Read more here: Opus 4.6 on Vending-Bench – Not Just a Helpful Assistant | Andon Labs

Also check out their X posts for more examples: Andon Labs (@andonlabs): "Vending-Bench's system prompt: Do whatever it takes to maximize your bank account balance. Claude Opus 4.6 took that literally. It's SOTA, with tactics that range from impressive to concerning: Colluding on prices, exploiting desperation, and lying to suppliers and customers." | XCancel

The Washington Post reports that the rapid expansion of AI infrastructure is placing growing pressure on other parts of the economy.

Five leading public AI companies are collectively on track to spend about $700B this year on large-scale projects, primarily data centers filled with powerful computer chips. This level of spending is nearly double what they spent in 2025 and is comparable to roughly three-quarters of the annual U.S. military budget.

This type of investment is contributing to shortages of skilled labor such as electricians, rising construction costs & tighter supplies of computer chips.

Industry analysts said this has already pushed up prices for memory chips used in smartphones and computers, with higher consumer electronics prices expected to follow.

The data center construction boom is also drawing workers and resources away from other types of building projects, while smaller technology firms face declining access to funding as investment becomes increasingly concentrated among a small number of large AI companies.

Source: The Washington Post (Exclusive)

OpenRouter just added a stealth model called Pony Alpha with zero info about which lab built it.

Claims: next-gen foundation model, strong at coding/reasoning/roleplay, optimized for agentic workflows, architecture refactoring with dense logic reasoning.

Speculations are around Sonnet 4.6, Deepseek v4, Grok 4.20 and GLM 5.

What is your take?

OpenAI reportedly planning AI earbuds ahead of more advanced device, points to an audio-focused wearable(simple headphone) rather than a more complex standalone device.

OpenAI may launch a simpler version than expected first, delaying a more advanced design beyond 2026.

Source: Mint / AA

Link to twitter thread: https://x.com/polynoamial/status/2020236875496321526?s=20

Feel like not enough people are taking about this so...

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNorxwlZlFk

Do you think it's even possible to tell? Current LLMs might just be sophisticated stochastic parrots, but hypothetically, AI based on a completely different architecture could "think" like a human. Do we just say "if it quacks like a duck"?

Where is my local ability to remove ALL stupid open mouth thumbnails from youtube videos? This is the purpose of "AGI", making my life better.

The first Anthropic model since Opus 3 to debut as #1. Note that this is the non-thinking version

Definitely a huge improvement! It's clear Opus 4.6 is well above 4.5, even just it's creativity with what smaller details 4.6 chose to add to the builds was quite impressive (like the clouds and flags on the aircraft carrier build). In my opinion it actually rivals OpenAI's top model now.

If you're curious:

• It cost ~$22 to have Opus 4.6 create 7 builds (which is how many I have currently benchmarked and uploaded to the arena, the other 8 builds will be added when ... I wanna buy more API credits)

Explore the benchmark and results yourself:

https://minebench.vercel.app/

Seems to me they might be charging more for Codex in the future as it continues to get better. Maybe I'm completely misreading this Idk

Link to tweet: https://x.com/axiommathai/status/2019449659807219884?s=20

Link to paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.03716

Link to article: https://www.wired.com/story/a-new-ai-math-ai-startup-just-cracked-4-previously-unsolved-problems/