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Meta releases Muse Spark Open weights for a large multimodal model
Meta released Muse Spark Open on October 15 with 816 billion total parameters and support for text, image, audio and video input. The weights are downloadable, and Hugging Face has published deployment recipes and tested quantized inference on an M3 Ultra Mac; Meta says two M5 Ultra Mac Studios can run the model locally. Meta's performance comparisons remain vendor claims.
ThereforeDevelopers can run and modify a full-size model without depending on a proprietary model API, but local use requires unusually large memory.
research.meta.ai — Meta AI Research · Hugging FaceCopy link to: Meta releases Muse Spark Open weights for a large multimodal model
Also
Anthropic gives six METR evaluators employee-like access
The embedded team may publish assessments of Anthropic's risks and practices without the company's veto, subject to specified redactions.
ThereforeThe evaluators can examine Anthropic's training and safeguards with access comparable to its internal risk teams.
Anthropic newsCopy link to: Anthropic gives six METR evaluators employee-like access
White House AI task force adopts 120-day charter
Semafor reports the task force agreed on October 15 to commission a presidential advisers' report on AI risks and form working groups for the Super Intelligence Accord and lab incident reports.
ThereforeThe government has put a timetable and named officials behind proposed AI oversight, although enforcement remains undecided.
SemaforCopy link to: White House AI task force adopts 120-day charter
Follow-up to Oct 14: CoreWeave credit insurance reaches distressed pricing
CNBC reports its five-year default-swap spread passed 1,140 basis points intraday on October 15, as the yield on a 2031 bond reached 15.78%; its stock finished higher that day.
ThereforeHigher borrowing costs threaten the financing of rented AI compute even when customer demand persists.
CNBCCopy link to: Follow-up to Oct 14: CoreWeave credit insurance reaches distressed pricing
Follow-up to Oct 14: Investors discuss a lower Anthropic IPO valuation
Reuters spoke to people familiar with October 15 investor discussions of roughly $1.5 trillion, down from earlier expectations near $2 trillion, after Anthropic's quarterly disclosures.
ThereforeSlower quarterly revenue growth is tempering some investors' expectations for the prospective share sale.
ReutersCopy link to: Follow-up to Oct 14: Investors discuss a lower Anthropic IPO valuation
Google says its News AI pilot now includes more than 400 publications
Its October 15 update names CNN, the Financial Times and local outlets among participants in a licensing program for experimental article overviews and audio briefings.
ThereforePublishers are being paid to supply content for AI news features, though Nieman Lab says Google declined to disclose deal terms.
blog.google — Google · Nieman LabCopy link to: Google says its News AI pilot now includes more than 400 publications
Microsoft finishes pre-training MAI-Base-2
Its 2.8-trillion-parameter mixture-of-experts base model is undergoing post-training; Microsoft's efficiency comparison with an open-weight base model comes from its own tests.
ThereforeMicrosoft plans to use its model pipeline in its products and later offer model access to Foundry customers.
microsoft.ai — Microsoft AICopy link to: Microsoft finishes pre-training MAI-Base-2
Tools & releases
Perplexity open-sources its SPACE agent sandbox
Perplexity released its code and says CoreWeave and Akamai have tested and launched it on their clouds; Crusoe is partnering to offer it.
ThereforeDevelopers can inspect and adapt the isolation and recovery controls around agents that run code.
Perplexity blog · SemaforCopy link to: Perplexity open-sources its SPACE agent sandbox