Toggle light / dark theme

OpenAI’s GPT-5 Flop, AI’s Unlimited Market, China’s Big Advantage, Rise in Socialism, Housing Crisis

Questions to inspire discussion.

📊 Q: How did GPT-5 perform compared to GPT-4? A: GPT-5 was narrowly ahead of GPT-4 in artificial analysis, but GPT-4 was significantly better in “humanity’s last exam” and RKGI2, which measures tasks relatively easy for humans but hard for AIs.

🌐 Q: What is the key architectural improvement in GPT-5? A: GPT-5 has a multimodal architecture that can self-select the underlying model for a task, providing a simple, clean interface without users needing to understand technical details.

AI industry growth and economic impact.

💰 Q: How much is being invested in the AI industry annually? A: The AI industry is experiencing astronomical growth, with hundreds of billions of dollars being deployed annually, and a projected trillion dollars in the next 5 years on data centers and AI infrastructure.

📈 Q: Are there already economic returns on AI investments? A: Economic returns on AI investments are already evident, with companies like Meta and Microsoft reporting significant revenue growth and productivity gains.

Major climate-GDP study under review after facing challenge

A blockbuster study published in top science journal Nature last year warned that unchecked climate change could slash global GDP by a staggering 62% by century’s end, setting off alarm bells among financial institutions worldwide.

But a re-analysis by Stanford University researchers in California, released Wednesday, challenges that conclusion—finding the projected hit to be about three times smaller and broadly in line with earlier estimates, after excluding an anomalous result tied to Uzbekistan.

The saga may culminate in a rare retraction, with Nature telling AFP it will have “further information to share soon”—a move that would almost certainly be seized upon by climate-change skeptics.

Game developers association decries ‘financial censorship’ amidst payment processor crackdown on NSFW games, calls for ‘greater transparency and fairness in how adult games are moderated’

The IGDA says the problem isn’t the rules themselves, but their “vague” enforcement.

Hackers breach Toptal GitHub account, publish malicious npm packages

Hackers compromised Toptal’s GitHub organization account and used their access to publish ten malicious packages on the Node Package Manager (NPM) index.

The packages included data-stealing code that collected GitHub authentication tokens and then wiped the victims’ systems.

Toptal is a freelance talent marketplace that connects companies with software developers, designers, and finance experts. The company also maintains internal developer tools and design systems, most notably Picasso, which they make available through GitHub and NPM.

Brave blocks Windows Recall from screenshotting your browsing activity

Brave Software says its privacy-focused browser will block Microsoft’s Windows Recall from capturing screenshots of Brave windows by default to protect users’ privacy.

Windows Recall is an opt-in Windows feature that takes screenshots of active windows every few seconds, analyzes them, and enables Windows 11 users to search for text within the snapshots using natural language. The goal is to make it easy for users to quickly find information about past activities in Windows.

However, the feature has sparked widespread criticism for potentially exposing sensitive data of Windows users, including passwords, emails, health records, and financial information.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warns of an AI ‘fraud crisis’

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says the world may be on the precipice of a “fraud crisis” because of how artificial intelligence could enable bad actors to impersonate other people.

“A thing that terrifies me is apparently there are still some financial institutions that will accept a voice print as authentication for you to move a lot of money or do something else — you say a challenge phrase, and they just do it,” Altman said. “That is a crazy thing to still be doing… AI has fully defeated most of the ways that people authenticate currently, other than passwords.”

The comments were part of his wide-ranging interview about the economic and societal impacts of AI at the Federal Reserve on Tuesday. He also told the audience, which included, representatives of large US financial institutions, about the role he expects AI to play in the economy.

/* */