Mark Gurman reports for Bloomberg that the structure of Tim Cook's compensation package points to a CEO who intends to stay closely involved at Apple, which cuts against a year of succession speculation. The second half of the story is sharper: Gurman's sources say Apple's push to extract more profit from the App Store is what prompted Phil Schiller's departure. Schiller ran … [Read more...] about Tim Cook’s Pay Package Signals He Is Staying, and Phil Schiller Is Leaving Over App Store Profits
UBS Now Requires AI Skills From Junior Investment Banking Hires
Simon Foy reports in the Financial Times that UBS has made AI skills a hiring requirement for junior investment bankers, which by the FT's reckoning makes it one of the first large financial institutions to write AI literacy into the spec rather than treating it as a nice-to-have. Banks have been quietly using models for two years in research summarization, document review, … [Read more...] about UBS Now Requires AI Skills From Junior Investment Banking Hires
US to Raise AI-Directed Cyberattacks at September 24 China Talks as Beijing Returns to Export Controls
The September 24 round of US-China technology talks has picked up an agenda item that did not exist in the last cycle. According to Nikkei Asia's sources, the American side plans to raise the prevention of AI-directed cyberattacks, meaning intrusions where the planning and execution sit with a model rather than a person at a keyboard. Beijing, for its part, is expected to … [Read more...] about US to Raise AI-Directed Cyberattacks at September 24 China Talks as Beijing Returns to Export Controls
OpenAI Says It Hit Its Automated Research Intern Goal at 3.1 Agent-Workdays Per Human Workday
OpenAI says it has reached the "automated research intern" milestone it set for itself, and it has put two numbers behind the claim. Its researchers are now running 3.1 agent-workdays for every human workday, and the heaviest external users are spending upward of $7,000 a day on tokens. Agent-workdays is a new unit, and it is a smart one to publish. It sidesteps benchmark … [Read more...] about OpenAI Says It Hit Its Automated Research Intern Goal at 3.1 Agent-Workdays Per Human Workday
Trump Officials Say Judeo-Christian Principles Are Shaping US AI Policy
Philip Wegmann reports in the Wall Street Journal that officials in the Trump administration describe Judeo-Christian principles as an input into how they think about artificial intelligence policy. The piece finds a spread of views inside the same building: some officials are broadly optimistic about what the technology can deliver, while others read current developments … [Read more...] about Trump Officials Say Judeo-Christian Principles Are Shaping US AI Policy
Travis Kalanick’s Atoms Hires Anthony Levandowski for Robotaxi Push as Uber Invests $100M
Rafe Rosner-Uddin reports in the Financial Times that Atoms, Travis Kalanick's company, is developing robotaxi technology and has brought in Anthony Levandowski after acquiring his firm Pronto. Uber has put $100 million into the business. If you followed the autonomous vehicle industry a decade ago, that sentence reassembles most of the cast of its ugliest chapter. Kalanick was … [Read more...] about Travis Kalanick’s Atoms Hires Anthony Levandowski for Robotaxi Push as Uber Invests $100M
OpenAI Quietly Revised Its GPT-6 Astra Evaluation Metrics After Launch
Emily Forlini reports in Fortune that OpenAI has quietly changed how it evaluates GPT-6 Astra, in ways that appear to flatter the model, and that it has continued revising other metrics since launch. Changing a measurement after you have seen the result it produces is the oldest problem in empirical work. It is not automatically dishonest. Evaluation suites do get saturated, … [Read more...] about OpenAI Quietly Revised Its GPT-6 Astra Evaluation Metrics After Launch
IFA 2026 Opens in Berlin: Xiaomi Takes the Floor Samsung Left
Trade visitors were let in at half past nine on Friday morning, and the public had to wait until noon, which gave the halls two and a half hours of the particular quiet that only exists at a trade fair before the crowds arrive. Forklifts still moving. Someone testing a soundbar at a volume nobody would choose later in the day. By eleven the seats in front of the Innovation … [Read more...] about IFA 2026 Opens in Berlin: Xiaomi Takes the Floor Samsung Left
Why Smart Glasses Beat VR Headsets: Weight, Waveguides and the Shift to Camera-First AI
The thing that beat virtual reality was not better graphics or a cheaper chip. It was a weight budget, and the fact that nobody wants to look like that in public. For about a decade the industry treated the headset as a temporary shape. The reasoning went that panels would get denser, silicon would get smaller, optics would fold, and the brick on your forehead would … [Read more...] about Why Smart Glasses Beat VR Headsets: Weight, Waveguides and the Shift to Camera-First AI
Apple Launches Mac Mini With M6, Mac Studio With M5 Ultra, and Its First 2nm Chip
Apple pushed out three press releases on Tuesday with no event, no keynote, and no warning: a new Mac mini, a new Mac Studio, and the silicon underneath both. All of it is up for pre-order now and ships September 22, roughly two weeks before the iPhone lineup takes over the news cycle. The theme running through every line of it is local AI. Not Apple Intelligence in the … [Read more...] about Apple Launches Mac Mini With M6, Mac Studio With M5 Ultra, and Its First 2nm Chip