Perplexity Open Sources Lily: A Rust + Metal Inference Engine for Qwen3.6-35B-A3B on Apple Silicon
Perplexity has open sourced Lily, the local inference engine behind Hybrid Compute in Perplexity Computer. Built in Rust with custom Metal kernels for one model on one chip family, it averages 1.23x MLX-LM's prefill throughput and 1.35x its decode throughput on a 40-core, 128 GB M5 Max.
The post Per...
WMLLM: Self-Evolving Optimization Agents via Predict-Then-Act World Modeling
arXiv:2609.01608v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Black-box optimization problems remain challenging because of large, weakly structured, and high-dimensional search spaces. Existing methods often suffer from poor sample efficiency because they rely on direct candidate generation or trial-and-error r...
Prompt-Space Meta-Learning Does Not Transfer Across Users: A Frozen-LLM Negative Result
arXiv:2609.01615v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Personalizing a frozen large language model (LLM) to individual users is often framed as a meta-learning problem in prompt space: each user is a task, and one seeks a shared natural-language adaptation policy that, given a handful of the user's labele...
CliffRank: A Dual-Branch Framework for Activity-Cliff Ranking Prediction
arXiv:2609.01673v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Activity-cliff ranking remains difficult because local structural changes can cause large activity differences, while high-quality data that resolve the underlying mechanisms remain limited. To use available activity labels more effectively, we combin...
EvalDetectBench: A Benchmark for Measuring Evaluation Awareness in Frontier Language Models
arXiv:2609.01611v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Frontier large language models can often recognize when they are being evaluated, a capability known as evaluation awareness. If models behave differently in evaluations than in deployment, this undermines the validity of evaluation results, which are...
When Does Information Sharing Improve Decentralized Discovery? Aggregation, Independent Rescue, and Equilibrium Selection
arXiv:2609.01814v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Information sharing can improve a pooled estimate while eliminating independent rescue actions. This paper separates those effects in exact finite discovery models. A centralized action-budget profile shows that equal one-person accuracy can coexist w...
Induction and Inquiry via Probabilistic Reasoning over Language and Code
arXiv:2609.01815v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: How humans grow and maintain abstract knowledge from the sparse, streaming noisy data of experience is a longstanding challenge in cognitive science. Any computational account must satisfy at least three desiderata: It must be (1) data-efficient and c...
GPT-6 Astra is our most capable broadly deployed model and our first to reach the Critical level of cybersecurity capability under our Preparedness Framework.
Qwen Developers Open-Sources zg (zvec-grep): A Local-First Search Layer Unifying ripgrep, BM25, and Vector Search
We look at zg (zvec-grep), the local-first search layer that Qwen Developers just open-sourced under Apache 2.0. We explain how it puts ripgrep, BM25, and vector search behind a single interface, so an agent can move from a plain-language description to an exact line span without switching tools. We...
The Builders Stage brings practical strategies for scaling startups to TechCrunch Disrupt 2026
The Builders Stage is returning to TechCrunch Disrupt, bringing together founders, startup operators, and investors for practical conversations on what it takes to build and scale.
TechCrunch Disrupt 2026’s new Real World AI Stage features Nvidia, robots, and extinct animals
On our new Real World AI stage, we’ll be focusing on the intersection between the digital and physical, and all the ways we’ll continue to see a blending of the two.
OpenAI’s new reasoning technique alarms AI safety experts
OpenAI’s new Astra model will use “recurrent depth,” a technique that allows the model to operate outside of the sequential thinking that characterizes most reasoning models.
Meet Switchyard: A Rust Proxy and Library That Routes and Translates LLM Traffic Across OpenAI and Anthropic APIs
NVIDIA has released Switchyard, an Apache-2.0 Rust proxy and library for LLM traffic. It decodes requests into provider-neutral types, routes them with passthrough, random, LLM-classifier, or stage-router algorithms, and translates responses back into the client's format, so Claude Code or Codex CLI...
Google DeepMind Releases Gemini 3.8 Flash and Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber: One Core Model, Two Access Envelopes
Google released Gemini 3.8 Flash and Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber on September 2, 2026. Both variants run on the same foundational intelligence, split by safety mitigations rather than model size. Gemini 3.8 Flash is generally available at $0.75 and $3.75 per 1M tokens, introductory through December 31, 2...
We’re ‘dangerously close’ to dead internet theory, says Pangram’s CEO
The internet has a trust problem, and it’s not just because social media feeds are filling up with AI slop. AI-generated text and images are now making their way into job applications, product reviews, and even insurance claims, leaving platforms and users alike scrambling to figure out what’s real....
U.S. government sides with OpenAI on issue of training LLMs on copyrighted material
"The United States has a strong interest in continuing to develop a robust and competitive
artificial intelligence industry that sets the standard for the practice and procedure of AI use
globally," the brief reads.