The Who's Who of AI

“ISBNdb, a company that sources printed books for AI companies to turn into training data, tells clients “the optics problem is real.””

“New from 404 Media: a company is selling tons of old books specifically to AI companies and says they have a strong NDA to never reveal which AI company bought all of the books. They don't want headlines of 'we scanned and destroyed millions of books for AI…”

“This article ends with a good conclusion, but it is extremely misguided along the way. It is also a rich text for exploring how clear language helps make the point better. A thread: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... >>”

“This editor/author does the same “trick” as he writes: "Recently, the ability of large language models (LLMs) to predict protein structures and to accelerate the discovery of new materials has revolutionized both fields. New AI agents can now carry out many…”

“"The impressive capabilities of Chinese lab Moonshot’s Kimi K3, the biggest open-weight large language model, have kicked off a debate that conflates two things: the economic possibilities of American AI giants and the future of LLMs as a technology." techc…”

“Move over, Palantir? "A ​team of former DOGE employees have raised a major funding round for a startup that aims to use AI ‌to expand U.S. military cyber capabilities, three sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters." www.reuters.com/technology/d...”

“U.S. AI policy for the foreseeable future is going to be an open sewer of bizarre, incoherent, xenophobic protectionism, and our trash press is going to normalize it as serious adult policymaking the entire way”

“"The city of San Francisco has ordered Apple and Google to remove dozens of “nudify” apps — — software programs that can digitally alter pictures to unclothe the people in them — from their app stores." techcrunch.com/2026/07/17/a...”

“As we've been saying, in a fair competition, American AI risks losing ground to Chinese AI because low-cost or free AI models are becoming good enough for many use cases. www.wsj.com/tech/ai/top-...”