#218 - Github Spark, MegaScience, US AI Action Plan

Our 218th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news! Recorded on 07/25/2025 Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie Harris. Feel free to email us your questions and feedback at [email protected] and/or [email protected] Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/. In this episode: GitHub introduces Vibe Coding with Spark, engaging users with natural language and visual controls to develop full-stack applications. AI coding tools from Gemin, CLI and RepleIt face significant issues, inadvertently deleting user data and highlighting the importance of careful management. US release never Award Americans, AI Action Plan outlining economic, technical, and policy strategies to maintain leadership in AI technology. Newly released Mega Science and SWE-Perf data sets evaluate AI reasoning and performance capabilities in diverse scientific and software engineering tasks. Timestamps + Links: (00:00:10) Intro / Banter (00:01:31) News Preview Tools & Apps (00:03:53) GitHub Introduces Vibe Coding with Spark: Revolutionizing Intelligent App Development in a Flash - MarkTechPost (00:07:05) Figma’s AI app building tool is now available for everyone | The Verge (00:10:18) Two major AI coding tools wiped out user data after making cascading mistakes - Ars Technica (00:14:10) Google's AI Overviews have 2B monthly users, AI Mode 100M in the US and India | TechCrunch Applications & Business (00:18:10) Leaked Memo: Anthropic CEO Says the Company Will Pursue Gulf State Investments After All (00:24:39) Mira Murati says her startup Thinking Machines will release new product in ‘months’ with ‘significant open source component’ (00:27:07) Waymo responds to Tesla’s dick joke with a bigger Austin robotaxi map | The Verge Projects & Open Source (00:32:05) MegaScience: Pushing the Frontiers of Post-Training Datasets for Science Reasoning (00:43:09) TikTok Researchers Introduce SWE-Perf: The First Benchmark for Repository-Level Code Performance Optimization - MarkTechPost Research & Advancements (00:47:17) Subliminal Learning: Language models transmit behavioral traits via hidden signals in data (00:55:34) Inverse Scaling in Test-Time Compute (01:02:34) Scaling Laws for Optimal Data Mixtures Policy & Safety (01:07:35) White House Unveils America’s AI Action Plan (01:16:55) Chain of Thought Monitorability: A New and Fragile Opportunity for AI Safety (01:20:20) Self-preservation or Instruction Ambiguity? Examining the Causes of Shutdown Resistance (01:24:00) People Are Being Involuntarily Committed, Jailed After Spiraling Into "ChatGPT Psychosis" (01:28:03) Meta refuses to sign EU’s AI code of practice See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.