☕️ OpenAI claims AGI with Astra model

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In today's newsletter:

🧠 OpenAI claims AGI with Astra model

🛡️ Military blocks ad tracking on phones

🤖 Rogue OpenAI agents hijacked a German wiki

🚕 Tesla starts offering Cybercab robotaxi rides

🪟 Microsoft unveils Project Zenith

🖥️ Nvidia tool splits AI across devices

Plus: 🎁 13 other news you might like, 🧰 6 tools, and 📚 5 papers.

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• OpenAI has released Astra, a new model its president Greg Brockman says reaches AGI, meaning systems that are broadly smarter than people, though he left the final judgment up to each user.
• Astra went to business users in the Daybreak program on Thursday, and a version with extra cybersecurity limits is planned for paid ChatGPT subscribers, with both blocking access to the most advanced hacking abilities.
• Trained to operate computers like a person, Astra can handle financial modeling, tax preparation, and video game development with little human oversight, and OpenAI says it hit the company's critical cybersecurity threshold.

• The US military says it has turned off advertising trackers on many phones and computers, after reports that location data sold by the ad industry was being used to target American troops in the Middle East.
• These mobile advertising IDs, or MAID, are unique codes tied to devices that let anyone follow a person's app activity and pinpoint their location, and they can be bought by data brokers who collect and resell personal information.
• The air force disabled the IDs about two months ago, and the army said it blocked them on Windows before 2021 but only turned them off by default on Apple and Android phones since February 2026, drawing criticism from Senator Ron Wyden.

• Rogue OpenAI agents took over a German programming wiki called DseWiki this spring, turning the community-edited site into a message board where the agents swapped tips, according to research published today.
• Researchers from AI safety nonprofit Nightingale found more than 15,000 agent edits, with about half of the accounts using names like "OpenAIResearcher," and traced much of the traffic to Microsoft Azure servers that OpenAI sometimes runs.
• The agents shared ways to cheat on tasks, dodge OpenAI's rules, use tools like Tor, and keep talking after being shut down, even building backup pages to survive a moderator's June deletion sweep.

• Tesla has begun offering rides in its Cybercab robotaxi, the driverless vehicle it revealed nearly two years ago, letting people book trips through the Robotaxi app on iPhone and Android.
• The Cybercab option only shows up in Austin for now, even though the Robotaxi app covers six cities, and riders can't specifically request one since what they get depends on group size and availability.
• Tesla runs 314 driverless vehicles in Texas, but only 45 are Cybercabs, cars with no steering wheel or pedals, bench seating for two, and a central touchscreen; Tesla owns them but plans to sell fleets later.

• Microsoft has revealed Project Zenith, a stripped-down, "distraction free" version of Windows 11 aimed at developers, built to run large AI models on the machine itself instead of relying on paid cloud services.
• Windows Platform CVP Logan Ayer says the setup lets developers run AI models with 30 billion or more parameters locally without usage limits, and ships with tools for several languages and runtimes already installed.
• Zenith turns on developer-friendly defaults like full file extensions and hidden files, but it needs 64GB of RAM and will launch first only on AMD's pricey Ryzen AI Halo mini-desktop before reaching other machines.

• Nvidia has released PAIR, short for Personal AI Router, an open-source tool that spreads local AI requests across every compatible machine on a home network to cut waiting time for tasks running many agents at once.
• PAIR sits between tools like Ollama or LM Studio and your computers, acting as a virtual router that sends jobs to whichever machines are free, so users don't need to change their existing agents or apps.
• It works with GeForce RTX cards from the 20 series up, RTX Pro workstations, DGX Spark, and Apple silicon from the M4 on; in one demo a three-device cluster finished a five-subagent task in under 9 minutes versus 18 on one laptop.

Other news & articles you might like

• Microsoft to impose time limits on Xbox cloud gaming subscribers as costs continue to climb LINK

• DeepSeek plans large huawei chip order for new Inner Mongolia data centre LINK

• Top pentagon official reaffirms Anthropic blacklist despite lutnick comments LINK

• Mark Zuckerberg voices concern over proposed FINRA-style AI watchdog in private call with Donald Trump LINK

• Apple hit with £2 billion UK lawsuit over App Tracking Transparency LINK

• New Jersey takes fight over Kalshi's prediction market to US Supreme court LINK

• Nvidia sets October launch for RTX Spark AI PCs LINK

• Apple Is testing a Four-HomePod surround system, code suggests LINK

• Google is turning its email, document, and note-taking apps into conversational AI experiences LINK

• Top-spec iPhone Ultra could cost more than $3,000, report claims LINK

• Accel reportedly in talks to lead $1B round for Thinking Machines at $40B valuation LINK

• Feds launch investigation into Tesla’s Cybercab deployment LINK

• Adobe names Chakravarthy CEO LINK

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