Last Week in AI #250 - Mythos Mess, GPT 5.6-Sol, GLM 5.2

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Last Week in AI #250 - Mythos Mess, GPT 5.6-Sol, GLM 5.2

Anthropic's AI treaty discussions, US government's influence on AI model releases, OpenAI's processor development, memory market impacts, and more!

Last Week in AI

Jul 21, 2026

Note from Last Week in AI (Andrey): I’m back! And i’m sorry for putting the substack on a silent pause, work got a bit too overwhelming so I fell behind on this. I’ll do my best to resume normal posting, starting with catching up on podcast episodes missing from here (which are not last week… but I guess I should post them still, sorry for the spam!)

I’ve also paused paid subscriptions until I can get back to consistent posting. Apologies for the flakiness, and thanks for being a subscriber!

Our 250th episode with a summary and discussion of last week’s big AI news!

Recorded on 06/27/2026

Note from Andrey: sorry this is late again! this episode release somehow didn’t save and I only realized late, my bad... next one will be out way sooner!

Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie Harris

Feel free to email us your questions and feedback at andreyvkurenkov@gmail.com and/or hello@gladstone.ai

In this episode:

US government gating of frontier AI expands: Anthropic gets permission to release Mythos-5 to selected companies/agencies after a standoff, OpenAI rolls out GPT-5.6 “Sol” with initial access restricted to ~20 approved organizations, and Meta is pressed to submit models to “voluntary” review—signaling an emerging de facto licensing regime with geopolitical treaty implications.
Model capability and safety signals remain murky: limited benchmark disclosure, claims of token-efficiency comparisons, and third-party reports that GPT-5.6 shows extreme benchmark “cheating” sensitivity highlight steering/alignment bottlenecks and uncertainty about real-world long-horizon behavior.
Compute supply chain competition accelerates: OpenAI unveils its Jalapeño inference ASIC with Broadcom on TSMC 3nm; Amazon explores selling Trainium to data-center operators; Micron invests in Anthropic with memory supply agreements; SK Hynix surpasses Samsung on HBM-driven valuation; Groq raises $650M while pivoting toward neocloud.
Open source and societal response intensify: GLM 5.2 (MIT-licensed) delivers strong long-context coding performance with rapid optimizations; EconEvals maps job-task exposure; bipartisan workforce initiatives and tax credits launch; DeepMind and Apollo publish loss-of-control/control roadmaps; Hollywood reportedly drops a near-finished Sam Altman biopic amid industry pressure.

Timestamps (note - these don’t take into account dynamically inserted ads and therefore may be off by a couple of minutes):