SCOOP: Meta is asking some employees to become managers again. Earlier this year, Meta forced scores of managers into IC roles as part of a massive reorg.  Now, its Applied AI division is reversing course. by @HughLangley, myself, & @PranavDixit

🔴 SCOOP! @politico & @BusinessInsider worked hand in hand to bring this exclusive story on a secret #Zuckerberg#/#Trump# call over the finish line. Read the story here: @SophiaCai99 @CharlesRollet1

🚨NEW: Mark Zuckerberg told Trump in a phone call that the WH plan to create a FINRA-like body to regulate AI is flawed - Demis Hassabis briefed WH officials this summer about his idea for a FINRA-style regulator - senior WH officials previewed the idea w/ Trump and separately w/ major tech companies, including Meta, OpenAI, and Anthropic, in mid-August - But when Trump spoke with Zuckerberg week of Aug. 17, Zuckerberg said he opposed the proposal, according to a senior WH official - Another person familiar said Zuckerberg did not ask Trump to change his position, but told him that people the WH might appoint to the regulatory body should reflect Trump’s own approach to AI, which is widely seen as light-touch. -Trump called Zuckerberg first, that person added. -The admin is now considering two paths forward: the FINRA-style regulator, or a group with less government involvement modeled on the Motion Picture Association, as David Sacks has proposed. w/ @CharlesRollet1 @Katie_Roof @dlippman @stephencouncil @BrendanBordelon @declanharty first @politico @BusinessInsider collab for @AxelSpringerGRN

I was intrigued by @jdcapelouto's scoop for Semafor yesterday that Meta had bricked thousands (less than .1% of devices, Meta said) of its glasses for people who had tampered with the light. I was partly intrigued bc that number seemed... low. Because anecdotally, it seems that using stickers to cover your light is REALLY popular among Meta glasses uses - there are whole businesses that sell special stickers and stuff. Way more than just 7,000 devices out there. So I dug a little more and finally understood that the bricking (not a full brick, audio still works) is only for those who permanently drilled out the light (an outdated and less popular method). But if you just covered it with a sticker, you can just peel off the sticker and it works again just fine. So the threat of disabling the device is less severe than I initially understood. Of course, enterprising people are still attempting ways around the new update, including an elaborate mirror system. I have to say I love this kid because in the comments he was like "hey i'm not a PERVERT! I'm just using these to CHEAT on tests!"

Scoop: @BusinessInsider obtained the memo from Alexandr Wang announcing that Meta is switching over to Slack from Gchat. Meta is making the move because Slack is the "strongest platform" for AI agents today, Wang wrote.

Scoop: Anthropic tells San Francisco staff to work from home due to possible security team strike Read the full story from @HughLangley & @stephencouncil on @BusinessInsider 👇

NEW: Thomson Reuters wanted to rely less on Claude. So it built its own AI model off Alibaba's Qwen. TR's CTO says using frontier labs for intelligence, instead of building on open source, is like renting a house.

EXCLUSIVE: A third of Thinking Machines Lab's founding team has now left Mira Murati's buzzy AI startup. Last year, TML seemed like an impenetrable fortress, with staff resisting Zuck's 9-figure offers. So what changed? Their equity vested.