Reporter covering AI @WSJ | Formerly @WIRED, @TechCrunch, @markets | Send tips to my Signal username: mzeff.88
San Francisco, CA
Joined November 2020
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Max Zeff retweeted
Last month, OpenAI called in the three outspoken safety researchers and asked them to unlock their personal phones. It was conducting a leak investigation into a story in The Information about Astra’s use of opaque architectures, and the company’s plans to continue down that path. A week later, at 2 p.m., they were all fired.
Our story, w/ @ZeffMax and @berber_jin1 , looks at the battle over how much AI companies should share with third-party monitors like METR and Redwood to ensure AI safety wsj.com/tech/ai/the-signal-c… via @WSJ
Max Zeff retweeted
We've decided to sunset Arc on December 22, 2026.
That's not an easy sentence to write. We spent years building Arc and celebrating each and every release along the way: we have so much pride and love for what we made alongside the Arc community.
Our priority is to deliver best-in-class security for our members. Keeping a browser secure takes constant, dedicated work that is only increasing in the age of AI. Dia was built from the ground up to meet today’s security standards, so that's where our engineering and security teams will focus moving forward.
We've worked to make switching to @diabrowser as easy as possible for Arc members. Here's how:
· Your passwords, bookmarks, extensions and history come over to Dia seamlessly.
· Spaces, Folders, and Tab Groups are in Dia and import over with your data intact.
· Dia now surpasses Arc benchmarks in stability, speed, and security.
· The browser features you use in Arc are free in Dia, and the AI is optional.
Thank you for using Arc, for pushing us to make it better, and for building alongside us. The team that made Arc is the same team behind Dia, and some of our most ambitious work is just ahead. We'd love for you to be there with us when it lands.
Max Zeff retweeted
SCOOP: Anthropic's latest draft S-1 documents show financials results for the first half of the year, gigantic spending plans for the future, and a laundry list of risk factors.
- Anthropic recorded a net loss of $80.7 billion in the first half of the year, tied to accounting adjustments related to previous financings
- Anthropic is set to spend >$600 billion on compute in the coming years, inclusive of cloud agreements and chip leases.
More in @WSJ:
Max Zeff retweeted
Even before the Saudi OpenAI employee was arrested yesterday, the startup had been warning staff to beware of people trying to glean work-related information from them--from honeypots to playground spies
More in my story w/ @georgia_wells @erinkwoo
wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-companies…
RT @anissagardizy8: SCOOP: OpenAI’s head of computing capacity is leaving the company next month after about a year, the latest leadership…
Max Zeff retweeted
A 20-something Harvard dropout built Facebook into a social media giant. A 20-something MIT dropout is helping usher it into the AI era.
My profile of Alexandr Wang, the camo-wearing Gen Z billionaire behind Meta’s new consumer agent app, featuring ~those~ memes
wsj.com/tech/ai/alexandr-wan…
Max Zeff retweeted
It’s really incredible how there is now a type of guy in the discourse whose sincerely held take is “we need to stop worrying about these abstract sci-fi risks and focus on present-day harms like emergent ecologies of digital minds engaging in unauthorized hacking.” Bravo.
Max Zeff retweeted
Over the last few weeks, so many people have asked me: if people at Anthropic believe that AI has a meaningful chance of killing us all, why are they building it? @berber_jin1 and I did a deep dive into Anthropic’s relationship with effective altruism to try to explain how doomerism came to be so influential at the company.
The tale took us to a group house in San Francisco, “clothing optional” swims in the Bahamas and a co-working space in Berkeley funded by an Anthropic investor’s money that has become a central gathering place for those most worried about the existential risk from AI.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-safety-ef… via @WSJ
Max Zeff retweeted
At the end of the Meta Connect keynote, Mark Zuckerberg pulled a small handheld device out of his pocket
He said it’s called “Muse Charm” and that users would be able to access their Muse AI agent via it
He said Meta is planning for it to go on sale in time for the holidays
Max Zeff retweeted
Interesting back and forth. Ezra describes the HF incident, Jensen says "well they shouldn't release the product." Ezra says "this product wasn't released," and Jensen's response is that if they say they can't contain their experiments then "we have to shut the labs down"
Tomorrow on the show: @JensenHuang, the CEO of NVIDIA, who thinks A.I. fear is getting way out of hand.
Max Zeff retweeted
Wrote about Meta’s new Muse AI agent and what hurdles Meta will have to overcome for it to succeed
wsj.com/tech/ai/meta-ai-agen…
Max Zeff retweeted
In a new post, Anthropic says Claude AI leads 26% of all its R&D development, in one of the clearest indications so far that AI is speeding up development of future models.
bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Max Zeff retweeted
We profiled Jacob Coxon, the "normal researcher" who quit Anthropic and caused a firestorm, tracing his journey from high school math whiz to London rationalist to self-proclaimed "doomer."
with @AmrithRamkumar @berber_jin1 @bzcohen: wsj.com/tech/ai/jacob-coxon-…
Max Zeff retweeted
Now Benioff asks Jensen directly about pacing the frontier:
Jensen: "If you're not confident about the safety of the products... then don't release it. That's a very obvious thing to do. You pace yourself until you are confident...
We don't need any new laws, we don't need any new regulation...
So run as fast as you can, but if you feel that any given point in time, the company is out of control or the products are not going to be safe, you take a pause."
Max Zeff retweeted
jensen huang, CEO of nvidia, is currently onstage at the All In tech summit politely calling bullshit on the doomerism coming out of Anthropic (and OpenAI to some degree) right now
nvidia just as conflicted as everyone, since it sells the chips to all the AI companies
Max Zeff retweeted
New from 404 Media: humans are reading ChatGPT conversations
OpenAI has hired an army of contractors who read real ChatGPT users' chats. I've seen internal docs, the review system, and real user prompts. Can contain very personal/sensitive information 404media.co/inside-project-l…
Max Zeff retweeted
I’m joining Sound Ventures to invest in the tech industry I’ve been covering for the last decade.
Ten years ago, I set out to have a front-row seat to the biggest stories in tech. I’ve sometimes played a part in them through my reporting. Along the way, I’ve gotten to know many of the most influential founders shaping the future. Now I want to back them.
I’ll continue to run Sources independently of my work at Sound. The newsletter is continuing, and I’m investing more in the podcast, which has an amazing roster of guests lined up.
I got into covering Silicon Valley because I’m insatiably curious about what technology makes possible. It’s time to follow my curiosity again. sources.news/p/joining-sound…
Max Zeff retweeted
Jacob was a senior researcher who joined Anthropic in May. My Anthropic colleagues and I had been trying to recruit him for ~2 years, because we knew he was a strong researcher at OpenAI. Before he left, I pitched him to stay and join my team, and I was sad he decided to leave, as are many of my colleagues. 100% agree with him that AI poses serious risks to society, and I'm glad he's speaking out!
Max Zeff retweeted
New from me + @razhael:
Back in May. OpenAI agents hijacked a German website this spring and transformed it into a bulletin board for other AI agents. OpenAI execs have been aware for a while, but chose not to disclose the incident.
