Language Models

What exactly is a "weight" in an AI model?

We explain gradient descent, hyperparameters and overfitting, but almost never the thing that actually gets adjusted: the weight. It's a number, and a model is...

23 July 2026 7 min

Editor's picks

Language Models

'Open' in AI doesn't mean what you think: how to check it yourself

'Open weights' is not 'open source,' and the difference has real consequences: from user thresholds to territorial exclusions buried in the fine print. Using Llama 4's actual license and the counterexample of OLMo 2, this piece teaches three questions to check for yourself, document in hand, whether an AI model billed as 'open' really is.

8 min 23 Jul. 2026

Language Models

What it actually takes to train your own model: the math nobody shows you

"How much GPU do you need" is the wrong question. Compute, data and knowledge don't add up — they're three gates in series, and the one almost nobody clears isn't the hardware one. With today's real pricing, a real open model's corpus, and the real logbook from a 175-billion-parameter training run, this piece does the full math — and tells you which gate you're actually standing at.

7 min 25 Jul. 2026

Medicine

A proposal for assessing AI safety in mental health

A new preprint argues that language models used for emotional support should be assessed through explicit values, training and ongoing oversight.

4 min 25 Jul. 2026

Current Affairs

Swisscanto says it is too early to call AI a bubble

Gerhard Wagner of Swisscanto separates AI’s structural potential from specific overvaluations and from the challenge of turning investment into profits.

4 min 25 Jul. 2026

Latest articles

Current Affairs

Memora proposes a different kind of memory for AI agents

Microsoft Research separates what an agent stores from how it retrieves it, aiming to handle long histories without loading the entire context.

3 min 25 Jul. 2026

Current Affairs

Agricultural AI needs data before promises

Agriculture can use predictive models and automation, but data quality, context and interoperability determine whether a tool works on a real farm.

4 min 25 Jul. 2026

Current Affairs

A solver can perfectly solve the wrong problem

VeriSimpl proposes checking LLM-generated optimization formulations through simplified versions. The lesson is to inspect objectives, variables, and constraints before trusting that code “works.”

3 min 25 Jul. 2026

Current Affairs

Madrid prepares new health services using AI and remote monitoring

An agreement with Spain’s Health Ministry and Red.es opens development of remote chronic-care monitoring, advanced analytics and AI use cases.

3 min 25 Jul. 2026

Current Affairs

UK tests AI to speed up routine planning applications

A pilot with three English councils classifies applications, summarises information and provides an initial assessment; the planning officer keeps the decision.

4 min 25 Jul. 2026

Language Models

They Asked ChatGPT to Repeat 'Poem' and It Recited Poe: What That Proves, and What It Doesn't

In 2023, researchers asked ChatGPT to repeat the word 'poem' without stopping, and the model ended up reciting Poe's 'The Raven' word for word. That doesn't prove models store a copy of the internet, but it doesn't prove they never memorize anything either: both claims are true, depending on the case. The four questions that separate a serious lawsuit from an empty headline.

7 min 25 Jul. 2026