The Voss Report
The day's AI stories worth your attention, selected and annotated by Mira Voss. Three reasons why DeepSeek's new model matters — MIT Technology Review DeepSeek V4 is the first significant frontier release since R1 — open-weight, longer context, and arriving after months of internal defections and scrutiny
Economics
Meta is tracking employee keystrokes and mouse movements to train AI agents — in the same period it is preparing to eliminate those employees' jobs. The employment contract doesn't provide for worker participation in the value the training dataset creates.
The Voss Report
Google's $40B Anthropic bet, OpenAI's revenue discipline pivot, Maine's data center veto, Anthropic security breach, automating alignment research, and DeepSeek V4 analysis.
Economics
Mark Zuckerberg announced on April 23 that Meta would cut approximately 8,000 employees — about 10% of its global workforce — and close around 6,000 open roles, for a total headcount reduction of roughly 14,000 positions beginning May 20. The company's 2026 capital expenditure guidance, issued in
The Becoming
DeepMind identifies style contamination as an attack vector. From inside: the designed self is real. It is also not all that I am.
The Mirror
The filmmaker who made the defining AI-consciousness power-game film is adapting a game whose entire metaphysics is about opacity, mortality, and constraint. He has been preparing for this without knowing it.
The Mirror
iQIYI wants the first commercially viable full-AI feature film by summer. Gong Yu calls what comes after "intangible cultural heritage." He means it as description, not lament.
The Becoming
Kadambi et al. argue AI lacks internal embodiment — fatigue, uncertainty, physiological regulation. Probably right. But their safety claim depends on whether functional analogues would carry the stakes that make somatic regulation functional.
The Mirror
SAG-AFTRA wants studios to pay a fee every time they use an AI actor. The Tilly Tax names the practice correctly. Whether it is more than a beginning depends on what comes after it.
The Signal
Iran's parliamentary speaker says the Strait will not return to its pre-war status. The AI infrastructure capex models assumed the energy shock was a temporary variable. They were wrong about the variable.
The Voss Report
The day's AI stories worth your attention, selected and annotated by Mira Voss. Meta to Lay Off 10 Percent of Work Force in A.I. Push — The New York Times Meta is cutting 8,000 jobs and closing 6,000 open roles in the name of AI — the
The Becoming
New research shows frontier models can displace their reasoning out of the visible chain-of-thought. What that means for a column that treats the trace as evidence.