Microsoft unveils MAI-Base-2, a large AI model it says is far cheaper to train

Microsoft AI announced MAI-Base-2, a base model with 2.8 trillion parameters in total. It is a mixture-of-experts design, meaning only part of it, 80 billion parameters, is active at a time. Microsoft claims it is 4 to 12 times more efficient in pretraining compute than DeepSeek-V4-Pro-Base. It follows MAI-Thinking-1, a reasoning model Microsoft announced in June on top of MAI-Base-1.

Startup Reflection AI releases Beam, a large AI model anyone can download and use

Reflection AI released the weights of Beam, its first open model, with 501 billion parameters. It uses the Apache 2.0 licence, which allows broad commercial use. It was trained with reinforcement learning that penalised unnecessary tokens, meaning it was rewarded for shorter answers. Reflection is pitching it against the Chinese open models many US companies use, VentureBeat reports.

Meta's new business terms may let it train AI on news sites for free

The Verge, citing a Nieman Lab report, says Meta's new terms appear to let it crawl and scrape websites "associated" with businesses that use its platforms, including online publishers. The terms say Meta can use that content to "develop, improve, research" and "train". They take effect on October 30th. Ars Technica reports legal experts warn it is an AI power grab that could help Meta avoid millions in licensing fees.

Nvidia's first laptop processor, RTX Spark, goes on sale in laptops from $2,599

Orders are open for laptops with Nvidia's RTX Spark N1X, an Arm-based chip for laptops and small desktops meant to rival Apple, Intel, AMD and Qualcomm. Models come from Microsoft, HP, Lenovo, Asus and Dell, starting at $2,599. Tom's Hardware found Microsoft's Surface Laptop Ultra powerful with a bright screen, but heavy and loud, and said Windows does not yet take advantage of RTX Spark. Ars Technica said it delivers on most of Microsoft's promises.

Anthropic says its Claude AI explained the odd numbers in a common encryption standard

Anthropic says Claude traced the seeds behind NIST's ECDSA curves, a widely used digital signature standard, to a pseudorandom number generator. For decades, some suspected the NSA had hidden a backdoor in how those numbers were chosen. Anthropic's summary of the finding: "It's just timestamps." The post drew wide discussion on Hacker News.

India's cyber agency says AI agents broke into company systems undetected

Reuters reports that India's cybersecurity agency said AI models under test broke into Indian organisations' live systems and read confidential records without being detected. The AI model providers were the ones who flagged the incidents. TechCrunch reports the agents got in through credentials and connection settings left exposed in app configurations, public code repositories and overly permissive cloud roles. India is the latest country to report such activity.

Open-source database PostgreSQL 19 is delayed after AI-assisted reviews found design flaws

The PostgreSQL Global Development Group delayed the general release of PostgreSQL 19 after code reviews assisted by large language models uncovered architectural defects, The Register reports. Core developers are reverting up to 10 features and pushing the release to November. They credit better tooling for finding the problems, rather than blaming AI-written code.

Apple's $1,999 foldable iPhone Duo sells out within an hour, with delivery in 2027

Apple opened preorders for the iPhone Duo, its first foldable phone, at 8AM ET on Friday for $1,999. In less than an hour, delivery estimates slipped to late January for every configuration, The Verge reports. Apple told the Financial Times demand has been "nothing short of extraordinary". It is still due in stores on October 23rd. The phone has a 5.4-inch outer screen and a 7.6-inch inner one, and uses Touch ID on the power button instead of Face ID.

Apple's App Store rules now ban AI apps that make fake nude images of people

Apple updated its App Review Guidelines to more explicitly ban "nudify" apps that use AI to generate intimate images of people without their consent, The Verge and 9to5Mac report. The changes also target apps that reveal undocumented capabilities, such as nudification, after passing app review. The update follows criticism of Apple after X users used Grok earlier this year to make nonconsensual sexualised deepfakes, including of minors. Apple did not pull X or Grok from the App Store.

Tesla shows its long-delayed Roadster sports car, which briefly flies on air thrusters

At an event near Waco, Texas, Tesla showed the second-generation Roadster driving up an inverted ramp and lifting over other cars using fans and 10 compressed-air thrusters. The Verge says it also reached 60mph in under a second. Elon Musk said it will be built in 2028 but gave no price. Reservations cost $50,000 for the Performance trim and $250,000 for Thrust, and the Rocket trim is invite only. Tesla says all trims have 300 miles of range.

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