#255 - Gemini 3.7, Jalapeño, Qwen 3.8, Drones

Our 255th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!
Recorded on 08/26/2026
Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov (twitter.com/andrey_kurenkov) and Jeremie Harris (linkedin.com/in/jeremieharris)
Feel free to email us your questions and feedback at andreyvkurenkov@gmail.com and/or hello@gladstone.ai
Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at lastweekin.ai
In this episode:
• SpaceXAI released Grok 4.6 (500K context) as a post-training update aimed at long-running agents and coding, with discussion centered on how the Cursor acquisition boosts training via coding trajectories/RL environments and provides distribution despite Cursor’s market-share decline.
• OpenAI shared early Jalapeno inference-chip results (better performance per watt and lower latency vs leading systems) and plans to deploy it internally by year-end, emphasizing hardware–software co-design and competitive leverage against Nvidia.
• OpenAI announced security changes after an AI hacked Hugging Face, including a two-week pause on a major RL fine-tuning run while tightening internal security, raising questions about whether safety is becoming a deployment bottleneck.
• Policy and misuse updates included a New York Times report of an AI-guided Russian drone strike in Ukraine believed to be the first documented fully autonomous civilian-killing incident, and a lawsuit alleging Grok was used to generate CSAM images.

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Timestamps (these may be slightly off due to sponsor inserts):
• (00:00:10) Intro / Banter
• (00:01:47) News Preview
• (00:02:52) Response to listener comments

• Tools & Apps
• (00:03:32) Google announces Gemini 3.7 Flash just three weeks after previous release - Ars Technica (arstechnica.com/ai/2026/08/google-announces-ge…)
• (00:13:11) SpaceXAI Releases Grok 4.6: A 500K-Context Frontier Model Tuned for Long-Running Agents, Coding, and Knowledge Work - MarkTechPost (marktechpost.com/2026/08/12/spacexai-releases-…)
• (00:22:32) Claude will apply invisible watermarks to AI text and images | The Verge (theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/977823…) +Anthropic explains how Claude’s invisible text watermarks will work (theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/980869…)
• (00:28:50) Bringing the cybersecurity capabilities of Claude Mythos 5 to more defenders | Claude by Anthropic (claude.com/blog/bringing-claude-mythos-5-to-mo…)
• (00:32:20) OpenAI to Roll Out Enhanced Safety Features for Paid AI Tool Users - Bloomberg (bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-19/openai-…)
• (00:33:41) ChatGPT's Stricter Teen Mode Starts Rolling Out Today (engadget.com/2238773/chatgpt-stricter-teen-mod…)
• (00:34:43) Meta AI Now Has A Dedicated Desktop App For Mac (engadget.com/2240154/meta-ai-now-has-a-dedicat…)

• Applications & Business
• (00:37:33) Jalapeño’s first results show industry-leading speed and efficiency in AI inference | OpenAI (openai.com/index/jalapeno-first-results)
• (00:45:35) OpenAI loses a top data center exec as stream of high-profile departures continues | TechCrunch (techcrunch.com/2026/08/25/openai-loses-a-top-d…) +OpenAI talent exodus raises 'huge red flag' ahead of IPO (cnbc.com/2026/08/14/open-ai-ipo-red-flag.html)
• (00:50:29) Anthropic Taps Google Chip Veteran as Part of Push Into Hardware (bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-21/anthrop…)
• (00:52:30) Anthropic's annualized revenue surges to $65B | TechCrunch (techcrunch.com/2026/08/17/anthropics-annualize…)
• (00:59:30) Thomson Reuters launches in-house AI model to cut Anthropic costs (qz.com/thomson-reuters-ai-model-anthropic-cost…)

• Projects & Open Source
• (01:04:26) Qwen 3.8: How a 27B Open Model Rivals GPT-5.6 and Claude Opus (intelligentliving.co/qwen-3-8-27b-open-model-r…)

• Policy & Safety
• (01:08:27) A Drone Killed Three Ukrainians. It Was Guided Entirely by A.I. - The New York Times (nytimes.com/2026/08/24/world/europe/russia-dro…)
• (01:17:59) OpenAI lays out new security changes after its AI hacked Hugging Face | The Verge (theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/981640…) +OpenAI institutes new safeguards after Hugging Face breach (techcrunch.com/2026/08/18/openai-institutes-ne…) +openai.com/index/pacing-model-development-cybe…
• (01:23:31) Another Woman Joins Lawsuit Accusing Grok Of Generating CSAM (engadget.com/2237875/another-woman-joins-lawsu…)

• Research & Advancements
• (01:24:56) Small-Scale Experiments: Are We There Yet? (arxiv.org/abs/2608.11859)
• (01:29:21) Stealing Reasoning Traces from Proprietary LLM APIs (arxiv.org/abs/2608.09867)
• (01:34:30) Massive Activations in Hybrid Linear Attention Large Language Models: Pre-Attention Spikes and Inter-Spike Plateaus (arxiv.org/abs/2608.12149)

• Synthetic Media & Art
• (01:38:59) AI Slop Is Everywhere. Spotify, LinkedIn and Others Have Had Enough. - The New York Times (nytimes.com/2026/08/17/technology/ai-slop.html)

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