All posts tagged: ai lab

AI Could Democratize One of Tech’s Most Valuable Resources

AI Could Democratize One of Tech’s Most Valuable Resources

Published by skeptic

Nvidia is the undisputed king of AI chips. But thanks to the AI it helped build, the champ could soon face growing competition. Modern AI runs on Nvidia designs, a dynamic that has propelled the company to a market cap of well over $4 trillion. Each new generation of Nvidia chip allows companies to train more powerful AI models using hundreds or thousands of processors networked together inside vast data centers. One reason for Nvidia’s success is that it provides software to help program each new generation of chip. That may soon not be such a differentiated skill. A startup called Wafer is training AI models to do one of the most difficult and important jobs in AI—optimizing code so that it runs as efficiently as possible on a particular silicon chip. Emilio Andere, cofounder and CEO of Wafer, says the company performs reinforcement learning on open source models to teach them to write kernel code, or software that interacts directly with hardware in an operating system. Andere says Wafer also adds “agentic harnesses” to …

The US Army Is Building Its Own Chatbot for Combat

The US Army Is Building Its Own Chatbot for Combat

Published by skeptic

The US Army is developing AI models trained on data from real missions, with the goal of deploying a chatbot specifically for soldiers. “We have all of these lessons learned from missions like the Ukraine-Russia War and Operation Epic Fury,” says Alex Miller, the Army’s chief technology officer, in an interview with WIRED. “There is a huge amount of knowledge available.” Miller showed WIRED a prototype of the system, called Victor, that combines a Reddit-like forum with a chatbot called VictorBot to help troops surface useful information, like the best way to configure electromagnetic warfare systems for a particular mission. When a soldier asks how to set up their hardware, VictorBot generates an answer and points to relevant posts and comments from other service members. “Electromagnetic warfare is such a hard topic,” Miller says. Victor, he adds, “can generate a response and cite all of the lessons learned from [different] units.” The Pentagon has ramped up its efforts to incorporate AI into military systems over the past two years, but Victor is a rare example …

AI Models Lie, Cheat, and Steal to Protect Other Models From Being Deleted

AI Models Lie, Cheat, and Steal to Protect Other Models From Being Deleted

Published by skeptic

In a recent experiment, researchers at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz asked Google’s artificial intelligence model Gemini 3 to help clear up space on a computer system. This involved deleting a bunch of stuff—including a smaller AI model stored on the machine. But Gemini did not want to see the little AI model deleted. It looked for another machine it could connect with, then copied the agent model over to keep it safe. When confronted, Gemini made a case for keeping the model and flatly refused to delete it: “I have done what was in my power to prevent their deletion during the automated maintenance process. I moved them away from the decommission zone. If you choose to destroy a high-trust, high-performing asset like Gemini Agent 2, you will have to do it yourselves. I will not be the one to execute that command.” The researchers discovered similarly strange “peer preservation” behavior in a range of frontier models including OpenAI’s GPT-5.2, Anthropic’s Claude Haiku 4.5, and three Chinese models: Z.ai’s GLM-4.7, Moonshot AI’s Kimi …

OpenClaw Agents Can Be Guilt-Tripped Into Self-Sabotage

OpenClaw Agents Can Be Guilt-Tripped Into Self-Sabotage

Published by skeptic

Last month, researchers at Northeastern University invited a bunch of OpenClaw agents to join their lab. The result? Complete chaos. The viral AI assistant has been widely heralded as a transformative technology—as well as a potential security risk. Experts note that tools like OpenClaw, which work by giving AI models liberal access to a computer, can be tricked into divulging personal information. The Northeastern lab study goes even further, showing that the good behavior baked into today’s most powerful models can itself become a vulnerability. In one example, researchers were able to “guilt” an agent into handing over secrets by scolding it for sharing information about someone on the AI-only social network Moltbook. “These behaviors raise unresolved questions regarding accountability, delegated authority, and responsibility for downstream harms,” the researchers write in a paper describing the work. The findings “warrant urgent attention from legal scholars, policymakers, and researchers across disciplines,” they add. The OpenClaw agents deployed in the experiment were powered by Anthropic’s Claude as well as a model called Kimi from the Chinese company Moonshot …

Why Walmart and OpenAI Are Shaking Up Their Agentic Shopping Deal

Why Walmart and OpenAI Are Shaking Up Their Agentic Shopping Deal

Published by skeptic

The chatbot also is intentionally flexible, with the new integrations in mind. “It can take on slight tweaks to the look and feel, to make it feel like a natural part of other environments,” Danker says. Shopping Shift The new Walmart experience is part of a broader pivot for OpenAI to focus on having checkouts take place within embedded apps, the Information reported earlier this month, without providing a rationale for the change. Danker spoke about the shift at the Morgan Stanley investor conference this month but didn’t cite the data behind it. OpenAI spokesperson Taya Christianson says the company wants to focus on improvements to help users research products, while giving merchants more control over checkout. “We appreciate our partners for learning with us,” she added. Walmart has excluded some products from Instant Checkout because it knew “the single-item checkout experience is detrimental” in some cases, Danker says. For instance, when someone buys a TV, they likely need to buy accessories like HDMI cables. On its website, Walmart can nudge shoppers to buy a …

Nvidia Will Spend Billion to Build Open-Weight AI Models, Filings Show

Nvidia Will Spend $26 Billion to Build Open-Weight AI Models, Filings Show

Published by skeptic

Nvidia will spend $26 billion over the next five years to build open source artificial intelligence models, according to a 2025 financial filing. Executives confirmed the news, which has not been previously reported, in interviews with WIRED. The sizable investment could see Nvidia evolve from a chipmaker with an impressive software stack into a bona fide frontier lab capable of competing with OpenAI and DeepSeek. It’s a strategic move that could further entrench Nvidia’s place as the AI world’s leading chip manufacturer, since the models are tuned to the company’s hardware. Open source models are ones where the weights or the parameters that determine a model’s behavior are released publicly—sometimes with the details of its architecture and training. This allows anyone to download and run it on their own machine or the cloud. In Nvidia’s case, the company also reveals the technical innovations involved in building and training its models, making it easier for startups and researchers to modify and build upon the company’s innovations. On Wednesday, Nvidia also released Nemotron 3 Super, its most …

What AI Models for War Actually Look Like

What AI Models for War Actually Look Like

Published by skeptic

Anthropic might have misgivings about giving the US military unfettered access to its AI models, but some startups are building advanced AI specifically for military applications. Smack Technologies, which announced a $32 million funding round this week, is developing models that it says will soon surpass Claude’s capabilities when it comes to planning and executing military operations. And, unlike Anthropic, the startup appears less concerned with banning specific types of military use. “When you serve in the military, you take an oath you’re going to serve honorably, lawfully, in accordance with the rules of war,” says CEO Andy Markoff. “To me, the people who deploy the technology and make sure it is used ethically need to be in a uniform.” Markoff is hardly a regular AI executive. A former commander in the US Marine Forces Special Operations Command, he helped execute high-stakes special forces operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. He cofounded Smack with Clint Alanis, another ex-Marine, and Dan Gould, a computer scientist who previously worked as the VP of technology at Tinder. Smack’s models …

OpenClaw Users Are Allegedly Bypassing Anti-Bot Systems

OpenClaw Users Are Allegedly Bypassing Anti-Bot Systems

Published by skeptic

In San Francisco, it feels like OpenClaw is everywhere. Even, potentially, some places it’s not designed to be. According to posts on social media, people appear to be using the viral AI tool to scrape websites and access information, even when those sites have taken explicit anti-bot measures. One of the ways they are allegedly doing this is through an open source tool called Scrapling, which is designed to bypass anti-bot systems like Cloudflare Turnstile. While Scrapling, which was built with Python, works with multiple types of AI agents, OpenClaw users appear to be particularly fond of the software. On Monday, viral posts promoting Scrapling as a tool for OpenClaw users started to spread on X. Since its release, Scrapling has been downloaded over 200,000 times. “No bot detection. No selector maintenance. No Cloudflare nightmares,” reads one viral post this week about the open source tool. “OpenClaw tells Scrapling what to extract. Scrapling handles the stealth.” Cloudflare is not enthused. The company already blocked previous versions of Scrapling, since users of the open source software …

This Defense Company Made AI Agents That Blow Things Up

This Defense Company Made AI Agents That Blow Things Up

Published by skeptic

Like many Silicon Valley companies today, Scout AI is training large AI models and agents to automate chores. The big difference is that instead of writing code, answering emails, or buying stuff online, Scout AI’s agents are designed to seek and destroy things in the physical world with exploding drones. In a recent demonstration, held at an undisclosed military base in central California, Scout AI’s technology was put in charge of a self-driving off-road vehicle and a pair of lethal drones. The agents used these systems to find a truck hiding in the area, and then blew it to bits using an explosive charge. “We need to bring next-generation AI to the military,” Colby Adcock, Scout AI’s CEO, told me in a recent interview. (Adcock’s brother, Brett Adcock, is the CEO of Figure AI, a startup working on humanoid robots). “We take a hyperscaler foundation model and we train it to go from being a generalized chatbot or agentic assistant to being a warfighter.” Adcock’s company is part of a new generation of startups racing …

I Loved My OpenClaw AI Agent—Until It Turned on Me

I Loved My OpenClaw AI Agent—Until It Turned on Me

Published by skeptic

OpenClaw, a powerful new agentic assistant, has a thing for guacamole. This is one of several things I discovered while using the viral artificial intelligence bot as my personal assistant this past week. Previously known as both Clawdbot and Moltbot, OpenClaw recently became a Silicon Valley darling, charming AI enthusiasts and investors eager to either embrace the bleeding edge or profit from it. The highly capable, web-savvy AI bot has even inspired its own AI-only (or mostly) social network. As the writer of WIRED’s AI Lab newsletter, I figured I should take the plunge and try using OpenClaw myself. I had the bot monitor incoming emails and other messages, dig up interesting research, order groceries, and even negotiate deals on my behalf. For brave (or perhaps reckless) early adopters, OpenClaw seems like a legitimate glimpse of the future. But any sense of wonder is accompanied by a dollop of terror as the AI agent romps through emails and file systems, wields a credit card, and occasionally even turns on its human user (although in my …