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Up to six tracked models linked to this topic’s reports in the last 30 days. Counts measure coverage on Themata, not usage.
- Qwen3.8 27B
Qwen
· Open weights
A 27-billion-parameter vision-language model for text, images, and video. Supports coding and multi-step tasks, with optional thinking and configurable reasoning effort.
1 story · 1 report on this topic
- Qwen3.8 Flash
Qwen
· Open weights
An open-weight preview of Qwen’s next architecture, combining sparse and linear attention. A vision-language model designed to make long-context agent workloads more efficient.
1 story · 1 report on this topic
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Latest stories
Google illegally cut down 250K trees in Finland for data center
news
4 min read
Finnish regulators ordered Google project subsidiary Tuike Finland Oy to suspend operations at two planned data-center sites near Muhos and Kajaani after extensive site preparation, including tree removal, began before a mandatory environmental impact assessment was completed. The Finnish Licensing and Supervision Agency set an Oct. 23 deadline and said the work could alter the environment in ways the assessment process is meant to identify. Google is developing the sites as part of a $15 billion Nordic AI-infrastructure investment announced in September. The Guardian estimated that clearing near Muhos in northern Finland removed about 250,000 trees across 816 acres. Regulators cited removed trees and topsoil, construction roads and storage areas, altered ditches and culverts, and stormwater work. Residents and conservation advocates said the deforestation displaced wildlife, including wolves that entered nearby Otanmäki, and muddied water sources feeding the Oulujoki River. Google’s Finland chief, Antti Järvinen, said the company believed it had legal approval to begin the clearing and apologized. Google said it would protect water sources and replant trees on about 321 acres. Finnish Association for Nature Conservation chair Hanna Halmeenpää called Google’s conduct “pure arrogance,” while residents also raised concerns about noise and broader effects on the local environment.
Now Google says it might use your Gmail and Google Photos data to target ads
news
2 min read
Google updated its privacy policy on October 16 to allow certain data from Gmail, Google Drive and Google Photos to be used for personalized ads when users choose to make that data available to other Google services that support advertising. The policy previously said Google would not use data from those services for personalized ads; it now includes an exception for data users share with other Google services. The change can affect people who connect Gmail, Drive or Google Photos to Search tools such as AI Mode through Google’s Personal Intelligence feature. Those connections let Search and Gemini Apps access data to provide more personalized responses, recommendations and content, and Search may process permitted data to personalize advertising. Google says advertisers do not receive users’ Drive, Gmail or Photos information, or personally identifying details such as names or email addresses. Google also says it does not show ads based on sensitive categories including race, sexual orientation, religion or health. Users can limit this use by disconnecting individual apps from Search’s Personal Intelligence features or disabling Personalized Recommendations through the Search Services Personalization settings page.
Gemma-4-26B-A4B with 39-69% less thinking at same accuracy
research
8 min read
Bottlecap AI released ThinkingCap-gemma-4-26B-A4B-it, a token-efficient version of Google’s Gemma-4-26B-A4B-it reasoning model. Gemma-4-26B-A4B is a sparse mixture-of-experts model with 26 billion parameters and about 4 billion active parameters per token. Bottlecap says its model uses 38.9% fewer thinking tokens on average across 12 benchmarks while accuracy declined by 0.15 percentage points, from 75.18% to 75.03%, under identical vLLM serving and sampling settings. Thinking-token reductions ranged from 13.7% on IFBench to 69.1% on LongBench v2. The model used 54.4% fewer tokens across long-context and multimodal tasks, 44.4% fewer on knowledge and reasoning, 36.1% fewer on math, and 27.6% fewer on code. Accuracy increased on some tests, including IFBench and LongBench v2, but fell 4.00 percentage points on AA-LCR. Bottlecap measured looping in 0.76% of the optimized model’s responses, down from 3.64% for the base model. Bottlecap evaluated both models with thinking enabled, temperature 1.0, top-p 0.95, top-k 64, and a 65,536-token generation cap. The open model and GGUF builds are available under the bottlecapai/ThinkingCap-gemma-4-26B-A4B-it repository. Bottlecap also offers a commercial PRO version, which it says cuts thinking tokens by up to 87.6% and 62% on average.
Google cleared 300 hectares of Finnish forest
news
2 min read
Finland’s Permit and Supervision Agency, LVV, has asked Google’s local project company, Tuike Finland Oy, to explain forest clearing connected to a planned data center expansion. Google is investing €13 billion in AI-focused infrastructure in Finland, but public reports cited by LVV indicate that roughly 300 hectares of forest—about 420 football fields—were cleared before the full project’s environmental impact was assessed. Google said the clearing complied with Finnish laws and regulations and that the site was surveyed before work began to avoid damage to environmentally valuable areas. Hanna Halmeenpää, chair of the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation, disputed that account, saying satellite imagery indicates that areas requiring protection had already been leveled. She has asked LVV to halt construction while authorities determine whether formal approval was required before the clearing. The investigation could suspend work on the project. The proposed development is subject to environmental commitments covering energy sustainability, job creation, and support for the local environment. Large data center projects require substantial land and power resources, intensifying scrutiny of AI infrastructure expansion in Finland and elsewhere.
Google staff resign in backlash over its AI contracts with military
news
6 min read
Several Google DeepMind employees have resigned or are preparing to leave over concerns about Google’s expanding military AI contracts. London-based research engineer Sofia Liguori resigned after three years at the company, citing work with the US and Israeli militaries and saying it conflicted with Google’s stated ethical values. AI researcher Andreas Kirsch also left DeepMind, arguing that Google’s governance and oversight were insufficient for safe deployment in military and classified settings. Current and former staff told the BBC that employees fear retaliation or career consequences for publicly raising concerns, while Google said it has channels for reporting concerns and policies against retaliation. Google signed a Pentagon contract earlier in 2026 allowing its AI models to be used for classified work and “any lawful government purpose.” The agreement prohibits domestic mass surveillance and autonomous weapons, including target selection, without appropriate human oversight and control. OpenAI, Amazon, Microsoft, SpaceX, Oracle, Nvidia and Reflection signed similar US military agreements. Critics say rapid AI deployment can undermine meaningful human review in high-pressure targeting decisions; former Project Maven director Jack Shanahan said the Pentagon’s philosophy appears to prioritize speed over rigorous testing. Google also faced employee criticism in 2024 over Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion joint cloud and AI contract with Amazon for Israel’s government and military. Google said Nimbus was not intended for sensitive military, weapons or intelligence workloads.