AI Reading for Saturday, January 17

If you've been using coding assistants since GitHub Copilot, Claude Code is a significant improvement. If you haven't been coding and now you can, it's one of those moments like discovering the Internet and a browser. - Fabricated Knowledge

Anthropic released MCP Tool Search for Claude Code, which lazy-loads tool definitions, cutting token use (example 134k→5k) and improving Opus 4 accuracy 49%→74% and Opus 4.5 79.5%→88.1%, with immediate rollout. - VentureBeat

When tools start using too much context, instead of loading all tools at startup, puts them into a tool search tool, then when necessary, tools are found and loaded via search instead of preloaded. - Claude Docs

don’t need the whole Home Depot in your context, just get the tool you need when you need it.

Anthropic made its Claude Cowork agent available on Mac to $20/month Pro subscribers, previously limited to $100+/month Max users, warning Pro customers may hit usage limits sooner. - Engadget

I tried it but I think if you know what you are doing, Claude Code CLI can do it a lot faster outside of the sandbox.

How scientists are using Claude to accelerate research and discovery - Anthropic

Taiwan and the United States struck a tariff-cut deal under which Taiwan companies will invest $250 billion in U.S. semiconductor, energy and AI production, including $100 billion from TSMC in 2025, and Taiwan guarantees $250 billion in credit. - Yahoo

We interrupt this ChatGPT session with a very special message from our sponsors: OpenAI will begin testing labeled ads in the US on its free tier and low-cost ChatGPT Go, Fidji Simo said; Pro, Business, and Enterprise subscriptions will not include ads, and users under 18 and sensitive queries will be exempt. - The Register

OpenAI will add ads to ChatGPT, matching them to conversation topics using personalization data; it says ads won't influence responses or sell user data, while advertisers may set cookies and opt-out is limited to GDPR and some US states. - WIRED

OpenAI: Our approach to ads in the free and cheapest tiers - OpenAI

H2-No: Chinese customs instructed agents not to allow Nvidia's H200 AI chips into the country, prompting suppliers to pause H200 parts production and threatening over one million expected Chinese orders, sources told the FT and Reuters. - Tech in Asia

Nvidia suppliers halted production of the H200 AI processor after China blocked shipments, creating immediate supply-chain risk for Nvidia customers and data-center operators and potentially reducing short-term availability of AI hardware. - Financial Times

4-comma-club or bust: Elon Musk wants to speak to the manager, seeks up to $134 billion from OpenAI and Microsoft in a federal court filing, alleging OpenAI gained $65.5–109.4 billion and Microsoft $13.3–25.1 billion from his early contributions while he co-founded OpenAI. - Yahoo

Money not gonna mean anything as we enter an age of abundance tho?

The EPA ruled that xAI illegally operated methane gas turbines at its Colossus 1 and 2 datacenters without required air permits, clarified portable turbines are not exempt, and estimated the action could cut NOx emissions up to 296 tons by 2032. - the Guardian

The EPA updated rules to prevent trailer-mounted gas turbines being classed as "non-road engines", requiring Clean Air Act permits when aggregate emissions exceed major-source thresholds, a change affecting xAI's Memphis data center that used such turbines without SCR controls. - CNBC

How much water does your almond milk or burger “consume?” SemiAnalysis estimates Colossus 2 uses about 346 million gallons of blue water per year, roughly 2.5 times a typical In-N-Out store's annual use (~147 million gallons). Would you like AI-generated fries with that? - SemiAnalysis

John Furner and Sundar Pichai told the National Retail Federation conference retailers will "rewrite the playbook" as hundreds of AI startups offer chatbots, supply‑chain and inventory systems, in‑store cameras and robots to embed AI across commerce. - The New York Times

more cameras, more bots, fewer humans, more online shoppers

GenAI ate my bank: Wall Street bank CEOs say generative AI will boost productivity and eliminate jobs, with Citi planning about 20,000 cuts as part of $2.5 billion savings and Wells Fargo having cut headcount by over 25% since 2020. - Business Insider

What happens when every company shares a single brain cell? AI could hollow institutional knowledge, create vendor lock-in and long-term fragility, and shift competition toward cost and speed at the expense of innovation. - Business Insider

Eyes wide shut: Leaders must decide and limit AI agents' workplace visibility so their access mirrors what a reasonable employee would encounter, and firms should update role-based permissions, monitoring, auditing and governance to balance productivity gains with privacy and compliance risks. - Fast Company

Memory-makers are shifting capacity to AI data centers, causing a consumer DRAM and SSD shortage that Micron says could persist, Intel forecasts about nine to 12 months of laptop stock, and Jeff Bezos says this will accelerate cloud 'rent-a-PC' subscriptions. - Tom's Guide

Talking your book much? AWS is not replacing a $1k MacBook. But average Joe will pay more in SaaS subs. An interesting question is to what extent people will run local AI vs. cloud/SaaS as LLMs get commoditized.

Bondholders filed a proposed class-action in New York over $18 billion of September notes, alleging Oracle failed to disclose massive AI-related borrowing plans and left them holding the bag when credit quality and bond prices declined. - Yahoo

OpenAI, Anthropic and Google released healthcare AI tools in January 2024—OpenAI's ChatGPT Health (Jan 7), Anthropic's Claude for Healthcare (Jan 11), and Google's MedGemma 1.5 (Jan 13)—and OpenAI and Anthropic say health data won't be used to train models. - ZDNET

The force awakens: Mayo Clinic researchers used BabyFORce, an AI agent, to screen approved drugs for WAC-related DeSanto–Shinawi syndrome and identified clonazepam, which normalized WAC protein in Jorie Kraus’s cells and may have been the cause of rapid clinical improvement. - New York Magazine

Black Forest Labs released FLUX.2 [klein] image models (4B Apache-2.0 and 9B FLUX non-commercial) with Hugging Face weights and GitHub code, claiming sub‑0.5s generation on modern GPUs, ~13GB VRAM fit, and text-to-image plus editing features. - VentureBeat

ADBE gonna take another leg down

Hark, what bubble through yonder window breaks? Morningstar launched the PitchBook GenAI 20 index to track the 20 largest pure-play generative-AI firms using PitchBook valuations. - Wealth Management

Humanoid arms race: Milan Kovac, former head of Tesla's Optimus humanoid program, will join Boston Dynamics' board and become an adviser, and Hyundai plans a factory to produce 30,000 robots annually by 2028. - CNA

Dazed and confused by deepfakes: Ken Paxton released a 39‑second AI‑generated ad showing a digitally fabricated John Cornyn twirling with Jasmine Crockett, labeled in small text as AI satire, which Paxton is distributing digitally because it lacks the 'I approve this message' for linear TV. - The New York Times

A fake 'fake AI' video - Reddit

Good movie, got to see Demis Hassabis talk about it at the premiere - YouTube

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