electricity prices climb 12-16 percent faster than the national average.

Beyond power costs, Microsoft is making several other commitments: the company will stop requesting local tax breaks, cut water consumption by 40 percent by 2030, and replenish more water than it uses. Microsoft President Brad Smith told GeekWire that the industry used to operate differently and now needs to change its approach. Trump previewed the announcement on Truth Social before Microsoft made it official.

As part of the initiative, Microsoft also plans to train local workers and invest in AI education programs in affected communities.

Comment Source: Microsoft
Maximilian Schreiner
Maximilian Schreiner View the LinkedIn Profile of Maximilian Schreiner
Jan 13, 2026
AI research
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Read full article about: AI models don't have a unified "self" - and that's not a bug

Expecting internal coherence from language models means asking the wrong question, according to an Anthropic researcher.

"Why does page five of a book say that the best food is pizza and page 17 says the best food is pasta? What does the book really think? And you're like: 'It's a book!'", explains Josh Batson, research scientist at Anthropic, in MIT Technology Review.

The analogy comes from experiments on how AI models process facts internally. Anthropic discovered that Claude uses different mechanisms to know that bananas are yellow versus confirming that the statement "Bananas are yellow" is true. These mechanisms aren't connected to each other. When a model gives contradictory answers, it's drawing on different parts of itself - without any central authority coordinating them. "It might be like, you're talking to Claude and then it wanders off," says Batson. "And now you're not talking to Claude but something else."

The takeaway: Assuming language models have mental coherence like humans might be a fundamental category error.

Comment Source: MIT
Maximilian Schreiner
Maximilian Schreiner View the LinkedIn Profile of Maximilian Schreiner
Jan 13, 2026
AI research
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UK startup turns planetary biodiversity into AI-generated drug candidates

UK company Basecamp Research has developed AI models together with researchers from Nvidia and Microsoft that generate potential new therapies against cancer and multidrug-resistant bacteria from a database of over one million species.

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