This is the week that was: The No. 1 country song in America is by an AI, ChatGPT has learned to charm, AI is making heart scans better, delusional chatbot users are spiraling into a ‘Cult of Two’, and much more.
9–11 minutes read
News from the Wall St. Journal (no paywall)
These Small-Business Owners Are Putting AI to Good Use
Big companies have teams to guide tech strategy—smaller firms noodle until something works
Mike Salvatore, owner of Heritage Hospitality Group in Chicago, used to run reports once or twice a year on the cost of goods for the two cafes, two bars and the bike shop he owns. He would spend hours crunching potential price adjustments manually, based on the expense of raw materials. Now, he does it every three weeks with the help of OpenAI’s ChatGPT….
November 15, 2025
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News from Peter Wildeford
AI Ran Its First Autonomous Cyberattack
Chinese hackers used AI and changed the economics of cyberattacks
….A Chinese government-sponsored group jailbroke Claude ….They targeted roughly 30 organizations, successfully breaching a handful including major tech companies, financial institutions, and government agencies.… AI completed roughly 80-90% of the attack autonomously, with human operators stepping in only for about 4-6 key decision points per attack.
November 14, 2025
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News from the Wall St. Journal
When AI Hype Meets AI Reality: A Reckoning in 6 Charts
Record capital expenditures and data-center planning run up against the ground truths of physical infrastructure
…An increasing share of that investment is fueled by debt. OpenAI, Anthropic and other startups continue to lose money, and must fund most of this investment by selling off pieces of themselves to investors and by issuing this debt. A recent Goldman Sachs report projected that OpenAI alone could spend $75 billion in 2026. Even cash-flush Meta Platforms is signing complicated debt deals involving private-equity firms.
November 14, 2025
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News from Bloomberg
Delusional Chatbot Users Can Spiral Into a ‘Cult of Two’
Last week, my colleague Rachel Metz and I published an investigation about people who fall into delusional spirals while chatting for hours a day with artificial intelligence bots like ChatGPT.
As we were reporting the piece, we found many harrowing stories of heavy chatbot users who lost touch with reality or ended up hospitalized for psychosis.
But one aspect of the reporting particularly surprised me: Some of our interview subjects compared these chatbot relationships to cults.
November 14, 2025
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News from The Verge
Google will let users call stores, browse products, and check out using AI
There have never been more options for things to buy. Google is betting AI is how shoppers will make decisions.
November 13, 2025
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News from Axios
ChatGPT learns to charm
The latest AI models powering ChatGPT just learned to be friendlier, improving the experience for people who use chatbots responsibly. It could be a problem for those who don’t or can’t. Why it matters: As chatbots become more humanlike in their behavior, it could increase the risks of unhealthy attachments or a kind of trust that goes beyond what the products are built to handle.
November 13, 2025
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News from the Wall St. Journal, no paywall
Big Tech’s Soaring Profits Have an Ugly Underside: OpenAI’s Losses
Quarterly profits soared at Nvidia, Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft as AI-related revenue poured in…But much of the AI-related profits come from being a supplier to, or investor in, the private companies building the large language models behind AI chatbots—and they’re losing money as fast as they can raise it, and plan to keep on doing so for years….For this to continue…. First, the AI developers need to come up with winning products to cover their massive research and computing costs. Second, investors need to stump up enough to finance the losses—which OpenAI alone estimated at more than $150 billion—until then….OpenAI hopes to turn profitable only in 2030, while Anthropic is targeting 2028.
November 13, 2025
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News from 93Q
The No. 1 Country Song In America Is By A Non-Human Artist
The track, “Walk My Walk,” (An AI-generated song) by the virtual artist Breaking Rust, has reached the top of Billboard’s “Country Digital Song Sales” chart.
The No. 1 Country Song In America Is By A Non-Human Artist
November 11, 2025
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News from Statnews
Medicare will pay more than $1,000 for AI to analyze a heart scan. Is that too much?
As insurers pay for more AI-powered devices, the debate over value grows…
November 11, 2025
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News from Canary Media
Inside the data-center energy race with Google and Microsoft
America’s data centers used a whopping 176 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2023, representing 4.4% of the nation’s total power consumption. Those numbers are only going up as AI tools gain popularity, pushing computing loads higher. By 2028, data centers could gobble as much as 580 TWh of power, or 12% of the U.S.’s total electricity consumption that year… The surge seriously complicates goals set by hyperscalers to slash planet-warming pollution
November 11, 2025
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News from CNBC
‘Big Short’ investor Michael Burry accuses AI hyperscalers of artificially boosting earnings
Michael Burry, the investor made famous by “The Big Short” who recently roiled the market with a tech short bet, is accusing some of America’s largest technology companies of using aggressive accounting to pad their profits from the artificial intelligence boom.
November 11, 2025
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News from The Deep View
The European Commission will unveil a “digital omnibus” package in late November, according to POLITICO, aimed at simplifying its tech and privacy laws. The amendments include broad changes to the General Data Protection Regulation, the EU’s strict rules governing individuals’ control over their personal data.
November 11, 2025
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News from Axios
Google, the sleeping AI giant, awakens
Google has been quietly — and successfully — pursuing all the buzzy AI trends: touting AI agents, offering enterprise subscriptions and putting chatbots everywhere.
• Gemini went viral in August after the company released its Nano Banana image generation model and won praise for the realistic physics underlying its latest Veo video generation model.
• Now there are reports Apple may shift gears on its own AI ambitions and turn to Google to power the long-awaited next generation of Siri — a concession that, for all of Apple’s technical might, Google just does this better (right now).
November 10, 2025
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News from Inside Climate News
It’s Not Too Late’: New Cornell Study Maps the Environmental Cost of AI and How Policy Could Limit the Damage
Researchers warn that U.S. data centers could devour vast amounts of energy and water unless stronger guardrails shape the industry’s growth.
November 10, 2025
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News from People
Before Suicide, College Grad Spent Hours Sharing His Plans with ChatGPT — Who Knew He Had a Gun and Said ‘Rest Easy’: Suit
OpenAI insists its wildly popular program is trained to “recognize and respond to signs of mental or emotional distress”
It was nearly midnight on July 25 when recent college graduate Zane Shamblin pulled up ChatGPT on his phone in what would be the final hours of his life.
November 10, 2025
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News from Tom’s Hardware
Silicon Valley data centers totalling nearly 100MW could ‘sit empty for years’ due to lack of power — huge installations are idle because Santa Clara can’t cope with surging electricity demands….
Digital Realty’s four-story SJC37 facility and Stack Infrastructure’s SVY02A campus in Santa Clara, California, were both constructed to host tens of megawatts of high-density IT hardware. Instead, they’re waiting for electricity.
November 10, 2025
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News from The Deep View
Tech firms forge ahead on superintelligence
Last week, Microsoft announced a new unit focused on superintelligence… The goal is to create superintelligent AI that keeps humans in the driver’s seat… the unit will work towards “Humanist Superintelligence,” ….“We are not building an ill-defined and ethereal superintelligence; we are building a practical technology explicitly designed only to serve humanity,”
November 10, 2025
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News from The Neuron
Kimi K2 Thinking = The First Good AI Creative Writer?
DEEP DIVE: Everything to know about Kimi K2 Thinking (and our hands-on demo)
Most AI writes like it’s cramming for a test. Fast, efficient, technically correct… but kinda soulless?
Kimi K2 Thinking is different. It’s an open-source reasoning model from China that can think through 300 steps straight without losing the plot, match (or beat) the best closed models, and cost just $4.6M to train. Oh, and it’s shockingly good at creative writing.
November 9, 2025
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