AI Agents - Page 7

Anthropic has launched the Anthropic Cyber Mission: a Critical Infrastructure Defense Program with 11 founding partners and OSS Scanner, a free opt-in service that sends open-source projects unreviewed, model-written bug reports. What is confirmed, what is Anthropic's expectation, and what is not yet proven.

Anthropic says a team of Claude Science agents helped build the first complete UV map of the sky, about a third of it predicted rather than observed. A preprint finds agent benchmark scores can move because of the grader, not the agent, and Exa previews a search benchmark it designed and runs itself. What each one shows, and what it doesn't.

Two device stories from 8–9 October 2026. Nikkei Asia reports that Apple told some suppliers to cut production of iPhone 18 Pro components after price rises dampened demand; Apple has not commented. And start-up Natura has shown Interface, a $99 smart ring for sending voice requests to AI agents, which cannot be ordered yet.

CrowdStrike says an unnamed, likely Chinese-speaking attacker used ARTEX, an open-source AI penetration-testing agent, alongside several AI models to steal data from South Korean financial firms. What CrowdStrike found, what Korean investigators say, and what it does not prove.

Anthropic has published a new Usage Policy, taking effect on 12 November, with a section on deceptive campaigns, tighter wording on weapons and surveillance, and a ban on extreme abuse of its models. The UK's ICO says ten AI developers have made or committed to data protection changes, and has opened a call for evidence on AI agents. What changes, and for whom.

JetBrains has released Mellum2.1, a small open model for coding agents, and Hugging Face has released Carbon-A, a 1.2B-parameter model that predicts protein-coding regions in DNA, plus a database of 566 million predicted loci. What each does, and which numbers are the developers' own.

An unreleased "Additional sandbox options" setting found in Google's Gemini desktop app for Mac would let the AI reach files, apps and network connections beyond the folders users connect today. It is hidden, unconfirmed by Google and arrives just as Apple is tightening Full Disk Access.

Samsung's third-quarter guidance points to about ₩107.4 trillion in operating profit on ₩195 trillion of sales, up from ₩12.17 trillion a year ago, with AI data-centre memory demand credited. AWS becomes a Platinum member of the Linux Foundation, with a board seat. What the numbers say and what they leave out.

Manus raises more than $500m after Beijing blocked Meta's takeover. Tab emerges at a $300m valuation. Nvidia reportedly discusses another $1bn for Figure. ElevenLabs says it has passed a $600m run rate, and Synthesia launches Syren in beta. A Reuters/Ipsos poll finds most Americans think government is not taking AI risks seriously enough.

A new benchmark, TasteVal, says the best AI model now reaches expert-level results on eight AI research tasks with 2.3 times less compute, though its authors list reasons that may overstate progress. Preference Model has open-sourced Karotte, a framework for training environments that are harder to game, and DatologyAI has released Zephon, a data loader that keeps experiments repeatable when the GPU count changes. What each claims, and who measured it.