#218 - Github Spark, MegaScience, US AI Action Plan

Our 218th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!

Recorded on 07/25/2025

Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov (twitter.com/andrey_kurenkov) and Jeremie Harris (twitter.com/jeremiecharris).

Feel free to email us your questions and feedback at contact@lastweekinai.comand/or hello@gladstone.ai

Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at lastweekin.ai.

In this episode:

• GitHub introduces Vibe Coding with Spark, engaging users with natural language and visual controls to develop full-stack applications.

• AI coding tools from Gemin, CLI and RepleIt face significant issues, inadvertently deleting user data and highlighting the importance of careful management.

• US release never Award Americans, AI Action Plan outlining economic, technical, and policy strategies to maintain leadership in AI technology.

• Newly released Mega Science and SWE-Perf data sets evaluate AI reasoning and performance capabilities in diverse scientific and software engineering tasks.

Timestamps + Links:

• (00:00:10) Intro / Banter

• (00:01:31) News Preview

• Tools & Apps

•

• (00:03:53) GitHub Introduces Vibe Coding with Spark: Revolutionizing Intelligent App Development in a Flash - MarkTechPost (marktechpost.com/2025/07/24/github-introduces-…)

• (00:07:05) Figma’s AI app building tool is now available for everyone | The Verge (theverge.com/news/712995/figma-make-ai-general…)

• (00:10:18) Two major AI coding tools wiped out user data after making cascading mistakes - Ars Technica (arstechnica.com/information-technology/2025/07…)

• (00:14:10) Google's AI Overviews have 2B monthly users, AI Mode 100M in the US and India | TechCrunch (techcrunch.com/2025/07/23/googles-ai-overviews…)

• Applications & Business

•

• (00:18:10) Leaked Memo: Anthropic CEO Says the Company Will Pursue Gulf State Investments After All (wired.com/story/anthropic-dario-amodei-gulf-st…)

• (00:24:39) Mira Murati says her startup Thinking Machines will release new product in ‘months’ with ‘significant open source component’ (venturebeat.com/ai/mira-murati-says-her-startu…)

• (00:27:07) Waymo responds to Tesla’s dick joke with a bigger Austin robotaxi map | The Verge (theverge.com/news/708885/waymo-austin-map-expa…)

• Projects & Open Source

•

• (00:32:05) MegaScience: Pushing the Frontiers of Post-Training Datasets for Science Reasoning (arxiv.org/pdf/2507.16812)

• (00:43:09) TikTok Researchers Introduce SWE-Perf: The First Benchmark for Repository-Level Code Performance Optimization - MarkTechPost (marktechpost.com/2025/07/21/tiktok-researchers…)

• Research & Advancements

•

• (00:47:17) Subliminal Learning: Language models transmit behavioral traits via hidden signals in data (arxiv.org/pdf/2507.14805)

• (00:55:34) Inverse Scaling in Test-Time Compute (arxiv.org/pdf/2507.14417)

• (01:02:34) Scaling Laws for Optimal Data Mixtures (arxiv.org/pdf/2507.09404)

• Policy & Safety

•

• (01:07:35) White House Unveils America’s AI Action Plan (whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/07/white-house-un…)

• (01:16:55) Chain of Thought Monitorability: A New and Fragile Opportunity for AI Safety (arxiv.org/pdf/2507.11473)

• (01:20:20) Self-preservation or Instruction Ambiguity? Examining the Causes of Shutdown Resistance (alignmentforum.org/posts/wnzkjSmrgWZaBa2aC/sel…)

• (01:24:00) People Are Being Involuntarily Committed, Jailed After Spiraling Into "ChatGPT Psychosis" (futurism.com/commitment-jail-chatgpt-psychosis)

• (01:28:03) Meta refuses to sign EU’s AI code of practice (techcrunch.com/2025/07/18/meta-refuses-to-sign…)

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