Good morning. It's Friday, May 29, and we're covering whether AI-generated wealth should fund the public good, why calls for AI-specific taxes are gaining traction, and Anthropic’s latest effort to make AI more reliable.
Don’t miss the Friday Fact + yesterday's poll results ↓
Anthropic says Claude Opus 4.8 is four times less likely than Opus 4.7 to miss flaws in its own code, framing honesty and judgment as key upgrades rather than raw benchmark jumps. The company releases the model at the same pricing as Opus 4.7 while adding effort controls, faster inference, and “dynamic workflows” for large-scale coding tasks. Fast mode now runs 2.5× quicker and costs one-third less than prior versions, while Claude Code can manage migrations across hundreds of thousands of code lines.
Anthropic announced its Series H Thursday, raising $65B at a $965B post-money valuation led by Altimeter, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Sequoia, with run-rate revenue having crossed $47B earlier in May (up from $30B just weeks ago). The round absorbs $15B previously committed from hyperscalers and brings on Micron, Samsung, and SK hynix as strategic infrastructure partners, slotting in alongside recently announced compute deals with Amazon, Google plus Broadcom, and SpaceX. The raise puts Anthropic effectively at parity with OpenAI's reported private valuation in the same week OpenAI files confidentially for an IPO.
Apple plans to turn Siri into a standalone chatbot-style app in iOS 27, adding persistent conversations, file uploads, and a new “Search or Ask” interface tied to the Dynamic Island. Bloomberg reports the overhaul will introduce personalized context awareness, letting Siri pull details from apps like Mail, Messages, and Calendar to complete tasks and answer questions. The update is expected to work on iPhone 15 Pro models and newer, with Gemini and Claude integrations arriving through a new “Extensions” system ahead of WWDC 2026 on June 8.
Federal prosecutors say a Google engineer used confidential “Year in Search” data to make more than $1.2 million from trades tied to prediction-market contracts. The DOJ charged Michele Spagnuolo, who allegedly traded on Polymarket under the alias “AlphaRaccoon,” with commodities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering after placing bets ahead of Google’s 2025 search rankings release. Prosecutors say he wagered roughly $2.75 million between October and December 2025 using internal search-trend information, while Google has placed him on leave and is cooperating with investigators.
FRIDAY FACTS
What’s That Small Circle on Voyager?
Tucked into the cover of humanity's most famous interstellar message is a tiny patch of radioactive metal, and the reason it's there is more clever than you'd guess. Answer below.
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VIDEO
Matt Reviews Opus 4.8
FORWARD FUTURE ORIGINAL
Four Harnesses, Four Philosophies
Every serious AI agent platform in 2026 is running the same handful of frontier models from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google. Same APIs, same context windows, same benchmarks. And yet some of these platforms ship reliable production agents in weeks while others spend nine months in prototype hell. The model has stopped being what separates them. → Read the full article here.
PHILANTHROPY
AI Fortunes Spark Debate Over Philanthropy and Public Trust
In an opinion essay, New York Times columnist David Wallace-Wells examined how the next wave of artificial intelligence wealth could reshape philanthropy — and public skepticism toward it. The piece cites estimates from Stripe executive Nan Ransohoff that upcoming AI-related IPOs could unlock roughly $370 billion in charitable capital, potentially generating up to $100 billion in annual giving.
Wallace-Wells argues that while earlier philanthropic efforts from organizations like the Gates Foundation and Gavi have been credited with saving millions of lives, today’s political climate is far less trusting of billionaire influence. The essay also highlights growing scrutiny of AI-linked philanthropy focused on “existential risk” and AI safety. → Read the full article here. (Paywall)
TAXATION
Elizabeth Warren Calls for New Taxes on AI Companies and Billionaires
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren argues that artificial intelligence is accelerating wealth inequality and should face new forms of taxation to fund social programs and worker protections. Warren pointed to rising layoffs, increasing electricity costs tied to AI data centers, and warnings from tech leaders about potential “wealth concentration” caused by automation.
She proposed higher corporate taxes, a wealth tax on billionaires, and direct taxes on AI infrastructure such as data centers and energy usage. Warren said the revenue could help finance universal health care, unemployment support, education, and job programs as AI reshapes the labor market. → Read the full article here.
NEWS
What Else is Happening
Jets Push AI-First Culture: The Jets say 91% of front-office staff now use Microsoft Copilot daily as leadership expands AI across football operations.
AI Feature Film Tests Festival Boundaries: A fully AI-generated feature film about Iran’s 2025 protest crackdown is set to premiere at the Tribeca Festival.
CNN Sues Perplexity Over AI: CNN accuses Perplexity of copying and distributing its reporting without permission, escalating the AI copyright fight.
Groq Raises $650 Million: Groq is pivoting from AI chips to inference cloud services after its NVIDIA deal, giving investors a new growth bet.
Microsoft Preps New Coding Model (Paywall): Microsoft likely to launch a new AI coding model next week to compete in the developer tools market.
Data Centers vs. Golf Course Water Use: A viral claim says U.S. data centers would use just 8% of the water consumed by golf courses by 2030.
POLL RESULTS
What’s Your Favorite Model?
Here’s how you voted:
🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️ GPT-5.5 (39%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Claude Opus 4.7 (45%)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Gemini 3.1 Pro (10%)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Grok 4 (2%)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ DeepSeek V4 (3%)
FRIDAY FACTS
A Radioactive Clock for Whoever Finds Voyager
When NASA launched Voyager 1 in September 1977, engineers knew the spacecraft would still be drifting through interstellar space billions of years after every person involved was forgotten.
So they electroplated a small, two-centimeter patch of ultra-pure uranium-238 onto the cover of the Golden Record. Uranium-238 has a half-life of about 4.51 billion years. Any finder who measures the ratio of remaining uranium to its decay products can calculate, to a reasonable approximation, how long the probe has been adrift.
