AI models that fine-tune themselves

👋 Good morning/evening (wherever you are). It’s Friday.

Two papers I’ll be reading this weekend:

• Self-Adapting Language Models (MIT)

• Unsupervised Elicitation of Language Models (Anthropic)

MIT’s SEAL and Anthropic’s ICM share a common goal: reducing reliance on human supervision.

But they differ in purpose, mechanism, and philosophy.

Here’s a simple breakdown:

• Anthropic’s ICM teaches an AI to judge itself and learn from what makes sense. Think of it as grading its own homework without a teacher.

• MIT’s SEAL teaches an AI to rewrite parts of itself to improve at new tasks. Imagine a robot editing its own brain code after learning something new.

Switching gears:

Missed my LinkedIn post on Monday? It’s worth checking out.

Jacob Adler’s Grand Prix–winning video essay Total Pixel Space (winner of AIFF 2025) is becoming a cult favorite.

OK let’s keep going ↓

Here’s what you should know:

• Behind “ANCESTRA:” combining Veo with live-action filmmaking

  Google DeepMind partnered with Darren Aronofsky, Eliza McNitt, and a team of more than 200 people to make a film using Veo and live-action filmmaking.

• Google tests Audio Overviews for Search results

  Google is launching a new Search experiment in Labs – Audio Overviews, which uses the latest Gemini models to generate quick, conversational audio overviews for certain search queries.

• Eleven v3 now supports Text to Speech in 41 new languages

  This brings the total to over 70 languages and means you can now reach over 90% of the global population with ElevenLabs.

• The world’s first industrial AI cloud for European manufacturers

  NVIDIA and Deutsche Telekom will build the world's first industrial AI cloud for European manufacturers on German soil. In doing so, they pave the way for the AI Gigafactory on the one hand and the opportunity to advance Germany as an industrial hub rapidly implementing AI and thus building a competitive advantage on the other. Full implementation expected by 2026.

• AstraZeneca signs AI research deal with CSPC for chronic diseases

  Under the terms of the agreement, AstraZeneca and CSPC agree to discover and develop pre-clinical candidates for multiple targets with the potential to treat diseases across chronic indications, including a pre-clinical small molecule oral therapy for immunological diseases.

• Jury acquits consultant behind AI robocalls mimicking Biden

  A political consultant who sent artificial intelligence-generated robocalls mimicking former President Joe Biden to New Hampshire Democrats last year was acquitted Friday of voter suppression and impersonating a candidate.

• New York is the first state requiring AI disclosures for layoffs

  The move applies to New York State's existing Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) system and took effect in March, Bloomberg reported. New York is the first state in the U.S. to add the disclosure, which could help regulators understand AI's effects on the labor market.

• Bytedance releases Seedance 1.0

  Seedance 1.0 now ranks first on the T2V and I2V leaderboards of Artificial Analysis. Also check out Seaweed-APT2, a streaming video generation model for real-time interactive applications.

The numbers:

• Meta finalized a $14.3B investment in Scale AI, valuing it at $29B.

• Clay raised Series C at a $3B valuation, led by CapitalG.

• Fireflies hit $1B via tender offer and launched Talk to Fireflies with Perplexity.

• Canary raised $80M to scale hospitality AI, now valued at $600M.

• Tastewise raised $50M Series B for GenAI in food and beverage, led by TELUS.

• Landbase raised $30M Series A to build AI sales tools, backed by Sound and Picus.

• Bolo AI raised an $8.1M seed round for industrial AI, led by True Ventures.

• Weavy raised a $4M seed round for AI image and video editing, led by Entree.

Thought starters:

• AMD x OpenAI — Sam Altman & AMD Instinct MI400

  ⏱️ 8:30 min (YouTube)

• Countdown to Superintelligence (Making Sense with Sam Harris)

  ⏱️ 20 min (Podcast)

Meme of the day:

Thanks for reading,

Eddie

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