Welcome back to review week! There are plenty of cool things this week for the joy of reading. Jeff Bezos backs EV startup slate. Meta’s whistleblowers have accused the company of collusion. Waymo may use interior camera data. And more. Let’s get to that!
Want this: EV startup Slate has an ambitious goal of building an affordable two-seater pickup truck for an attractive price of $25,000. Supported by Jeff Bezos, there has been accumulation of considerable war chests serving that goal, and hopes to introduce vehicles into production in the second half of 2026.
China Collusion: Former Facebook Head of Global Public Policy Sarah Wynn-Williams wrote a book about her time on Facebook and testified before the US Senate this week. As you can imagine, her testimony was painful. According to Wynn-Williams, Facebook, now known as Meta, works directly with the Chinese Communist Party to “harm the national security of the United States and betray the values of the United States,” she said.
Wait, what? Nicola founder Trevor Milton, who was recently permitted after being convicted of securities fraud, is about to buy assets from bankruptcy from the company. It is unclear whether other parties have submitted bids for Nicola’s assets.
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news
Say “Cheese”: According to an unreleased version of Waymo’s privacy policy, the self-driving car company plans to use Robotaxis data, including interior camera videos tied to rider identity, to train the generated AI model. Users will obviously be able to opt out.
Back, Back, Back Again: On Tuesday, President Trump signed an executive order in favor of coal for data center power. The government has been instructed to designate coal as a critical mineral and prevent the closure of several coal-fired power plants, and must continue operating.
How to get rich: NetJet violations of a private jet company owned by Berkshire Hathaway revealed some information about how flight attendants will serve Elon Musk on planes. According to the guide, masks “want to fly directly as soon as possible” because they “have no interest in saving fuel.” He also likes to keep his cabin at a frigid 65 degrees.
Scoop up talent: Thinking Machine Labs, former Openai CTO Mira Murati’s new AI venture, has hired several well-known names in the field as advisors. This is Bob McGrew, formerly Chief Research Officer at Openai, and Alec Radford, former Openai researcher behind many more transformative innovations.
Dropbox: Dropbox Chief Customer Officer Eric Cox joined the company in 2023 but has resigned, according to SEC filings. It is not yet clear who will replace him.
Engaged HVAC in my heart: Matt Rogers, co-founder of Nest, knows he’s rolling with punches. “Nest isn’t necessarily doing everything I was trying to do years ago,” Rogers told Tim de Chant. “It was one of those things when I sold the company.” However, Rogers couldn’t shake his obsession with HVAC.
Paste the fork inside: At a summit that explores how AI affects education, U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon called AI a steak sauce-like “A1.” During the panel she initially said “ai” but became increasingly less consistent and led her to believe she knew the difference. Delicious, delicious slip-up.
analysis
$$$$$: While AI itself is very expensive for businesses to run, we found that testing these models can also be quite costly. For example, to evaluate Openai’s O1 inference model, it would be $2,767. Anthropic’s recent benchmark for Claude 3.7 Sonnet “hybrid” inference model is $1,485.35 for the same test set. Compare that to the cost of assessing Openai’s O1-Mini ($141.22) and Claude 3.7 Sonnet’s non-seasonal predecessor ($81.41). Kyle Wiggers is considering why benchmarks are becoming more expensive as models grow and become more complicated.
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