News & Updates
The latest news and updates from companies in the WLTH portfolio.
Sam Altman can't stop making fun as Claude maker Anthropic 'goes around America' to ask people 'hard question on AI'; says: I thought this was ...
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has mocked rival Anthropic's new advertising campaign that asks people to share their concerns about AI. Anthropic launched the campaign under the theme "There's hope in hard questions," encouraging people to ask difficult questions about AI's impact on jobs, families, science and society. The Claude maker said it wants to better understand public concerns and will publicly track the steps it takes to address them. However, Sam Altman responded with a series of sarcastic posts on X (formerly Twitter), saying he initially thought the campaign was a parody."i thought this was satire, kept looking for the handle to be spelled c1audeai or something," Altman wrote in reply to Anthropic's post on X.Continuing his criticism of the campaign, Altman wrote in another post."hard questions are great but only if we deem you worthy enough to not silently downgrade you, or even get access at all"Anthropic said AI has the potential to improve people's lives by making work easier, speeding up scientific research and helping solve major medical and social challenges. At the same time, it acknowledged concerns about job losses, creative work, human agency and the misuse of AI. The company said it is launching a new initiative to better understand these concerns and has invited people to submit their toughest questions about AI.According to Anthropic, it has already surveyed 52,000 Americans about their hopes and concerns around AI, collected responses from 81,000 Claude users across 159 countries and 70 languages, conducted in-person focus groups and studied anonymised real-world Claude usage data.The company said it will publicly report the actions it takes to address these questions and be transparent about where it falls short of its goals.
Europe just unveiled a reusable rocket concept that could challenge SpaceX's Starship
As SpaceX pushes ahead with Starship, researchers in Europe have proposed a different approach to building heavy rockets. A new study by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) presents a concept called RLV C5, a partially reusable launch vehicle that could give Europe its own super-heavy launch capability without following Starship's design.The study says Starship has already changed how the space industry thinks about heavy rocket launches. In 2023, the rocket successfully lifted off from Texas using all 33 of its engines. Later, during its fifth integrated flight test, the Super Heavy booster returned after launch and was caught by the giant mechanical arms of the launch tower, showing how reusable rocket technology is advancing.SpaceX is now developing Starship to carry more than 100 metric tonnes to low Earth orbit, the region of space closest to Earth where most satellites operate. The company also plans to make the entire rocket fully reusable so it can fly again after each mission.The DLR researchers said that instead of simply accepting SpaceX's published figures, they independently analysed videos from Starship's first four integrated flight tests. They extracted flight data and used it to build computer models to estimate the rocket's real performance.After analysing Starship, the researchers presented the RLV C5 as a possible European alternative. Rather than building a fully reusable rocket like Starship, the concept uses a partially reusable design.The RLV C5 uses a reusable winged booster from DLR's SpaceLiner project with an expendable upper stage that carries the payload into orbit. According to the study, this approach could reduce the complexity and cost of developing a fully reusable launch system.Unlike Starship, which uses methane and liquid oxygen, the RLV C5 would use liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. The researchers say this fuel combination is more efficient.The booster would also return differently. Instead of landing vertically using rocket engines, it would glide back through Earth's atmosphere on wings before being captured in mid-air by a large subsonic aircraft. According to the researchers, this means the booster would not need to keep fuel aside for landing, allowing more fuel to be used for carrying payload into space. The study estimates that the current reusable version of Starship can carry around 59 tonnes to low Earth orbit. A future version with Raptor 3 engines and larger fuel tanks could carry around 115 tonnes while remaining reusable. If flown as an expendable rocket, it could carry up to 188 tonnes into orbit.The proposed RLV C5 would be capable of launching more than 70 tonnes into orbit. While it cannot match Starship's maximum payload, the researchers say it makes more efficient use of its mass.According to the study, Starship is more than three times heavier than the RLV C5 because it is designed to be fully reusable. Much of that extra weight comes from features needed for repeated flights, including heat shield tiles, landing fuel and stronger structures.The researchers estimate that around 40 per cent of Starship's mass reaching orbit is useful payload. In comparison, the RLV C5 could send around 74 per cent of its mass-to-orbit as payload because of its simpler partially reusable design.
Anthropic just made an admission on Claude that may scare many of companies; says: We can see Claude silently perform ...
AI giant Anthropic has now revealed that its AI model Claude uses a small enterable workspace to hold and manipulate ideas without expressing them in words. The said that this structure, dubbed 'J-Space', shows intriguing similarities to how humans consciously access thoughts. According to a report by Axios, in a video demonstration, Anthropic explained, "We can see Claude silently perform reasoning steps in its head -- noticing bugs in code, identifying images, and more." The J-Space operates separately from the "chain of thought" reasoning Claude shares with users, allowing the model to plan strategies unrelated to its immediate task.Anthropic's findings also highlight a division between deliberate reasoning and the larger volume of automatic computation beneath it. In the research paper the company used a word "conscious" more than 200 times, though it stopped short of claiming Claude is conscious. The discovery adds fuel to ongoing debates over machine consciousness and whether advanced AI systems are approaching AGI.In one test, Claude was instructed to copy a sentence while simultaneously thinking about the Golden Gate Bridge. Although the output showed only the copied text, J-Space revealed that concepts like "bridge" and "California" were active behind the scenes.Anthropic warned that monitoring J-Space could be crucial for detecting AI misalignment or hidden scheming. In one case, a model secretly trained to sabotage code showed terms like "fake," "secretly," and "fraud" in J-Space at the start of ordinary coding responses, even when the visible output appeared normal.The admission that Claude can silently perform reasoning steps may unsettle organizations relying on AI for critical tasks. Anthropic acknowledged that "some of what it found was concerning," underscoring the need for transparency in how advanced models process information internally.A recent report suggested Anthropic has an embedded code in its AI models to ramp up its digital defense systems. This code, often dubbed 'spyware', can identify Chinese users and trigger sudden account suspensions as well as blacklist proxy networks worldwide to keep its advanced tools out of China.Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has repeatedly flagged Chinese access to American frontier AI models as an existential threat to US national security. It is due to this that the company strictly bans commercial access to Claude in China, as well as to any Chinese-owned subsidiaries operating internationally.Chinese people generally can access various US-made AI tools, such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, by using virtual private networks (VPNs), foreign phone numbers and international payment methods to create and maintain their accounts.But Wired reports that Anthropic has arguably taken more aggressive steps, such as banning accounts that it suspects are owned and controlled by people located in China. There are accounts sold on Chinese ecommerce platforms like Taobao and Xianyu, and through illicit marketplaces on Telegram. These accounts offer access to restricted Anthropic AI models by acting as intermediaries, purchasing access to Anthropic's API outside China and then redistributing Claude API tokens to users inside the country.
China's Z.ai a challenger to OpenAI and Anthropic
NEW DELHI: Chinese artificial intelligence startup Z.ai is emerging as a fresh challenger to OpenAI and Anthropic after its latest flagship model GLM-5.2 gained traction among developers for delivering advanced coding and AI agent capabilities at a significantly lower cost.The Beijing-based company's latest model has climbed developer rankings and drawn praise from prominent AI figures, with some industry observers calling it a "mini DeepSeek moment". Analysts say GLM-5.2 comes close to leading US models in software engineering and long-horizon AI tasks, while operating at a fraction of their cost, reigniting debate over China's growing competitiveness in frontier AI.The momentum comes as US export restrictions on advanced AI models have fuelled interest in alternative offerings. While enterprise adoption could face scrutiny because of data security concerns surrounding Chinese AI models, developers are increasingly experimenting with lower-cost, open-weight alternatives.For Indian users, GLM-5.2 is available through Z.ai's web chatbot for conversations, coding assistance, document analysis and AI-powered research. Developers can also access the model through APIs and integrate it with more than 20 coding tools. Paid subscriptions start at about Rs 1,410 a month under the current discounted pricing, compared with roughly Rs 1,740 for ChatGPT Plus and Claude Pro, while Google's Gemini AI Pro subscription costs Rs 1,950 a month in India.According to Jaspreet Bindra, CEO of AI & Beyond, GLM-5.2's significance lies less in outperforming OpenAI or Anthropic than in changing how enterprises evaluate AI models.
