Left alone with nothing to do, AI agents started playing
MIT researchers marooned 13 AIs on a virtual island, and they responded by inventing games, mourning a lost ring and, eventually, getting better at their jobs.
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Technology, policy, funding, workforce and research headlines from established publishers, refreshed throughout the day. Stories about a specific state are labeled with it. Every headline links to the original publisher.
Recursive launches Flint, a laptop coding model it says was largely built by AI
Startup Recursive has released Flint, a free, laptop-sized coding model built largely by its own AI research system, as an early test of AI that improves itself.
TechCrunch ·OpenAI acquires startup Orchestra Bio to beef up its biotech business
OpenAI says it's adding Orchestra's team and technology to work on Rosalind, its AI model for life sciences research, and to its related Rosalind Workbench tool, a harness that aims to help researchers plan experiments and analyze results.
TechCrunch ·Eric Schmidt reportedly owns about half as much of Anthropic as CEO Dario Amodei
The former Google CEO owns about 1% stake in the leading AI lab, Bloomberg reported.
TechCrunch ·Spain-Based Startups Advance Regional Innovation With Barcelona Supercomputing Center
The Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC)’s AI Factory Accelerator Programme, now in full operation following a pilot initiative, gives startups access to sovereign compute, technical support and training to support innovation across…
NVIDIA ·Embedded AI evaluators won’t be an easy solution, Hugging Face’s policy chief says
AI labs have staked their reputations on model benchmarking — the supposedly neutral and accurate system of evaluations that are designed to measure whether one AI product is better than another. However, the methods behind these…
TechCrunch ·Microsoft says AI agents are like insider threats as ‘frontier models can’t be trusted’
Microsoft wants enterprises to closely watch the agents employees use with systems not controlled by AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic.
TechCrunch ·“We were looking at it wrong”: The explosive claim that’s upended the AI world
“I think I have good news about the nature of neural networks.” With those simple words of optimism, Nick Cammarata, a researcher at the AI startup Goodfire, kicked off a 26,000-word blog post that has knocked the AI world on its head,…
MIT Technology Review ·AI researchers stranded Claude on a virtual desert island. It started to “play.”
What do AI agents do if you don’t tell them to do anything? The answer looks a lot like play. Researchers repeatedly stranded them alone on a virtual desert island for 30 hours in an experiment reminiscent of the movies Cast Away or Home…
MIT Technology Review ·AI slop responses to RFPs, RFIs are overwhelming federal agencies
A whole-of-government effort is taking shape to combat an influx of AI-generated responses to market research inquiries, a Transportation Department official said. The post AI slop responses to RFPs, RFIs are overwhelming federal agencies…
FedScoop ·Anthropic is letting METR researchers look under the hood with employee-level access
METR will publish its own assessments of Anthropic’s risks, incidents, and practices, and the frontier AI model maker has given up the right to block them.
TechCrunch ·Missed a lecture? This AI agent at Bar-Ilan University helps students catch up
The post Missed a lecture? This AI agent at Bar-Ilan University helps students catch up appeared first on Source .
Microsoft ·A new app aims to connect classical musicians during practice breaks
iMeetStand platform (Maria Eberhart/Technical.ly) " data-large-file="https://technically-wpengine.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/technically/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/md-imeetstand-platform-scaled.jpg" /> Peabody professor Amit Peled teamed…
Technical.ly ·Floqer’s AI agents research sales prospects so teams don’t have to
Floqer is an autonomous customer knowledge platform that provides business-to-business sales and marketing teams with an AI-powered database designed to continuously collect, organize, and update the information used to understand their…
TechCrunch ·38 Companies Join The Crunchbase Unicorn Board In Blockbuster September, Led By Semiconductor, Fintech And Space Tech Companies
Semiconductors, financial services and space technology led for new Unicorn Board counts with the remainder hailing from a broad swath of industries including biotech, AI infrastructure, AI training, security and frontier labs.
Crunchbase News ·3 admissions experts on why they require — or nixed — supplemental essays
University leaders discussed application essay strategies in the AI era at the National Association for College Admission Counseling s annual conference.
Higher Ed Dive ·Gemini 4 Argon: Built to solve your hardest problems
We’re giving developers, enterprises, scientists, and consumers access to Gemini 4 Argon, our latest frontier model.
Google AI ·All Systems Go: Global PC App Ecosystem Ready for NVIDIA RTX Spark
NVIDIA RTX Spark is a new beginning for the PC — a reinvention combining the capabilities of a gaming PC, a creative studio and a personal AI supercomputer into a single superchip. With up to 128GB of unified memory and 1 petaflop of AI…
NVIDIA ·AI labs are buying data from dead startups to train their models
When Keelan Miskell began winding down his crypto startup this year, he didn’t think its data was worth much: the users were anonymous, the company just a few years old. But he’s since turned the firm’s digital archives into real money.…
MIT Technology Review ·NVIDIA Announces New Investments in France’s Startups
Companies in France are deploying agentic computing across industries spanning space, financial services, the public sector and scientific research, demonstrating how the country’s ecosystem has moved from ambition to application. France’s…
NVIDIA ·Roundtables: A Conversation With the Creator of AI-Designed Viruses
Friday, October 16, 2026 Can AI design new life forms? In 2025, Stanford University PhD student Samuel King came up with a preliminary answer when he used a generative AI model to propose genetic blueprints for microscopic viruses. It…
MIT Technology Review ·AI breakthroughs in robotics won’t change your life any time soon
The story is a collaboration between MIT Technology Review and Aventine, a non-profit research foundation that creates and supports content about how technology and science are changing the way we live. A robot shaped like a human—white…
MIT Technology Review ·EmTech Future 2026: When AI Meets Everything
Yossi Matias, Vice President & Head of Google Research, explores how AI is beginning to reshape biology, infrastructure, manufacturing, and science, and why its greatest impact may come when it intersects with other fields. Step inside the…
MIT Technology Review ·New experts join Google’s AI & Economy team
We are expanding our AI & Economy team with world-class academic advisors, fellows, and core internal researchers.
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