Back to Basics: denoising critique

Our 226th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!

Recorded on 11/24/2025

Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and co-hosted by Michelle Lee

Feel free to email us your questions and feedback at contact@lastweekinai.com and/or hello@gladstone.ai

Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/

In this episode:

• New AI model releases include Google's Gemini 3 Pro, Anthropic's Opus 4.5, and OpenAI's GPT-5.1, each showcasing significant advancements in AI capabilities and applications.
• Robotics innovations feature Sunday Robotics' new robot Memo and a $600M funding round for Visual Intelligence, highlighting growth and investment in the robotics sector.
• AI safety and policy updates include Europe's proposed changes to GDPR and AI Act regulations, and reports of AI-assisted cyber espionage by a Chinese state-sponsored group.
• AI-generated content and legal highlights involve settlements between Warner Music Group and AI music platform UDIO, reflecting evolving dynamics in the field of synthetic media.

Timestamps:

• (00:00:10) Intro / Banter
• (00:01:32) News Preview
• (00:02:10) Response to listener comments
• Tools & Apps
• (00:02:34) Google launches Gemini 3 with new coding app and record benchmark scores | TechCrunch
• (00:05:49) Google launches Nano Banana Pro powered by Gemini 3
• (00:10:55) Anthropic releases Opus 4.5 with new Chrome and Excel integrations | TechCrunch
• (00:15:34) OpenAI releases GPT-5.1-Codex-Max to handle engineering tasks that span twenty-four hours
• (00:18:26) ChatGPT launches group chats globally | TechCrunch
• (00:20:33) Grok Claims Elon Musk Is More Athletic Than LeBron James — and the World’s Greatest Lover
• Applications & Business
• (00:24:03) What AI bubble? Nvidia's strong earnings signal there's more room to grow
• (00:26:26) Alphabet stock surges on Gemini 3 AI model optimism
• (00:28:09) Sunday Robotics emerges from stealth with launch of ‘Memo’ humanoid house chores robot
• (00:32:30) Robotics Startup Physical Intelligence Valued at $5.6 Billion in New Funding - Bloomberg
• (00:34:22) Waymo permitted areas expanded by California DMV - CBS Los Angeles - Waymo enters 3 more cities: Minneapolis, New Orleans, and Tampa | TechCrunch
• Projects & Open Source
• (00:37:00) Meta AI Releases Segment Anything Model 3 (SAM 3) for Promptable Concept Segmentation in Images and Videos - MarkTechPost
• (00:40:18) [2511.16624] SAM 3D: 3Dfy Anything in Images
• (00:42:51) [2511.13998] LoCoBench-Agent: An Interactive Benchmark for LLM Agents in Long-Context Software Engineering
• Research & Advancements
• (00:45:10) [2511.08544] LeJEPA: Provable and Scalable Self-Supervised Learning Without the Heuristics
• (00:50:08) [2511.13720] Back to Basics: Let Denoising Generative Models Denoise
• Policy & Safety
• (00:52:08) Europe is scaling back its landmark privacy and AI laws | The Verge
• (00:54:13) From shortcuts to sabotage: natural emergent misalignment from reward hacking
• (00:58:24) [2511.15304] Adversarial Poetry as a Universal Single-Turn Jailbreak Mechanism in Large Language Models
• (01:01:43) Disrupting the first reported AI-orchestrated cyber espionage campaign
• (01:04:36) OpenAI Locks Down San Francisco Offices Following Alleged Threat From Activist | WIRED
• Synthetic Media & Art
• (01:07:02) Warner Music Group Settles AI Lawsuit With Udio

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