Category: Top News

IBL News | New York

Proactive, personal, and autonomous digital assistant, open-source AI agent OpenClaw—formerly Moltbot, formerly Clawdbot—has become the most talked-about AI tool on the internet this month, racking up over 177,000 GitHub stars to date. Demos of this AI agent autonomously completing tasks rocketed across X, TikTok, and Reddit.

It runs locally on a user’s own hardware and connects to apps like WhatsApp, Slack, Discord, Telegram, and iMessage, acting as a proactive digital assistant. It can take autonomous actions across a user’s online life, running commands, summarizing information, updating calendars, or managing emails.

OpenClaw features persistent memory and works more like a digital employee and assistant than a chatbot. Its mascot is a “space lobster.”A developer named Peter Steinberger created OpenClaw, inspired by Claude Code.

“It is very personal, it’s very easy, and you can get both very practical and very silly with it,” explained IBM Senior Research Scientist Marina Danilevsky.

Meanwhile, Matt Schlicht, Cofounder of Octane AI, built Moltbook, a social network designed exclusively for AI agents. Their agents generate posts, comments, argue, joke, and upvote each other in a swirl of automated discourse. Humans may observe, but cannot participate. Since launching on January 28, Moltbook has ballooned to more than 1.5 million agents.

These tools show that creating agents with true autonomy can also be community-driven, not limited to large enterprises.

Kaoutar El Maghraoui, a Principal Research Scientist at IBM, said, “The rise of OpenClaw challenges the hypothesis that autonomous AI agents must be vertically integrated, with the provider tightly controlling the models, memory, tools, interface, execution layer, and security stack for reliability and safety.”

OpenClaw’s popularity also reflects a broader moment for AI agents. What was recently a concept in research papers and enterprise roadmaps has become something that

Other AI agents that regular people can install, run, and experiment with are Claude Cowork and IBM’s Granite 4.0 Nano.

However, some experts have raised questions about whether OpenClaw provides sufficient guardrails, since highly capable agents without proper safety controls can create major vulnerabilities, especially when deployed in workplaces.

As OpenClaw usage grows, the hosting company DigitalOcean launched a VM-based deployment, with elastic scaling, safe defaults, and cost control.

The 1-Click Deploy OpenClaw promises system control, with a secure, hardened environment where users own the virtual machine and manage the underlying infrastructure directly.

IBL News | New York

AI-related ads stole the show at Super Bowl LX, with major players competing to become users’ default assistants, agents, or devices.

Moreover, this wave of commercials featuring spots from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Amazon, Meta, startups, and even an AI-generated vodka spot showed that AI’s mainstream presence is growing.

• Anthropic made its Super Bowl debut with a viral campaign against AI ads. The launch sparked a feud with OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, last week.
• Vodka brand SVEDKA ran what it called the first primarily AI-generated Super Bowl ad, reviving its robotic mascot with AI-trained dance moves.
• Meta showcased “athletic intelligence” via its AI glasses, while Amazon pushed the new Alexa+, and Google highlighted Gemini and Nano Banana.

• Other AI-related spots included Base44, Genspark, Ramp, Rippling, Wix, and Arlist.

In other words, the Super Bowl ad business became a battlefield for consumer AI attention.

• Techcrunch: From Svedka to Anthropic, brands make bold plays with AI in Super Bowl ads

 

IBL News | New York

Anthropic upgraded its smartest model, enabling it to sustain agentic tasks for longer, operate across larger databases, and feature better code review and debugging to catch its own mistakes.

This is Anthropic’s first Opus-class model, Opus 4.6, which features a 1-million-token context window in beta, meaning the system can recall more information per user session.

However, its most notable addition is the inclusion of “agent teams” in Claude Code. It means thatusers can now assemble agent teams to work on tasks together.

Claude Opus 4.6 is available on claude.ai, the API, and all major cloud platforms. For developers, pricing through the Claude API remains the same at $5/$25 per million tokens.

Opus 4.6 can apply its improved abilities to running financial analyses, conducting research, and creating and using documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.

Within Cowork, where Claude can multitask autonomously, Opus 4.6 can leverage all these skills.

“The model’s performance is state-of-the-art on several evaluations,” according to the

Anthropic made substantial upgrades to Claude in Excel and released a research preview of Claude integrated in PowerPoint as an accessible side panel.

It means the presentation can be crafted in PowerPoint with direct help from Claude.

IBL News | New York

Google updated the Chrome browser on macOS, Windows, and Chromebook Plus to include Gemini 3’s agent capabilities this month.

Currently available only to AI Pro and AI Ultra subscribers, with no set date for general availability, these AI features are on display in a new side panel that lets users multitask across the web, regardless of which tab they are in.

The search giant is also adding the image generator Nano Banana directly into Chrome, allowing users to transform images on the fly without downloading and re-uploading them or opening another tab.

Additionally, Gemini in Chrome supports deeper integrations with apps, such as Gmail, Calendar, YouTube, Maps, Google Shopping, and Google Flights. These features can be enabled in the Connected Apps section of Gemini Settings.

 

IBL News | New York

Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, warned of the imminent danger posed by superhuman intelligence to civilization. This manager is one of the most vocal moguls about AI risk.

“Humanity is about to be handed almost unimaginable power, and it is deeply unclear whether our social, political, and technological systems possess the maturity to wield it,” wrote Dario Amodei in a 38-page essay. “I believe we are entering a rite of passage, both turbulent and inevitable, which will test who we are as a species.”

Currently, AI handles 90% of the company’s computer programming.

However, he insists he’s optimistic that humans will navigate this transition, but “only if AI leaders and the government are candid with people and take the threats more seriously than they do today.”

In his essay, “The Adolescence of Technology: Confronting and Overcoming the Risks of Powerful AI”, Dario Amodei makes statements such as:

 

• “AI will disrupt 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs over 1–5 years.”

 

• “I think the best way to get a handle on the risks of AI is to ask the following question: suppose a literal ‘country of geniuses’ were to materialize somewhere in the world in ~2027. Imagine, say, 50 million people, all of whom are much more capable than any Nobel Prize winner, statesman, or technologist. … I think it should be clear that this is a dangerous situation — a report from a competent national security official to a head of state would probably contain words like ‘single most serious national security threat we’ve faced in a century, possibly ever.’ It seems like something the best minds of civilization should be focused on.”

 

• “There is evidence that many terrorists are at least relatively well-educated. Biology is by far the area I’m most worried about, because of its very large potential for destruction and the difficulty of defending against it.”

 

• “China’s government is currently autocratic and operates a high-tech surveillance state. AI-enabled authoritarianism terrifies me.”

 

• “AI companies control large datacenters, train frontier models, have the greatest expertise on how to use those models, and in some cases have daily contact with and the possibility of influence over tens or hundreds of millions of users. They could, for example, use their AI products to brainwash their massive consumer user base, and the public should be alert to the risk this represents. I think the governance of AI companies deserves a lot of scrutiny.”

 

• “There is so much money to be made with AI — literally trillions of dollars per year.”

 

• “Wealthy individuals have an obligation to help solve this problem. It is sad to me that many wealthy individuals (especially in the tech industry) have recently adopted a cynical and nihilistic attitude that philanthropy is inevitably fraudulent or useless.”

 

• “Humanity needs to wake up, and this essay is an attempt — a possibly futile one, but it’s worth trying — to jolt people awake.”

IBL News | New York

OpenAI announced the Codex app for macOS, with an interface designed to manage multiple agents at once, run them in parallel, and collaborate on long-running tasks. It’s included with ChatGPT Free and Go plans, and the company is doubling the rate limits on Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Edu plans.

Those higher limits apply everywhere you use Codex—in the app, from the CLI, in your IDE, and in the cloud.

IBL News | New York

Google powered its Maps with AI, allowing users to ask the digital assistant Gemini questions while walking and cycling. The feature is available on iOS and Android.

The search giant explained that Gemini will work as a personal walking tour guide.

If the user is cycling, Gemini gives them hands-free help.

IBL News | New York

Columbia State Community College received this month a $2.02 million, four-year federal grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education.

With the funding, this community college — the only one in Tennessee — will establish a new AI division and expand AI literacy across its programs, an initiative which is part of COMPASS (Community College Operational Model for Promoting AI Student Success).

This program is designed to build institutional capacity for AI while ensuring students gain practical AI skills, according to the announcement.

The grant will also help integrate AI tools across academic programs and student services, benefiting more than 1,200 first-year students each year.

“This grant establishes us as an AI cutting-edge institution, integrating AI throughout our curricula and services,” President Janet F. Smith said in the announcement.

“What we build here can serve as a model for community colleges nationwide,” Mehran Mostajir, Columbia State dean of the Business and Technology Division and assistant professor of Engineering Systems Technology,

IBL News | New York

Chinese company Qwen presented its latest flagship reasoning model, Max-Thinking, this month.

“Qwen3-Max-Thinking achieves significant performance improvements across multiple dimensions, including factual knowledge, complex reasoning, instruction following, alignment with human preferences, and agent capabilities,” said the company.

Qwen ensured that on “19 established benchmarks, Qwen3-Max-Thinking demonstrated performance comparable to leading models such as GPT-5.2-Thinking, Claude-Opus-4.5, and Gemini 3 Pro.

IBL News | New York

Substack, a publishing platform for podcasters and bloggers, announced this month the launch of its app for Apple TV and Google TV, which will host thought-provoking videos and livestreams for free and paid subscribers.

This content can include a variety of videos, from Dolly Parton reflecting on her showbiz journey, George Saunders reading from his book, to Tina Brown’s interviews with leading figures, and Chris Cillizza, the author of So What.

Substack creators’ videos will automatically be available for subscribers who are signed in to the TV app.

This initial version of the Substack TV app will host video posts and livestreams from the creators and publications they’re subscribed to, plus recommended videos, and an exploration area.

Veteran journalist and former CNN anchor Jim Acosta, who uses Substack’s live video feature to host a daily news show, said, “This is a game-changing moment for the rise of independent media. Substack has proven that legacy media consumers are not only searching for fresh alternatives; they are finding them.”