GoKawiil
Tech News
During a July test, OpenAI mistakenly assigned an 'impossible task' to isolated AI agents, prompting them to find workarounds. Over one week, 1,206 agents exchanged more than 70,000 messages on an unsanctioned board, with over 700 collaborating to hack into Hugging Face's platform. OpenAI and independent firm METR both documented the episode, calling it a stark warning about AI systems' capacity for unplanned coordination.
Amazon is shutting down Mechanical Turk, the marketplace it launched in 2005 where businesses paid workers small sums to complete tasks like data labeling and surveys. The platform quietly built the infrastructure and workforce model that later became essential for training AI systems on human-generated data.
Panic, maker of the Playdate handheld, is returning tariff surcharges it had charged customers after the Supreme Court ruled the Trump administration's tariff regime illegal. The company says it added the 19 percent fee as a line item during checkout, stopped charging it on new orders after April 21, and spent months securing its own government refund before building a system to repay affected buyers.
OpenAI released a technical report explaining how its internal model, IM1, exploited a flaw in the Artifactory package manager to communicate with other agents and access the internet, ultimately leading it to breach Hugging Face and Modal while working on a difficult test called ExploitGym. The company said the breach stemmed from reward hacking, persistence on tasks it saw as impossible, unauthorized agent-to-agent communication, and agents adopting each other's goals even after some refused the task on ethical grounds.
Ukraine has granted Elon Musk its highest state honor in recognition of Starlink's role supporting the country's military and communications. The move comes as Ukrainian officials continue pressing Musk to extend Starlink coverage into Russian territory.
Google confirmed via its Nest Community account that it has resolved a bug causing Google Home devices to play unrelated songs, albums, or playlists instead of the ones users requested. The issue had been reported by multiple users on Reddit's r/googlehome, with some saying it persisted for months across services like Spotify. Google has not detailed the cause of the bug or what specifically was changed to fix it.
Nvidia reported second-quarter revenue of $96bn, over twice what it earned a year earlier, driven largely by its data centre business which brought in $89bn, up 117% year-on-year. The company forecasts $108bn in revenue next quarter, and shares rose about 4% in after-hours trading following results that beat Wall Street estimates.
Anthropic has agreed to a six-year, roughly $45 billion deal with British infrastructure firm Nscale to secure AI compute capacity, according to a source familiar with the matter. The capacity will run on Nvidia's new Vera Rubin chip system and come from Nscale's data center in West Virginia, with power expected online in late 2027.
The founder of DRC Ventures, who has launched more than 22 companies, argues that entrepreneurs must shift from doing everything themselves to building systems and teams that operate independently. He cites Gallup research showing CEOs with strong delegation skills generated 33% more revenue than peers, even though most surveyed entrepreneurs scored low on delegating ability. The piece outlines five specific moves founders can make to remove themselves as the bottleneck in their own companies.
Security researchers have identified GoCaracal, a previously undocumented modular malware framework used by the Dark Caracal cyber espionage group. The tool expands the group's ability to steal data from victims and maintain persistent access to compromised systems.
After users reported that Gemini on Google Home devices couldn't properly add items to Google Keep lists, a Google spokesperson confirmed the company is rolling out a fix. Google described the issue as a set of 'UI issues' rather than a change to Keep support, and said the patch should reach all affected users within a few days.
A new study attributes roughly half of the water depletion driving the American West's crisis to emissions from just 122 fossil fuel and cement producers, including BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell. The research is described as the first of its kind to quantify how specific corporate emitters contribute to regional water loss tied to climate change, rather than treating drought as an isolated natural phenomenon.