This week, all eyes are on Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. It’s the culmination of a feud that has raged for years, taking place mostly online until now, and it will likely have huge repercussions not only for the future of OpenAI, but also for the future of the AI industry as a whole. So far, the courtroom details have already been extraordinary – and not always in such a flattering way.
Along with the trial, several other important AI news stories caught my attention this week. Many, as always, involve OpenAI – from the announcement that the company might soon launch a phone to the discovery that a coding model was asked not to reference goblins or mythical creatures.
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As always, I’ve rounded up the top stories you need to know below. Think you paid attention to my roundup of the latest AI news from last week? Take the quiz below to find out.
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Last week’s top AI headlines
Welcome to ICYMI AI, your weekly roundup of the most important developments in artificial intelligence. Here are the biggest AI stories from the past week and why they matter.
Musk vs. Altman Lawsuit Is AI’s Biggest Drama
Elon Musk is suing OpenAI, CEO Sam Altman and company co-founder Greg Brockman for a whopping $130 billion. He claims they betrayed the company’s original plan to be a nonprofit. However, his motivations are complicated by the fact that he runs his own AI company, xAI. There is, however, more to this trial beyond the drama.
At its core, this essay really feels like a test of whether AI companies can ever stick to a mission, especially remaining a nonprofit, once money, computation, and competition have reached dizzying levels. If Musk wins, OpenAI could face a very complicated restructuring that will impact leadership, funding and product development. If it loses, it will reinforce the fact that creating the latest AI technologies can still attract companies to business priorities, regardless of how they started.
Either way, it puts a lot of pressure on external regulation to fill a void that good intentions alone cannot fill.
OpenAI could build an AI phone
Reports emerged this week that OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, may be building a smartphone. Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reported that the device is in development with MediaTek and Qualcomm working on a custom chip and Luxshare management manufacturing. Speculations indicate that mass production is planned for 2028. However, OpenAI has not made any comments.
It seems the concept behind this OpenAI phone will replace apps with AI agents, maintaining context and completing tasks on your behalf – similar to Google’s plans to make AI a layer on top of everything we talked about last week.
But think about the broader implications: If OpenAI controls the hardware, that means it will completely bypass big tech players like Apple and Google. As we said last week, how you feel about OpenAI increasingly trying to build an ecosystem rather than just being a chatbot depends on how much you trust OpenAI.
Are young people already fed up with AI?
A new report from The Verge that certainly ruffled a few feathers this week reveals that the more young people use AI, the less they like it. According to the report, despite being among the heaviest users of chatbot tools, Gen Z workers and students are increasingly irritated by what many describe as an AI-centric future being forced upon them – with some actively choosing career paths where they will never have to use it.
This is important because over the past year the dominant story has been adoption, particularly among young people who I have repeatedly seen described as “AI natives.” But it’s one of many clear signs of friction in recent weeks. If the people expected to create, use and standardize AI in the long term are already losing trust, it complicates the idea that the technology will easily integrate into everyday life.
More AI news you may have missed
- China’s electricity grid will soon be managed by an army of humanoid robots: According to the South China Morning Post, the Chinese government plans to put thousands of robots at the service of the country’s infrastructure. It is interesting to see what large-scale AI deployment could look like and shows how China is moving toward rapid, state-backed deployment compared to the United States.
- OpenAI tells its latest model to stop talking about goblins: In one of the lighter stories of the week, Wired reports that OpenAI really wants its coding agent to never talk about goblins, gremlins, or other animals or creatures. It seems that previous iterations of the model assumed that “bugs” meant mythical creatures and It is why OpenAI had to explain things in new instructions.
- We compared ChatGPT Images 2.0 and Google’s Nano Banana 2: We used real-world prompts, but which AI image generator do you think came out on top? You’ll have to click to find out, but we were fascinated to discover that although the two models were similar, one of them excelled when it came to realism.
- I tried using ChatGPT to follow the 7 habits of highly effective people step by step: Graham, TechRadar’s AI editor, used ChatGPT to break down a typical self-help system into a structured plan. The results were surprising and prove that ChatGPT can truly excel as a personal development partner.
- OpenAI faces lawsuit for failure to report school shooter: We saw this one coming last week. Reportedly, OpenAI’s moderation tools flagged Jesse Van Rootselaar’s ChatGPT account for discussions about violence. But after much debate, OpenAI did not report her to local law enforcement and instead deactivated her account. Today, several families are suing OpenAI for not acting sooner.
- The Pentagon now has an agreement with seven AI companies: Companies like OpenAI, Google, Nvidia and several others have now agreed to “any lawful use” of their technology by the US military. Anthropogenic was not included. This agreement raises all kinds of questions about limits and who decides how these systems are used.
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