Recent Summaries

This Technology Review newsletter promotes a subscriber-exclusive ebook arguing that the pursuit of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) has become a damaging "conspiracy theory" hijacking the AI industry. The ebook, authored by Will Douglas Heaven, explores how Silicon Valley became fixated on AGI and the negative consequences of this obsession.

• AGI as a "Conspiracy Theory": Frames the relentless pursuit of AGI as a harmful and potentially unrealistic goal driving the AI field.

• Silicon Valley's AGI Obsession: Highlights the perceived fixation within Silicon Valley on achieving AGI, possibly at the expense of other valuable AI research.

• AI Hype Correction: References a broader trend of re-evaluating and potentially scaling back overly optimistic expectations surrounding AI's immediate capabilities, as seen in "The great AI hype correction of 2025."

• Subscriber-Only Content: Emphasizes the exclusive nature of the ebook, encouraging subscription to access it and other premium content.

• The newsletter positions AGI not as a scientific goal, but as a belief system that may be negatively influencing the direction of AI research and development.

• The title "How AGI became the most consequential conspiracy theory of our time" suggests a critical stance on the narratives and promises surrounding AGI.

• The inclusion of "The great AI hype correction of 2025" suggests a wider narrative of disillusionment within the AI community.

• The newsletter uses strong language ("hijacked," "conspiracy") to attract attention and generate debate about the future of AI.

1. Cerebras has secured a $10 billion deal with OpenAI, positioning its wafer-scale engine as a significant competitor to Nvidia in the AI chip market. This deal aims to enhance the performance and speed of large AI models for tasks like coding, image generation, and complex reasoning, addressing the current trade-off between model intelligence and processing speed.

2. Key themes and trends:

   • AI Chip Market Competition: The deal signifies growing competition in the AI chip market, with Cerebras emerging as a potential challenger to Nvidia's dominance.
   • Wafer-Scale Technology Validation: This agreement provides a crucial platform for Cerebras to validate the effectiveness and scalability of its unique wafer-scale engine technology.
   • Enterprise AI Adoption Challenges: The article highlights the challenges enterprises face in deploying large AI models due to speed and cost constraints, which this partnership seeks to alleviate.
   • Shift to AI Agents: The underlying narrative suggests a shift from basic chatbots towards more sophisticated AI agents capable of complex problem-solving, demanding faster and more efficient hardware.

3. Notable insights and takeaways:

   • Legitimacy for Cerebras: The OpenAI deal immediately elevates Cerebras from a niche player to a serious contender, requiring other AI labs to consider its technology.
   • Potential Price Reduction: Increased competition among chipmakers could lead to reduced AI service prices, benefiting enterprise customers.
   • Nvidia's Vulnerability: Cerebras' wafer-scale approach presents a potential technological advantage over Nvidia's multi-chip approach, which could erode Nvidia's market share if proven superior.
   • Integration Challenges for Cerebras: Despite its technological potential, Cerebras faces challenges in scalability and integration, which may limit its appeal to non-hyperscale enterprises.
   • Underlying strategic moves: Nvidia has made moves of its own, including a $20 billion licensing agreement with Groq, and ongoing negotiations with OpenAI, suggesting a dynamic and competitive landscape.

This newsletter highlights two major technology-related challenges: the promise and pitfalls of next-generation nuclear energy and the growing public backlash against data centers, despite their crucial role in modern infrastructure. It also touches on topics ranging from Iran's attempts to cripple Starlink to the potential for AI to generate fake celebrity scandals. The newsletter suggests a complex relationship between technological advancement and societal acceptance, with energy and AI at the forefront.

• Energy Transition Challenges: Explores the tension between the need for clean energy sources (nuclear) and the public's concerns about costs and safety, as well as the rising demand for electricity and emissions.

• Data Center Controversy: Highlights the paradox of data centers being essential infrastructure but facing increasing local opposition due to their resource consumption and impact on communities.

• AI's Double-Edged Sword: Discusses AI's potential (Google's Veo model, Africa's AI adoption), while also noting its downsides (power consumption, deepfake scandals, potential job displacement concerns for middle management).

• Geopolitical Tech Conflicts: Iran's efforts to jam Starlink illustrate how technology is being weaponized and used in geopolitical conflicts, impacting access to information.

• Next-generation nuclear energy is gaining traction as a potential solution to climate change and energy independence, but faces challenges related to cost and the speed of deployment.

• Data centers, while technologically impressive and vital, are generating significant public opposition due to their environmental and social impact, requiring companies and governments to address community concerns.

• Microplastic research faces scrutiny, highlighting the importance of verifying scientific claims and addressing potential contamination issues.

• Even small lifestyle changes can significantly extend lifespan, underscoring the importance of holistic health and well-being.

This newsletter analyzes the diffusion of AI into financial services, highlighting key architectural shifts, deployment patterns, and governance strategies expected in 2026. It emphasizes a move towards domain-specific AI solutions, multi-agent workflows, and robust compliance frameworks, rather than a focus on AGI.

• Shift to Specialized Models: A move away from massive, general-purpose models towards smaller, domain-specific language models (SLMs) optimized for latency and data sovereignty.

• Multimodal Data Integration: The incorporation of diverse data streams (audio, video, tabular data) into unified models for a more holistic financial analysis.

• Autonomous Agents: The rise of AI agents that actively participate in trade execution, optimizing strategies in real-time.

• Hybrid Architectures: Integration of AI as a reasoning layer on top of existing quantitative infrastructure, rather than replacing it entirely.

• Continuous Compliance: Transition from periodic model validation to ongoing "compliance-as-code" driven by regulations like the EU AI Act.

• Relational Foundation Models (RFMs) are gaining traction by using graph transformers to map entities and interactions, enabling systems to capture the propagation of events through business networks.

• Reinforcement learning is being used to train models to explicitly lay out their reasoning steps, improving accuracy and reducing reliance on human prompting.

• "White Box" verification architectures are being adopted to mitigate hallucinations by positioning LLMs as critics and auditors, emphasizing explainability and factual accuracy.

• Synthetic data is becoming a core infrastructure tool for generating realistic but counterfactual datasets for stress testing and model validation.

• Open-source initiatives are democratizing access to systematic investment strategies, enabling smaller institutions and retail investors to construct alpha-generating strategies.

The newsletter announces the formation of the "Trust in AI Alliance," a collaboration between tech giants (Anthropic, AWS, Google Cloud, OpenAI) and Thomson Reuters, aiming to address the challenges of building trustworthy AI systems. The alliance will focus on actionable solutions and shared standards to promote transparency and accountability in agentic AI development.

• Focus on Actionable Solutions: The alliance prioritizes collaborative problem-solving and development of practical approaches over mere discussion.

• Key Technical Challenges: Initial workshops will tackle maintaining context, guaranteeing source provenance, and protecting against malicious inputs in AI workflows.

• Industry-Wide Impact: The alliance intends to share findings and insights to encourage broader dialogue and the development of industry standards.

• Trust as a Core Issue: The initiative recognizes trust as a defining challenge for the advancement and adoption of increasingly autonomous AI systems.

• Transparency and Accountability: The alliance aims to ensure AI systems are developed and deployed with transparency and accountability in mind.

• Addressing Malicious Inputs: Protecting workflows against malicious inputs is a key area of focus, highlighting the growing importance of AI security.

• The Importance of Provenance: Guaranteeing the provenance of sources is crucial for building trust in AI systems, especially in professional environments.

This newsletter covers emerging tech, focusing on sodium-ion batteries as a lithium alternative, China's optimistic tech presence at CES, and controversial gene therapies promising longevity. It also touches on AI's growing impact on various sectors and geopolitical tech tensions.

• Energy Alternatives: Sodium-ion batteries are gaining traction due to lithium scarcity and price volatility.

• China's Tech Ascendancy: Chinese tech companies are displaying increased confidence and presence in the global tech landscape.

• AI's Expanding Reach: AI continues to disrupt multiple sectors, from image generation to music creation.

• Ethical Concerns in Tech: The newsletter highlights ethical issues such as non-consensual deepfakes and the environmental impact of AI development.

• Geopolitical Tech Dynamics: The newsletter references Trump's appeal to Musk regarding Iranian internet access and the Pentagon's adoption of Musk's Grok AI chatbot.

• Sodium-ion batteries could be a game-changer for energy storage due to the abundance and affordability of sodium.

• CES 2026 showcased the growing influence and optimism of Chinese tech companies on the global stage.

• The pursuit of longevity through gene therapy raises ethical questions and requires careful scrutiny despite potential benefits.

• AI's creative applications, particularly in music, are blurring the lines of authorship and originality.

• Tech developments are increasingly intertwined with geopolitics, requiring awareness of international relations and potential consequences.