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🍩 OpenAI's new gadget is a $300 speaker
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- OpenAI's next hardware product will be a screenless smart speaker priced between $300 and $400, according to a Bloomberg report that adds fresh details about the design, features, and how the device plans to stand out.
- The battery-powered speaker is said to have a doughnut shape about the size of a hockey puck, with moving parts that animate during conversations, plus microphones, lights, a camera, and sensors so the AI can read its surroundings.
- Designed with Jony Ive's LoveFrom studio, the speaker is aimed at a 2027 launch and uses AI models that learn about users over time, part of a wider plan for a family of devices that could eventually replace smartphones.
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🧬 AI designs new viruses from scratch
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- Researchers at Arc Institute used an AI model called Evo to design entirely new viral genomes from scratch, producing viruses not found in nature that proved capable of infecting and spreading through bacteria.
- Evo generated 700,000 potential genomes, which scientists narrowed to about 300 to build in the lab, and only 16 turned out to be viable, though those successfully overcame resistance in two strains of E. coli.
- Experts at Johns Hopkins warned that while the science has clear medical uses, governance rules haven't caught up, and the NIH's new biosafety policies don't cover purely AI-based research like this.
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⚖️ New Mexico fines Meta $942M
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- A New Mexico court ordered Meta to pay nearly $942 million after ruling that Facebook and Instagram fueled the state's youth mental health crisis and connected child predators with minors.
- The latest $567 million judgment, added to a jury's $375 million penalty from March, will fund the state's abatement plan and requires Meta to add teen safety measures over the next five years.
- Those changes include monthly time limits for teens, fewer notifications, tighter controls on adults contacting minors, AI chatbot safeguards, and better reviews of child sexual abuse reports; Meta disagreed and said it will appeal.
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☀️ Trump hits solar material with 15% tariff
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- President Trump placed a 15% tariff on imported products made from polysilicon, the key material in solar panels, aiming to shield U.S. solar supply chains from Chinese competition and boost domestic production.
- Alongside the duty, Trump set minimum prices for some related imports and used Section 232 of the 1962 Trade Expansion Act, acting on advice from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, as part of a wider push against China in energy and AI.
- U.S. solar stocks rose in Friday premarket trading, with First Solar climbing more than 7%, Solaredge Technologies up 1%, and the Invesco Solar ETF gaining 4%.
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🇨🇳 ByteDance trains massive AI model in bid to rival Anthropic
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- ByteDance is training an AI model with up to 10 trillion parameters, a size that could rival Anthropic's most advanced Mythos system and push Chinese labs closer to the leading US companies.
- The model is in early pre-training, a stage that usually runs three to six months before fine-tuning and release, and its final size will only be settled later, according to three people familiar with the work.
- At 10 trillion parameters, it would be three times bigger than Moonshot's Kimi K3, the largest Chinese model so far, and would top industry estimates of about 8 trillion for Anthropic's Mythos 5.
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💾 SK Hynix to invest $38B in chips
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- SK Hynix will spend 54 trillion won ($38.1 billion) to build two new memory chip plants in South Korea, aiming to meet the surging demand for chips driven by the AI data center boom.
- The bulk of the money, 35.2 trillion won ($24.9 billion), goes to a Yongin plant making HBM and other DRAM, while 19.1 trillion won ($13.2 billion) funds a Cheongju facility for NAND storage chips.
- The first cleanroom won't start production until as early as June 2029, so shoppers shouldn't expect relief, as analysts say memory prices are unlikely to soften before the end of 2028.
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