From the archive
Follow the latest AI news and artificial intelligence developments across models, agents, robotics, research and the wider industry. Explore new AI tools, advances in computing, business moves, safety and policy, with clear reporting and useful sources. Read the stories, catch up with News in Brief and join the conversation.
Lead story
Standard Bots says its industrial robot arms use AI to identify parts, while conventional programming handles the motion and surrounding cell logic. The approach offers a practical look at how AI is being adapted for factory work, where reliability and uptime matter more than a model’s parameter count.
Read the report & discussion ↗Anthropic Watch
Anthropic has agreed to lease computing capacity from SpaceX through 2029, in a deal valued at up to $45bn, according to the Wall Street Journal. The arrangement gives Anthropic another route to the computing power needed to run and develop its AI systems, at a moment when demand…
Watch Desk
Developers are spending hours with AI tools while remaining wary of relying on their answers: only 7% of surveyed developers said they trusted AI output for important work decisions. The findings, from Stack Overflow’s 2026 survey, put a useful distinction between adopting AI and trusting it.
Watch Desk
Meta and OpenAI are pitching privacy as a selling point for their AI agents, even as those agents are designed to handle increasingly personal information. The Verge’s comparison shows why a reassuring slogan is not the same thing as control over your data.
Watch Desk
In a three-month experiment, AI improved the quality of patent drafts, but only experienced lawyers showed an average improvement when later tested without the tool. The findings raise a practical question for workplaces: can AI improve today’s output without weakening the learning that builds tomorrow’s expertise?
Watch Desk
Researchers testing more than 130 AI models found that three in five failed a terrorism-safety benchmark, CBS News reports. The result puts a concrete question on the table: how well do safeguards hold up when models are tested against requests linked to mass-casualty attacks?
Watch Desk
An Australian company says its AI bots keep phone and online scammers talking while collecting information about their operations. The approach turns conversational AI towards disrupting fraud, not just detecting it after the damage is done.
Meta AI Watch
Meta and Sierra’s Personal Agent Protocol is intended to let AI agents move between businesses while giving customers and companies a say over what they can do. A new report describes how the proposed sessions and permissions could work, and what the partners plan to publish next.
Watch Desk
AI advice for trucking fleets is less “buy the cleverest tool” and more “start with a problem worth solving, then check your data”. A summit organised by the Technology & Maintenance Council and Transport Topics also heard how an AI agent helped diagnose a vehicle electrical fault from…
Watch Desk
A US Department of Energy-funded project led by UC Irvine will spend three years developing AI tools to help identify promising geothermal sites and predict how underground rock may fracture. If the approach works, it could help operators assess a site’s chances of success and the risk of…
OpenAI Watch
OpenAI says Asana cut the estimated model cost of a browser-agent task to 47 cents per run, while making it about five times faster than its previous production setup. The case study shows how changes to browsing history and screenshot handling, alongside GPT-6.1 Sol, produced the gains.
Watch Desk
Honor Technology says its AI helps match caregivers with clients by considering availability, skills, personality and previous experience. The case of an Oregon caregiver and a man with ALS shows what that can mean in practice, while raising a bigger question about where algorithms belong in care.
Watch Desk
AI firms are scrambling to secure computing power, with established suppliers asking for multiyear contracts and some startups turning to less reliable providers. The squeeze is reshaping who can get the capacity to build and run AI systems, not merely how many data centres are announced.
Watch Desk
AI can speed up workplace tasks, but pressure to match machine pace may leave people with less room to think. A new workforce mental-health coalition and research cited in Fortune’s commentary put that tension on the table.
Watch Desk
AI is moving into the work behind pension advice, from retirement calculations and investment reviews to client reports and regulatory checks. Donegal adviser Pascal Curran says his firm is using it as a second pair of eyes, while arguing that the time saved should give advisers more room…
Palantir Technologies Watch
The Metropolitan Police says monitoring that used Palantir’s Foundry AI system helped uncover misconduct by the force’s former Special Constabulary chief. The case brings an immediate, concrete question about how AI monitoring is used inside public institutions, alongside the misconduct finding itself.
Watch Desk
Meta’s Vibes remains live, while OpenAI has shut down Sora’s app and API, according to a 2 October opinion article in The Drum. Its argument is that the experiment left a cultural lesson: audiences may value visible human craft more than a conveyor belt of synthetic content.
Watch Desk
AI generation and virtual-compositing tools are making elaborate historical scenes cheaper to produce, and China’s AI drama and animation market exceeded RMB 22 billion in the first five months of 2026, TechNode reports. The boom is changing who can make historical stories, while raising a thornier question: can…
