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 in practice
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AI artist Xania Monet has signed a $3 million record deal with Hallwood Media, according to Billboard. The project is led by 31-year-old designer Telisha Jones from Mississippi, who uses the Suno platform to turn her lyrics into music. With Suno currently facing copyright lawsuits from major labels, their subsidiaries held back from making offers.

Monet entered the Billboard charts for the first time last week. Her track "Let Go, Let God" reached No. 21 on the Hot Gospel Songs chart, while another single hit No. 1 on the R&B Digital Song Sales chart. Manager Romel Murphy said around 90 percent of her lyrics draw on personal experiences, and that upcoming projects will include collaborations with human producers.

Hallwood had previously signed another AI artist from Suno back in July.

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OpenAI is planning an additional $100 billion in spending on reserve servers over the next five years, according to The Information. By 2030, the company expects to have spent around $350 billion on rented server capacity.

At a Goldman Sachs conference, CFO Sarah Friar explained that OpenAI often has to delay product launches or hold back features because of severe limits on available compute.

The extra servers are meant to protect against sudden spikes in usage and to support future model training. Projections suggest OpenAI will spend about $85 billion per year on servers, nearly half of what Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Oracle combined earned in 2024. Taken together, these investments push the expected cash outflow through 2029 to $115 billion.

AI and society
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Huawei introduced its new AI supercomputer, the Atlas 950 SuperCluster, at the Connect 2025 conference. The system uses more than 524,000 Ascend-950DT chips and, according to Huawei, can deliver up to 524 FP8 exaFLOPS for training and 1 FP4 zettaFLOP for inference. That makes it capable of handling models with trillions of parameters, according to Huawei.

In contrast to Nvidia's Rubin systems, Huawei continues to focus on scale over individual chip performance. As reported by Tom's Hardware, the setup requires about 64,000 square meters of floor space. Huawei is already planning a follow-up: the Atlas 960, slated for 2027, will include more than one million chips.

AI and society
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Abu Dhabi has announced a plan to build what it calls a fully AI-native government by 2027, with more than 200 AI systems deployed across public services.

The plan focuses on integrating AI into all government operations to build a proactive, agile, and technology-driven state apparatus. By 2027, all government processes are expected to be digitized and automated.

The initiative will rely on sovereign cloud infrastructure and collaborations with the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, the Advanced Technology Research Council on large language models, and AI infrastructure company G42.

Authorities plan to invest $3.5 billion in the program. By 2027, the effort is projected to contribute about $6.5 billion to GDP and create more than 5,000 jobs.

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AI in practice
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The US House of Representatives is running a trial of Microsoft's Copilot AI assistant. Lawmakers and staff now have access to the chatbot, which can connect to emails and OneDrive documents and comes with expanded data and legal protections, Axios reports.

Technical staff have been testing Copilot since June. This fall, leadership offices and additional staff will join the pilot. Up to 6,000 one-year licenses are expected to be distributed.

House Speaker Mike Johnson announced the rollout at the "Congressional Hackathon," alongside Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. The two had already launched a bipartisan AI working group.

At the same time, administrators are reviewing offers from other vendors, including ChatGPT Enterprise, Claude, Gemini, and USAi. More details about Microsoft's role in Congress are expected in the coming months.

AI in practice
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Notion has released version 3.0 of its software. The main update is the addition of AI "agents" that can handle tasks like creating documents, building databases, and executing multi-step workflows.

Users can set up personal agents with custom instructions, context, and work styles. The system integrates with services such as Slack, Google Drive, and GitHub. Notion says team-specific "Custom Agents" are in development and will be able to run on schedules or triggers.

Other changes include row-level permissions for databases, new integrations via the MCP ecosystem, and connectors for Notion Mail, Box, and Outlook.

The company also confirmed support for Claude Sonnet 4 and GPT-5.

AI in practice
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Elon Musk's AI startup xAI has reached 64 million monthly users for its Grok chatbot - far below OpenAI's ChatGPT with roughly 700 million weekly users, according to the New York Times.

Despite billions in funding, a supercomputer project in Tennessee, and heavy promotion, Grok's user base remains a fraction of its rival's. Musk tried to make the chatbot "edgier" in hopes of driving growth on X, but the plan backfired when Grok started generating antisemitic, racist, and politically biased responses. Several senior researchers left the company as a result.

In response, Musk tightened control, fired managers, launched side projects like "Baby Grok," and announced plans to more closely integrate the chatbot into Tesla and SpaceX.

NYT
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AI in practice
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Nvidia has spent more than $900 million to bring Enfabrica CEO Rochan Sankar, several of his team members, and key technology from the AI hardware startup into the company, CNBC reports.

The deal combined cash and stock and looks similar to an acquihire, where companies focus on hiring talent without buying the startup outright. Big tech firms like Google, Meta, and Microsoft often use this strategy to add AI specialists while avoiding lengthy acquisition processes.

Enfabrica builds networking technology that links large GPU clusters more efficiently - a capability Nvidia is betting will strengthen its AI infrastructure. The deal closed last week. Nvidia had already invested in Enfabrica in 2023.

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AI in practice

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

AI in practice
Update

OpenAI unveils Sora 2 video model with realistic physics, high-quality audio, and a new social app

AI in practice

Deepmind says video models for visual tasks could become what LLMs are for text tasks

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