#260 - Muse, Misalignment, Math

Our 260th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news! Recorded on 10/07/2026 ; ok I lied, hopefully next ep will be out on time though... 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: OpenAI began testing new visual ad formats in ChatGPT image generation, while TikTok launched an AI shopping assistant with one-click checkout, highlighting growing agent-mediated commerce and “generative engine optimization.” Meta’s Muse app hit 5M+ downloads with heavy in-house promotion, and Meta/Walmart/Stripe introduced a “personal agent protocol” to standardize how AI agents interact with businesses. ElevenLabs’ valuation reportedly doubled to $22B amid rising voice-agent demand, while major open releases included Reflection’s Beam (MoE, compute-efficient), Mistral’s 1T-parameter “Le Chunk” (Mistral Large 4), and Google’s Embedding Gemma 2 multimodal embedding model. Safety/policy and research updates included OpenAI misalignment reports, a resignation criticizing OpenAI’s culture and “iterative deployment,” California data-center regulation bills, dismissal of Google AI Overview antitrust suits, Meta’s new end-to-end software engineering benchmark, and OpenAI publishing 722 math manuscripts across 372 result families with potential cryptography and national security implications. A thank you to our current sponsors: Box - visit box.com/LWIAI to learn more Notion - visit notion.com/lwai to try Notion’s Developer Platform today. ODSC AI - visit odsc.ai/east and use promo code LWAI for an additional 15% off your pass to ODSC AI East 2026. Factor - visit factormeals.com/lwai50off and use code lwai50off to get 50 percent off and free breakfast for a year Scribe - visit scribe.how/lwai and mention lwai for a 30-day Timestamps (these may a few minutes off due to sponsor inserts): 00:00:10) Intro / Banter (00:02:58) News Preview Tools & Apps (00:03:31) OpenAI is sticking more ads in ChatGPT | The Verge (00:07:48) TikTok rolls out an AI shopping assistant and one-click checkout | TechCrunch Applications & Business (00:11:57) Meta's Muse tops 5 million downloads, faster than ChatGPT, Claude + Meta joins with group of companies to tame ‘chaos’ of doing business with AI bots (00:17:53) ElevenLabs' valuation doubles to $22 billion on surging AI voice-agent demand | Reuters Projects & Open Source (00:23:05) Reflection debuts Beam, an open-weight AI model to rival Chinese models at lower compute cost | TechCrunch (00:32:19) Mistral Says Its New AI Model ‘Le Chonk’ Is the Best Open-Weight Offering Outside of China | WIRED (00:37:07) Google launches EmbeddingGemma 2, an open multimodal embedding model for devices (00:39:39) E2E-SWE: Benchmarking LLMs on Building Working Codebases from Scratch Policy & Safety (00:47:30) New OpenAI misalignment disclosures (00:56:38) Language Models Are "Insecure" Reporters (01:03:11) OpenAI safety employee resigns, claiming the company’s ‘culture is broken’ | TechCrunch +I Quit OpenAI Because Its Culture Is Broken (01:10:14) What to know about 7 new data center laws Gavin Newsom signed - CalMatters (01:15:50) Trump orders US government to call AI ‘Super Intelligence’ | The Verge (01:21:04) Judge dismisses antitrust lawsuits over Google’s AI Overviews | The Verge Research & Advancements (01:22:45) OpenAI drops another batch of mathematical breakthroughs | The Verge See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.