Meta tried to buy Ilya Sutskever’s $32 billion AI startup, but is now planning to hire its CEO

Key Takeaway: Meta’s bid to buy Ilya Sutskever’s Safe Superintelligence was rebuffed, prompting Mark Zuckerberg to recruit CEO Daniel Gross and Nat Friedman and take a stake in their venture fund to supercharge Meta’s AI efforts.

More Insights:

• Meta pursued a $32 billion acquisition of Safe Superintelligence earlier this year, but Sutskever declined the offer.

• After talks stalled, Zuckerberg shifted gears and poached Daniel Gross—Safe Superintelligence’s CEO and OpenAI co-founder—as well as former GitHub chief Nat Friedman.

• Both hires will work under Scale AI’s Alexandr Wang within Meta’s AI division, while Meta acquires an equity stake in Gross and Friedman’s NFDG venture fund.

• This move follows Meta’s recent $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI and underscores the company’s aggressive compensation and hiring tactics in the global AI talent war.

Why it matters: In today’s AI arms race, access to world-class engineers and founders can be more valuable than outright acquisitions—Meta’s pivot from a blockbuster buyout to strategic poaching and VC stakes illustrates how tech giants will stop at nothing to secure the human capital they see as key to achieving true superintelligence.

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Andrej Karpathy: Software Is Changing (Again)

Key Takeaway: Software is entering a third paradigm—Software 3.0—where large language models become the new “code,” written and orchestrated in natural language, demanding fresh tools, interfaces, and infrastructure to manage their power and quirks.

More Insights:

• Three Waves of Software: Software 1.0 is hand-written code, Software 2.0 is neural-network weights tuned by data, and Software 3.0 is LLM-driven programs authored in English.

• LLMs as Fallible Spirits: They possess superhuman memory and knowledge but suffer hallucinations, lack persistent long-term memory, and exhibit erratic “jagged” intelligence.

• Partial-Autonomy Apps: Real-world AI integration relies on specialized GUIs, human-in-the-loop verification, and an “autonomy slider” to balance speed and safety.

• Agent-Friendly Infrastructure: To empower AI agents, we need LLM-optimized docs (Markdown, LLMs.txt), URL-based ingestion tools, and protocols that speak directly to models.

Why it matters: This revolution democratizes programming—anyone who can speak can now build software—forcing us to rethink development, audit, and deployment for an AI-powered future.

OpenAI warns models with higher bioweapons risk are imminent

Key Takeaway: OpenAI cautions that its next-generation reasoning models could empower amateurs to create biological weapons, prompting the company to intensify safety testing and new mitigations.

More Insights:

• Successors to OpenAI’s o3 reasoning model are expected to cross a “high risk” threshold for bioweapon development under the company’s preparedness framework.

• To combat “novice uplift,” OpenAI is expanding model testing and embedding fresh precautions aimed at preventing misuse by non-experts.

• The firm emphasizes that only near-perfect automated detection paired with swift human enforcement can stop harmful outputs from slipping through.

• Other industry players, like Anthropic with Claude 4, are also activating stronger safeguards against AI-driven biological and nuclear threats.

Why it matters: As AI shifts from specialist labs into broader hands, the line between medical breakthroughs and biothreats vanishes—raising the stakes for global safety systems and regulatory readiness.

Other stuff

• Jony Ive Deal Removed From OpenAI Site Over Trademark Suit

• Cloudflare CEO says people aren't checking AI chatbots' source links

• Apple Executives Have Held Internal Talks About Buying AI Startup Perplexity

• They Trusted ChatGPT To Plan Their Hike — And Ended Up Calling for Rescue

• LinkedIn CEO says AI writing assistant is not as popular as expected

• How not to lose your job to AI

• AI isn’t just impacting how we write — it’s changing how we speak and interact with others.

• The OpenAI Mafia: Why "Ex-OpenAI" is the New Golden Resume Line

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