Episode Details

Fired OpenAI safety researchers disputed their dismissals and OpenAI pushed back. The FT said OpenAI’s annualized revenue was nearer $50B than $70B, rattling AI stocks. SpaceX bought spectrum to take on carriers, and Apple lined up a second October event.

• AI researcher Mikita Balesni says he believes OpenAI fired him, Tomek Korbak, and Jasmine Wang for “prioritizing safety over the near-term interests of OpenAI” (X)
• Fired OpenAI safety researchers Jasmine Wang, Mikita Balesni and Tomek Korbak published an open letter warning the “very public” firings could have a “chilling” effect on employees, and urging OpenAI to keep its third-party safety auditors (Engadget)
• OpenAI is standing firm on firing Wang, Korbak and Balesni after an investigation found “a significant breach of trust,” insisting it wasn’t about their safety concerns (The Verge)
• Sources: Apple is planning an event on or around October 27 for its first touchscreen MacBook, an OLED iPad mini, a 14" MacBook Pro with M6, and an iMac with M6 (Bloomberg)
• Anthropic launches OSS Scanner, which provides free, opt-in security audits for open-source projects by sending AI-generated reports without human review (Anthropic)
• Anthropic’s OSS Scanner gives open-source projects periodic scans by its strongest models, including Claude Mythos, at no cost, but the reports are fully model-generated with no human triage, so some may be wrong (Engadget)
• Docs: OpenAI told investors its annualized revenue was nearing $50B at the end of September, well below the $70B reported by the media based on investor docs (Financial Times)
• SpaceX agrees to acquire a low-band spectrum portfolio to help Starlink “become a major mobile carrier in the US”; AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon fall 6%+ after hours (Bloomberg)
• Jev developer TypeSafe AI raised ~$870M led by a16z at a $7.5B valuation with Sequoia and others participating (Bloomberg)
• Anthropic updates its usage policy to ban “sustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior” toward Claude; ending chats is “the primary enforcement mechanism” (The Verge)

Longreads

• “Software is over”: Bold AI developer takes aim at Adobe with open source clones (Ars Technica)

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