Last Week in AI #222 - Sora 2, Sonnet 4.5, Vibes, Thinking Machines
657 snips
Oct 7, 2025 
Jon Krohn, a data-science educator and host of the Super Data Science podcast, joins the discussion on the latest AI innovations. They dive into OpenAI's Sora 2, which boasts photorealistic video capabilities. The duo also dissects Anthropic's Claudia Sonnet 4.5, highlighting its impressive coding features. The community backlash against Meta's new short-form video feed, Vibes, is a hot topic, alongside OpenAI's proactive ChatGPT Pulse service. Finally, they explore the implications of OpenAI's staggering $500 billion valuation and ongoing legal tussles with xAI.
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Liquidity Spike Raises OpenAI Valuation
- OpenAI's private-share sales imply a $500B valuation and more liquidity for employees.
- The company still burns billions but shows revenue growth as monetization strategies diversify.
AI + Robotics To Automate Science
- Periodic Labs raised a $300M seed to automate science with AI and robotics focusing on superconductors.
- Investors bet on AI-robotic systems to accelerate physical-world scientific discovery.
Benchmark Long-Horizon Software Tasks Properly
- Use richer, contamination-resistant benchmarks like SWE-Bench Pro to evaluate long-horizon software tasks.
- Focus on multi-file, multi-step problems rather than tiny bug fixes to measure agentic coding strength.
