The semiconductor industry will reach $1 trillion in revenue this year, up from $791.7 billion in 2025, driven by AI demand—logic-chip revenue rose 40% to $301.9 billion and memory sales grew 35% to $223.1 billion. - Bloomberg

Data-center construction spending rose 32% in 2025 through October versus 2024, OpenAI told the White House its planned centers could require roughly 20% of the skilled-trades workforce, and about one-third of startup investment went to the top 1% of firms. - The Washington Post

Spending on AI matches historical investment sprees - WSJ

doesn’t match COVID spending, the GFC bailout, or the current Federal deficit tho

SemiAnalysis: Anthropic's Claude Code currently authors about 4% of public GitHub commits and is projected to exceed 20% of daily commits by the end of 2026. - SemiAnalysis

Anthropic's Claude Code surpassed $1 billion in revenue in November 2025, Anthropic released Opus 4.6, and Caliber data showed its word-of-mouth exposure rose 13 points between Dec. 29 and Jan. 26 as investors eye a $20 billion funding expansion. - The Verge

Anthropic's just-released Claude Opus 4.6, found and human-validated over 500 high-severity vulnerabilities in widely used open-source projects, with proof-of-concept crashes and human-written patches. - Anthropic

Mo Gawdat warns AI-driven automation could eliminate the need for human labor and decision-making, causing up to 20–50% unemployment in some sectors, eroding consumption and prompting policies like guaranteed income. - Business Insider

Dr. Alexander Wissner‑Gross argues the rapid collapse in AI costs — with AGI effectively present since GPT‑3 in 2020 and recursive self‑improvement underway — is making intelligence and robotics near‑zero‑cost labor, shifting bottlenecks to regulation and pressuring markets and policy. - NextBigFuture.com

Replit CEO Amjad Masad says AI-powered tools enable non-engineers to build and ship software inside large companies, citing an employee-created routing algorithm that generated "tens of millions, if not hundred million dollars" and led to promotions. - Business Insider

A team of mathematicians including Fields Medalist Martin Hairer, Mohammed Abouzaid, Lauren Williams and Tamara Kolda published the "First Proof" paper and launched a dataset of unpublished research problems to benchmark LLMs, which struggle with research-level mathematics. - The New York Times

OpenAI is negotiating with Abu Dhabi's G42 to build a UAE-specific, government-targeted ChatGPT fine-tuned for local Arabic dialects and Emirati law—including content restrictions and user notices—using post-training fine-tuning layers while keeping the global ChatGPT available in the UAE. - Semafor

OpenAI says 49% of ChatGPT conversations are questions, and experts warn chatbots' single authoritative answers—often presented without uncertainty and surfaced above human content—are shifting engagement away from community Q&A and eroding lived experience. - The Washington Post

OpenAI's ChatGPT is no longer the clear leader, with shorter context (~128K–196K tokens) than Opus and Gemini's 1M, which have also caught up in other respects. - PCMAG

Apple will rebuild Siri around an LLM core, partner with Google to use a custom Gemini model, begin iOS 26.4 testing in late Feb/early March 2026, and launch the update in spring 2026. - MacRumors

Everyone is talking to their computer in the office now. Advances in voice-to-text AI now let workers dictate emails, reports and code, prompting startups and vendors to market voice-mode tools and gooseneck microphones while adoption grows despite uncertain cultural acceptance. - Bloomberg

Google and Microsoft are doing a lot of influencer sponsored content to promote their AIs. - CNBC

Waymo is using Google DeepMind's Genie 3 to build a video-based Waymo World Model that leverages Genie 3's long-horizon memory to generate rare or dangerous scenarios, supplementing over 200 million real miles and billions of virtual miles for safety testing. - Ars Technica

Human-in-the-loop is a feature, not a bug. Waymo routes edge-case audio and visual segments to remote human reviewers in the Philippines to intervene and label data, using human-in-the-loop assistance to resolve perception and decision failures in its autonomous vehicles. - Futurism

Random Filiponos remote-driving on American soil…just a soupçon of ‘economic anxiety’ - The Daily Caller

Department of Homeland Security disclosed that Mobile Fortify, a NEC-built facial-recognition app classified as "high-impact," was marked operational by CBP in early May 2025 and given to ICE on May 20, 2025, despite lacking required OMB privacy/AI impact assessments. - Techdirt

An EU-funded audit 'Weaponised Algorithms' found Yandex Alice repeated Kremlin narratives in 86% of Russian responses and replaced fact-based English replies with refusals in 86%, while Western models were 86–95% factually accurate. - Propastop

A Sainsbury's manager at Elephant and Castle wrongly ejected customer Warren Rajah after a Facewatch facial-recognition alert; Sainsbury's apologized, said Facewatch had matched a known offender, and pledged further staff training. - The Register

AI algorithms can be patented, if they are integrated into concrete product applications and aren't just abstract ideas. - Bloomberg Law

MCP: Many Connected Problems: Capability composition may be an underappreciated risk with MCP, since the LLM acts as a bridge, you are effectively exposing all the MCP servers to each other. You might not want to expose e.g your mail to some APIs, and one server prompt injection vulnerability could exfiltrate from all. - Hacker Noon

Coursera and Udemy plan to merge to expand online AI education offerings. - Bloomberg

A majority of Canadian university students use generative AI, and professors such as Université du Québec à Montréal accounting professor Antonello Callimaci, who created an AI teaching assistant named Bobby, are embedding AI in courses and redesigning assessments. - CBC

UCLA AI-written comp-lit textbook draws fire - X (formerly Twitter)

With technology evolving so fast, a fixed strategy roadmap is doomed, instead enterprises should define postures to guide decisionmaking as capabilities evolved. - Fast Company

Thirteen rising‑star venture capitalists say they use AI tools such as ChatGPT and NotebookLM to source deals, automate CRM and diligence, create searchable call‑transcript second brains, and James Flynn reported up to 10× faster research. - Business Insider

Using AI to challenge your high NYC rent - Business Insider

Kris Marszalek, Crypto.com co‑founder, bought the domain AI.com for $70 million—the highest disclosed price for a domain—and plans to launch a consumer AI site and run a Super Bowl ad this weekend. - Crypto.com: Buy, Sell & Trade Crypto with a Trusted App

Trying to comfort your friend after you convinced him to buy Bitcoin at $120K - X (formerly Twitter)

E/lon Musk said SpaceX is not developing a phone but envisions an AI‑first device, has worked with T‑Mobile and filed a "Starlink Mobile" trademark to extend cellular coverage. - TechRadar

We used to fund USAID, which saved millions of lives, but Elon Musk said it was a government propaganda front and so he shut it down. Many will die and the US govt is now funding actual MAGA propaganda like pro-Russian, pro-Brexit and anti-EU orgs, which are un-American and pisses off friends and allies. - FT

A tragic waste. Elon is still saying completely crazy stuff, like Social Security is paying dead people. When he is the one firing the auditors. If I didn’t know better I would think the goal was to break the government so it can’t regulate him, and so people lose confidence in government and don’t support any government action /s.

Atlas robot practicing for the Olympics - Reddit

I would pay money to see a robot decathlon and all-around gymnastics competition

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