AI Weekly Update - June 16, 2025
Self-adapting models & ChatGPT in Barbies
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last week’s top stories
🧠 MIT researchers enable self-adapting language models. MIT’s SEAL framework lets a deployed LLM rewrite its own weights for new tasks without full retraining. A policy module judges each weight patch and rolls back regressions. Translation and summarization scores jump 12% while compute falls 30%. Read more
💰 Meta buys Scale AI for $14.8 billion. Meta will fold Scale’s labeling and eval pipelines into Llama pre-training and agent benchmarking. CEO Alexandr Wang joins Meta’s super-intelligence group, reporting to Yann LeCun. Closing awaits FTC review and a Q4 capex carve-out. Read more
📺 Kalshi airs $2k AI-generated NBA Finals spot. The 30-second clip was built with Google Veo 3 and cloned narration in under three days. Total spend: cloud credits, one editor, zero cameras. The alligator-riding banker became instant meme fuel. Read more
🧸 Mattel taps ChatGPT Enterprise for toy design. A multiyear deal gives product teams private GPTs for concept testing, supplier search, and marketing copy. OpenAI and Mattel will co-build a streaming “AI dollhouse” platform for connected toys. Rollout starts with Barbie digital playsets. Read more
⚖️ Disney and Universal sue Midjourney over training data. Studios allege unauthorized ingestion of storyboards and stills in Midjourney’s diffusion corpus. The filing seeks data deletion plus triple damages under the DMCA. First case-management conference lands August 4. Read more
🌐 Dia browser beta blends tabs with agents. The Browser Company opened invites for Dia, a Chromium fork with an embedded 7B LLM and plugin graph. A sidebar parses page context, drafts replies, and schedules follow-ups. Token spend caps at 5 M per day per user. Read more
💸 OpenAI drops o3 prices 80 % and adds o3-pro tier. Input now runs $2/M tokens, output $8; o3-pro offers 8x throughput plus expanded vision context. Read more
🍎 Apple opens on-device “Apple Intelligence” SDK. WWDC25 delivered foundation models that run inside A18 and M4 secure enclaves. Live translation, call screening, and semantic search pipe through a new API. Xcode 17 beta ships today.
🧪 AI Research of the Week
Understanding the Impacts of Generative AI Use on Children
From the Alan Turing Institute's Children & AI team, backed by the LEGO Foundation
Jake’s Take: This paper explores UK-based surveys of 780 children and 1,001 teachers, alongside hands-on school workshops. Turns out, one in five kids aged 8–12 actively uses ChatGPT, despite age restrictions intended to exclude them. Private-school kids are significantly ahead of peers in state schools regarding AI exposure. Children voiced sharp observations on bias, misinformation, and the environmental costs of generative AI, and notably highlighted AI’s frequent failures in representing their identities through images. Parents are more worried about toxic content than cheating, while teachers appreciate AI as prep support yet remain skeptical about its impact on genuine student participation.
Key recommendations here emphasize kid-friendly protections, data rights, and direct youth involvement in shaping policies. Industry reluctance to address these concerns head-on invites inevitable criticism (and legal headaches).
and then, even more news…
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