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Outside of tech there has been no financial payoff to US companies for using AI, now viewed as a margin-hurting cost center, as VC-backed firms burn more tokens (Torsten Slok / Apollo Global Management) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

Source: Replit recently moved most AI spend from Anthropic to OpenAI, which gave 30%+ off in a deal worth $100M+/year, after Anthropic discontinued its discount (The Information) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

A look at Alpha School, a network of private schools that claims to teach kids 2x as fast using AI; data shows ~50% of K-8 students missed this goal in math (@danagoldstein / New York Times) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

An interview with Ciena CEO Gary Smith, a veteran of the 2001 telecoms crash, on AI demand outpacing supply for Ciena's optical networking chips, and more (@steve_rosenbush / Wall Street Journal) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

Block unveils Dessa, a "true speech-to-speech" AI model trained on "nothing but human conversation" that it says runs locally on a MacBook Pro M4 Max or better (@jaypeters / The Verge) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

Ukraine says Starshield was working normally again on Saturday morning; US officials said Trump asked Elon Musk to restore the service (Wall Street Journal) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

Inside Meta's law enforcement outreach team, which uses AI and human reviewers to analyze social media posts, aiming to prevent threats like school shootings (@rachmonroe / New Yorker) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

A look at OpenAI's Project Daybreak, which lets vetted partners use its top hacking models to find and fix vulnerabilities and helped uncover PHP2Shell RCE bugs (@iblametom / Forbes) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

The PHP Foundation, which coordinated fixes for two critical PHP flaws, operates on a shoestring budget with one full-time staff member and 14 contractors (@lbsterling / Reuters) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

Google updates its privacy policy to clarify it could use data shared via Personal Intelligence from connected apps, including Gmail and Photos, to target ads (Shimul Sood / Android Authority) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

Andy Jassy says AWS capacity for 2027 is "largely sold out" and a "good chunk" of 2028 capacity is also sold, though AWS reserves some capacity for on-demand (@catherineperlo1 / The Information) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

The UK plans to invest £100M to create the AI Biosecurity Lab to boost defenses against biological threats, supported by OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind (@liv_mcmahon / BBC) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

OpenAI says it built an "offline world" from cached web content to train isolated frontier models to browse, search for information, and use web apps (OpenAI) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

Utopai, an AI film studio that says it has more than 20 projects in the works, raised $60M at a $1B valuation (@rocketalignment / The Information) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

Memo: Helen Chiang, Xbox's first COO, is leaving Microsoft on October 23, just months after the role was created; she spent 21 years at the company (@tomwarren / The Verge) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

Mave, which is developing an AI-driven tool to automate security investigations, raised a $28M Series A led by Red Dot, bringing its total funding to $34M (@meirorbach / CTech) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

Sources: Instacart, currently valued at $12B, is in talks to sell itself and held preliminary conversations with DoorDash and Uber (The Information) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

OpenAI says it is cutting off internet access for its most capable AI models during training until adequate safeguards are in place to mitigate online actions (@rachelmetz / Bloomberg) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

Moonshot says it removed cyber-related data from training phases for Kimi K3.1 Pro "to reduce potential misuse risk while preserving general usefulness" (@maba_xr / The Decoder) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

Artificial Analysis says Kimi K3.1 Pro lands 4th on its Intelligence Index, behind only Opus 5.5 (max), Sonnet 5.5 (max), and Muse Wonder Full (max) (@artificialanlys) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)