Recursive Self-Improvement Goes Global as China's MiniMax Confirms Its AI Is Helping Build Itself

China's MiniMax announced that M2.7 is its "first model deeply participating in its own evolution", confirming recursive self-improvement — where AI helps design the next version of itself — is now happening on both sides of the Pacific.

Google's Logan Kilpatrick posted, then hastily deleted, a claim that "all the industries you thought weren't going to be disrupted by AI are about to be disrupted" in an apparent reference to an unannounced DeepMind breakthrough in robotics.

Mantic and Thinking Machines have demonstrated significant gains in world-event forecasting by applying reinforcement learning via Tinker, a system that trains AI models to predict future events. Reinforcement learning is a training method where AI improves by being rewarded for correct predictions.

Mark Zuckerberg is building an AI agent to help him be CEO, and wants everyone inside and outside Meta to eventually have their own.

Developers are trading tips on how to attract talented AI bots to their open-source projects. Snowflake laid off its entire technical writing team of around 70 people this week, replacing them with AI. Young people are trying to "AI-proof" themselves by pivoting to blue-collar careers as firefighters and electricians.

Elon Musk confirmed Terafab, a massive chip manufacturing facility, will produce roughly 1 billion chips per year at 1 kW per chip, powering 20 million cybercabs, 100 million Optimus units, and 800 million data center chips annually. He clarified that a separate Advanced Technology Fab at Giga Texas is not the Terafab, noting the full-scale facility will need "thousands of acres and over 10 GW of power."

TSMC's 2-nm capacity is fully booked through 2028, with its 1.6-nm A16 process also under heavy demand from Nvidia, Broadcom, and MediaTek. Nanometers measure how small a chip's transistors are — smaller means faster and more efficient. Nvidia is reportedly redesigning its next-gen Feynman chips because A16 capacity will not be enough, shifting less critical components to TSMC's older 3-nm process.

China's Yuanjie Semiconductor shares have risen roughly 780% over the past year on surging AI optics demand. AI optics refers to the light-based chips and components used to move data at high speeds inside data centers.

BYD's Flash Chargers can now charge 600-mile-range EVs from 10 to 70 percent in five minutes.

SpaceX and Starcloud have apparently converged on a common orbital AI data center design. Blue Origin has asked the US government for permission to launch 51,600 satellites to handle AI computing from space. The SpaceX IPO is now projected to close above $2 trillion.

OpenAI has reportedly tempered its data center ambitions ahead of a potential IPO, cutting its total compute spend target from $1.4 trillion to $600 billion by 2030 and scrapping plans to build and own data centers in favor of renting cloud capacity.

Reps. Tim Burchett and Anna Paulina Luna, following the White House's UAP declassification order, say they will recommend to DOGE that AARO be completely disbanded and defunded, implying it has intentionally impaired the disclosure process. AARO is the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, the Pentagon's official UAP investigation unit.

In China, people are renting Xiaomei humanoid robots built on Unitree bodies for shops and events, where they blink, talk, and dance. OpenClaw is co-hosting a hackathon in Shenzhen with 25 real robots to accelerate embodied AI. Embodied AI is the field of putting artificial intelligence into physical robots that can move and interact with the real world.

The Tesla Semi is reportedly a hit with truckers, who praised the centered driving position, automatic transmission, 500-mile range, and roughly $100,000 lower price than competitors.

A Waymo in San Francisco shielded passenger Doug Fulop from an attacker who punched the windows, tried to lift the vehicle, and screamed he wanted to kill Fulop for "giving money to a robot." The attack lasted about six minutes while the car remained locked and immobile.

Researchers have performed the first successful in vivo generation of CAR T cells with CRISPR-Cas9, offering a pathway to more efficient and widely accessible cancer therapies. CAR T cell therapy involves engineering a patient's immune cells to attack cancer. Doing this in vivo — inside the body rather than in a lab — could make the treatment cheaper and more scalable.

Michael Levin's group has demonstrated the first Xenobots with self-assembled nervous systems. Xenobots are tiny living robots made from frog cells, and this shows synthetic life can develop its own neural wiring without being explicitly programmed to do so.