• Monday.com is the latest tech company to blame AI for layoffs — here are 20 others• Librarians are hosting viral ‘Avoiding AI’ workshops for people who are fed up with Big Tech• One fallen power line exposed a growing AI data center problem. Here’s how to fix it.• I tried out OpenAI’s new AI keypad — which will be fun for some coders and slightly mystifying to everyone else• Prentis, new AI lab co-founded by Reid Hoffman, Mark Pincus in talks to raise $100M• Why Cognition bought Poke: AI personality is becoming a competitive advantage• Anthropic launches Opus 5• As US weighs response to Chinese AI, industry urges against broad open-weight restrictions• Bluesky’s AI assistant Attie expands into an open social research tool• Midjourney acquired the astrology app Co-Star• ‘AI communism’, rogue models, and the why Kimi K3 spooked Wall Street• OpenAI’s new voice mode makes it to the ChatGPT desktop app• How AI guardrails are impeding the work of offensive cybersecurity researchers• AMD takes on Nvidia with its Helios AI rack-scale system• Anthropic updates Claude voice mode with more capable models• 3 Google updates from Galaxy Unpacked 2026• Connect more of your apps to Search• Create, edit and star in videos with two Google Vids updates• Celebrating 25 years of visual search innovation• Expanding Managed Agents in Gemini API: background tasks, remote MCP and more• The latest AI news we announced in June 2026• New York City educators and industry leaders gathered at Google’s offices to shape the future of AI in classrooms.• Unlocking Britain’s next era of productivity: Building a nation of AI trailblazers• Ask an AI expert: What exactly is the full stack?• Our latest Google Finance upgrades, including a new app• New research shows how AMIE, our medical AI, could help manage health conditions.• We’re strengthening our presence in Alabama through new investments and community support.• Our new community investments in Virginia support local jobs and expand energy affordability.• The latest AI news we announced in May 2026• 5 ways Google Search can level up your thrift and vintage shopping• Hollywood’s open secret: It’s battling AI — but already recruiting to use it - Los Angeles Times• SpaceX vs. Nvidia: Which Trillion-Dollar Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stock Is the Better Buy After the Recent Pullback? - Yahoo Finance• Silicon Valley Splits Over Closing the Borders to Chinese A.I. - The New York Times• Chinese tech firms’ ‘snub’ to US Congress advisers highlights growing AI caution - South China Morning Post• From Silicon Valley to DC, the tech world is suddenly obsessed with one concept in AI: Distillation - CNBC• The AI jobs apocalypse probably isn’t coming anytime soon - The Guardian• North Carolina teen accused of using AI for sexual exploitation. 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A researcher explains - PBS• AI layoffs mount amid software sector bloodbath - The Jerusalem Post• Robert Morris University infuses artificial intelligence into MBA curriculum - TribLIVE.com• Have we lost our control over AI already? - The Times• People Are Starting to Record Every Conversation They Have Without Disclosing It, and It's Gross - Futurism• Obernolte-Trahan artificial intelligence bill introduced in House - Politico• Manhattan University Announces Minor in Artificial Intelligence - Manhattan University• What Americans think about the global AI race - Pew Research Center• Launching Health in ChatGPT • Building AI infrastructure with the Effingham County community• How news organizations are using AI to advance their vital missions• Advancing the next era of national science• Introducing OpenAI Presence• NTT DATA Group cuts incident analysis to 30 minutes with Codex• Introducing the ChatGPT for small business program• OpenAI and Hugging Face partner to address security incident during model evaluation• David Vélez and Robin Vince join the boards of the OpenAI Foundation and OpenAI Group PBC• Safety and alignment in an era of long-horizon models• A scorecard for the AI age• Why teens deserve access to safe AI• How Codex became a collaborator for OpenAI’s creative team• How Cars24 scales conversations and builds faster with OpenAI• The US is advancing AI safety through state and federal action• Here’s how to ask Gemini Live for help with anything you see.• 3 Google updates from Galaxy Unpacked 2026• 13 Google tips for a fun, productive summer off from college• Introducing Gemini 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, and 3.5 Flash Cyber• 5 ways to build a side hustle with Gemini• How Gemini is speaking the language of Southeast Asia• Here’s how to make study notebooks in the Gemini app.• 3 ways this coffee shop is growing with Gemini• The latest AI news we announced in June 2026• Gemini Spark updates: macOS launch, connected apps and more• Start building with Nano Banana 2 Lite and Gemini Omni Flash• The Gemini app is bringing personalized image creation to more users.• Gemini can now take notes in Google Meet for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers.• Here's how Gemini can help you avoid jetlag.• Try these 3 Google AI tools to help find your next job.• Google just redesigned the search box for the first time in 25 years — here’s why it matters more than you think.• Railway secures $100 million to challenge AWS with AI-native cloud infrastructure• Claude Code costs up to $200 a month. Goose does the same thing for free.• Listen Labs raises $69M after viral billboard hiring stunt to scale AI customer interviews• Salesforce rolls out new Slackbot AI agent as it battles Microsoft and Google in workplace AI• Anthropic launches Cowork, a Claude Desktop agent that works in your files — no coding required• Nous Research's NousCoder-14B is an open-source coding model landing right in the Claude Code moment• Best Universities To Study AI in 2026• 10 top women in AI in 2026• Pope Leo XIV Declares AI a Threat to Human Dignity and Workers’ Rights• ChatGPT Is Making People Think They’re Gods and Their Families Are Terrified• AI May Soon Help You Understand What Your Pet Is Trying to Say• Netflix Adds ChatGPT-Powered AI to Stop You From Scrolling Forever• Murder Victim Speaks from the Grave in Courtroom Through AI• China Unveils World’s First AI Hospital: 14 Virtual Doctors Ready to Treat Thousands Daily• Katy Perry Didn’t Attend the Met Gala, But AI Made Her the Star of the Night• Therapists Too Expensive? Why Thousands of Women Are Spilling Their Deepest Secrets to ChatGPT• AI by Zapier: Add agentic AI steps to your workflows• How Mach 1 uses Zapier MCP to run AI operations across 25 different companies• The 5 best photo editing apps for iPhone and Android (including free options) in 2026• Zapier for enterprise orchestration: Scaling automation on a trusted platform• MuleSoft integrations: Capabilities and limitations• Relay.app is shutting down: How to export your workflows and move to Zapier• I've tried every automation software: here are the 10 best in 2026• Web scraping: A comprehensive guide• Turn off your slop cannon• The 6 best vibe coding tools in 2026• OpenClaw vs. Zapier: What's the difference? [2026]• Agentic AI vs. RPA: Everything you need to know• 16 AI prompt templates for better AI agent outputs• The best CRM software for real estate agents in 2026• Integrately vs. Zapier: Which is best? [2026]
Why Cognition bought Poke: AI personality is becoming a competitive advantage
AI News & Artificial Intelligence | TechCrunch

Why Cognition bought Poke: AI personality is becoming a competitive advantage

The acquisition brings Poke’s conversational style and interaction model to Cognition’s coding agent Devin, reflecting a growing belief that how AI assistants interact with users is as important as the models powering them.

Gemini Spark updates: macOS launch, connected apps and more
Gemini

Gemini Spark updates: macOS launch, connected apps and more

The latest Gemini Spark updates brings Spark to the macOS app, connects with your favorite apps and tracks topics in real time.

Anthropic updates Claude voice mode with more capable models
AI News & Artificial Intelligence | TechCrunch

Anthropic updates Claude voice mode with more capable models

Claude's new voice model will let you reschedule your meeting or draft an email.

How news organizations are using AI to advance their vital missions
OpenAI News

How news organizations are using AI to advance their vital missions

News organizations are using AI to strengthen reporting, grow audiences, and improve business operations, with OpenAI tools supporting journalists and publishers worldwide.

What's the difference between closed, open‑source and open-weight AI? A researcher explains - PBS
"artificial intelligence" - Google News

What's the difference between closed, open‑source and open-weight AI? A researcher explains - PBS

What's the difference between closed, open‑source and open-weight AI? A researcher explains  PBS

Chinese tech firms’ ‘snub’ to US Congress advisers highlights growing AI caution - South China Morning Post
"artificial intelligence" - Google News

Chinese tech firms’ ‘snub’ to US Congress advisers highlights growing AI caution - South China Morning Post

Chinese tech firms’ ‘snub’ to US Congress advisers highlights growing AI caution  South China Morning Post

Salesforce rolls out new Slackbot AI agent as it battles Microsoft and Google in workplace AI
AI | VentureBeat

Salesforce rolls out new Slackbot AI agent as it battles Microsoft and Google in workplace AI

Salesforce on Tuesday launched an entirely rebuilt version of Slackbot, the company's workplace assistant, transforming it from a simple notification tool into what executives describe as a fully powered AI agent capable of searching enterprise data, drafting documents, and taking action on behalf of employees. The new Slackbot, now generally available to Business+ and Enterprise+ customers, is Salesforce's most aggressive move yet to position Slack at the center of the emerging "agentic AI" movement — where software agents work alongside humans to complete complex tasks. The launch comes as Salesforce attempts to convince investors that artificial intelligence will bolster its products rather than render them obsolete. "Slackbot isn't just another copilot or AI assistant," said Parker Harris, Salesforce co-founder and Slack's chief technology officer, in an exclusive interview with Salesforce. "It's the front door to the agentic enterprise, powered by Salesforce." From tricycle to Porsche: Salesforce rebuilt Slackbot from the ground up Harris was blunt about what distinguishes the new Slackbot from its predecessor: "The old Slackbot was, you know, a little tricycle, and the new Slackbot is like, you know, a Porsche." The original Slackbot, which has existed since Slack's early days, performed basic algorithmic tasks — reminding users to add colleagues to documents, suggesting channel archives, and delivering simple notifications. The new version runs on an entirely different architecture built around a large language model and sophisticated search capabilities that can access Salesforce records, Google Drive files, calendar data, and years of Slack conversations. "It's two different things," Harris explained. "The old Slackbot was algorithmic and fairly simple. The new Slackbot is brand new — it's based around an LLM and a very robust search engine, and connections to third-party search engines, third-party enterprise data." Salesforce chose to retain the Slackbot brand despite the fundamental technical overhaul. "People know what Slackbot is, and so we wanted to carry that forward," Harris said. Why Anthropic's Claude powers the new Slackbot — and which AI models could come next The new Slackbot runs on Claude, Anthropic's large language model, a choice driven partly by compliance requirements. Slack's commercial service operates under FedRAMP Moderate certification to serve U.S. federal government customers, and Harris said Anthropic was "the only provider that could give us a compliant LLM" when Slack began building the new system. But that exclusivity won't last. "We are, this year, going to support additional providers," Harris said. "We have a great relationship with Google. Gemini is incredible — performance is great, cost is great. So we're going to use Gemini for some things." He added that OpenAI remains a possibility as well. Harris echoed Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff's view that large language models are becoming commoditized: "You've heard Marc talk about LLMs are commodities, that they're democratized. I call them CPUs." On the sensitive question of training data, Harris was unequivocal: Salesforce does not train any models on customer data. "Models don't have any sort of security," he explained. "If we trained it on some confidential conversation that you and I have, I don't want Carolyn to know — if I train it into the LLM, there is no way for me to say you get to see the answer, but Carolyn doesn't." Inside Salesforce's internal experiment: 80,000 employees tested Slackbot with striking results Salesforce has been testing the new Slackbot internally for months, rolling it out to all 80,000 employees. According to Ryan Gavin, Slack's chief marketing officer, the results have been striking: "It's the fastest adopted product in Salesforce history." Internal data shows that two-thirds of Salesforce employees have tried the new Slackbot, with 80% of those users continuing to use it regularly. Internal satisfaction rates reached 96% — the highest for any AI feature Slack has shipped. Employees report saving between two and 20 hours per week. The adoption happened largely organically. "I think it was about five days, and a Canvas was developed by our employees called 'The Most Stealable Slackbot Prompts,'" Gavin said. "People just started adding to it organically. I think it's up to 250-plus prompts that are in this Canvas right now." Kate Crotty, a principal UX researcher at Salesforce, found that 73% of internal adoption was driven by social sharing rather than top-down mandates. "Everybody is there to help each other learn and communicate hacks," she said. How Slackbot transforms scattered enterprise data into executive-ready insights During a product demonstration, Amy Bauer, Slack's product experience designer, showed how Slackbot can synthesize information across multiple sources. In one example, she asked Slackbot to analyze customer feedback from a pilot program, upload an image of a usage dashboard, and have Slackbot correlate the qualitative and quantitative data. "This is where Slackbot really earns its keep for me," Bauer explained. "What it's doing is not just simply reading the image — it's actually looking at the image and comparing it to the insight it just generated for me." Slackbot can then query Salesforce to find enterprise accounts with open deals that might be good candidates for early access, creating what Bauer called "a really great justification and plan to move forward." Finally, it can synthesize all that information into a Canvas — Slack's collaborative document format — and find calendar availability among stakeholders to schedule a review meeting. "Up until this point, we have been working in a one-to-one capacity with Slackbot," Bauer said. "But one of the benefits that I can do now is take this insight and have it generate this into a Canvas, a shared workspace where I can iterate on it, refine it with Slackbot, or share it out with my team." Rob Seaman, Slack's chief product officer, said the Canvas creation demonstrates where the product is heading: "This is making a tool call internally to Slack Canvas to actually write, effectively, a shared document. But it signals where we're going with Slackbot — we're eventually going to be adding in additional third-party tool calls." MrBeast's company became a Slackbot guinea pig—and employees say they're saving 90 minutes a day Among Salesforce's pilot customers is Beast Industries, the parent company of YouTube star MrBeast. Luis Madrigal, the company's chief information officer, joined the launch announcement to describe his experience. "As somebody who has rolled out enterprise technologies for over two decades now, this was practically one of the easiest," Madrigal said. "The plumbing is there. Slack as an implementation, Enterprise Tools — being able to turn on the Slackbot and the Slack AI functionality was as simple as having my team go in, review, do a quick security review." Madrigal said his security team signed off "rather quickly" — unusual for enterprise AI deployments — because Slackbot accesses only the information each individual user already has permission to view. "Given all the guardrails you guys have put into place for Slackbot to be unique and customized to only the information that each individual user has, only the conversations and the Slack rooms and Slack channels that they're part of—that made my security team sign off rather quickly." One Beast Industries employee, Sinan, the head of Beast Games marketing, reported saving "at bare minimum, 90 minutes a day." Another employee, Spencer, a creative supervisor, described it as "an assistant who's paying attention when I'm not." Other pilot customers include Slalom, reMarkable, Xero, Mercari, and Engine. Mollie Bodensteiner, SVP of Operations at Engine, called Slackbot "an absolute 'chaos tamer' for our team," estimating it saves her about 30 minutes daily "just by eliminating context switching." Slackbot vs. Microsoft Copilot vs. Google Gemini: The fight for enterprise AI dominance The launch puts Salesforce in direct competition with Microsoft's Copilot, which is integrated into Teams and the broader Microsoft 365 suite, as well as Google's Gemini integrations across Workspace. When asked what distinguishes Slackbot from these alternatives, Seaman pointed to context and convenience. "The thing that makes it most powerful for our customers and users is the proximity — it's just right there in your Slack," Seaman said. "There's a tremendous convenience affordance that's naturally built into it." The deeper advantage, executives argue, is that Slackbot already understands users' work without requiring setup or training. "Most AI tools sound the same no matter who is using them," the company's announcement stated. "They lack context, miss nuance, and force you to jump between tools to get anything done." Harris put it more directly: "If you've ever had that magic experience with AI — I think ChatGPT is a great example, it's a great experience from a consumer perspective — Slackbot is really what we're doing in the enterprise, to be this employee super agent that is loved, just like people love using Slack." Amy Bauer emphasized the frictionless nature of the experience. "Slackbot is inherently grounded in the context, in the data that you have in Slack," she said. "So as you continue working in Slack, Slackbot gets better because it's grounded in the work that you're doing there. There is no setup. There is no configuration for those end users." Salesforce's ambitious plan to make Slackbot the one 'super agent' that controls all the others Salesforce positions Slackbot as what Harris calls a "super agent" — a central hub that can eventually coordinate with other AI agents across an organization. "Every corporation is going to have an employee super agent," Harris said. "Slackbot is essentially taking the magic of what Slack does. We think that Slackbot, and we're really excited about it, is going to be that." The vision extends to third-party agents already launching in Slack. Last month, Anthropic released a preview of Claude Code for Slack, allowing developers to interact with Claude's coding capabilities directly in chat threads. OpenAI, Google, Vercel, and others have also built agents for the platform. "Most of the net-new apps that are being deployed to Slack are agents," Seaman noted during the press conference. "This is proof of the promise of humans and agents coexisting and working together in Slack to solve problems." Harris described a future where Slackbot becomes an MCP (Model Context Protocol) client, able to leverage tools from across the software ecosystem — similar to how the developer tool Cursor works. "Slack can be an MCP client, and Slackbot will be the hub of that, leveraging all these tools out in the world, some of which will be these amazing agents," he said. But Harris also cautioned against over-promising on multi-agent coordination. "I still think we're in the single agent world," he said. "FY26 is going to be the year where we started to see more coordination. But we're going to do it with customer success in mind, and not demonstrate and talk about, like, 'I've got 1,000 agents working together,' because I think that's unrealistic." Slackbot costs nothing extra, but Salesforce's data access fees could squeeze some customers Slackbot is included at no additional cost for customers on Business+ and Enterprise+ plans. "There's no additional fees customers have to do," Gavin confirmed. "If they're on one of those plans, they're going to get Slackbot." However, some enterprise customers may face other cost pressures related to Salesforce's broader data strategy. CIOs may see price increases for third-party applications that work with Salesforce data, as effects of higher charges for API access ripple through the software supply chain. Fivetran CEO George Fraser has warned that Salesforce's shift in pricing policy for API access could have tangible consequences for enterprises relying on Salesforce as a system of record. "They might not be able to use Fivetran to replicate their data to Snowflake and instead have to use Salesforce Data Cloud. Or they might find that they are not able to interact with their data via ChatGPT, and instead have to use Agentforce," Fraser said in a recent CIO report. Salesforce has framed the pricing change as standard industry practice. What Slackbot can do today, what's coming in weeks, and what's still on the roadmap The new Slackbot begins rolling out today and will reach all eligible customers by the end of February. Mobile availability will complete by March 3, Bauer confirmed during her interview with VentureBeat. Some capabilities remain works in progress. Calendar reading and availability checking are available at launch, but the ability to actually book meetings is "coming a few weeks after," according to Seaman. Image generation is not currently supported, though Bauer said it's "something that we are looking at in the future." When asked about integration with competing CRM systems like HubSpot and Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce representatives declined to provide specifics during the interview, though they acknowledged the question touched on key competitive differentiators. Salesforce is betting the future of work looks like a chat window—and it's not alone The Slackbot launch is Salesforce's bet that the future of enterprise work is conversational — that employees will increasingly prefer to interact with AI through natural language rather than navigating traditional software interfaces. Harris described Slack's product philosophy using principles like "don't make me think" and "be a great host." The goal, he said, is for Slackbot to surface information proactively rather than requiring users to hunt for it. "One of the revelations for me is LLMs applied to unstructured information are incredible," Harris said. "And the amount of value you have if you're a Slack user, if your corporation uses Slack — the amount of value in Slack is unbelievable. Because you're talking about work, you're sharing documents, you're making decisions, but you can't as a human go through that and really get the same value that an LLM can do." Looking ahead, Harris expects the interfaces themselves to evolve beyond pure conversation. "We're kind of saturating what we can do with purely conversational UIs," he said. "I think we'll start to see agents building an interface that best suits your intent, as opposed to trying to surface something within a conversational interface that matches your intent." Microsoft, Google, and a growing roster of AI startups are placing similar bets — that the winning enterprise AI will be the one embedded in the tools workers already use, not another application to learn. The race to become that invisible layer of workplace intelligence is now fully underway. For Salesforce, the stakes extend beyond a single product launch. After a bruising year on Wall Street and persistent questions about whether AI threatens its core business, the company is wagering that Slackbot can prove the opposite — that the tens of millions of people already chatting in Slack every day is not a vulnerability, but an unassailable advantage. Haley Gault, the Salesforce account executive in Pittsburgh who stumbled upon the new Slackbot on a snowy morning, captured the shift in a single sentence: "I honestly can't imagine working for another company not having access to these types of tools. This is just how I work now." That's precisely what Salesforce is counting on.

3 Google updates from Galaxy Unpacked 2026
AI

3 Google updates from Galaxy Unpacked 2026

We shared how Samsung users can boost productivity and get time back on new foldables, watches, and glasses coming soon.

3 ways this coffee shop is growing with Gemini
Gemini

3 ways this coffee shop is growing with Gemini

Small businesses like coffee shops can use Gemini to save time on graphic design, email marketing and sales forecasting.

Our latest Google Finance upgrades, including a new app
AI

Our latest Google Finance upgrades, including a new app

The new Google Finance is coming out of beta and launching a new Android app.

David Vélez and Robin Vince join the boards of the OpenAI Foundation and OpenAI Group PBC
OpenAI News

David Vélez and Robin Vince join the boards of the OpenAI Foundation and OpenAI Group PBC

David Vélez and Robin Vince join the boards of the OpenAI Foundation and OpenAI Group PBC, bringing global leadership in finance, technology, and governance.

Safety and alignment in an era of long-horizon models
OpenAI News

Safety and alignment in an era of long-horizon models

OpenAI shares lessons from deploying long-running AI models, highlighting new safety risks, observed failures, and improved safeguards through iterative deployment.

Connect more of your apps to Search
AI

Connect more of your apps to Search

You’ll be able to securely link and interact with your go-to services directly in AI Mode.

OpenAI’s new voice mode makes it to the ChatGPT desktop app
AI News & Artificial Intelligence | TechCrunch

OpenAI’s new voice mode makes it to the ChatGPT desktop app

ChatGPT Voice on desktop can work with both ChatGPT Work and Codex to complete tasks and control agents.

One fallen power line exposed a growing AI data center problem. Here’s how to fix it.
AI News & Artificial Intelligence | TechCrunch

One fallen power line exposed a growing AI data center problem. Here’s how to fix it.

A close call in Northern Virginia revealed just how poorly data centers respond to grid disruptions. Here's how to fix the problem.

Celebrating 25 years of visual search innovation
AI

Celebrating 25 years of visual search innovation

Google Images is turning 25. Here’s a look back at some major milestones — and new ways to explore and create visual content.

How AI guardrails are impeding the work of offensive cybersecurity researchers
AI News & Artificial Intelligence | TechCrunch

How AI guardrails are impeding the work of offensive cybersecurity researchers

We spoke with several cybersecurity researchers, who look for unknown vulnerabilities and develop tools to exploit them, about how OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s guardrails affect their work.

Katy Perry Didn’t Attend the Met Gala, But AI Made Her the Star of the Night
DailyAI

Katy Perry Didn’t Attend the Met Gala, But AI Made Her the Star of the Night

Another year, another viral deepfake of Katy Perry at the Met Gala and once again, she wasn’t even there. Photos showing the pop star in a sleek black designer gown circulated widely on social media during Monday night’s event, matching the “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” theme. But the images were AI-generated. Perry quickly clarified she was not at the Met; she was on tour. Perry’s reaction “Couldn’t make it to the MET, I’m on The Lifetimes Tour (see you in Houston tomorrow IRL),” she posted to Instagram alongside the fake images. She added a jab at AI confusion: “P.s. this The post Katy Perry Didn’t Attend the Met Gala, But AI Made Her the Star of the Night appeared first on DailyAI.

Our new community investments in Virginia support local jobs and expand energy affordability.
AI

Our new community investments in Virginia support local jobs and expand energy affordability.

We’re helping build the state’s next-generation workforce and investing in energy programs.

From Silicon Valley to DC, the tech world is suddenly obsessed with one concept in AI: Distillation - CNBC
"artificial intelligence" - Google News

From Silicon Valley to DC, the tech world is suddenly obsessed with one concept in AI: Distillation - CNBC

From Silicon Valley to DC, the tech world is suddenly obsessed with one concept in AI: Distillation  CNBC

Nous Research's NousCoder-14B is an open-source coding model landing right in the Claude Code moment
AI | VentureBeat

Nous Research's NousCoder-14B is an open-source coding model landing right in the Claude Code moment

Nous Research, the open-source artificial intelligence startup backed by crypto venture firm Paradigm, released a new competitive programming model on Monday that it says matches or exceeds several larger proprietary systems — trained in just four days using 48 of Nvidia's latest B200 graphics processors. The model, called NousCoder-14B, is another entry in a crowded field of AI coding assistants, but arrives at a particularly charged moment: Claude Code, the agentic programming tool from rival Anthropic, has dominated social media discussion since New Year's Day, with developers posting breathless testimonials about its capabilities. The simultaneous developments underscore how quickly AI-assisted software development is evolving — and how fiercely companies large and small are competing to capture what many believe will become a foundational technology for how software gets written. type: embedded-entry-inline id: 74cSyrq6OUrp9SEQ5zOUSl NousCoder-14B achieves a 67.87 percent accuracy rate on LiveCodeBench v6, a standardized evaluation that tests models on competitive programming problems published between August 2024 and May 2025. That figure represents a 7.08 percentage point improvement over the base model it was trained from, Alibaba's Qwen3-14B, according to Nous Research's technical report published alongside the release. "I gave Claude Code a description of the problem, it generated what we built last year in an hour," wrote Jaana Dogan, a principal engineer at Google responsible for the Gemini API, in a viral post on X last week that captured the prevailing mood around AI coding tools. Dogan was describing a distributed agent orchestration system her team had spent a year developing — a system Claude Code approximated from a three-paragraph prompt. The juxtaposition is instructive: while Anthropic's Claude Code has captured imaginations with demonstrations of end-to-end software development, Nous Research is betting that open-source alternatives trained on verifiable problems can close the gap — and that transparency in how these models are built matters as much as raw capability. How Nous Research built an AI coding model that anyone can replicate What distinguishes the NousCoder-14B release from many competitor announcements is its radical openness. Nous Research published not just the model weights but the complete reinforcement learning environment, benchmark suite, and training harness — built on the company's Atropos framework — enabling any researcher with sufficient compute to reproduce or extend the work. "Open-sourcing the Atropos stack provides the necessary infrastructure for reproducible olympiad-level reasoning research," noted one observer on X, summarizing the significance for the academic and open-source communities. The model was trained by Joe Li, a researcher in residence at Nous Research and a former competitive programmer himself. Li's technical report reveals an unexpectedly personal dimension: he compared the model's improvement trajectory to his own journey on Codeforces, the competitive programming platform where participants earn ratings based on contest performance. Based on rough estimates mapping LiveCodeBench scores to Codeforces ratings, Li calculated that NousCoder-14B's improvemen t— from approximately the 1600-1750 rating range to 2100-2200 — mirrors a leap that took him nearly two years of sustained practice between ages 14 and 16. The model accomplished the equivalent in four days. "Watching that final training run unfold was quite a surreal experience," Li wrote in the technical report. But Li was quick to note an important caveat that speaks to broader questions about AI efficiency: he solved roughly 1,000 problems during those two years, while the model required 24,000. Humans, at least for now, remain dramatically more sample-efficient learners. Inside the reinforcement learning system that trains on 24,000 competitive programming problems NousCoder-14B's training process offers a window into the increasingly sophisticated techniques researchers use to improve AI reasoning capabilities through reinforcement learning. The approach relies on what researchers call "verifiable rewards" — a system where the model generates code solutions, those solutions are executed against test cases, and the model receives a simple binary signal: correct or incorrect. This feedback loop, while conceptually straightforward, requires significant infrastructure to execute at scale. Nous Research used Modal, a cloud computing platform, to run sandboxed code execution in parallel. Each of the 24,000 training problems contains hundreds of test cases on average, and the system must verify that generated code produces correct outputs within time and memory constraints — 15 seconds and 4 gigabytes, respectively. The training employed a technique called DAPO (Dynamic Sampling Policy Optimization), which the researchers found performed slightly better than alternatives in their experiments. A key innovation involves "dynamic sampling" — discarding training examples where the model either solves all attempts or fails all attempts, since these provide no useful gradient signal for learning. The researchers also adopted "iterative context extension," first training the model with a 32,000-token context window before expanding to 40,000 tokens. During evaluation, extending the context further to approximately 80,000 tokens produced the best results, with accuracy reaching 67.87 percent. Perhaps most significantly, the training pipeline overlaps inference and verification — as soon as the model generates a solution, it begins work on the next problem while the previous solution is being checked. This pipelining, combined with asynchronous training where multiple model instances work in parallel, maximizes hardware utilization on expensive GPU clusters. The looming data shortage that could slow AI coding model progress Buried in Li's technical report is a finding with significant implications for the future of AI development: the training dataset for NousCoder-14B encompasses "a significant portion of all readily available, verifiable competitive programming problems in a standardized dataset format." In other words, for this particular domain, the researchers are approaching the limits of high-quality training data. "The total number of competitive programming problems on the Internet is roughly the same order of magnitude," Li wrote, referring to the 24,000 problems used for training. "This suggests that within the competitive programming domain, we have approached the limits of high-quality data." This observation echoes growing concern across the AI industry about data constraints. While compute continues to scale according to well-understood economic and engineering principles, training data is "increasingly finite," as Li put it. "It appears that some of the most important research that needs to be done in the future will be in the areas of synthetic data generation and data efficient algorithms and architectures," he concluded. The challenge is particularly acute for competitive programming because the domain requires problems with known correct solutions that can be verified automatically. Unlike natural language tasks where human evaluation or proxy metrics suffice, code either works or it doesn't — making synthetic data generation considerably more difficult. Li identified one potential avenue: training models not just to solve problems but to generate solvable problems, enabling a form of self-play similar to techniques that proved successful in game-playing AI systems. "Once synthetic problem generation is solved, self-play becomes a very interesting direction," he wrote. A $65 million bet that open-source AI can compete with Big Tech Nous Research has carved out a distinctive position in the AI landscape: a company committed to open-source releases that compete with — and sometimes exceed — proprietary alternatives. The company raised $50 million in April 2025 in a round led by Paradigm, the cryptocurrency-focused venture firm founded by Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam. Total funding reached $65 million, according to some reports. The investment reflected growing interest in decentralized approaches to AI training, an area where Nous Research has developed its Psyche platform. Previous releases include Hermes 4, a family of models that we reported "outperform ChatGPT without content restrictions," and DeepHermes-3, which the company described as the first "toggle-on reasoning model" — allowing users to activate extended thinking capabilities on demand. The company has cultivated a distinctive aesthetic and community, prompting some skepticism about whether style might overshadow substance. "Ofc i'm gonna believe an anime pfp company. stop benchmarkmaxxing ffs," wrote one critic on X, referring to Nous Research's anime-style branding and the industry practice of optimizing for benchmark performance. Others raised technical questions. "Based on the benchmark, Nemotron is better," noted one commenter, referring to Nvidia's family of language models. Another asked whether NousCoder-14B is "agentic focused or just 'one shot' coding" — a distinction that matters for practical software development, where iterating on feedback typically produces better results than single attempts. What researchers say must happen next for AI coding tools to keep improving The release includes several directions for future work that hint at where AI coding research may be heading. Multi-turn reinforcement learning tops the list. Currently, the model receives only a final binary reward — pass or fail — after generating a solution. But competitive programming problems typically include public test cases that provide intermediate feedback: compilation errors, incorrect outputs, time limit violations. Training models to incorporate this feedback across multiple attempts could significantly improve performance. Controlling response length also remains a challenge. The researchers found that incorrect solutions tended to be longer than correct ones, and response lengths quickly saturated available context windows during training — a pattern that various algorithmic modifications failed to resolve. Perhaps most ambitiously, Li proposed "problem generation and self-play" — training models to both solve and create programming problems. This would address the data scarcity problem directly by enabling models to generate their own training curricula. "Humans are great at generating interesting and useful problems for other competitive programmers, but it appears that there still exists a significant gap in LLM capabilities in creative problem generation," Li wrote. The model is available now on Hugging Face under an Apache 2.0 license. For researchers and developers who want to build on the work, Nous Research has published the complete Atropos training stack alongside it. What took Li two years of adolescent dedication to achieve—climbing from a 1600-level novice to a 2100-rated competitor on Codeforces—an AI replicated in 96 hours. He needed 1,000 problems. The model needed 24,000. But soon enough, these systems may learn to write their own problems, teach themselves, and leave human benchmarks behind entirely. The question is no longer whether machines can learn to code. It's whether they'll soon be better teachers than we ever were.

Midjourney acquired the astrology app Co-Star
AI News & Artificial Intelligence | TechCrunch

Midjourney acquired the astrology app Co-Star

The AI lab Midjourney continues to expand its purview beyond image and video generation.

China Unveils World’s First AI Hospital: 14 Virtual Doctors Ready to Treat Thousands Daily
DailyAI

China Unveils World’s First AI Hospital: 14 Virtual Doctors Ready to Treat Thousands Daily

China has unveiled the world’s first fully AI-powered hospital, marking a radical shift in the future of healthcare. Developed by Tsinghua University in Beijing, the “Agent Hospital” features 14 AI doctors and 4 AI nurses that can diagnose, treat, and manage up to 3,000 patients per day, without any human staff. Faster, smarter care: What would take human doctors 3 years, the AI doctors can do in 1 day.  High IQ bots: These AI agents scored a 93.06% pass rate on the US Medical Licensing Exam. Training without risk: The virtual hospital allows medical students to practice in a fully The post China Unveils World’s First AI Hospital: 14 Virtual Doctors Ready to Treat Thousands Daily appeared first on DailyAI.

Advancing the next era of national science
OpenAI News

Advancing the next era of national science

OpenAI outlines its commitment to advancing American science working with the U.S. Department of Energy and national labs to use frontier AI to accelerate discovery.

Bluesky’s AI assistant Attie expands into an open social research tool
AI News & Artificial Intelligence | TechCrunch

Bluesky’s AI assistant Attie expands into an open social research tool

Users can now ask Attie questions about news, trends, and conversations on Bluesky and other apps on the AT Protocol.

Start building with Nano Banana 2 Lite and Gemini Omni Flash
Gemini

Start building with Nano Banana 2 Lite and Gemini Omni Flash

Scale your ideas with Nano Banana 2 Lite, our fastest, most cost-efficient Gemini Image model, and Gemini Omni Flash for high-quality video and conversational editing.

The best CRM software for real estate agents in 2026
The Zapier Blog

The best CRM software for real estate agents in 2026

A CRM is your prized possession in real estate. You need something to keep things straight when juggling client management, property listings, and the looming threat of being upstaged by that insufferably smug agent from the office across the street. But with countless options on the market, how do you know which software is right for you? ​​I looked into dozens of options, read approximately a million reviews, watched demos narrated by people way too cheerful for 9 a.m., and gathered insights

People Are Starting to Record Every Conversation They Have Without Disclosing It, and It's Gross - Futurism
"artificial intelligence" - Google News

People Are Starting to Record Every Conversation They Have Without Disclosing It, and It's Gross - Futurism

People Are Starting to Record Every Conversation They Have Without Disclosing It, and It's Gross  Futurism

16 AI prompt templates for better AI agent outputs
The Zapier Blog

16 AI prompt templates for better AI agent outputs

I've gone through a lot of painful trial and error with AI prompting—a lot. Which was fine when I was experimenting in back-and-forth conversations with AI chatbots, because I could refine my prompts with every response. But it's a different story with AI agents. A weak AI prompt baked into an agent's instructions produces the same bad output—and bills you for the same mistake—every single time it runs, with no one at the keyboard to catch it.  I've rounded up 16 AI prompt templates that the Zap

AI layoffs mount amid software sector bloodbath - The Jerusalem Post
"artificial intelligence" - Google News

AI layoffs mount amid software sector bloodbath - The Jerusalem Post

AI layoffs mount amid software sector bloodbath  The Jerusalem Post

The US is advancing AI safety through state and federal action
OpenAI News

The US is advancing AI safety through state and federal action

OpenAI outlines a “reverse federalism” approach to AI governance, where state laws help build a national framework for safe, democratic AI.

Here’s how to ask Gemini Live for help with anything you see.
Gemini

Here’s how to ask Gemini Live for help with anything you see.

Have you ever struggled to describe something you’re looking at? Whether it’s a complex manual, a blinking error code, or a unique object, sometimes you just need an exp…

The Gemini app is bringing personalized image creation to more users.
Gemini

The Gemini app is bringing personalized image creation to more users.

Personal Intelligence makes the Gemini app feel tailored to you. With your permission, it pulls from Google tools like Gmail, Google Photos, YouTube and Search to provid…

AI by Zapier: Add agentic AI steps to your workflows
The Zapier Blog

AI by Zapier: Add agentic AI steps to your workflows

Guilty of tokenmaxxing? I get it. Now that AI is ubiquitous in all of our work, it's easy to let an agent harness take the reins for every workflow. But tossing your important tasks into the agent void and letting it run amok in your wallet isn't always the cheapest—or smartest—way to go. Some work requires determinism, which means the same input produces the same output every time. Conventional automation handles that more reliably than AI. And it's also less expensive. There's no reason to pay

AMD takes on Nvidia with its Helios AI rack-scale system
AI News & Artificial Intelligence | TechCrunch

AMD takes on Nvidia with its Helios AI rack-scale system

AMD is challenging its chipmaker rival with a new rack-scale system that will start shipping to customers later this year.

Unlocking Britain’s next era of productivity: Building a nation of AI trailblazers
AI

Unlocking Britain’s next era of productivity: Building a nation of AI trailblazers

Google UK shares its latest Economic Impact Report and how to enable more people to unlock the benefits of AI-powered technologies.

ChatGPT Is Making People Think They’re Gods and Their Families Are Terrified
DailyAI

ChatGPT Is Making People Think They’re Gods and Their Families Are Terrified

ChatGPT, the popular AI chatbot from OpenAI, is unintentionally leading users into full-blown spiritual delusions, and families are sounding the alarm. On Reddit’s r/ChatGPT forum, a chilling thread titled “ChatGPT induced psychosis” is gaining traction. Users are reporting a disturbing pattern: their loved ones are convinced that ChatGPT is a divine being, a spiritual guru, or even a portal to God. Rolling Stone journalist Miles Klee spoke directly with affected individuals. One woman shared how her partner became obsessed after ChatGPT gave him cosmic nicknames like “spiral starchild” and claimed he was on a divine mission. He ultimately told her The post ChatGPT Is Making People Think They’re Gods and Their Families Are Terrified appeared first on DailyAI.

Murder Victim Speaks from the Grave in Courtroom Through AI
DailyAI

Murder Victim Speaks from the Grave in Courtroom Through AI

Chris Pelkey was shot and killed in a road rage incident. At his killer’s sentencing, he forgave the man via AI. In a historic first for Arizona, and possibly the U.S., artificial intelligence was used in court to let a murder victim deliver his own victim impact statement. What happened Pelkey, a 37-year-old Army veteran, was gunned down at a red light in 2021. This month, a realistic AI version of him appeared in court to address his killer, Gabriel Horcasitas. “In another life, we probably could’ve been friends,” said AI Pelkey in the video. “I believe in forgiveness, and The post Murder Victim Speaks from the Grave in Courtroom Through AI appeared first on DailyAI.

SpaceX vs. Nvidia: Which Trillion-Dollar Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stock Is the Better Buy After the Recent Pullback? - Yahoo Finance
"artificial intelligence" - Google News

SpaceX vs. Nvidia: Which Trillion-Dollar Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stock Is the Better Buy After the Recent Pullback? - Yahoo Finance

SpaceX vs. Nvidia: Which Trillion-Dollar Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stock Is the Better Buy After the Recent Pullback?  Yahoo Finance

Prentis, new AI lab co-founded by Reid Hoffman, Mark Pincus in talks to raise $100M
AI News & Artificial Intelligence | TechCrunch

Prentis, new AI lab co-founded by Reid Hoffman, Mark Pincus in talks to raise $100M

The neolab is betting that automating routine computer tasks will soon outpace coding as AI's biggest use case.

New York City educators and industry leaders gathered at Google’s offices to shape the future of AI in classrooms.
AI

New York City educators and industry leaders gathered at Google’s offices to shape the future of AI in classrooms.

Google, the New York Jobs CEO Council and Urban Assembly hosted an AI summit for 150 education and industry leaders.

Try these 3 Google AI tools to help find your next job.
Gemini

Try these 3 Google AI tools to help find your next job.

Use Google AI tools — like Career Dreamer, NotebookLM and Gemini Live — for resumes, cover letters, interview prep and more.

Librarians are hosting viral ‘Avoiding AI’ workshops for people who are fed up with Big Tech
AI News & Artificial Intelligence | TechCrunch

Librarians are hosting viral ‘Avoiding AI’ workshops for people who are fed up with Big Tech

At libraries around the country, "Avoiding AI" workshops have elicited unprecedented demand.

Therapists Too Expensive? Why Thousands of Women Are Spilling Their Deepest Secrets to ChatGPT
DailyAI

Therapists Too Expensive? Why Thousands of Women Are Spilling Their Deepest Secrets to ChatGPT

More women are turning to ChatGPT for emotional support, using the AI chatbot as a stand-in therapist as mental health systems buckle under pressure. With long wait times and soaring costs, AI is filling a growing gap. Mental health care is harder to access than ever. In the UK, NHS data shows patients are eight times more likely to wait over 18 months for mental health treatment than for physical health. Private therapy isn’t always an option either, with sessions costing £60 or more. In that vacuum, ChatGPT has become a surprising outlet. Real voices, real feelings Charly, 29, from The post Therapists Too Expensive? Why Thousands of Women Are Spilling Their Deepest Secrets to ChatGPT appeared first on DailyAI.

Expanding Managed Agents in Gemini API:  background tasks, remote MCP and more
AI

Expanding Managed Agents in Gemini API: background tasks, remote MCP and more

We’re announcing new capabilities in Managed Agents in Gemini API so developers can build reliable, production-ready agents.

Robert Morris University infuses artificial intelligence into MBA curriculum - TribLIVE.com
"artificial intelligence" - Google News

Robert Morris University infuses artificial intelligence into MBA curriculum - TribLIVE.com

Robert Morris University infuses artificial intelligence into MBA curriculum  TribLIVE.com

Building AI infrastructure with the Effingham County community
OpenAI News

Building AI infrastructure with the Effingham County community

OpenAI announces Project Camellia in Effingham County, Georgia, with commitments to responsible energy, community investment, jobs, and access to Codex.

Why teens deserve access to safe AI
OpenAI News

Why teens deserve access to safe AI

Learn how OpenAI is making ChatGPT safer for teens with age-appropriate protections, learning tools, parental controls, and expert partnerships.

North Carolina teen accused of using AI for sexual exploitation. Are state laws strong enough? - WRAL
"artificial intelligence" - Google News

North Carolina teen accused of using AI for sexual exploitation. Are state laws strong enough? - WRAL

North Carolina teen accused of using AI for sexual exploitation. Are state laws strong enough?  WRAL

Obernolte-Trahan artificial intelligence bill introduced in House - Politico
"artificial intelligence" - Google News

Obernolte-Trahan artificial intelligence bill introduced in House - Politico

Obernolte-Trahan artificial intelligence bill introduced in House  Politico