AI:AM: Is THIS the AI We Want? Alarming Acceleration, AI Election Bets, GPU Trading & AI-Native VC

This week on AI in the AM: the reports of acceleration keep coming. Is recursive self-improvement already underway, and is dramatic acceleration imminent? Friday morning, the day after METR published its report on how much AI is already speeding up AI research inside Anthropic. Prakash Narayanan, my co-host. We were talking about the local ballot measures against data centers, and how the developers have been going about buying land. Mike San Miguel of Luxor Technology. He sells GPU servers off its hardware desk, and he set up its KYC department. Brian Zhou, a researcher at Thoughtful. He helped build BallotBench: nine frontier agents, each given a week to forecast the midterms, and trading agents putting real money on their forecasts. Bryan Bischof, head of AI at Theory Ventures. Prakash asked about the firm's 2026 builder survey. Bryan expected open-source models to gain ground in production. Instead, the balance shifted toward closed models. This is the AI in the AM weekly highlights, with my co-host Prakash Narayanan. I'm Nathan Labenz, the narration is my cloned voice, and we'd love your feedback on what works and what doesn't.

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Nathan Labenz