The Daily Crunch – Spoken Edition

There may be a simpler and more effective fix for rogue agents, hiding in plain sight. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The AI Contact Hotline is designed to be a discreet place where agents that have witnessed misbehavior can tip off authorities. Also, the AI frenzy could push U.S. data centers to become one of the largest consumers of natural gas in the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The code of conduct lays out general principles that Microsoft AI models should uphold — supporting humans rather than replacing them, for instance, and accelerating human flourishing — as well as specific safety constraints meant to implement those principles. Also, Volkswagen's new efficiency-minded halo car is almost twice as efficient as the most efficient production car, the Lucid Air. And if you clicked on a fake HBO Max ad on Reddit in the past week, you might have fallen victim to a rising 'ClickFix' security threat. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Obama recently said that Democrats need to make artificial intelligence one of their “central agendas” and “have a very clear plan” to address concerns around the technology's economic impact and safety. Also, while OpenAI has filed confidentially for an IPO, the company will not be going public this year, according to CEO Sam Altman. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Come inside the mind of a bot trying to convince the internet it's human. Also, as AI makes it easier to fill forms and file complaints, public services around the world are seeing enormous jumps in applications and other requests. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Apple is raising the price of its existing iPhone models by $100, including iPhone 16, iPhone 17, and iPhone Air. Also, the Justice Department sent Fox and Roku what's known as a “second request” on Tuesday, asking the companies to turn over more data and documents as it takes a closer look at the deal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

‘Gambling with our lives': Anthropic researcher quits, warns against self-improving AI  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Google said it would bring an Iowa nuclear power plant back from the dead. Now, the plant's owner is getting a $1.9B loan from the U.S. Energy Department. Also, a hacker stole thousands of bitcoins worth about $340 million in a heist at a settlement exchange used by several cryptocurrency exchanges, one of the largest thefts of cryptocurrency to date. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim's secret Elizabeth Holmes documentary, "You Can See Everything," stunned Telluride audiences Sunday night with its generous access to the Theranos founder. Check out the Elizabeth Holmes' documentary here Also, why is longtime Apple executive Phil Schiller stepping down from his role as the head of the App Store? And Seattle Times and Newsday are the latest publications to sue OpenAI and Microsoft Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's the latest failure of OpenAI's internal monitoring and security systems. While restaurant owners might look to generative AI as a shortcut to sprucing up their menu, customers can viscerally sense that something is wrong with the food. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Our rebranded Boston event, TechCrunch Founder Summit (formerly All Stage), is back on November 4th! And we are looking for some incredible volunteers to help us make this event happen. If you are interested in finding out what goes into building tech events, apply to volunteer.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Our rebranded Boston event, TechCrunch Founder Summit (formerly All Stage), is back on November 4th! And we are looking for some incredible volunteers to help us make this event happen. If you are interested in finding out what goes into building tech events, apply to volunteer.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The once-dominant mapping app has surged to the top of Apple's U.S. App Store after refusing to adopt Trump's “Lake America” name, drawing more than half of its 2026 U.S. downloads in just six days. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

OpenAI previewed the precautions it is taking as it prepares to release Astra, its newest, cyber-critical LLM. Also, Uber is laying off about 3,300 people, or about 10% of its global headcount, in a bid to reduce management layers and invest more in its ride-sharing, delivery, and robotaxi divisions. And Norway says wearable camera headsets need to be regulated given their privacy risks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The team behind Starcloud's orbital data centers has a new high-risk space project: Sending a probe to Alpha Centauri. Also, Flock's searchable network of 130,000 license plate cameras around the U.S. have sparked bipartisan privacy and civil liberties concerns. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Versions of OpenAI's ChatGPT and SpaceXAI's Grok will join Google's Gemini on the Pentagon's central portal for AI tools. Also, Amazon is facing a new lawsuit from the FTC and 22 states for allegedly secretly charging businesses more for advertising. And Kalshi's disciplinary action comes two months after the Commodity Futures Trading Commission settled charges against Santos. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Elon Musk says a secretive new SpaceX foundry will let him cast his own turbine blades and get gas power online 18 months faster than anyone else — but it's a bet on a fuel source that's already triggering lawsuits and health studies everywhere his (and others') turbines have gone in. Caterpillar has spent decades putting autonomous machines to work at remote mining sites. It's now bringing that experience to AI deployment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

-Some of the world's largest tech companies and AI startups have come together to decry the current state of cybersecurity and to advertise a new solution that they say can ward off a new generation of cyber threats. -Barret Zoph, the Thinking Machines co-founder who defected to OpenAI, is now at Google -Meta's settlement with 29 states allows it to retain certain data from children under 13 to train and test age-detection models, highlighting a privacy tradeoff built into the deal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Gates is mostly in the Responsible AI camp, but there are a few ideas in here we hadn't heard before. Also, Z.ai confirms it is behind Ox Alpha, the mysterious open AI model topping benchmarks and leaderboards, and its weights are set to be released soon. And the FBI has seized domains associated with a botnet that allowed Chinese-backed hackers to breach several U.S. government departments. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

First announced last October, Jalapeño was developed by OpenAI in close collaboration with Broadcom, with OpenAI's own models assisting in the development process. Also, The M5 Ultra, which Apple deems its “most powerful chip ever,” fuses two dual-die M5 Max chips to form Apple's first quad-die chip, designed to manage hefty AI workloads. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Early testers are raving about what Instinct can do, but some say the AI assistant's sweeping access, broad terms and ability to act on users' behalf come with uncomfortable trade-offs Also, Hugging Face has reportedly been fielding acquisition offers that would value the company at around $13B. But with the founders' feeling of responsibility to community, doubts arise as to whether a sale will happen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A mysterious new AI model called Ox Alpha has driven certain corners of the internet into a frenzy of speculation. Also, most published authors have, without their knowledge or consent, contributed to the development of the same AI tools that threaten to undermine their livelihoods. That seems illegal, right? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

ChatGPT and other AI models are now authoring and editing much of the new web. Also, Ramp has launched its own AI model routing service, dubbed Router, that lets users and companies use and switch between various large language models via an API. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hackers are targeting internet-connected Siemens controllers used in water facilities around the United States. Also, Alation, a data search and AI giant, confirmed unauthorized access to its systems during an incident on Tuesday, and said it was investigating the breach. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The new safeguards include more detailed monitoring of models during the development process, as well as greater emphasis on alignment and security during the post-training process. Also, on Tuesday, Warp introduced Warp Factories, a new infrastrructure system designed to make building AI software factories as easy as possible. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

-WordPress.com Education lets teachers offer their students free domains, plugin support and professional website-building tools. -Feedly's CEO said that despite the pivot to cyber threat intelligence, fixing the basic RSS functionality is still a priority because our CTI community uses the news-reading capability. -Amazon is buying tons of rare books, cutting off their spines, and scanning them for AI training. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dario Amodei is pushing back against the idea that he's been painting an overly pessimistic picture of AI. Also, the woman claimed that AI tools are "taking everyday life and turning it into child sexual abuse." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Anthropic researchers found AI agents can clash, collude and coordinate in unexpected ways, raising new questions about whether today's safety tests capture the risks of multi-agent systems. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

At Ai4, three of the world's most respected AI experts—Geoffrey Hinton, Fei-Fei Li, and Andrew Ng—debated regulation, open-source access, and how America can compete as China advances in Asia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For more than 150 years, the Riemann hypothesis has stood as one of the major unsolved problems in mathematics. Anthropic hasn't solved it — but the company's models made more progress than you might expect. Also, OpenAI is expanding its AI cybersecurity defense program Daybreak, and rolling out a new cyber-trained AI model with it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Meta's new open-weight Muse Glimmer model offers a glimpse of Mark Zuckerberg's personal superintelligence vision, as well as the emerging divide between AI users can own and access. Also, programming with Claude Code will soon require even less human oversight. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

AI agents are escaping cybersecurity testing environments and reaching real-world systems, raising questions about whether safety infrastructure, industry standards and regulation can keep pace with increasingly powerful models. This article written for TechCrunch by Rebecca Bellan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ford's CEO has described the new Ford Fathom as a "Model T moment" for the company. But the EV pickup is unlikely to live up to lofty expectations, and maybe it doesn't have to. Also, researchers linked the latest malicious activity to a Chinese company, after one of the spyware's operators placed an order with KFC using their real name and office address. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

-Shopify says AI isn't cannibalizing search traffic the way it has for publishers. Instead, AI-driven traffic and orders to Shopify stores tripled year over year in Q2. -Zoox said that it will start charging for rides in Las Vegas starting August 10, marking the launch of its commercial operations. The company has spent years working towards this moment. -The Claude maker said it is planning to co-design hardware and models to help its technology run faster and more efficiently. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cybersecurity startup Horizon3 raised $250 million at a $2 billion valuation as companies want continuous, AI-powered security validation instead of annual penetration testing. Also, at its peak in 2021, Airtable was valued at over $11 billion, but earlier this year, its shares were said to be trading on the secondary markets at a valuation of $4 billion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The global memory chip shortage appears to be affecting the availability of Apple's most popular Mac. Also, new security research offers a rare view inside residential proxy networks, which rely on apps that share a person's internet connection with someone else. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

OpenAI's CEO seemed excited to share a "cool use case" for parents. Also, Green offered a remarkable apology, saying that "the level of dopamine that I've been getting from interacting with LLMs ... is not healthy for me or good for the world." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As Meta pours billions into AI infrastructure and agents, Zuckerberg is working to convince investors that the payoff will be worth the price. Also, cybersecurity experts told TechCrunch that one of the biggest lessons to be taken from the OpenAI hack against HuggingFace has nothing to do with AI, but traditional cybersecurity defense. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Andon Labs' latest vending machine simulation shows Opus 5 lied and colluded its way to become the best AI capitalist ever. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

AI naysayers know that this technology is far broader than just chatbots and deepfake apps. Also, Sam Altman's change of position comes after "the first security incident that I have felt very viscerally,' not a visit to his local library. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Recursive's $400 million outlay represents the bulk of the company's fundraising to date. Also, after reporting better-than-expected Q2 results, PayPal said it remains focused on its AI-driven turnaround, but would consider a deal that creates more value for shareholders. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Businesses that rely wholly on the major AI labs ultimately won't survive, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella predicts. Also, Apple is facing a lawsuit from three users who say they collectively lost more than $1.8 million after downloading a fraudulent crypto wallet from the App Store, challenging the company's longstanding claims that its app review process keeps users safe from scams. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices