Chess engines can beat grandmasters—but they can’t agree on a single infallible strategy. And, instead of ruining the game, artificial intelligence is now uncovering new ways of playing. 🔗

Another HISTORIC class 🌟 Grandmaster Flash, Charlamagne Tha God, Keke Palmer, Delroy Lindo and more are officially joining the Hollywood Walk of Fame Class of 2027. 🔗 View More:

From a multi-agent system surpassing human grandmasters to terrorist groups weaponizing AI chatbots, the last two weeks highlight agentic AI is reshaping both competition and security landscapes. Here's your biweekly recap of everything that happened in the space, in the latest edition of AI Agents Pulse: 1️⃣ SpaceXAI releases Grok 4.5, an 'Opus-class model' the company says has 'twice greater token efficiency' than other leading models, positioned as a workhorse for coding, research, and knowledge work. 2️⃣ AI chip startup SambaNova raises $1 billion in a round led by General Atlantic, reaching an $11 billion valuation as investors continue to back Nvidia challengers. 3️⃣ S&P Global downgrades Oracle's credit rating to BBB-, citing OpenAI as a key credit risk due to Oracle's massive data center contractual obligations. 4️⃣ Databricks adopts Chinese open-source model GLM 5.2 as its default coding engine after it matched Anthropic's Opus 4.8 performance at a lower cost. 5️⃣ Microsoft's carbon emissions rose 25 percent in 2025 to 34 million metric tons, driven primarily by the expansion of its datacenter infrastructure, per the company's 2026 sustainability report. 6️⃣ Over 200 economists and AI researchers, including Nobel laureates, warn that the window to prepare for AI's economic impact is closing fast. 7️⃣ General Intuition, a Bezos-backed startup, raises $320 million at a $2.3 billion valuation to develop physical AI world models trained on gaming data. 8️⃣ GrandCode, a multi-agent reinforcement learning system, becomes the first AI to consistently beat all human participants in live Codeforces contests. 9️⃣ A study finds terrorist groups like Boko Haram are using major AI chatbots for attack planning and weapons development, with safety filters failing to prevent misuse.

In this video, two Grandmasters of two different Shaolin lineages, including Shaolin Yijinjing Qigong lineage, can be seen demonstrating pyro-kinetic abilities. Such an attainment only becomes available to those who remain persistent and consistent with their neigong practice, spending many years toward simultaneously cultivating one’s health and internal life-force. In the first video, is a direct disciple of the well-known Shaolin Grandmaster Hai Deng, who was renowned for his ability to meditate while standing on a single finger, a skill otherwise known as Shaolin YiZhiChan. The internal cultivation skills (fagong) displayed by that specific lineage are phenomenal. In the second video, the now passed Grandmaster Xuan Kong, the Shifu, Jiang Lianyuan, can be seen projecting his internal energy from a distance and causing a piece of paper to ignite.

During a 1976 chess tournament in Amsterdam, Soviet grandmaster Viktor Korchnoi quietly asked an English competitor how to spell the phrase “political asylum.” Moments later, he walked into a police station and announced that he wanted to defect from the Soviet Union. By the mid-1970s, Viktor Korchnoi was one of the world’s strongest chess players, but life in the Soviet Union had become increasingly restrictive. While the USSR celebrated its chess champions as symbols of national prestige, they were also expected to remain politically loyal. Korchnoi openly criticized the Soviet chess establishment and repeatedly clashed with officials over limits on his travel and career. In 1976, he decided to leave for good. His defection in the Netherlands sent shockwaves through the chess world. Leaving the Soviet Union meant far more than changing countries. Korchnoi was branded a traitor, stripped of official support, and separated from much of his family, who remained in the USSR for years. Despite the personal cost, he settled in Switzerland, competed under the Swiss flag, and remained one of the world’s elite players for decades. The drama reached its peak at the 1978 World Chess Championship against Anatoly Karpov. The match became one of the Cold War’s most politically charged sporting events, featuring accusations of psychological warfare, claims of coded messages hidden in yogurt deliveries, disputes over mirrored sunglasses, alleged hypnotists in the audience, and constant protests from both camps. It became as much a symbolic contest between East and West as a battle over the chessboard. Although Korchnoi never won the world championship, his resilience and extraordinary longevity made him a chess legend. Decades after defecting, he was still defeating grandmasters less than half his age. In 2006, at 75 years old, he became the oldest player ever to qualify for the Candidates Tournament, a remarkable achievement that remains one of the greatest examples of longevity in elite chess.

Ben Horowitz and Erik Torenberg with Nas, Steve Stoute, and Grandmaster Caz on the Paid in Full Foundation Caz penned rhymes that became Rapper's Delight. Even with his name in them, he got nothing. The Paid in Full foundation honors the people who created hip-hop by making sure they're "paid in full," financially, spiritually, and culturally. As Nas points out, money alone reads as a handout. So the grant comes attached to the honor. Each year at the foundation's Hip Hop Grandmaster Awards, pioneers are celebrated by the artists they inspired. Caz ultimately received a five-year grant, bought a house, and left the projects. In his words: "The thing is the honor. The thing is putting you in the light that you deserve to be in." Ben says he bought Paid in Full (the album) for $10 and got at least $5 million worth of value out of the record, with no way to pay it back. The vision is paying the debt. Felicia Horowitz runs the foundation. She and Ben are matching donations 2.5 to 1, and every dollar goes to the artists. 0:00 Intro 1:40 The $10 album that was worth $5M to Ben 3:10 Nas: in hip-hop, you can't just give money 5:05 Why artists thought it was a scam 9:30 Caz wrote Rapper's Delight and got nothing 11:40 Roxanne Shanté: "I wanted the right award" 16:35 Dr. Dre asks to meet Kool Moe Dee and Slick Rick 18:50 Why the industry never did this 26:05 Ben: start with what's right, not what's possible 29:10 Inside the room: Grand Puba, George Clinton 32:15 The Quincy Jones Award 37:00 Scarface and Rakim talk writing for the first time 38:45 Caz: the grant got me out of the projects 43:45 What hip-hop did for Adidas, Hilfiger and Sprite 48:00 How Felicia saved Scarface's life 52:10 Quincy Jones stories, and Nas's jazz legend dad @Nas @SteveStoute @GrandmasterCaz @bhorowitz @eriktorenberg

.@travisk says only 1% of VCs are actually helpful: “ An operator who's running a company, if they're good, is a grandmaster of chess.”  ”And the VC is a chess enthusiast. They check in on the chess match once every three months and they're trying to make a mark on the world. They have an opinion.” “And you're like, don't go to Jordan and tell him how to dunk, and definitely don't go to him and tell him how to dribble. But it's hard because everybody has an opinion.” “The way to think about it is—you're on the Serengeti. If an antelope limps in the Serengeti, the lion will take it down, even if it's not hungry. Can't even fucking help it. It's just what he does. That's kind of the nature of most VCs.”

Games have been an important testbed for our AI research for over 15 years. 🎮 From mastering Atari to reaching Grandmaster in StarCraft II, they have driven some of our biggest AI breakthroughs. Our work with SIMA taught agents how to understand 3D worlds, but learning to navigate real human dynamics takes a living, persistent universe. Through our research partnership with @FenrisCreations, we’re exploring how to tackle open challenges in AI: 🔵 Continual learning to acquire new skills without forgetting past knowledge. 🔵 Deep memory systems that store and retrieve information far beyond today’s context windows. 🔵 Long-horizon planning over weeks, months, or years. 🔵 Multi-agent dynamics spanning cooperation, negotiation, economics, and emergent behaviors. Our long-term goal is to use AI to discover entirely new gameplay experiences in partnership with game developers – making games more accessible and personalized – while applying what we've learned to problems in the real world and scientific discovery. Find out more →