OpenAI is working on AI systems that can tackle problems for hours or even days at a time. In the company's official podcast, Chief Scientist Jakub Pachocki and researcher Szymon Sidor share inside stories about building these long-term thinking models, which are designed to plan, reason, and experiment over extended periods. OpenAI's math and code models, which recently won Olympic gold in their fields, offer an early glimpse of this approach.
The goal is to automate parts of the research process, such as AI-driven discovery of new ideas in medicine or AI safety. According to the researchers, making this possible will require significantly more computing power than most users have today, which explains Sam Altman's willingness to invest "trillions of dollars" in data centers over the coming years.
Yann LeCun, Chief Scientist at Meta's FAIR lab, is the focus of a new "AI Stories" documentary. In the film, LeCun talks in Paris about his early work on neural networks, his collaboration with Jeff Hinton, and the evolution of deep learning and open-source AI.
LeCun believes the real race in AI is about openness, not national borders. "What we're seeing is not a competition between regions but more a competition between the open research, open-source world and the proprietary world," he says. For LeCun, real progress in AI comes from open systems that make innovation widely accessible.
The timing is notable, as Mark Zuckerberg recently suggested that Meta could reconsider its open-source approach with Llama. If that happens, it's unclear whether Meta would still be the right place for LeCun.
Cohere has raised $500 million in a new funding round, pushing its valuation to $6.8 billion. The Canadian company builds AI models and services for enterprise customers.
Alongside the funding news, Cohere is bringing in Joelle Pineau as its new Chief AI Officer. Pineau previously served as VP of AI Research at Meta, where she led the FAIR team. She is also a professor at McGill University and a member of the Mila Institute in Montréal, and will continue her work with both organizations while joining Cohere.
Cohere's previous funding round was in July 2024, when it also raised $500 million at a $5.5 billion valuation. Major backers include Canadian pension fund PSP Investments, Cisco, Fujitsu, AMD, and export credit agency EDC.