OpenAI banned a cluster of ChatGPT accounts that it said very likely originated in Russia and were used to promote the International Burke Institute, or IBI, a purported Israel-based expert community. The operators used VPNs to access ChatGPT because OpenAI does not permit model access from Russia. They prompted the service in Russian to produce mostly English-language posts and comments for X, LinkedIn, Facebook, Substack and Telegram, while instructing it to conceal linguistic signs of Russian authorship. OpenAI said the campaign used ChatGPT primarily for promotional social-media content, including replies to real Substack users that encouraged them to follow IBI. One operator also generated German-language Telegram posts criticizing Ukraine, the EU and the German government, while advocating closer relations with Russia. Another created logos for about a dozen country-focused Telegram channels and requested Russian-language summaries of their activity. IBI’s website, registered in February 2025, promoted a “sovereignty index” that portrayed Russia favorably and criticized Western countries. In a sample of 36 IBI articles published from September 2025 through May 2026, OpenAI found that 34 had been copied from elsewhere online, sometimes with false attribution. OpenAI assessed the operation’s direct social-media reach as limited, although its Telegram channels generally had 10,000 to 20,000 followers each.

A study by David Stromberg of Stockholm University, Victor Lei, and Wu Yanhui of the University of Hong Kong tracked 27,000 Chinese students aged 12 to 18 and found a gap between AI-assisted homework performance and unaided exam results. About 80% of surveyed students reported using AI models including Doubao and DeepSeek, while the 20% who did not use AI served as a control group. Over six months, students using AI increased their average homework scores by 18% across subjects, according to figures reported by The Economist on August 18. Under exam conditions without AI access, those students scored 20% below classmates who had not used the tools during the period. The researchers’ full study had not been independently verified by other institutions at the time of publication. A 2024 University of Pennsylvania study found a similar pattern in math: students using ChatGPT or an AI tutoring program did better during practice but did not retain that advantage on a later closed-book test. A Brookings Institution tip sheet cautioned that AI can support learning when used intentionally, while overreliance that substitutes for thinking, social interaction, or creativity may hinder cognitive and social-skill development.

“Mathematics in the age of AI” examines how the mathematical community might respond if artificial-intelligence tools become capable of research-level mathematical work. The essay treats the arrival of those capabilities as a hypothesis rather than debating whether or when they will emerge. The work shifts attention from AI capability to the goals and values of mathematical research. It uses mathematics’ problem-solving component as a case study for considering what researchers value beyond the production of solutions. The essay is based on a public lecture delivered at the 2026 International Congress of Mathematicians and was submitted to arXiv on August 17, 2026.

Cooking a steak requires minimal skill, involving basic steps like placing it in a hot pan, flipping, and waiting. Achieving a consistently good steak, with proper browning and seasoning, demands more expertise and attention.

Google removed the Nano Banana 2 image generation feature from Google Earth just one day after its launch on July 30. The tool allowed users to generate photorealistic images of any location using Google’s satellite, aerial, and 3D imagery.

Linus Torvalds supports the use of AI tools, particularly large language models (LLMs), in Linux kernel development. Over 1,200 kernel commits since September 2025 have been tagged with “Assisted-by,” indicating contributions from AI tools in authoring and reviewing code.

Thousands of repositories on GitHub are currently distributing malware, accessible through the standard search function without special knowledge. Despite having a substantial budget, a dedicated security team, and AI resources, GitHub has not resolved this issue over the past two years.

A tool has been developed to help users find quality non-fiction books, contrasting them with inferior AI-generated content. The creator reflects on the significant intellectual experience gained from a college job shelving books in a library.

ChatGPT disproved Erdős’ Unit Distance conjecture in discrete geometry on May 20, 2026. Human mathematicians have acknowledged this achievement and its implications for the field of formalization and AI tools.

Exploit brokers have paid $500,000 for a remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in WordPress. A tool for checking WordPress instances for this vulnerability is available at https://wp2shell.com/.