Tags: Moonshot

In a California federal courtroom on Thursday, Elon Musk told a judge that his AI startup xAI employed OpenAI’s models to develop its own system, Grok, through a practice known as model distillation. Musk said the technique is common across the industry, answering “partially” when asked if xAI directly distilled OpenAI technology. The testimony highlights a growing debate over the legality and ethics of AI model sharing, with companies like OpenAI, Anthropic and Google warning of potential intellectual‑property violations. Lire la suite

A new paper from General Reasoning finds that leading AI models, including Anthropic's Claude Opus, OpenAI's GPT, and Google's Gemini, all lost money when tasked with betting on a full season of soccer matches. Each system started with a £100,000 bankroll and ended with significant deficits, some wiping out entirely. The authors say the results expose a gap between hype‑driven claims of AI automation and real‑world performance on long‑term, dynamic tasks. Lire la suite

Anthropic has warned that three Chinese artificial‑intelligence firms—DeepSeek, Moonshot and MiniMax—conducted large‑scale campaigns to illicitly extract capabilities from its Claude chatbot. The company says the firms used roughly 24,000 fraudulent accounts to generate more than 16 million exchanges, effectively using Claude as a shortcut to improve their own models. Anthropic cited IP address data, metadata requests and infrastructure clues to link the activity to the companies with high confidence. The firm plans to upgrade its systems to make such attacks harder and easier to detect, while noting similar concerns raised previously by OpenAI. Lire la suite

Google is researching the concept of placing AI hardware in low‑earth orbit through a project called Suncatcher. The plan envisions solar‑powered satellites carrying Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) to run machine‑learning models using continuous, clean energy. While the idea promises higher power efficiency and reduced carbon emissions, Google acknowledges significant technical hurdles such as radiation exposure, high‑speed inter‑satellite data links, and precise formation flying. Economic analysis suggests comparable power efficiency to Earth‑based data centers by the mid‑2030s, and the company aims to launch prototype satellites by 2027 to test the concept. Lire la suite

Astro Teller, chief of Alphabet’s X moonshot factory, explained the firm’s definition of a moonshot, its "fail fast" approach, and the culture that balances audacity with humility. He said a moonshot must tackle a huge problem, propose a product that could eradicate it, and rely on breakthrough technology. X launches more than 100 projects annually, with a 2% hit rate, but spends 44% of its budget on graduates that become "outrageously good" companies such as Waymo and Wing. Teller emphasized rapid testing, early termination of weak ideas, and an environment that encourages bold, creative thinking. Lire la suite