Saturday Links: Drug Discovery, AI Safety, and Robot Games

AI made it to the Edinburgh Fringe comedy festival, where one of the top jokes of this year was "Everyone is worried about AI. I’m more concerned with what the other vowels are up to." (by Rob Auton). That's actually a really good point. What are the other vowels up to? Gold (AU) is up, but I'm not sure about the rest.

Anyway, here are this week's links:

• AI designs antibiotics for gonorrhoea and MRSA superbugs. A team of MIT researchers using generative AI was able to generate huge numbers of candidate compounds and simulate potential efficacy. A small number of sample compounds were then synthesized and tested on infected cells. This isn't the first time AI-enabled drug discovery has borne fruit (indeed, there are numerous startups and corporate labs pursuing this dream). It is, however, a very concrete breakthrough and suggests we will see more wins like this.
• Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on the Big Technology Podcast. This hour-long interview was taped not long after NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang suggested that Dario Amodei's public AI warnings suggest that Anthropic simply believes they are the only ones with safe enough hands to build AI. Amodei responds to that criticism and, I think, also gives quite a nuanced view on Large Language Models and long-term safety concerns. Well worth a listen!
• GPT-5 Set the Stage for Ad Monetization and the SuperApp. Semi Analysis' piece on the GPT-5 launch outlines a take on ChatGPT that I very much share. The shifts in GPT-5 are really about the long-term user experience as a primary interface for online access. This is really a key frontier in the fight for model dominance. The business model shifts required are also clear, with product recommendations being the clear favorite. Another deal that hints at this future is Perplexity's tie-up with OpenTable for restaurant bookings.
• Robots race, play football, crash, and collapse at China's 'robot Olympics'. Running races, soccer, and kickboxing were among the sports on show. This did not get as much mainstream news coverage as I expected, and perhaps we're now just too used to seeing more robots on screen. There is still something deeply dystopian about two humanoid robots kicking each other in an arena.
• Perplexity offers to buy Chrome for billions more than it’s raised. In a novel twist to the tech soap opera, startup Perplexity made a public bid to buy Chrome from Google (which is most definitely not for sale). The bid is no doubt to attract some PR head of judicial rulings on Google antitrust cases, where one of the potential remedies would be for Google to divest some of its assets. Perhaps Perplexity is simply trying to argue that there are potential buyers for Chrome. It seems unlikely the court will request as a specific remedy from Google to call for divestments, but in theory, it could happen. Certainly, Chrome is a key lever for Google in the fight for consumer eyeballs. It is also unclear how valuable Chrome would really be outside the hands of Google, since much of the browser's utility is tied to Google accounts and services such as Google Workspace.

In other news, for the avoidance of doubt, please check any health advice you get from ChatGPT.