Good afternoon! A lot has happened since the last Sizzle. What a crazy time. Today is a bit top-heavy on the US/AI stuff, but we'll be back to normal tomorrow -- CW

Mentioned in today’s edition: Anthropic, Sam Altman, Google, Jack Dorsey, Canva, Cortical Labs, Drake and Doom. Plus, deals on Sony earbuds, UE speakers and Kogan prepaid plans.

The News

The US government doesn't want AI companies to prevent them from using their tech to do surveillance or to kill autonomously

On Friday, the Trump administration ordered all US agencies to stop using Anthropic's tools after the AI company refused to scrap safeguards against mass surveillance and autonomous weapons (ABC News). This was the culmination of a long-simmering dispute about what the Pentagon could use Claude for. The dispute reportedly came down to Anthropic's refusal to let the US military "analyze bulk data collected from Americans" or to only use it in the cloud ??? (Atlantic). Defense secretary Pete Hegseth said the agency will declare Anthropic a "supply chain risk". Meanwhile OpenAI's Sam Altman says he signed a deal with the Pentagon that includes what Anthropic was asking for ... (Guardian).

Hours later, the US attacked Iran. Oh, and the US military ended up using Anthropic's AI for the Iran attack anyway (Engadget).

The Sizzle: It's not an exaggeration to say this is one of the craziest things to happen in AI and tech generally. This is the government using all its might to either force a company to make tech to surveil and kill people, or face what an ex-Trump admin member called "attempted corporate murder" (X). Casey Newton's Platformer edition on this is an excellent read.

A few things that are swirling around this issue: 

A few other related links: Hundreds of millions of dollars were wagered on Polymarket/Kalshi about the Iran strikes (The Verge),  Hacked Prayer App Sends “Surrender” Messages to Iranians Amid Israeli Strikes (WIRED), A UAE AWS server was hit by a drone and you can follow the issue notice on the status page (AWS).

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Are companies AI-washing their layoffs?

Financial payments tech company Block laid off close to half of its employees late last week, with CEO Jack Dorsey citing AI as a major reason (Guardian, Dorsey's letter). Block has a lot of Aussie employees since its Afterpay acquisition, and they literally went on a staff retreat two days before layoffs (AFR, $). This plus Wisetech's layoffs led friend of the Sizzle, David Swan, to call this "the week AI came for Australian jobs". Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that experts are raising the possibility that companies are "AI-washing" cuts to their companies, rather than owning up to having hired too many people and underperforming.

Discuss in Slack or Forum.

Australia's new AI age check rules start next week — and most services aren't compliant.

Just nine of the top 50 most popular AI services have rolled out or announced age check systems ahead of next week's Australian deadline (Reuters). It's been nearly six months since the eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant locked in the tech industry's proposed regulation on AI providers, which includes a new requirement for AI chatbots to restrict sexual and violent content from children. But, as some great reporting from Reuters shows, most of these services aren't compliant. Let's see how hard eSafety goes at enforcing this. 

Discuss in Slack or Forum.

Leftovers

Australia:

Rest of World:

Discuss in Slack or Forum.

Oh, Also

No thoughts, only Doom

It's a bit of a heavy news cycle, so I'm very glad to share the news that Australian company Cortical Labs says it's taught brain cells to play Doom. The backstory is that the company has created "neuron-powered computer chips", which is a bunch of human brain cells grown on top of some micro-electrode arrays (New Scientist). Now, Cortical Labs has built a way to run Python on these chips -- so naturally, the only thing to do was to teach it to play Doom. 

Apparently the chip plays better Doom than a randomly firing player but, the NS writeup dryly notes, its "performance is not up to par with humans". 

Discuss in Slack or Forum.

Bargains

Electronics

Computing

Mobile

The End

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