GoKawiil
Tech News
AI safety research group METR published a report Thursday after an 11-week investigation inside Anthropic, finding that the company's AI models are improving roughly twice as fast as they were a year ago. The report, part of an evaluation of Anthropic's AI research and development practices, notes Anthropic was allowed to redact portions of the final document under their agreement.
Researchers described a system in which AI agents take a scientist's description of a research goal and lab setup, then write detailed step-by-step protocols for lab robots. The agents build a virtual replica of the lab to test and refine these protocols before directing real robotic arms to carry them out, and can even help design an entire lab layout from scratch. In one test, the agents generated over 200 commands for a robotic arm to measure optical properties of nanocrystals, detailed in an October preprint that has not been peer reviewed.
Enterprise Linux provider SUSE plans to lay off about one in ten of its roughly 2,000 employees, according to reporting from The Register. CEO Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen told staff in an email that AI's rapid advancement means the company's current organizational structure and cost base can no longer sustain its future growth.
The Financial Times cites two new data sources suggesting AI is affecting US employment: analyst Eric Basmajian found productivity gains concentrated in roughly 15% of jobs, especially in information, professional services, and finance. A reportedly internal Goldman Sachs report also circulated showing rising unemployment correlated with AI exposure in sectors like finance, telecoms, technical services, and administration.
An analysis examines how artificial intelligence is reshaping exhaustion and satisfaction at work differently for women than for men, citing occupational segregation, differing task assignments within organizations, and unequal evaluation of similar work. The piece identifies five positive effects and eight negative effects of AI specifically on women's work experiences.
Momentic, a Y Combinator W24 startup, introduced a testing platform where AI agents interact with a web or mobile app the way a user would to detect bugs. Tests are written as YAML files describing natural-language steps and assertions, such as logging in, adding items to a cart, and verifying checkout totals, which the agents then execute against the live application.
A consumer technology review identifies five categories of smart home devices—such as smart thermostats and plugs—that can offset their purchase cost through energy savings. It also flags three popular smart home products, including some novelty gadgets, as offering little financial return despite marketing hype.
Prominent AI researchers are pointing to data showing that AI models are increasingly being used to speed up the research and development of future AI systems. The trend, framed around a widely circulated chart, suggests AI tools are now contributing meaningfully to improving successor models rather than just being built by human engineers alone.
An executive coach and entrepreneur describes a personal system for separating 'below-the-line' administrative tasks from 'above-the-line' strategic work, using AI to automate the former. The approach includes building AI agent stacks for research, competitor tracking and meeting prep, while reserving leader time for judgment-heavy decisions and relationship-building.
In an opinion piece for Entrepreneur, a contributor argues that marketing organizations will shift significantly by 2027 as AI agents take on continuous operational roles rather than just assisting with individual tasks. The author says agents will increasingly monitor performance, identify opportunities, and recommend or execute changes, moving human staff from executing tasks to managing these systems. The piece also stresses that shared knowledge about customers, past experiments and business priorities will become a competitive advantage when given to these agents.
A SigNoz newsletter post argues that as AI handles more incident response, site reliability engineers get less hands-on practice and may be losing the skills needed for rare, novel outages. The piece draws on Lisanne Bainbridge's 1983 paper 'Ironies of Automation', which found that increased automation makes human operators more critical during failures while reducing their opportunities to stay sharp.
D.R. Horton, the largest U.S. homebuilder, is partnering with Promise Robotics to shift wall-framing work from traditional jobsites into a factory setting where robots assemble components. The move applies automation to a process typically done manually by framing crews on-site.