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 and society

OpenAI restructures under new foundation, Microsoft takes 27 percent stake

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

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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.

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.

WSJ
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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
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The rise of autonomous AI agents could threaten the core business model of platforms like Booking.com and Expedia, which rely on charging hotels a commission for bookings.

Max Niederhofer, a partner at Heartcore Capital and an investor in travel startups like GetYourGuide, told the Financial Times, "Fundamentally, [OTAs] are parasitic... If [hotels] don’t have any commission to pay, that’s 20 or so per cent they can use to give [customers] other things like a better room. Online travel agents’ ‘take rates’ are at risk."

Some in the hotel industry see "clear potential" in AI agents to help reduce hotels' dependence on OTAs, a shift that could put long-term pressure on the platforms' margins. However, HOTREC, the European hotel industry group, also warned that the technology could create a new "dependency cycle." For now, the technology is still in its early stages.

FT
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AI research

The ARC benchmark's fall marks another casualty of relentless AI optimization

AI in practice

DeepseekMath-V2 is Deepseek's latest attempt to pop the US AI bubble

AI research

Frustrated authors withdraw papers after realizing their reviewers are just lazy LLMs

Google News