Cloudflare, the tech platform that powers millions of websites representing about 20% of the internet, announced yesterday that it will by default block crawlers from AI companies from scraping content without permission. It’s a significant move as AI juggernauts like OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta have scoured the corners of the internet for data to power their AI models, often depriving the websites of the traffic (and associated revenue) they would have otherwise received. Publishers like Conde Nast, TIME, The Associated Press and The Atlantic as well as tech companies like Pinterest and Quora have expressed their support for Cloudflare’s shift to permission-based crawling. The company also announced a partnership with an initiative called Pay Per Crawl that would allow website creators to get paid for their content.

Let’s get into the headlines.

PEAK PERFORMANCE

Microsoft claims that its AI system, known as “Microsoft AI Diagnostic Center,” can diagnose diseases four times more accurately than a group of experienced doctors at a significantly lower cost. That claim is based on an evaluation of how accurately the AI tool was able to make a diagnosis on about 300 complex cases previously published in the New England Journal of Medicine compared to physicians. However, in the study doctors were asked not to use any additional tools to assist their diagnosis, which doesn’t reflect real-world scenarios. Healthcare is a growing application area for AI with Microsoft Copilot and Bing receiving approximately 50 million health-related queries per month.

ETHICS LAW

AI-generated videos that depict Black women as primates and reinforce racist stereotypes are gaining millions of views on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, Wired reported. The videos, part of a social media trend called “Bigfoot Baddie,” were created using Google’s popular AI video generator, Veo 3.

TALENT RESHUFFLES

Anysphere, the company behind the rapidly growing AI coding tool Cursor, has recruited two engineers from Anthropic who previously worked on Claude Code, The Information reported. Cursor, which is used by developers at top AI companies to create programs and write code, is also a client of Anthropic’s powerful coding models.

AI DEAL OF THE WEEK

Genesis AI, which is developing an AI model for robotics, has secured a $105 million seed round led by Eclipse and Khosla Ventures.

DEEP DIVE

Mark Zuckerberg Sparks An AI Talent War With $100 Million Offers

As the competition to build powerful AI models and launch impressive products heats up, companies are offering huge sums for the researchers making these systems. On Monday, Alexandr Wang, Meta’s newly appointed Chief AI Officer and former CEO of data labeling giant Scale AI, announced the creation of a new lab within Meta aimed at building so-called “superintelligence”— an AI system that surpasses humans in a range of cognitive tasks including creativity and problem solving. (That’s different from artificial general intelligence, which is an AI system that can match human cognitive abilities.) Joining Wang are 11 top researchers that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has recently lured away from leading AI labs including OpenAI, Anthropic and Google DeepMind, with attractive multi-million dollar offers.

In recent weeks, Zuckerberg has personally reached out to dozens of researchers and engineers and offered eye-catching multi-million dollar pay packages, according to multiple reports. The researchers’ names appear on “The List”— the billionaire’s compilation of the brightest minds and hidden geniuses in the field of AI. The Facebook founder has offered top talent $300 million over four years, with $100 million in total compensation (including equity) for the first year, Wired recently reported.

Meta’s initiative also raises questions about whether “The List” actually contains the right names. Richard Socher, a pioneer in natural language processing and CEO of You.com, tells me that while the talent pool for AI engineers is relatively small, companies like Meta are scouting for talent in the most “obvious places” like OpenAI, which ends up being costly. "Not everyone who's joined OpenAI as employee number 500 is more qualified than someone in a smaller startup," he said. That said, not everyone at OpenAI is a target: Alex Nichol, a deep learning researcher at the startup posted on X, “Kinda offended that Meta didn’t try to recruit me… (not that I would accept, but it's nice to feel recognized).”

While the hires may seem extravagant, they are entirely feasible for a tech giant like Meta, which has nearly unlimited financial resources and unrestricted access to powerful chips used to run these AI models to attract top talent, even from comfortable jobs at major players like OpenAI. But not everyone is convinced that the financial incentives alone are enough to build a top-tier AI team and develop the best AI products. Two former Meta AI employees told Forbes they are skeptical that large amounts of money can motivate researchers to build superintelligence. “You want to attract people who care,” a former Meta AI employee said.

Meta itself has lost a lot of its top AI talent over the years, who’ve either left to start their own companies or to join rivals like OpenAI, the former Meta AI employee told Forbes. “A lot of people left to go to OpenAI…. This is Mark trying to reverse the loss of talent,” they said.

WEEKLY DEMO

In an experiment called Project Vend, Anthropic allowed its flagship AI model Claude to operate a small automated physical store in its San Francisco office. The AI system, which had access to various external programs like email, was responsible for managing the inventory, setting prices and conducting transactions. However, it encountered a series of issues that included creating a fake Venmo account, stocking and selling metal cubes after being prompted by a customer and offering discounts to persuasive customers.

MODEL BEHAVIOR

People are utilizing AI tools such as ChatGPT to serve as “trip sitters” — a term used to describe a sober person who monitors someone under the influence of psychedelics— while they consume psychedelics like magic mushrooms, MIT Technology Review reported. During their trip, individuals chat with AI tools to share their feelings and calm themselves. However, adding AI into the mix could result in a “dangerous psychological cocktail,” according to multiple psychotherapists.

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