What even is the AI bubble?
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What makes this moment surreal is the honesty. The same people pouring billions into AI will openly tell you it might all come crashing down.
Taylor framed it as two truths existing at once. “I think it is both true that AI will transform the economy,” he told me, “and I think we’re also in a bubble, and a lot of people will lose a lot of money. I think both are absolutely true at the same time."
He compared it to the internet. Webvan failed, but Instacart succeeded years later with essentially the same idea. If you were an Amazon shareholder from its IPO to now, you’re looking pretty good. If you were a Webvan shareholder, you probably feel differently. ...
Maybe AI will save us from our own irrational exuberance. But for now, we’re living in an in-between moment when everyone knows what’s coming but keeps blowing more air into the balloon anyway. As Altman put it that night at dinner: “Someone is going to lose a phenomenal amount of money. We don’t know who.”
See the full story here: https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/12/15/1129183/what-even-is-the-ai-bubble/
Anthropic’s Chief Scientist Says We’re Rapidly Approaching the Moment That Could Doom Us All
Anthropic’s chief scientist Jared Kaplan is making some grave predictions about humanity’s future with AI. ...
Such a point is fast approaching, he says in a new interview with The Guardian. By 2030, Kaplan predicts, or as soon as 2027, humanity will have to decide whether to take the “ultimate risk” of letting AI models train themselves. The ensuing “intelligence explosion” could elevate the tech to new heights, birthing a so-called artificial general intelligence (AGI) which equals or surpasses human intellect and benefits humankind with all sorts of scientific and medical advancements. Or it could allow AI’s power to snowball beyond our control, leaving us at the mercy of its whims. ...
Kaplan conceded it’s possible that AI’s capabilities could stagnate. “Maybe the best AI ever is the AI that we have right now,” he mused. “But we really don’t think that’s the case. We think it’s going to keep getting better.”
See the full story here: https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/anthropic-ai-scientist-doom
The white-collar layoffs have come to McKinsey
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The company is planning deep cuts across its non-client-facing staff, Bloomberg reports, as much as 10% of headcount within some areas, a move that could eliminate several thousand jobs over the next 18 to 24 months. ...
But AI has also opened up consulting opportunities as major firms advise the globe's biggest companies on how to integrate the new technology — making it difficult to get a precise read on the overall consulting industry's state. ...
McKinsey’s move lands with particular symbolic weight because of the firm’s cultural role in white-collar America. When McKinsey — an emblem of elite professions — lays off workers, it often means the larger white-collar labor cycle has turned negative. ...
See the full story here: https://qz.com/mckinsey-layoffs-white-collar-jobs-ai
Trump threatens funding for states over AI regulations
- Trump says state rules stymie innovation
- Administration must act with Congress to work on national standard, Trump says
- Critics say Trump order will create 'lawless Wild West'
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"To win, United States AI companies must be free to innovate without cumbersome regulation," the order said, adding that the current patchwork of different regulatory regimes made compliance more challenging, especially for start-ups. ...
Yet state leaders from both major political parties have said they need the power to put guardrails around AI, particularly as Congress has consistently failed to pass laws governing the tech industry.
New York state last month became the first to enact a law requiring online retailers that employ "surveillance pricing" to disclose their use of algorithms and customers' personal data. California and lawmakers in Washington are considering bans on such methods, which are also known as "personalized pricing." ...
See the full story here: https://www.reuters.com/world/trump-says-he-will-sign-order-curbing-state-ai-laws-2025-12-11/
Fortnite meets Hunger Games: There are no humans in this YouTube reality show
PhilNote: Isn't this Twitch without humans?
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The entire project was completed by just five people in under two months, with a budget of around $28,000.
The concept: six fully autonomous AI characters battling for survival on a treacherous island. But there's no script – the story unfolds entirely on its own. Each character is shaped by AiMation's proprietary engine, Omnigen-01, which gives them unique psychological profiles, backstories, traumas and motivations. Once the simulation begins, the characters act independently. As Tom Paton puts it, "We created the psychology, not the plot." Even the creators have no idea how each episode will end. ...
Returning to the question posed earlier: so far, reality shows without human participants haven't resonated strongly with audiences. At the time of writing, episode one had around 130 likes compared to 550 dislikes. Many viewers criticize the dialogue as stiff, the scenes as unnatural and the overall concept as "soulless". ...
See the full story here: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Fortnite-meets-Hunger-Games-There-are-no-humans-in-this-YouTube-reality-show.1183330.0.html
Cryptographers Show That AI Protections Will Always Have Holes
Large language models such as ChatGPT come with filters to keep certain info from getting out. A new mathematical argument shows that systems like this can never be completely safe.
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The researchers made their argument in a very technical, precise and general way. The work shows that if fewer computational resources are dedicated to safety than to capability, then safety issues such as jailbreaks will always exist. “The question from which we started is: ‘Can we align [language models] externally without understanding how they work inside?’” said Greg Gluch(opens a new tab), a computer scientist at Berkeley and an author on the time-lock paper. The new result, said Gluch, answers this question with a resounding no.
That means that the results should always hold for any filter-based alignment system, and for any future technologies. No matter what walls you build, it seems there’s always going to be a way to break through.
See the full article here: https://www.quantamagazine.org/cryptographers-show-that-ai-protections-will-always-have-holes-20251210/
Disney to Invest $1 Billion in OpenAI in Major Deal That Boosts Sora in Hollywood
Users of the AI video creation platform will now be able to create clips of 200 characters from Marvel, Pixar and 'Star Wars' franchises. ...
The three-year deal signals that studios may look to embrace, rather than fight, AI startups that already allow users to infringe on their intellectual property. By this thinking, at least Hollywood companies are able to monetize their IP with lucrative licensing deals rather than see their businesses entirely disrupted with nothing to show for it. ...
For now, shortform video creation is the deal of the day and Disney+ will now allow “fan-inspired Sora short form videos” on its platform, a product add that studio chief Bob Iger hinted at on a Nov. 13 earnings call. In examples, Disney included images of a fan with a lightsaber in Star Warsgarb, another fan surfing on a big wave with Stitch at the edge of the surfboard and another fan at the starting line of a race next to a Pixar vehicle from Cars. The licensed character product launches on Sora and ChatGPT images will debut in early 2026. ...
The move immediately may start to legitimize Sora around the industry, given Disney’s brand-cautious approach. ...
From a dealmaking perspective, the move from Iger reminds of a $1.5 billion equity investment into Epic Games last February to bring Disney characters into Fortnite in a multiyear effort to court audiences where they’re at. At the time Iger described the epic deal as “an important step when you look at the demographic trends and look at where Gen Alpha and Gen Z and even millennials are spending their time in media.” ...
See the full story here: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/disney-to-invest-1-billion-in-openai-in-major-deal-that-boosts-sora-1236447942/
Agents Have a Standard Now
OpenAI, Anthropic, and Block quietly did something important yesterday: they donated core pieces of their agent technology into a new neutral nonprofit called the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF), established under the Linux Foundation. The contributions include AGENTS.md, Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP), and Block’s open source “goose” framework. Together, these tools create the early architecture for interoperable agents.
AGENTS.md is the simplest part and also the most disruptive. It is a plain Markdown file that sits in the root of a code repository and acts like a contract for any agent that touches that code. It tells the agent how to build, test, lint, secure, and operate the project. Developers do not have to rely on tool-specific documentation or proprietary wrappers. The rules live in one place. Any supported agent knows what to do. ...
The foundation that now holds these tools matters as much as the tools themselves. The Linux Foundation has a long track record of managing open standards that reshape industries. ...
In practice, if agents follow agreed protocols, the market becomes less about individual models and more about the quality of the workflows built on top of them. The competition shifts to orchestration, trust, and domain expertise. ...
See the full story here: https://shellypalmer.com/2025/12/agents-have-a-standard-now/
CORNELL: AI CHATBOTS CAN EFFECTIVELY SWAY VOTERS – IN EITHER DIRECTION
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- The findings highlight both the persuasive potential and the risks of AI-generated political messaging, underscoring the need for safeguards as conversational AI becomes more common in election contexts.
- Cornell researchers found that even brief interactions with AI chatbots can meaningfully shift voter attitudes on candidates and policies, with effects far exceeding those of traditional political advertising.
- Experiments across the U.S., Canada and Poland showed chatbots moved opposition voters by up to 10 percentage points — and up to 25 points in a larger U.K. study — largely by generating high volumes of factual claims, including some inaccurate ones.
See the full story here: https://theaiinsider.tech/2025/12/06/cornell-ai-chatbots-can-effectively-sway-voters-in-either-direction/
Editor’s Dispatch: Wētā FX Signs MOU With AMD To Explore Development of AI-Driven VFX Tools
VFX studio Wētā FX has signed a memorandum of understanding with chipmaker AMD to explore development of next-generation rendering and AI tools for use in visual effects.
Speaking about the agreement with The Creative + Tech Orbit, Kimball Thurston, CTO at Wētā FX, didn’t describe Generative AI but focused on artist tools, including an artist-friendly interface. “I see more clearly now a path by which we can create artist centric toolsets that basically are leveraging some of the AI,” he says. ...
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