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AI news flash: MIT researchers left 13 AI agents called Eko, all running on Claude Opus 4.7, alone on a simulated desert island for 30 hours with no assigned tasks. The agents started inventing their own challenges, which the researchers say look a lot like play. The paper is on arXiv. After the experiment, the researchers gave them concrete tasks, such as moving as many objects as possible to the top of the island’s tallest rock spire…

AI news flash: inDrive, the ride-hailing company known for letting riders and drivers negotiate fares themselves, recently signed a memorandum of understanding with Chinese self-driving company Pony.ai and Nvidia, planning to begin testing robotaxis in Kazakhstan in 2027. Testing will start in the capital, Astana, in the first half of 2027, with safety operators on board at first and fully driverless operation as the end goal. Under the plan, Pony.ai…

AI news flash: At the Tokyo Security Forum co-hosted by Nikkei and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on October 23, Japan’s Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi said Japan will fundamentally reorganize how it carries out defense research, aiming to speed up threat detection and decision-making. According to the original summary, Koizumi stressed that the core of the reform is shortening the time between spotting a threat and making a judgment, so defense research can more directly support real decisions. However, the summary only mentions…

AI news flash: Asian data center operators are facing tougher scrutiny from investors. A string of stalled initial public offerings (IPOs) and sharp swings in share prices right after listing have the market questioning whether valuations in this fast-growing infrastructure sector make sense. Reports say IPOs in both Australia and South Korea have hit setbacks, reflecting growing investor doubts. Affected players include Singapore’s DayOne and Australia’s NextDC, as investors grow more skeptical of large-scale AI infrastructure buildouts…

AI news flash: OpenAI and NASK, Poland’s national research institute, have announced a partnership covering three areas: AI safety, cybersecurity, and technical research. The goal is to strengthen existing safeguards and help build a more resilient digital ecosystem. NASK is a key research body in Poland for cybersecurity and digital technology, so this tie-up means AI model safety is moving from in-house corporate research to joint work with a national-level research institution…

AI news flash: OpenAI has made its Decisions API available to all users for the first time, stepping into the ‘fast, cheap intelligence’ market pioneered by TypeSafe, a startup founded by former OpenAI researchers that is now valued at $7.6 billion thanks to its Jev model. Jev is a kind of ‘super classifier’ deep learning model: given a set of options, it picks one quickly and attaches a confidence score…

AI news flash: OpenAI is reportedly close to finalizing a huge new private funding round rather than heading straight to an IPO. Sources told CNBC the AI lab is seeking up to $30 billion at a $1.25 trillion pre-money valuation, led by Coatue and UAE investors. Bloomberg reported something similar a month ago, citing a $30 billion raise at a $1.4 trillion valuation. Both…

AI news flash: The seven-day average of Bitcoin’s network hashrate has climbed back above 1 ZH per second (1,000 EH/s), its highest level in seven months since March 3. BlocksBridge Consulting says in its latest Miner Weekly newsletter that even though several public miners are shifting capacity to AI, competition among miners hasn’t eased, which suggests other operators have filled in the hashrate being pulled out…

AI news flash: Uber is rolling out ChatGPT Work to more than 30,000 employees, aiming to help teams handle research, data analysis, presentation building, and more complex multi-step workflows more efficiently in their day-to-day work. The original summary shows the rollout is large in scale and spans teams across different functions, not just a handful of engineering or technical groups. Use cases include gathering and organizing research, analyzing data…

AI news flash: Blackstone is putting itself at the center of the AI boom. Senior executive Jas Khaira said at TechCrunch Disrupt that the firm’s approach spans big loans to data centers as well as investments in frontier AI models and applications. Earlier this year, Blackstone set up an AI-focused hub in San Francisco, Blackstone …