• OpenAI said its models found that a commonly held computer science hypothesis was wrong.
• Hours later, Anthropic agreed.
• Here's how techies and mathematicians in the internet's nerdiest corners are responding.

Turns out, OpenAI might be really good at computers.

On Monday, the company said it punctured the Exponential Time Hypothesis, or ETH, the nearly 30-year-old belief in the computer science community that some logic problems get overwhelmingly time-consuming as they grow. Hours later, Anthropic released its own research refuting ETH.

OpenAI said it had asked a group of outside computer scientists to organize an open review of its claim. The researchers have highlighted that their involvement is not an endorsement.

If the AI labs' announcements hold, they would likely reopen the hunt for increasingly capable algorithms — something that computer scientists had largely assumed couldn't get much better.

The ultra-nerdy claim has been a huge topic of conversation across social media and in techie circles. Here's how some of the thought leaders have reacted to OpenAI's announcement:

Ryan Williams, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT

Williams, one of the three independent algorithm design experts who are researching OpenAI's claims, has not certified the company's results.

He wrote on X that, if OpenAI's claim turns out to be true, the fresh findings "should make every computer scientist put at least a little more weight on the possibility of P = NP," making the company closer to another potential $1 million Millennium Prize Problem.

In more practical terms, Williams said the claimed breakthrough could lead to "faster algorithms."

He has previously said that he doesn't believe in ETH.

Gary Marcus, emeritus professor at NYU

Marcus, a frequent AI skeptic, wrote that this could be "a big deal if correct," on X.

John D. Cook, Ph.D. and tech consultant in applied mathematics

In a blog post, Cook said OpenAI's claims — while impressive — didn't finally answer computer science's biggest open question.

"The status of P = NP is still unknown," he wrote. "While 3-SAT does not take exponential time, it still takes more than polynomial time as far as anyone knows."

Joshua Fonseca Rivera, AI Safety Research Fellow at Anthropic

Rivera wrote on X that OpenAI's fresh claim was a reminder that humans could have underestimated a computer's intelligence.

"The bitter lesson should make this unsurprising," he wrote. "I know this logically, but... wow, we really don't know anything."

Timothy Gowers, professeur titulaire at Collège de France and Fields Medal-winning mathematician

Gowers wrote a blunt take on X about the development: "Very surprising and consequential that it is false."

Dan Shipper, CEO at Every

Shipper, the AI-pilled chief executive at a tech startup, wrote on X what everyone else was thinking…

"I regret not getting a Ph.D. in frontier math," he said. "(Not that I ever considered getting one but still)."

• Amazon shifts AI focus to business impact, not just raw usage, in new developer guidelines.
• The company warns that AI metrics can create bad incentives, including “tokenmaxxing.”
• Managers are told to examine teams at both the highest and lowest levels of AI adoption.

Amazon just issued new guidelines for software engineers in the AI era: Prioritize business outcomes over raw usage.

Terk Terkowitz, Amazon's vice president and distinguished engineer, said in a memo published Tuesday that AI is changing software development more quickly and fundamentally than earlier shifts such as cloud computing. But engineers should be judged by their impact on customers and the business, he wrote, not simply how much they use AI.

"We all need to embrace this change and take the time to learn, or we risk being left behind," Terkowitz said.

AI coding tools and agents are upending the software industry and changing what it means to be a coder. Amazon calls this the "era of the Renaissance Developer," where human judgement and machine intelligence combine to create new products and services faster and more efficiently.

"This is a time of change for our industry, and a time of change for what it means to be a software engineer," Terkowitz wrote in the memo.

The updated guidelines reflect Amazon's growing effort to make AI adoption part of how it assesses engineers and engineering managers. The company has tracked measures including AI usage, token consumption, and lines of code internally, and used leaderboards to rank teams by some of those metrics.

But the memo warns that using such measures as targets can produce bad outcomes, including "tokenmaxxing" rather than better software or customer experiences.

"Using these metrics could, if used as a target instead of a measure, drive negative outcomes," Terkowitz wrote in the memo.

Amazon has been experimenting with ways to measure and encourage AI use across its engineering organization.

Earlier this year, the company was tracking engineers's use of internal AI tools and some teams used leaderboards tied to measures such as token consumption. The programs created friction among some employees, who worried that pressure to use AI could reward wasteful activity rather than productive work.

The new guidance offers Amazon's clearest public acknowledgment of that risk. Rather than lay out a detailed AI playbook that could quickly become obsolete, Amazon said its revised developer guidelines focus on long-term impact on customers and the business.

Still, the company said AI should be "at the center of software engineering practice" and urged engineers to incorporate the technology into their daily work.

Leaders are expected to use AI tools on production work themselves, understand where they help and where they fall short, and explain that judgment to their teams, according to the memo.

Terkowitz said Amazon has found that metrics such as token use, AI-tool adoption, and code reviews can correlate with the outcomes it values. But he said the measures must be used carefully. More token use can raise costs, while a focus on lines of code can create unnecessary complexity.

He also recommended that managers pay particular attention to teams at both ends of the AI adoption spectrum: those in the bottom 10%, to understand why they are not using AI effectively, and those in the top 10%, to determine whether heavier use is translating into faster delivery.

Terkowitz said Amazon's most AI-forward "frontier teams" have shown stronger productivity and delivery. He also said teams and individuals that are not adopting AI or increasing output metrics are falling behind.

But his memo left room for engineers whose work may not yet benefit from current AI tools. In those cases, he said, employees should document why and work toward a solution by sharing their findings with peers and managers.

"An engineer who can explain where AI does not yet help their work is demonstrating the judgement we are asking for," the memo said.

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• Anthropic is touting its ability to use different AI chips in its initial public offering filing.
• Analysts say a multichip strategy could weaken Nvidia's pricing power.
• Switching chips is hard and expensive, putting it out of reach for smaller players.

Anthropic is hedging its bets by using multiple chips to handle its AI work — a strategy that could eventually erode Nvidia's dominance.

The AI lab says it manages compute "as a single, fungible pool from multiple strategic partners" — with software that can direct its work to different chips depending on where they're most productive, according to Anthropic's S-1 filing, which came out Monday as the company prepares to go public.

Anthropic says it uses hardware from four chip families: Amazon Trainium, Google TPUs, Nvidia GPUs, and AMD GPUs.

That flexibility, which Anthropic said "took years and significant investment to build," could make major AI companies less dependent on Nvidia over time and give them more negotiating leverage, analysts said.

"The real exposure could be Nvidia's pricing power," said Patrick Moorhead, founder and CEO of Moor Insights & Strategy, "because a customer that can shift work across four platforms negotiates very differently than one that can't."

Ashish Nadkarni, an analyst at IDC, added that a multichip approach also makes Anthropic less vulnerable to fluctuations in Nvidia's chip supply.

Breaking Nvidia's grip isn't easy

Although Anthropic's chip mix isn't new, the company is now pitching it as a core advantage to investors, Moorhead said.

The threat has its limits. Switching between chips is still difficult — especially when it comes to training AI models as opposed to running them, Moorhead said — and only the biggest AI companies have the resources to do it.

Anthropic also continues to spend billions on Nvidia compute, Moorhead said.

Gil Luria, head of technology research at D.A. Davidson, said that while other major companies like OpenAI likely take a multichip approach, it may not be worth the effort and investment for smaller players.

Brad Gastwirth, global head of research and market intelligence at Circular Technology, said Anthropic's strategy doesn't represent a major near-term threat. Having more chip options doesn't erase Nvidia's advantages in performance, networking, and software, he said.

There's a broader risk for Nvidia if AI compute becomes more of a commodity.

Citadel CEO Ken Griffin has warned that if supply overtakes demand, it could drive down rental prices.

"GPUs, like airlines, have a very low marginal cost to run," he told Bloomberg last week. "The moment you have overcapacity, pricing goes into freefall."

Nvidia did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

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Anthropic, the AI startup known for its Claude chatbot and its doomer CEO Dario Amodei, has filed for an IPO that could value the company at up to $2 trillion. The company's IPO filing devotes nearly 100 pages to the dangers its own technology could pose.

The post Hacking & Blackmail: 6 Risks Anthropic Flags in Its IPO Documents appeared first on Breitbart.

• Anthropic's IPO paperwork shows the AI giant has some unusual approaches to governance.
• One of those is an agreement with a separate entity, Anthropic Founders LLC, controlled by seven of its cofounders.
• Those seven cofounders, including CEO Dario Amodei, can submit a secret list of successors to inherit their voting power.

Anthropic has devised an unusual way for its founders to pass on their power.

In its IPO filings, Anthropic outlined how seven of its cofounders, who collectively have 50.1% of voting control, will be able to create a ranked list of who they'd like to inherit their power in the event of their death or incapacitation.

What's particularly notable is that while the names would be shared with the other LLC members and Anthropic's Nominating Committee, they are otherwise contractually confidential and generally not public.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Anthropic President Daniela Amodei, and the five other LLC members will review and vote on whether to approve their fellow founders' proposed successors, but the names will likely never be seen by other shareholders. (The agreement allows for the publication only in narrow circumstances, such as a court order or other legal requirement.)

Under the agreement, which was first highlighted by Forbes, each member of the Founders LLC may name up to 10 potential successors, ranked in order of preference. The other LLC members must then vote to approve the secret lists.

While succession plans are not unusual, Anthropic's approach is unusual in how it ranks potential successors. It also underscores how, thanks to the Founders LLC, Anthropic's leaders will be able to maintain control as shareholders begin to offer input post-IPO.

Facebook's 2012 IPO paperwork suggested that if Mark Zuckerberg were in control of the company at the time of his death, then control could be transferred to someone he designated. (Meta has since tweaked this plan.) In 2020, Airbnb's three cofounders agreed to transfer their voting power to their other cofounders if one of them died or became disabled, but that arrangement (which still exists) only lasts for nine months.

The succession plan does not establish CEO succession. Anthropic's board of directors would handle such a chief executive appointment.

There are also some limitations to who the Anthropic founders can name on their lists.

Eight of their 10 potential successors are subject to eligibility requirements, including that the person named is a current or former employee of Anthropic or one of its subsidiaries, or has worked for "a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization or a national or international organization whose primary purpose is research, education, or the promotion of public benefit." In either case, the person must have worked there for at least three years.

If the person worked for Anthropic, they must have held a specific role, such as a member of the technical staff or the company's internal think tank, or another role approved by the board and a majority of the other members. If they worked outside Anthropic, they must have held a senior role at the nonprofit. These successors must also be US citizens, have permanent residency, or have valid work authorization.

The other two names, if a founder names all 10 potential successors, are not subject to the eligibility requirements, but they must also receive the required approval.

The succession plan doesn't last forever.

Under the agreement, a successor member generally would cease to be a member on the 10th anniversary of Anthropic's IPO. After that point, successor designees may be admitted only in limited circumstances during a transition period.

Microsoft is offering voluntary buyouts to 60,000 employees, or roughly 27 percent of its entire workforce as the software giant reconfigures its staff for the AI era.

The post The Impact of AI: Microsoft Slashes 27% of Workforce with Voluntary Buyout Offer appeared first on Breitbart.

• United CEO Scott Kirby says that so far he has found AI most useful for vibe coding.
• "I can read my calendar. I don't need to summarize my day," he told the "Cheeky Pint" podcast.
• Kirby said he had an "epiphany" after vibe-coding a sports-gambling tool.

United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby loves gambling, and now he's using AI as an ace up his sleeve.

Speaking on the "Cheeky Pint" podcast, Kirby said that over the past eight months, he's had an "AI epiphany" about the tech's best uses, which was triggered by one of his favorite pastimes — sports betting.

"Summarizing documents and all that crap, I think it's ridiculous," Kirby said. "I can read my calendar. I don't need to summarize my day."

Instead, he has found vibe coding far more valuable.

Kirby told "Cheeky Pint" host and Stripe cofounder John Collison that he hired a tutor for three hourlong sessions, then used AI to make a webpage for sports gambling.

"I've always been into gambling. For better or worse," Kirby said.

Between sets in a two-and-a-half-hour gym session, he typed prompts on his iPad to vibe-code a page with "four or five" drop-down menus for different sports, dates, and bets. Kirby said it links to four sportsbooks and pulls up the best odds; then he can enter a dollar amount, and it places the bet for him.

"I could do it with three hours of tutoring on my own, could write a program to do that, was an epiphany for me," Kirby said. "I think I called them on that Saturday, our team, and like, 'We're all in on this.'"

His appetite for risk has helped Kirby make bets on airline strategy that have paid off. For example, when carriers around the world retired their airplanes during the pandemic, United instead ordered hundreds of new jets — buoying the airline when travel demand boomed after lockdowns ended.

The United CEO previously spoke about his love for gambling in an April interview with The Wall Street Journal, where he described being kicked out of casinos for counting cards before he started in the airline industry.

He told "Cheeky Pint" that he went back to Las Vegas when the Super Bowl was held there in 2024.

After setting up a credit line to play poker, he had to hand over his ID.

"It was like 15 years ago that I got barred at the Bellagio last time," he said. "The manager comes over, and he's like, 'Mr. Kirby, you're welcome to play any game in the casino, but just so you know, still no blackjack.'"

This article was originally published by Truthout on Oct. 26, 2026. It is shared here under a  Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license.

The Northern Cheyenne Tribal Council voted unanimously this October to ban data centers on tribal land in Montana. The ban follows a decision in August by the Fort Peck Tribes to bar officials from projects involving data center developers.

But Montana’s Tribes are now split. Next door to the Northern Cheyenne, the Apsáalooke, or Crow Tribe, has not taken an official position and remains open to hearing proposals from companies, according to Shane Doyle, an Apsáalooke tribal member and The Nature Conservancy’s Indigenous right relations director. Doyle grew up on the Crow Reservation and has consistently advocated for reciprocity with the land, rendering him a voice in the dissent, whether he intends to be or not.

The stakes are highest in Crow country. In the small city of Hardin, at the Crow Indian Reservation’s northern edge, a former cryptocurrency mine is being actively converted into an AI data center. About 14 miles northwest of the reservation, Texas-based Quantica Infrastructure plans to build its Big Sky campus on nearly eight square miles of ranchland near the town of Broadview, north of Billings, Montana’s most populous city. As it’s currently planned, the data center would rank among the largest data centers in the world. The Yellowstone River Valley is “the heart of the Crow Nation,” Doyle said.

Krystal Two Bulls, who is Oglala Lakota and Northern Cheyenne, has been tracking these data centers closely. As the executive director of Honor the Earth, a nonprofit tracking data centers on or near reservation lands, she takes an extensive view of history and geography when it comes to tribal land and AI developments.

“Broadview is still a traditional territory of the Northern Cheyenne and also the Crow,” she told Truthout. “It may not technically be on the reservation, but it definitely is still going to have an impact on the land and the people around it.”

The divide over data centers comes as developers eye Montana for its land, water, and power, and as Tribes test how far their sovereignty can actually reach. Bans like the Northern Cheyenne’s are enforceable on tribal land, said Matthew Fletcher, a University of Michigan Law professor and member of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians. But tribal bans on off-reservation data centers that affect reservation waters are “unlikely to be enforceable,” Fletcher said, unless a tribe can show a very significant threat to its waters, enterprises, or citizens’ health.

Quantica has asked Northwestern Energy for more than 7,000 megawatts. The utility currently serves about 750 average megawatts, said Anne Hedges, executive director of the Montana Environmental Information Center. “We’ve never imagined something this massive,” she told Truthout. The company’s plan includes about 1,700 megawatts of gas generation, which alone would be more than the gas generated by all Montana’s existing gas plants combined.

The gas would affect more than just the rural Broadview community. A retired Billings pulmonologist modeled the air-quality impact of 1,700 megawatts using EPA tools, Hedges said, and found fine-particulate pollution spreading to communities east of the site, including the Crow, Northern Cheyenne, and Fort Peck reservations. “It’d be a disaster,” she said.

The Northern Cheyenne resolution, which passed by a vote of 8-0, covers all land on the reservation, says Melissa Lonebear, a Northern Cheyenne citizen and tribal council member. It quashes any extant or future data center discussions on their territory. (None are currently active.) “We have fought historically to preserve our land,” says Lonebear. “We have fought against coal development, coal bed methane, all these things.”

The Northern Cheyenne own nearly all of the land within their reservation, which makes the Tribe a target for developers looking for large, contiguous sites, Lonebear said. She added that the governor had remarked in a closed meeting with tribal leaders that big corporations were looking for land. “I almost felt like we would be targeted,” she said.

Fort Peck’s ban bars the tribal government, individuals, and entities from discussing proposals to build data centers on the tribe’s reservation. The tribe passed the ban after three companies approached the tribe about data center projects on tribal land, Tribal Chairman Floyd Azure told Montana Free Press. Azure had asked standard questions about the benefits to his community, and after learning about the required natural resources, he strongly rejected theirs and any future proposals. Azure did not respond to Truthout’s request for comment.

Tribal water rights in the state define what is available for development projects like data centers. Fort Peck and the Northern Cheyenne coordinate with state environmental agencies, such as Montana’s Department of Natural Resources and Conservation (DNRC), to enforce these rights. “Physical and legal water availability analysis are part of the water rights permitting process, as is an assessment of adverse effect to other water right,” Patricia Spencer, a DNRC spokesperson, told Truthout.

Water rights are set out in an agreement between a tribe and a state, and sometimes the federal government. Such an agreement limits the amount of water available to the tribe within the state’s overall supply, which is sourced from groundwater and rivers near and far. “The proposed datacenter in Hardin is located in a basin closed by the compact, and DNRC cannot process or grant an application for an appropriation of water within the Bighorn River Basin,” Spencer said in an email. “At this time, DNRC has not received any water rights applications or change applications tied to that facility.”

The Crow’s calculation also includes revenue, according to Lonebear. The Absaloka coal mine, which was long the Tribe’s marquee employer and profit source, shipped its last rail car of coal in 2024, the Billings Gazette reported. In August, a Senate committee advanced the Crow Revenue Act, a bill with full-throated support from Crow reservation chairman Frank White Clay that would give the Crow ownership of their coal, previously paternally managed by the Hope Family Trust. In exchange, the Hope family is offering federal coal reserves in Bill Mountains, which they’re anticipated to lease to Signal Peak Energy, whose customers are in Japan and South Korea. The Crow also plan to participate in the mining directly in the future.

The Absaloka coal mine reduced capacity and then halted production in April 2024 after losing its main client, Xcel Energy’s Sherburne County Generating Station (Sherco Plant), in Minnesota, which pivoted to cheaper, cleaner alternatives like natural gas. It’s a loss that left the Crow without a clear surrogate source of revenue.

“The Crow Tribe has decided to develop their coal… and so the rest of the world should not be in our way for that,” Conrad Stewart, energy director of the Crow Tribe, told Inside Climate News.

Water is on everyone’s mind. “We’re trying to always make sure that we protect our water, keep it clean, make sure there’s enough for the fish and for people to drink and use in the community,” says Doyle. “So I think a data center would conflict with that, with all our values.”

Asked whether the Crow will follow suit on the ban, Two Bulls said she was “hopeful,” but added that she doesn’t think the Crow will “entertain a ban or even a moratorium,” citing her understanding that tribal leadership sees data centers as a way to replace declining coal revenue.

The Crow chairman and executive officers all declined requests for comment.

Water may be a forefront issue, but that may not be the same for tribal consultation. Without a federal permit, federal land, or federal money, the federal consultation duties don’t apply: Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, NEPA review, and the federal government’s consultation obligations to Tribes.

The Montana Department of Environmental Quality has a public comment period that closes October 29 on Quantica’s water well. The company hasn’t yet applied for a water right, according to the DNRC, and that application will come with its own public notice.

Asked whether Montana’s Department of Natural Resources and Conservation must notify or consult the Crow Tribe, DNRC spokesperson Patricia Spencer pointed to the general public notice process. “Public notice, including an opportunity for the public to comment and make objections, is a part of the water rights permitting process,” Spencer told Truthout. “The Crow Tribe–Montana Water Rights Compact would not have any bearing on an application near Broadview.”

Meanwhile, the Montana Public Service Commission is developing a large-load tariff for data centers. The state legislature is scheduled to convene in January 2027, with what Hedges describes as dozens of data center bills. No Native legislators sit on the energy committee drafting them, and at the same time she called the American Indian Caucus “a force to be reckoned with.”

“We do not anticipate the construction and operation of our Big Sky Campus will impact tribal lands or water rights,” a Big Sky Digital Infrastructure spokesperson told Truthout over email.

“If we put a project like this in around Yellowstone County, in that river valley, it’s gonna be an environmental impact similar to a coal mine, or something that’s gonna cause irreparable harm to the area. I think that’s why there’s so much opposition to it right now,” Doyle said.

• "The Big Short" investor Michael Burry says Anthropic's IPO filing has fueled his worries about AI.
• Burry said a dense web of AI deals has made the industry "catastrophically vulnerable."
• Writing on Substack, Burry described AI financing arrangements as "garish and audacious."

Michael Burry says Anthropic's IPO filing this week has reinforced his concerns that the entire AI ecosystem is at risk of disaster.

The investor of "The Big Short" fame wrote in a Substack post on Tuesday that the first in-depth look at Claude's parent company, ahead of what could be the biggest IPO in history, threw up a bunch of red flags.

Burry pointed to Anthropic's huge spending commitments, slowing revenue, and tangled ties.

He said that Anthropic has struck deals to buy about $537 billion of compute from the likes of Amazon, Alphabet, and Microsoft, and reached preliminary agreements worth hundreds of billions more with others such as SpaceXAI, putting its total commitments at about 12 times its current annual run-rate revenue.

"This is not stated clearly in the S-1, and in my view it is the most deserved headline from it," Burry wrote in a Tuesday Substack post.

He underscored how hyperscalers like Amazon and Alphabet act as Anthropic's "lenders, vendors, channel providers, and shareholders." He also outlined its deal with Broadcom, which involves Apollo and Blackstone and includes convertible notes and structured credit tranches.

"Just remember, the reason this is so complex is because too much debt is needed, and it must be unloaded from the balance sheets of those involved," Burry wrote.

"While some may see all the circularity and connectedness as security on the way up, and that is not wrong, it does leave the entire organism catastrophically vulnerable either on a pause or on the way down," he added.

He also described financing arrangements in the AI space as "garish and audacious," and said hyperscalers aren't generating enough cash to fund the AI buildout so they're resorting to "Byzantine" deals.

Burry said it was a "very similar" situation with vendor financing during the dot-com bubble, saying "people keep making the same mistakes with every new thing."

Burry's worries

In its filing, Anthropic said its revenue surpassed $16 billion for the first six months of this year, a 14-fold increase from the first half of 2025. Its operating loss narrowed by about two-thirds to below $700 million, and it generated nearly $4 billion in operating cash flow.

Burry initially commented on Anthropic's filing in a Substack chat thread on Monday.

He said that revenue was "slowing," citing Anthropic's claim that third-quarter revenue was 86 times the $197 million it generated in the fourth quarter of 2024, or about $16.9 billion.

That would mean Anthropic's revenue grew by about 46% between the second and third quarters of this year, after soaring 144% between the first and second quarters.

"Overall slowing of growth is not attributed to a decline in tokenmaxxing, but I did not expect that to be mentioned," Burry wrote.

Burry was referring to the trend of maximizing AI token consumption, which has fallen out of favor in recent months given its costs.

In another comment, Burry wrote that large language models (LLMs) like Claude are "improving" and "already being used more efficiently and that trend will continue, to the detriment of their growth rate."

Burry said he's focused on the complexity and fragility of the debt financing many AI deals, hurdles to installing new graphics chips shoring up demand for older chips, a potential crash in memory chip prices once the shortage eases, compression and small language models (SLMs) reducing the need for computing power, and the "fundamentals behind not just companies but the deals they are doing."

Responding to a subscriber who said that Big Tech companies are shifting from Anthropic's AI models to their own, and that tokens are rapidly being commoditized, Burry wrote: "Yes, that is what I hear."

Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Burry's posts.

The contrarian investor shot to fame after his massive wager against the mid-2000s housing bubble was chronicled in the book and movie "The Big Short." He pivoted from running a hedge fund to writing about his personal investments on Substack last winter.

A recurring theme of his work since then has been deep skepticism of the AI boom. He's flagged slowing growth, overinvestment in microchips and data centers, aggressive accounting, hidden liabilities, and circular financing deals.

• President Donald Trump isn't giving up on his plan to rename the Atlantic to the "American Ocean."
• While he said last week that Google's CEO pushed back on the idea, he raised it again at a rally.
• "We have a lake, and we have a gulf. Now we need a river and an ocean," Trump told supporters.

Donald Trump is eyeing up new names for more bodies of water, despite pushback from Google's CEO.

"We have a lake, and we have a gulf. Now we need a river and an ocean," he said at a rally in Mississippi on Monday.

The president spoke about renaming the Atlantic Ocean to the "American Ocean" and quipped: "I think Europe will be thrilled."

Trump previously raised the idea last Wednesday at a rally in South Carolina, where he said that Google CEO Sundar Pichai had tried to change his mind.

Trump said that he called Pichai, joking that Google was "still rattled" from his renaming of the Gulf.

Google Maps previously changed its labels for the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario to the Gulf of America and Lake America following Trump's executive orders. The tech giant said the decision aligns with its policy to draw on official government databases. Users outside the US still see the original names followed by Trump's names in brackets.

However, Trump said that when he pitched the idea of renaming the Atlantic, Pichai replied, "This time I'm not doing it."

"Oceans are different, sir. They cover really a lot of countries. Please don't ask us to do that."

"So I'll probably pass," Trump told the crowd last week. "I think let's keep it the Atlantic Ocean."

The president first brought up the idea at a Tennessee rally earlier this month, where he floated renaming either the Atlantic or the Pacific as "Trump Ocean" or "Ocean of the Americas."

While he also spoke on Monday about renaming a river, he told the Mississippi crowd that the state's namesake river won't be relabeled.

"The Mississippi River, I'm not changing the name of the Mississippi," Trump said. "I promise."

• Machenta raised $40 million in seed funding led by Creandum and Union Square Ventures.
• It says robots can learn tasks from one demo using a model trained entirely in simulation.
• The startup remains focused on research as it takes on multibillion-dollar rivals.

A London-based robotics startup is betting it can teach robots new tricks without collecting the mountains of real-world data its much bigger rivals are chasing.

Machenta, founded by researchers from Imperial College London, has raised a $40 million seed round to build an AI model that can teach robots new physical tasks after seeing them performed just once, the company exclusively told Business Insider. Venture capital firms Creandum and Union Square Ventures co-led the round. Machenta declined to disclose its valuation.

While rivals building general-purpose AI models for robots are scrambling to amass real-world data, Machenta is taking a contrarian approach. Edward Johns, the startup's CEO and cofounder, and an Imperial professor, said the company trains its model in computer-generated environments that mimic how objects move and interact, without using a "single pixel of real-world data."

Once trained, the model can direct a robot to perform a new task, such as tidying a table or putting objects into a box, after watching it done just once, without further training, Johns said. In a video shared with Business Insider, three robots pack and close a box on an assembly line, a task Johns said they learned this way.

The startup has 11 employees and remains focused on research, with no near-term plans to commercialize its technology. Its model can learn some tasks immediately, but more precise tasks and complex movements remain challenging.

Machenta faces rivals with multibillion-dollar valuations in one of robotics' most competitive and well-funded fields. Its California-based competitors include Physical Intelligence, valued at roughly $11 billion, and FieldAI, which is raising funding at a $10 billion valuation, Business Insider reported this month.

Another rival, Skild AI, which is valued at over $14 billion, is already selling technology with similar capabilities. In August, Skild unveiled a model that it said could perform previously unseen tasks lasting up to 10 minutes after a single video demonstration. Last month, it said that it had reached $100 million in annual recurring revenue from more than 60 customers.

From research lab to startup

Six years ago, Johns began investigating whether robots could learn new physical tasks as quickly as humans at his Imperial College lab.

In the lab's early experiments, researchers physically guided a robot through a task, such as picking up a spatula and scooping an object. The robot then spent about 30 minutes collecting additional data about the object and its surroundings before it could perform the task on its own.

Johns and former Ph.D. student Vitalis Vosylius spent the next few years working to eliminate that extra step, founding Machenta late last year after seeing early signs that their model could perform new tasks immediately after a demonstration.

Companies are increasingly buying and collecting data to teach robots how to interact with the real world. But Johns believes simply collecting more data isn't the answer. It also remains unclear how much training data will be needed to make general-purpose robots a reality. Johns said that Machenta is taking on the harder challenge of designing algorithms that can generate synthetic data useful for teaching robots physical tasks.

Machenta plans to use the funding to expand its team and train its model with more computing power and simulated data, hoping to teach robots to perform more precise and complex tasks.

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• Infrastructure startup Hyperbolic raised a $30 million round led by Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan's VC firm.
• The startup connects companies with neoclouds and makes their AI chips easier to use.
• Hyperbolic also wants to let customers resell unused computing power.

Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan is backing an infrastructure startup that has raised $30 million to help companies rent compute across hundreds of different AI cloud providers.

Hyperbolic, an AI chip marketplace and software startup, has raised $50 million to date.

Walden Catalyst, the venture capital firm founded by Tan and former Samsung president Young Sohn, led the Series A-1 funding round. Dell Technologies Capital, General Catalyst, Vista Equity Partners, and Cambium Capital also participated.

As companies scramble for computing power, one challenge is that AI cloud providers, or neoclouds, use a mix of different chips, networking, and software. Hyperbolic helps customers find compute resources from different providers and creates software that makes it easier to use them all, rather than dealing with each one separately.

"It's been a really fragmented market that makes the customer experience really painful," said 31-year-old founder and CEO Jasper Zhang.

Hyperbolic also wants to let customers resell compute that they're paying for but no longer need.

The four-year-old startup works closely with about 30 neoclouds, including WhiteFiber and Vector Core Compute. It says it has roughly $200 million worth of compute connected to its software annually.

Hyperbolic previously raised a $12 million Series A round in 2024, led by Variant and Polychain Capital, following a $7 million seed round earlier that year. The company expects to have 50 employees by the end of the year and will use its funding to expand software tools for managing AI chips across different neoclouds.

Zhang said the company is aiming for $150 million in annual recurring revenue by the end of the year and is already breaking even. More than 250,000 developers, including teams at Modal, Higgsfield, and Daytona, use Hyperbolic.

Before founding the company, Zhang worked as a quantitative researcher at Citadel Securities. As Wall Street explores ways to financialize AI chips, he said his startup's plans to let companies resell unused compute could help pave the way for a futures market.

Here's a look at the pitch deck Hyperbolic used to raise its $30 million Series A-1. Slides have been redacted so that the deck can be shared publicly.

• Cybersecurity experts found severe PHP bugs that could allow attackers to hijack web servers.
• AI is being used to exploit vulnerabilities, making Americans more susceptible to scams.
• Experts stressed basic cyber hygiene and scam awareness, especially for older Americans.

In just two days, AI exposed critical flaws in a programming language behind 70% of all websites. That may have opened the door for a rush of scams — especially those targeted to vulnerable populations like older Americans.

Last week, cybersecurity researchers uncovered two severe bugs in the PHP programming language. Attackers could hijack web servers and execute remote code. This prompted the PHP Foundation to release emergency patches to prevent widespread hacks, and governments, cybersecurity agencies, and businesses quickly moved to do damage control.

Though some experts said there could have been more problems had these flaws not been immediately addressed, such a crisis can happen again. As AI becomes more advanced and widespread, Americans are becoming more exposed and susceptible to scams.

Scams have been pervasive for decades, starting with physical mail and landline telemarketing. But they've gotten significantly more complex and deceptive, now integrating AI in ways that even tech whizzes may not spot. Older Americans are often the main targets of fraud, losing billions in fraud. An AARP survey from April found that 4 in 10 older Americans have lost money to fraud.

With attackers pouncing on any vulnerability to steal personal details or get money, five experts told Business Insider that now is the time to get ahead on scam prevention. Their quotes have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, who founded the cybersecurity awareness campaign Take9

What are some of the most common scams targeting older Americans?

Hackers are using AI to ditch the typos and make scams harder to spot. AI also makes it easier to produce large numbers of targeted scams. This includes AI voice cloning and scans of social accounts for personal details. These scams are on the rise and hurting real people, including older folks like me.

How should families react to all the recent headlines about system vulnerabilities?

Don't panic, but don't ignore them either. It shouldn't be up to regular folks to outsmart scammers. The best thing for families to focus on is basic cyber hygiene.

Organizations like Google and Apple are working hard to block scams, particularly on phones. It's just as important that we prepare loved ones with the tools to protect themselves as scammers become more sophisticated.

What are ways in which you work to make people more cautious about scams?

I've been fighting scams for 25 years. I take them personally. That's why I founded Take9 in 2024 to help people understand how to protect themselves and stay safe online.

Scams are overwhelming, and people often don't know where to begin. My advice is to start with the basics: Take 9 seconds to pause before clicking on unknown texts or links.

Once they've got that down, try multi-factor authentication, password managers, passkeys, and single sign-on. Family codes are an effective method to keep your loved ones safe, too.

Don Grant, certified financial planner at Sabre Wealth and CFP Board Ambassador

What are some of the most common scams targeting older Americans?

Scams often involve impersonation of an institution or government agency like the IRS, Medicare, or Social Security. Fake technical support scammers contact you with claims of a breach at your bank or financial institution.

A good friend and client is in his mid-60s, is a single Notre Dame graduate, and is a retired university English professor. He talked incessantly about his gorgeous, accomplished girlfriend. She has sent him photos, but he had never met her in person, nor via video chat.

Fast forward to earlier this year. They are no longer an item. He reluctantly admitted that she was attempting to scam him. He did send her about $1,200 to help get her 9-year-old daughter into a music school. When she hit him up about 10 times so she could move, he figured it out and cut the ties. From what we pieced together, this was an AI-assisted romance scam.

How should families react to all the recent headlines about system vulnerabilities?

A security breach at an institution doesn't automatically mean that your accounts have been hacked. However, it does mean it's time to change your login credentials.

Set up account notifications for withdrawals, transfers, password changes, and anything to do with your accounts. Never respond to an unsolicited email from a site or financial institution with which you do business. Don't call the number provided in the communication or click the provided link. Take the time to log into a verifiable site and call a verifiable number with questions.

What are ways in which you work to make people more cautious about scams?

Communication and education are critical. I have open conversations about financial fraud, anonymously citing actual situations where a scammer attempted to separate them from their money. Recounting others' experiences seems to really drive the point home. We also insist that all clients designate a trusted contact we can reach if we notice unusual activity or have concerns about possible financial exploitation.

Removing the stigma that they are "stupid" if they are scammed is paramount. Many victims are embarrassed to admit they've been deceived, and that embarrassment can prevent them from seeking help.

Alex Jacquez, Groundwork Collaborative's senior vice president of policy, advocacy, and research

What are some of the most common scams targeting older Americans?

The FTC recently released its Protecting Older Consumers report, describing fraud in 2025. The top fraud types by incident report numbers for older people include online shopping, business impostors, government impostors, and investment scams. These, plus romance scams, are the top fraud types by total dollars lost for older people.

Scammers use AI to create deepfakes, clone voices, and send phishing messages. These types of fraud are not new, but AI makes them increasingly convincing and enables them to be carried out on a larger scale. Scammers also use AI in predictive targeting to find the most susceptible individuals.

In March 2026, Interpol warned that "AI-enhanced fraud is 4.5 times more profitable than traditional methods" because AI agents can complete the fraud on behalf of the scammers.

How should families react to all the recent headlines about system vulnerabilities?

Families should see the recent headlines about system vulnerabilities as part of a larger problem. Companies collect lots of information on users and fail to protect it. Now, consumers are exposed to data breaches and sophisticated scams.

What are ways in which you work to make people more cautious about scams?

We put out material for consumers and policymakers highlighting how companies are using more sophisticated techniques and technologies to rip them off.

While there are best practices people can follow to remain alert and vigilant against common scams, especially in the AI age, we believe that any real fix must be systematic and undertaken by policymakers. We need companies to better protect consumer data, stop collecting irrelevant data, and stop using it to squeeze consumers for every last dime.

Amy Nofziger, senior director of victim support, AARP Fraud Watch Network

What are some of the most common scams targeting older Americans?

Impostor scams remain the number one category reported to the AARP Fraud Watch Network Helpline. They will say there is a problem with your account and need to remotely access it, or they will say they are with the courthouse and you missed jury duty and demand payment to avoid being arrested.

AI hasn't changed human nature, but it has changed the scale, speed, and sophistication of scams. Criminals are still exploiting the same emotions they always have: fear, trust, loneliness, hope, curiosity, and urgency. We used to tell people to look for red flags like misspellings and poor grammar in emails, but with today's AI tools, those clues are often gone.

How should families react to all the recent headlines about system vulnerabilities?

It's understandable to be concerned by headlines about system vulnerabilities and data breaches, but the key is to focus on what you can control. The goal isn't to live in fear. It's to stay informed, slow down when something feels off, and ask for help. We don't have to do this alone.

What are ways in which you work to make people more cautious about scams?

AARP Fraud Watch Network helps individuals and families protect themselves from scams. It's a free resource available to everyone. We provide fraud prevention information, online tools, the award-winning Perfect Scam podcast, and a Fraud Watch Network Helpline that receives more than 100,000 calls each year.

Ali Tager, vice president of external affairs, National Cryptocurrency Association

What are some of the most common scams targeting older Americans?

Some of the most common online finance scams are relationship scams and impersonation. Giveaway scams are when scammers impersonate public figures, promising "free" money or crypto if users start by sending a small amount first. In phishing scams, fraudsters pose as a friend or a crypto exchange and ask victims to click links or share login details to steal private information.

Pump and dump scams occur when groups inflate the price of lesser-known crypto coins via online hype. When enough people join and spike the price, fraudsters quickly sell off their holdings for a profit, leaving others in the dust.

How should families react to all the recent headlines about system vulnerabilities?

Stay alert, not alarmed. Whether it's your bank, your Venmo account, or your crypto account, security should always be top of mind. Protecting yourself starts with recognizing common scams and practicing smart online habits.

For crypto holders, guard your private key or recovery phrase like you would your bank account number and password. No legitimate company will ever ask for it, so never share it, and keep physical backups in secure locations. Watch for small clues like odd sender addresses or sloppy spelling, and remember that deepfakes and fake websites can look real at first glance.

What are ways in which you work to make people more cautious about scams?

A scammer's greatest weakness is an informed community. The NCA is dedicated to helping everyday Americans understand and use crypto with confidence. Research shows that 72% of crypto holders cite scams and security as a concern. However, 76% of crypto holders say it has positively impacted their lives overall, while just 3% report negative impacts. Of those, about one-third are scam/fraud-related.

• Edward Tian co-founded GPTZero in college, building it into a success before selling to Superhuman.
• He said he thinks that creating 'artificial scarcity' for the product contributed to its success.
• He said he'd major in the humanities, not computer science, if he went to college today.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Edward Tian, the 26-year-old cofounder of GPTZero, who's based in New York. His words have been edited for length and clarity.

I was never planning to go down the founder path straight out of college. I had a visual investigations fellowship lined up for after graduation and was ready to start a journalism career.

My cofounder Alex and I went to high school together. When ChatGPT came out, he was pursuing his Ph.D. in computer science at the University of Toronto, and I was in my senior year at Princeton. Over winter break, we built an AI detection tool and put it online. The success was almost overnight.

Three years later, we sold our company, GPTZero, to Superhuman, and have stayed on board to work with the team. Superhuman is a very pro-AI company, and I think it was an unexpected move for us as an AI detection company to join them.

We didn't build GPTZero to say there should be no AI on the internet. I think that's the biggest misunderstanding about why we started our company, but my feelings on AI have changed.

I had a different job lined up for after graduation

I studied computer science at Princeton and worked with a professor at the Princeton Natural Language Processing Lab on AI research. I also worked on a few other startup projects in school, but I was always hoping to work in journalism.

While in college, I became very involved in the open-source investigation community. I ended up working on open-source investigative projects with the BBC and Bellingcat, and had a visual investigations fellowship at The New York Times lined up after graduation, which I was excited about but ultimately didn't take.

After ChatGPT came out, I was inspired to investigate where and when AI was being used online. It took about a week over winter break to build the first version of our AI detection tool, and it was released in January 2023.

We created artificial scarcity to help grow the business

My cofounder Alex and I posted on social media to market the tool so people could try it, but we didn't view it as a business right away. However, it blew up online pretty quickly. After seeing the success, we wanted to double down on the opportunity and turn it into a legitimate site.

One piece of advice I have for founders is that using a waitlist is really helpful for generating hype and excitement. We put the first version of GPTZero on a waitlist because it had reached capacity. So I think that artificial scarcity was also very helpful in the success.

We had a lucky combination of very talented engineers and some traction and buzz, so we started reaching out to VCs. Many of our early VC partners went to my alma mater, and kind of all knew each other. Jack Altman is also an investor, and I remember we had a call where I was in my dorm room, and he was like, "Oh, I recognize that dorm room too."

For founders raising funding for the first time, my advice is not to optimize for the flashiest name or the biggest brand because you think it will attract future talent. Go for where there's familiarity and trust; trust is the most important thing when working with an investor.

We raised around $3.5 million in our first funding round. I stayed at Princeton to finish my senior year and graduate, and we kept growing the business. My cofounder Alex left his Ph.D. program to focus on the business.

It was bittersweet to sell the company

When Shishir, the new CEO of Superhuman, joined in 2025, we spoke with him about his broader platform vision for a suite of products. He thought we could be part of the authenticity suite he wanted to create.

It was bittersweet to think about giving up something that we started from scratch and put so much energy and care into. At the same time, it was a lot easier because the team stayed on. I'm now a director of product at Superhuman.

For company acquisitions, a lot of folks think the three most important things for a great fit are product match, people fit, and economic sense. We had similar people philosophies, and the deal made sense financially. Then, product-wise, we realized we're definitely not against AI use anywhere in education. We just want to make sure there's some authenticity and truth with that usage.

Over the next few years, we're going to take our shot at building a startup within a larger company. I've seen a lot of startup founders go to larger companies and start their moonshots from within.

The bigger mission we have is to take steps to ensure people are being respectful of the person who's on the receiving end of AI generations and productivity now. We want it to be that we're reaping the benefits of AI without making other people deal with more work.

I wouldn't major in computer science anymore

When we first started GPTZero, I think I was actually more pro-AI than I am now. I believe people should know when something is AI-generated, but I wasn't saying not to outsource anything at all.

In the past year, though, I've started to see an over-reliance on AI among people who finished university after ChatGPT was launched, especially with writing. If I went back to college right now, I wouldn't major in computer science. I'd probably major in journalism and get a minor in computer science. I'd get a humanities degree because those are the important skills now.

I've started to see a friction point at work when people can't write or edit, and everything they send reads like AI. Part of what I'm doing now at Superhuman is working on responsible AI usage policies and guidance.

People are allowed to use these tools however they see fit. At the same time, I feel a profound sadness for the internet at large. It's important to make sure we still have human-written content online.

Do you have a story to share about working on a tiny team? If so, please reach out to the reporter at aapplegate@businessinsider.com.

• Nate Soares said he stopped adding to his 401(k) because AI may kill us within a decade.
• The MIRI president said humanity has a more than 50% chance of dying within a decade.
• Elon Musk said AI could make retirement savings irrelevant by creating an age of abundance.

Saving for retirement is a bet on the future. Nate Soares, the president of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, isn't so sure AI will let us get that far.

"I do not save for retirement right now. I have a 401(k) from when I worked at Google, but I haven't contributed for a decade," Soares told The Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson in a recent interview for Thompson's "The Most Interesting Thing in AI" series.

Soares' decision reflects a grim view of the AI race.

"Godfather of AI" Geoffrey Hinton and Anthropic researcher Evan Hubinger have, respectively, put the odds of AI killing everyone within a decade at 10% and more than 10%. Soares is more pessimistic: He told Thompson he believes there is a greater-than-50% chance AI causes human extinction in less than a decade.

Soares, who is also the coauthor of "If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies," has spent more than 12 years working on AI alignment, the field focused on ensuring powerful systems act as intended. Before joining MIRI, the Berkeley-based nonprofit focused on AI risks, he worked as an engineer at Google and Microsoft.

Soares said that a sufficiently capable AI could develop goals at odds with humanity's, evade oversight, improve itself, and build the automated infrastructure needed to operate without people.

From there, he said, it could reshape the planet around its own objectives, potentially making it uninhabitable for humans — a warning he shared with Business Insider last year.

A 401(k) for the apocalypse?

The question of how AI will shape the future has also prompted Elon Musk to question whether retirement savings will matter. Musk's vision of the future, however, is radically different than Soares'.

In January, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO said people should not worry about "squirreling money away for retirement" in 10 or 20 years, predicting advances in AI, robotics, and energy will make retirement savings "irrelevant." (Personal finance experts and AI gurus told Business Insider the opposite: You really should be saving for retirement.)

Musk has said that supercharged productivity could create an age of abundance, in which everyone has access to a "universal high income," cheap goods and services, and better healthcare and education.

Musk has also said money could become irrelevant in a future where AI and robots outperform humans at virtually every task.

For Soares, the prospect of a vastly capable AI is an existential danger, not a route to plenty.

Echoing calls from tech leaders to "pace the frontier" of AI development, Soares said governments should halt the training of general-purpose AI systems. They should focus on developing technology for applications like cancer research and safer self-driving cars, he said.

The solution, he told Thompson on Wednesday, "is to not build the thing that would kill everybody."

"I do everything I can to stop this eventuality," he said. "I don't think it's inevitable."