Plus: OpenAI has unveiled its long-awaited super app. The AI firm Anthropic has got the clearest glimpse yet at what's really going on inside large language models as they answer questions or carry out tasks. What they found ranges from the mundane to the unnerving. Researchers at the company built a tool called the Jacobian lens (or J-lens) and used it to uncover a hidden area, which they named the J-space, inside its flagship LLM, Claude. The J-space contains words related to the response a model is working on but may not ultimately produce. If Claude were a person (which it is not), you might say these hidden words reveal what's on its mind before it actually speaks.

Plus: NATO is building a network to stop Russian attackers in their tracks. I was really looking forward to July 4, and not just because I love a poolside barbecue. This year the American holiday also marked a big symbolic deadline for US nuclear power. Last year the Trump administration set a goal to see three new microreactors achieve criticality, a technical milestone establishing that a reactor can sustain a chain reaction, by the nation's 250th birthday. And just in time, not just three, but four reactors did so. But achieving criticality doesn't mean a reactor is ready to provide electricity for the grid (or at all, for that matter).

Plus: Samsung profits have jumped 1,800% on booming AI chip sales. Sam Altman's proposal that Americans should share in the wealth created by AI is back in the spotlight, with reports that he is discussing giving the US government a 5% stake in OpenAI. At the company's current valuation, that stake would be worth roughly $320 per American household. The idea is meant to address concerns that AI companies are benefiting from human-generated work without compensating creators, while also easing fears that AI will cause a collapse of the labor market by providing a safety net. The details, however, remain unclear. Indeed, the offer may be more powerful as a political narrative than as a policy plan.

Plus: An EU lawmaker investigating spyware was hacked by that same spyware. The UK's generational tobacco ban might not work. As the parent of two little girls, I often think about how their childhood is different from mine. The seven-year-old is learning about AI at school. The five-year-old is given internet-based homework every week. And they are both absolutely repulsed by the idea of smoking.

The Download: a startup has a solution for AI's groupthink problem Plus: Scientists say they have built a cell from scratch for the first time. LLMs are stuck in a groupthink groove. This startup is trying to get them out. Open up your chatbot of choice--Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini--and type "Give me a random number between 1 and 10." You're going to get 7. Almost always. That won't work every time--but if it did for you, you may wonder if I have superpowers. The truth is that most large language models are stuck in a rut.

The Download: Anthropic launches Claude Science, and California's carbon manure math Plus: The US has lifted restrictions on Anthropic's Mythos and Fable models. Claude Science is Anthropic's newest flagship product At an event for pharmaceutical executives, biotech founders, and researchers yesterday, Anthropic announced Claude Science, a major new product intended to support scientific research like Claude Code supports software engineering. Like Claude Code, Claude Science can autonomously carry out meaningful work from concise, high-level instructions, with tools for computational biology and drug development. The launch signals that Anthropic is doubling down on AI for science, and the company will also use the product in its own research into drugs for rare, neglected diseases. Discover why Anthropic is betting big on AI for scientific research . Why California's carbon manure math doesn't add up Years ago, the state set up a system that pays cattle farmers to turn the methane emitted from cattle manure into natural gas.

Plus: The US House has passed new youth online safety legislation. AI agents are not your "coworkers" Imagine coming in to work to learn that a new underling will report to you. The worker is not a person but an AI tool--one that your company nonetheless calls Alex, an "employee" with a title and defined responsibilities. How well do you think you would work with Alex? If you're anything like the managers studied by Boston University professor Emma Wiles, treating that AI as a coworker would lead you to do a worse job. They caught 18% fewer errors when the work was attributed to an agentic AI employee rather than a chatbot. This is an alarming glimpse of the future Silicon Valley is hurling us toward.

Plus: The US has allowed Anthropic to release Mythos 5 to "trusted" orgs. There are plenty of useful things a metric can reveal. There are even more that it can obscure or corrupt. Like a lot of people bitten by the self-quantifying bug, I started gathering personal data to pursue a nebulous collection of goals and desires. I wanted to feel better physically and emotionally, get outside more, and bring order to the messiness and uncertainty of my daily existence. But external metrics and data can never capture what's truly important.

Plus: The Trump administration has asked OpenAI to limit its next model release. Scientists are trying to figure out why. It's been hot in London this week. A dangerous heat wave has hit Western Europe. On Wednesday, the UK recorded its highest ever June temperature at 36.1 C (about 97 F). But as the weather app on my phone confirmed, it 39 C. Much of Western Europe is suffering, bringing awful consequences for agriculture, infrastructure, and the health system.

Plus: Meta is pausing an AI training program that tracks workers' keystrokes. It's a bit of a schlep to get to the top of ASML's newest machine. It's about the size of a double-decker bus, weighs more than 150 tons, and costs $400 million. But if you want to make the world's most powerful chips, a lithography system like this is essential. The AI era needs ever faster chips, and ASML's machines make that possible. They pattern chip features with extreme-ultraviolet light, or EUV--radiation outside the visible spectrum, produced by shooting lasers at tiny molten drops of tin tens of thousands of times a second.