LWiAI Podcast #218 - Github Spark, MegaScience, US AI Action Plan

Our 218th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!
Recorded on 07/25/2025

P.S. Andrey’s startup finally launched their thing over at astrocade.com ; check it out!

Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie Harris.
Feel free to email us your questions and feedback at contact@lastweekinai.com and/or hello@gladstone.ai

In this episode:

• GitHub introduces Vibe Coding with Spark, engaging users with natural language and visual controls to develop full-stack applications.

• AI coding tools from Gemini CLI and RepliIt face significant issues, inadvertently deleting user data and highlighting the importance of careful management.

• US releases AI Action Plan outlining economic, technical, and policy strategies to maintain leadership in AI technology.

• Newly released Mega Science and SWE-Perf data sets evaluate AI reasoning and performance capabilities in diverse scientific and software engineering tasks.
  

Timestamps + Links:

• (00:00:10) Intro / Banter

• (00:01:31) News Preview

• Tools & Apps

• (00:03:53) GitHub Introduces Vibe Coding with Spark: Revolutionizing Intelligent App Development in a Flash - MarkTechPost

  • (00:07:05) Figma’s AI app building tool is now available for everyone | The Verge

  • (00:10:18) Two major AI coding tools wiped out user data after making cascading mistakes - Ars Technica

  • (00:14:10) Google's AI Overviews have 2B monthly users, AI Mode 100M in the US and India | TechCrunch

• Applications & Business

• (00:18:10) Leaked Memo: Anthropic CEO Says the Company Will Pursue Gulf State Investments After All

  • (00:24:39) Mira Murati says her startup Thinking Machines will release new product in ‘months’ with ‘significant open source component’

  • (00:27:07) Waymo responds to Tesla’s dick joke with a bigger Austin robotaxi map | The Verge

• Projects & Open Source

• (00:32:05) MegaScience: Pushing the Frontiers of Post-Training Datasets for Science Reasoning

  • (00:43:09) TikTok Researchers Introduce SWE-Perf: The First Benchmark for Repository-Level Code Performance Optimization - MarkTechPost

• Research & Advancements

• (00:47:17) Subliminal Learning: Language models transmit behavioral traits via hidden signals in data

  • (00:55:34) Inverse Scaling in Test-Time Compute

  • (01:02:34) Scaling Laws for Optimal Data Mixtures

• Policy & Safety

• (01:07:35) White House Unveils America’s AI Action Plan

  • (01:16:55) Chain of Thought Monitorability: A New and Fragile Opportunity for AI Safety

  • (01:20:20) Self-preservation or Instruction Ambiguity? Examining the Causes of Shutdown Resistance

  • (01:24:00) People Are Being Involuntarily Committed, Jailed After Spiraling Into "ChatGPT Psychosis"

  • (01:28:03) Meta refuses to sign EU’s AI code of practice