US arrests Earthmade CEO over alleged $300M Nvidia-server smuggling

🚀 RELEASES & LAUNCHES

• Apple to tighten macOS Full Disk Access controls for AI agents
  Apple will add macOS controls limiting AI agents’ access to sensitive user data.

  • macOS users relying on AI agents are the focus of the changes.
  • Apple says new Full Disk Access controls will address agents’ access to files, messages, mail, and browsing history.
  • The changes respond to new privacy risks from increasingly capable AI agents.
  Sources 📎 Coverage: techcrunch.com · 👁 via TechCrunch AI

• Ai2 open-sources AstaBrief 8B for faster cited scientific reports
  Ai2 open-sourced AstaBrief 8B for fast cited scientific report generation.

  • For researchers and institutions using Asta or building scientific retrieval-augmented generation workflows.
  • AstaBrief 8B, based on Qwen3-8B, turns a research question and retrieved literature excerpts into a cited report in one pass.
  • Asta Fast mode averages 51.1 seconds per report versus 178.5 seconds for Claude-powered Thinking mode.
  • Ai2 released the Apache 2.0 weights, training data, and a local PDF-report workflow for on-premises deployment.
  Sources 📄 Source: allenai.org · 📎 Coverage: huggingface.co · 👁 via Hugging Face Blog

• Circuit Breaker Labs develops AI tests for psychologically risky chatbots
  Circuit Breaker Labs built AI agents to test mental-health chatbots for dangerous responses.

  • The tools target behavioral-health teams building mental-health apps, AI coaches, journals and support chatbots for children and adults.
  • Simulated users probe models across ages, languages, cultures, slang and typos in single- and multi-turn conversations.
  • The system runs tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of interactions daily and produces auditable safety scores.
  • The tests are designed to expose suicidal-ideation cues, context manipulation and other failures before vulnerable users encounter them.
  Sources 📎 Coverage: techcrunch.com · 👁 via TechCrunch AI

🔬 RESEARCH

• Google Research details verifiably private federated learning for Gboard
  Google Research introduced a TEE-based federated-learning system with verifiable differential privacy.

  • For Android Keyboard (Gboard) models trained from device data.
  • The system uses Trusted Execution Environments, encrypted uploads, a TEE-hosted key-management service, and workload policies.
  • Public transparency logs let external parties verify which server-side workloads can process the data.
  • Production deployment trained Gboard models faster with better accuracy under smaller, externally verifiable privacy budgets.
  Sources 📄 Source: arxiv.org · 📎 Coverage: research.google · 👁 via Google Research Blog

• Percepta introduces Spotlight, an LLM architecture with unbounded memory
  Percepta introduced Spotlight, an architecture that separates model intelligence from expandable memory.

  • Spotlight is designed for AI systems that need growing knowledge and skills without retraining model weights.
  • The architecture replaces attention with an unbounded memory that every token reads from and writes to.
  • Each token accesses only a small number of learned memory cells, keeping access cost constant as memory grows.
  • Spotlight changes the memory-capacity tradeoff faced by conventional attention and fixed-capacity sparse architectures.
  Sources 📎 Coverage: percepta.ai · 👁 via r/LocalLLaMA

📊 BENCHMARKS & EVALS

• SWE-sweep benchmarks AI agents on proactive bug fixing
  Researchers released SWE-sweep, a benchmark for agents that find and fix undisclosed real-world bugs.

  • Built for AI coding agents and software-maintenance teams working across large codebases.
  • SWE-sweep covers 100 repositories in 22 languages and scores agents on hidden bugs under regression checks.
  • The benchmark uses real-world bugs filtered for discoverability and fixability from repository contents alone.
  • Published older-model results resolved up to 4.7% of bugs.
  • It evaluates proactive maintenance rather than only fixing bugs users have already reported.
  Sources 📄 Source: github.com · 📎 Coverage: highlearningrate.substack.com · 👁 via r/LocalLLaMA

• AxiomicLabs releases Tiny Theory of Mind benchmark for small models
  AxiomicLabs published Tiny Theory of Mind, a benchmark for evaluating small models' theory-of-mind capabilities.

  • For researchers and builders evaluating small language models.
  • The benchmark measures theory-of-mind capabilities and is available as a Hugging Face dataset.
  • Tiny Theory of Mind reached the front page of Hugging Face's Datasets.
  • It provides a focused evaluation resource for small-model development.
  Sources 📄 Source: huggingface.co · 📎 Coverage: reddit.com · 👁 via r/LocalLLaMA

💰 BUSINESS & FUNDING

• US arrests Earthmade CEO over alleged $300M Nvidia-server smuggling
  US prosecutors arrested Earthmade CEO Greg Lui over an alleged $300 million Nvidia-server smuggling scheme.
  • The case targets Greg Lui, 38, CEO of California-based Earthmade Computer.
  • Prosecutors allege Earthmade routed Nvidia A100 and H100 servers through Malaysia and Singapore to China using false paperwork.
  • The alleged scheme involved more than $300 million in export-controlled servers and generated over $176 million for Earthmade in 2024.
  • Lui faces conspiracy, smuggling, and money-laundering charges carrying up to 20 years on conspiracy counts and 10 years for smuggling.
  • The arrest highlights enforcement of US AI-chip export controls and scrutiny of Nvidia’s shipment compliance.
  Sources 📄 Source: justice.gov · 📎 Coverage: arstechnica.com · 👁 via Ars Technica AI