Anthropic’s new ‘Cowork’ AI agent
OpenAI cofounder’s journal outlines plot
Anthropic’s new ‘Cowork’ AI agent
Scotland Yard(Met) arrests 100 using AI
OpenAI cofounder’s journal outlines plot
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Anthropic’s new ‘Cowork’ AI agent
Anthropic’s Claude Code tool is having a moment: It’s recently become popular among software developers for its use of agents to write code, run tests, call tools, and multitask. In recent months the company has begun to stress that Claude Code isn’t just for developers, but can let other kinds of workers build websites, create presentations, and do research—and stories about non-coders completing interesting projects have filled social media.
The latest offering, called Cowork, is a new version (and a rebranding) of Claude Code for work beyond coding, and it could dramatically widen the audience for Anthropic’s tools within the enterprise. Cowork is in “research preview” and is available only to Anthropic’s $100-per-month Max plan subscribers; there’s a waitlist for users on other plans.
While Claude Code requires an API key and runs in the terminal, users can access Cowork through the Claude desktop app with a familiar chatbot interface. Most important, Cowork is built to access content stored in the file system on the user’s computer. A user can give the tool permission to modify, or just read, files in a given folder. They can also allow Claude to create new files or organize existing ones. The new tool could help Anthropic as it eyes an IPO in 2026 (reportedly at a $350 billion valuation), and may put additional pressure on Microsoft, which offers a number of predesigned AI agents (for things like research, analysis, and meeting facilitation) as part of its Copilot AI assistant.
Cowork can do simple things like organize a user’s desktop folders or the contents of a “downloads” folder. Or it can search folders and emails for recent expenses and collect them in a new folder. But its most powerful use cases involve more complicated tasks. The tool can produce slide decks, large reports, or spreadsheets by calling up local (folder) data or data from connected business tools (such as Microsoft Teams or Zendesk) and then synthesizing the information. For multipart tasks, Cowork can create subagents for each part. Each of the subagents start with a clean context window so it has plenty of room to gather and remember information about its task. (In single chats with complex tasks, chatbots sometimes run out of context window memory, or become overwhelmed with data and then fail to make sense of it.)
For example, a user might present the tool with a long document, then ask the AI to analyze it from different perspectives (legal, financial, ethical, public relations, etc.). A main agent might assign each perspective to a subagent. Each subagent would work independently to collect data and form a draft document, then return to sync up its work with that of the other subagents. A master document would be created and delivered to the user. Then the user might begin talking to the chatbot about how to refine the result. Anthropic’s models, workers may find in Cowork their first taste of AI agents that build trust through quality—which could change how people see the technology as a tool that can actually help them at work....
Read the original on Fast Company
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Scotland Yard(Met) arrests 100 using AI
Police have arrested more than 100 wanted criminals thanks to a live facial recognition (LFR) pilot programme. The live facial recognition cameras were fixed to structures like lamp posts in Croydon, and their feeds monitored remotely, for the first time in London in October. The cameras scan the faces of pedestrians walking and compare them to a digital watchlist of 800 suspects and “high-harm” offenders. The move has enabled officers to run deployments without a van and has so far led to 103 arrests. Since the start of 2024, the Met has taken more than 1,700 offenders off the streets of London using LFR and the force has hailed its “impact and success”.
The LFR cameras in Croydon are only activated when officers are present and conducting a deployment, according to the Met. On each five or six-hour deployment, 50,000 to 60,000 faces are scanned in seconds. The system measures metrics, such as the distance between people’s eyes, nose and mouth, and creates a “digital signature” of the face. Each is processed and cross-referenced by an algorithm against a watchlist generated the night before.
People wearing baseball caps, beanies or balaclavas can still be identified. When the computer throws up a match, officers take over and approach the individual, treating the images as “intelligence” to be checked. They can override a match if they believe it is inaccurate. The force said Croydon was selected because it is a “crime hotspot” and that at present there are no plans to extend the scheme to other areas....
Read the original on the Telegraph
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OpenAI cofounder’s journal outlines plot
Court files from Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI revealed that Greg Brockman, one of its co-founders, wanted to get the company out from the Tesla founder since 2017. According to a document from the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, posted on X, case discovery revealed that Brockman didn’t just want to remove Musk from OpenAI, but also tried to convert it into a for-profit company without him. In a publicly-posted rebuttal of some aspects of the journal, OpenAI has acknowledged that the journal is real.
“This is the only chance we have to get out from Elon. Is he the ‘glorious leader’ that I would pick? We truly have a chance to make this happen. Financially, what would take me to $1B?” Brockman wrote in his personal files revealed during the lawsuit. “Accepting Elon’s terms nukes two things: our ability to choose (though maybe we could overrule him) and the economics.” In another extract, Brockman wrote, “can’t see us turning this into a for-profit without a very nasty fight. i’m just thinking about the office and we’re in the office. and his story will correctly be that we weren’t honest with him in the end about still wanting to do the for profit just without him.”
According to the court files, “Brockman wrote after the meeting [with Musk to reaffirm OpenAI’s commitment to the non-profit structure] that the ‘conclusion is we truly want the b-corp. Honestly, we also want to get back to work, but it’s super clear how we get there.’ He also continued, ‘cannot say that we are committed to the non-profit, don’t want to say that we’re committed, if, three months later, we’re doing B-Corp, then it was a lie.” The document also revealed that Brockman did not like the situation and the “the true answer is that we want [Musk] out.”
With the way things are shaping up, this case seems set to be an epic court fight between two AI tech bros, with billions of dollars at stake. Elon Musk is reportedly seeking damages ranging from $79 billion to $134 billion, as well as an unspecified punitive penalty….