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THE DAILY INDEX

Technology, AI, software, security, crypto and business

BIG TECH & STARTUPS

TLDR

ANTHROPIC'S NEW HARDWARE STANDARD LETS AI AGENTS CONTROL THE PHYSICAL WORLD

Anthropic has introduced a set of standardized drivers designed to let AI agents easily interface with and control arbitrary devices. The Model Harness Standard is a way for scientists to streamline the arduous process of creating custom software integrations needed to get disparate components of an experiment working in concert. It provides a common interface and format for data sharing between these devices. The system could reduce weeks or months of exact experimental setup down to hours or minutes.

NVIDIA INSISTS IT CAN KEEP PRINTING MONEY TO FUND THE AI BOOM

Many people have called Nvidia's AI investments circular financing, but the company sees it differently. Frontier AI labs are growing faster than what their balance sheets and credit profiles can support. Growth can only continue as long as they can secure ever-greater amounts of computing power, which they would have trouble doing on their own as they lack the ability to borrow huge sums of money at competitive rates. Nvidia aims to power this flywheel until AI labs are able to support themselves.

HUGGING FACE IS SELLING A CUTE $399 OPEN SOURCE DUCK ROBOT, MICRODUCK

Hugging Face has unveiled a cute little duck-like robot called the Microduck that will ship before Christmas. The 25-centimeter-tall open-source robot will sell for $399. It can waddle, pick up objects up to 800 grams with its beak, get up when it falls, crouch, and even roller skate. The robot's behaviors can be trained in simulation and then directly deployed on the robot. The SDK, simulation, and full RL training stack are available on GitHub.

META TOOK AIM AT ANTHROPIC. IT IS ALSO ONE OF ITS LARGEST CUSTOMERS

Mark Zuckerberg recently indirectly took aim at rival Anthropic in an essay, saying that leading AI labs were trying to consolidate power while painting the future as filled with doom. The 6,500-word essay claims the balance of power will favor larger institutions over individuals if those labs lead. Meta is a heavy user of Anthropic's AI products. It is internally projected to spend as much as $10 billion annually on Anthropic's services, making it one of the AI lab's largest customers.

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