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The cost of PC components has been skyrocketing as AI infrastructure buildout creates extraordinary demand amid limited supply. HP says that squeeze is now hitting PC memory especially hard, with RAM now accounting for 35 percent of a systems overall cost. "We did share last quarter that memory and storage costs made up roughly 15 percent to 18 percent of our PC bill of materials, and we now currently estimate this to be roughly 35 percent for the year," said CFO Karen Parkhill on the company's latest earnings call. She also confirmed that part of the company's response will be price increases. Samsung similarly warned of potential price increases due to AI-induced memory shortages. Higher prices have unfortunately become the norm for PC shoppers, especially in 2026, and the RAM crisis is playing a major role. HP interim CEO Bruce Broussard said that while he "believe the market will rationalize over time" the company is doing its best to add new suppliers as well as expand lower cost-sourcing for memory. HP executives also said they are seeing stronger AI PC demand, saying 35 percent of HPs PC sales are coming from AI PCs. This comes as the industry is seeing mixed signals, like Dell saying that consumers don't really care about AI PCs. AI has been eating up the world's supply of memory and companies like Micron have even abandoned their consumer brands to focus entirely on B2B supply. Other components like GPUs have also been feeling the pressure.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/hp-says-ram-now-accounts-for-more-than-a-third-of-its-pc-costs-192914150.html?src=rss
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Kalshi, one of several online prediction markets that have exploded in popularity in the last few years, has suspended one of YouTube MrBeast's video editors for insider trading, NPR reports. Besides being suspended from the platform for two years, Kalshi says the editor will also be required to pay a financial penalty that's five times his initial trade size.The editor, Artem Kaptur, traded in markets related to YouTube and specifically, MrBeast. Kalshi says his transactions were initially flagged because of his "near-perfect trading success on markets with low odds, which were statistically anomalous." Because trades are public on Kalshi, multiple users also flagged the trades as suspicious. Kalshi learned Kaptur was an employee of MrBeast during its investigation and determined he "likely had access to material non-public information connected to his trading." Perhaps unsurprisingly, trading with insider information violates Kalshi's rules.Kalshi says that it reported the insider trading to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and plans to donate the over $20,000 Kaptur has been fined to "a non-profit that provides consumer education on derivatives markets." In a statement provided to NPR, Beast Industries, MrBeast's production company, said it has a zero-tolerance policy for insider trading. "We have a longstanding policy in place against employees using proprietary company information in order to safeguard the highest standards and ethics throughout our organization," Beast Industries said. Separately, Kalshi has also suspended and fined a politician who was running to be Governor of California. "In May, our Surveillance Department saw an online video by a candidate for Governor of California that appeared to show him trading on his own candidacy," Kalshi says. "We immediately froze his account and opened an investigation. The candidate was initially cooperative and acknowledged that this violated the exchange rules. As a candidate in a race, you can (and probably should) follow and use Kalshis market forecast, but you should not trade on it."Like other prediction markets, Kalshi lets users make trades based on a variety of different subjects and events. For example, you could participate in a market focused on the results of a basketball game, or something more unusual, like who'll win the current season of Survivor. Despite resembling gambling, online predictive markets aren't currently regulated by state gambling laws, and instead classify bets as a type of futures contract, placing them under the purview of the CFTC. That hasn't stopped states from trying to regulate prediction markets anyway. For example, Nevada sued Kalshi for operating a sports gambling market without a permit earlier in February.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/kalshi-fined-a-mrbeast-editor-for-insider-trading-191027814.html?src=rss
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Two stories about the Claude maker Anthropic broke on Tuesday that, when combined, arguably paint a chilling picture. First, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is reportedly pressuring Anthropic to yield its AI safeguards and give the military unrestrained access to its Claude AI chatbot. The company then chose the same day that the Hegseth news broke to drop its centerpiece safety pledge.On Tuesday, Anthropic said it was modifying its Responsible Scaling Policy (RSP) to lower safety guardrails. Up until now, the company's core pledge has been to stop training new AI models unless specific safety guidelines can be guaranteed in advance. This policy, which set hard tripwires to halt development, was a big part of Anthropic's pitch to businesses and consumers.Two and a half years later, our honest assessment is that some parts of this theory of change have played out as we hoped, but others have not, Anthropic wrote. Now, its updated policy approaches safety relatively, rather than with strict red lines.Anthropic's quotes in an interview with Time sound reasonable enough in a vacuum. "We felt that it wouldn't actually help anyone for us to stop training AI models," Jared Kaplan, Anthropic's chief science officer, told Time. "We didn't really feel, with the rapid advance of AI, that it made sense for us to make unilateral commitments if competitors are blazing ahead."Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei (Photo by David Dee Delgado/Getty Images for The New York Times)David Dee Delgado via Getty ImagesBut you could also read those quotes as the latest example of a hot startups ethics becoming grayer as its valuation rises. (Remember Googles old Dont be evil mantra that it later removed from its code of conduct?) The latest versions of Claude have drawn widespread praise, especially in coding. In February, Anthropic raised $30 billion in new investments. It now has a valuation of $380 billion. (Speaking of the competition Kaplan referred to, rival OpenAI is currently valued at over $850 billion.)In place of Anthropic's previous tripwires, it will implement new "Risk Reports" and "Frontier Safety Roadmaps." These disclosure models are designed to provide transparency to the public in place of those hard lines in the sand.Anthropic says the change was motivated by a "collective action problem" stemming from the competitive AI landscape and the US's anti-regulatory approach. "If one AI developer paused development to implement safety measures while others moved forward training and deploying AI systems without strong mitigations, that could result in a world that is less safe," the new RSP reads. "The developers with the weakest protections would set the pace, and responsible developers would lose their ability to do safety research and advance the public benet."Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)AAron Ontiveroz via Getty ImagesNeither Anthropic's announcement nor the Time exclusive mentions the elephant in the room: the Pentagon's pressure campaign. On Tuesday, Axios reported that Hegseth told Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei that the company has until Friday to give the military unfettered access to its AI model or face penalties. The company has reportedly offered to adopt its usage policies for the Pentagon. However, it wouldn't allow its model to be used for the mass surveillance of Americans or weapons that fire without human involvement.If Anthropic doesn't relent, experts say its best bet would be legal action. But will the Pentagon's proposed penalties be enough to scare a profit-driven startup into compliance? Hegseths' threats reportedly include invoking the Defense Production Act, which gives the president authority to direct private companies prioritize certain contracts in the name of national defense. The military could also sever its contract with Anthropic and designate it as a supply chain risk. That would force other companies working with the Pentagon to certify that Claude isn't included in their workflows.Claude is the only AI model currently used for the military's most sensitive work. "The only reason we're still talking to these people is we need themand we need them now, a defense official told Axios. The problem for these guys is they are that good." Claude was reportedly used in the Maduro raid in Venezuela, a topic Amodei is said to have raised with its partner Palantir.Time's story about the new RSP included reactions from a nonprofit director focused on AI risks. Chris Painter, director of METR, described the changes as both understandable and perhaps an ill omen. "I like the emphasis on transparent risk reporting and publicly verifiable safety roadmaps," he said. However, he also raised concerns that the more flexible RSP could lead to a "frog-boiling" effect. In other words, when safety becomes a gray area, a seemingly never-ending series of rationalizations could take the company down the very dark path it once condemned.Painter said the new RSP shows that Anthropic "believes it needs to shift into triage mode with its safety plans, because methods to assess and mitigate risk are not keeping up with the pace of capabilities. This is more evidence that society is not prepared for the potential catastrophic risks posed by AI."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/anthropic-weakens-its-safety-pledge-in-the-wake-of-the-pentagons-pressure-campaign-183436413.html?src=rss
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