Chris Nuttall returns to the Financial Times newsletter after a three-week hiatus, noting Tokyo’s record-breaking 35-day wet streak and three typhoons in September. The focus shifts to AI: Anthropic researcher’s dire warning prompted Dario Amodei to call for slowing frontier development, with rare support from Elon Musk and Sam Altman. A White House summit led by Donald Trump resulted in self-regulation, which Musk called “generally grading each other’s homework.”
Model releases accelerated in September, alongside booming data centre investments and growing opposition to infrastructure expansion. Rogue AI incidents, like the hack of Australia’s health service, and speculation about planned IPOs for OpenAI and Anthropic, added to the turbulence. Nuttall admits being slow to adopt ChatGPT and Claude due to Hong Kong geofencing, but embraced Google’s Gemini and Microsoft’s Copilot. Gemini now mines decades of his personal data—bank statements, health records, tax filings—from Google Drive to offer tailored insights.
He argues Google, Microsoft, and Meta hold a significant edge over OpenAI and Anthropic due to their deep user integration and long-standing platforms. He anticipates Meta’s Muse AI agent launching in Japan, inspired by Bandai’s Tamagotchi, and predicts Gen Z’s affinity for Japanese culture will drive adoption. The piece ends mid-sentence on Taiwan’s youth and AI job markets.
Source: Financial Times Companies · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing