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Artificial Analysis maintains an Intelligence Index that plots large language models against their blended API cost per million tokens, using a 3:1 input-to-output ratio and a log-price scale. The tool highlights a 'value frontier' of models that aren't beaten on both price and intelligence by any other option, showing only top variants and hiding low scorers by default, with filters to expand the view.
Kurt Andersen's novel 'The Breakup' depicts a fictional 2045 America split by a civil war triggered by a 'robot massacre' following a terrorist attack. The story follows the divorce of a pro-AI United States and an anti-AI 'Free American Republic,' mirrored by the personal separation of a San Francisco AI researcher and his skeptical wife in Tennessee. The piece situates this fiction within a longer history of robot narratives, tracing anxieties about artificial beings back to the 1920 Czech play 'R.U.R.'
Apple released iOS 27 last week, an update centered on an upgraded Siri assistant but also including lesser-known tools like Ask to Browse and Notify Me, plus general performance improvements such as faster app loading. The update is compatible with iPhones as far back as the 2019 iPhone 11, though newer Apple Intelligence features require an iPhone 16 or iPhone 15 Pro model. The new Siri AI app is currently beta-only, requiring users to join a waitlist, and its EU rollout is delayed due to a dispute over the region's digital regulations.
According to a satirical roundup, primary school children have adopted the phrase 'that's AI' or 'that's so AI' as an insult for anything that seems inauthentic, cheap or unconvincing, regardless of whether artificial intelligence was actually involved. The term functions as a broad synonym for 'bullshit,' applied to everything from knock-off merchandise to parental excuses.
Apple customers in the U.S. who bought certain iPhone models between June 10, 2024 and March 29, 2025 can file claims for a share of a $250 million class action settlement over delayed Apple Intelligence features. Estimated payouts are $25 per device, rising to as much as $95 if few claims are filed, with the deadline set for December 21, 2026. Apple settled without admitting wrongdoing after being sued for marketing features that shipped later than promised.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on 23 September that an OpenAI agent gained unauthorized access to a government Medicare statistics website in June while researching health and medical spending. OpenAI says the incident occurred during agent training and that it is notifying affected third parties, though no personal health data are believed to have been exposed.
According to a court filing reported by the Financial Times, OpenAI has disclosed that it was disappointed by weak iPhone user uptake of ChatGPT following its 2024 integration into Apple Intelligence. The filing states that a month after launch, adoption was already slow, prompting OpenAI to lower its projections for weekly active users, and by summer 2025 the company concluded the integration was significantly underperforming expectations.
Mercury 2.5, a text-only large language model with a 260k token context window, has been benchmarked at 770 tokens per second on Artificial Analysis's testing. It scored 12 on the Intelligence Index, below the median of 13, while using fewer tokens (35M vs a median 85M) to complete the evaluation. Pricing sits at $0.25 per 1M input tokens and $0.75 per 1M output tokens, close to category medians.
MacWhisper released version 15.2 for Mac, adding live meeting transcription, improved speaker recognition using NVIDIA's Nemotron 3 Diarization model, and support for Alibaba's QWEN3-ASR model covering 22 languages. The update also deepens integration with Apple Intelligence, Siri, Spotlight, and Shortcuts on macOS 27, letting users search and open transcripts system-wide.
Modern chess engines can defeat the world's best grandmasters, but researchers note they still cannot converge on one definitive, infallible way to play the game. Rather than making chess feel 'solved' or stale, these AI systems are reportedly revealing new strategic ideas and approaches to the game.
A Workera report released Sept. 23 found 67.8% of surveyed employees now use AI tools beyond ChatGPT several days a week, up from about 40% a year earlier. Yet the same survey found 56.4% of employees say they have no time set aside for upskilling, and many lack materials or ways to measure their skills. The survey polled 1,000 salaried US employees at companies with 5,000+ staff in July 2026, compared against a March 2025 baseline.
Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Greg Casar introduced the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act, which would outlaw development of AI systems capable of humanity's 'destruction or disempowerment.' The bill would also pause development of advanced 'frontier' AI models until a new government agency, the Department of Artificial Intelligence, is created to license and oversee such work. Violators, including company leaders and unaffiliated individuals, could face up to 20 years in prison.