AI Neanderthal by Malcolm Werchota

About AI Neanderthal by Malcolm Werchota

AI news for humans, not robots. Every weekday, Malcolm Werchota comes out of the cave and explains what actually happened in AI — in plain language, with the numbers checked and the hype taken out. Around ten stories a day: three explained slowly, the rest fast. No jargon. No breathless futurism. Just what happened, what it costs, and who gets handed the bill — explained the way you would explain it to a smart friend who does not work in tech. If you run a company, sit on a board, or simply want to understand the technology reshaping your industry, this is your daily 25 minutes. Keep the stories that touch your world. Stay curious, stay human.

Publisher

Malcolm Werchota

Category

news · technology

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

14 Aug 2026

Latest episode

15 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

48 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   15 Oct 2026

   #48 - A Chip That Isn't Built Yet Moves Billions, and a Police AI Finds Your Home From One Photo

   A Chinese company announces progress on a memory chip it can't mass-produce yet – and Korea's two biggest chip makers lose five to six percent in one morning. In Berlin, Germany's digital minister wants to tax AI in the morning and talks about no new taxes by the evening. Today is one question: how can a plan move more money than a product – and who is checking? Recorded with a deep, cold-ridden voice. In this episode: 🌑 CXMT shakes the memory trade (01:47) — CXMT (ChangXin Memory Technologies), China's biggest maker of DRAM, the short-term memory every computer and AI server needs, says it has made progress on a denser memory design – by industry estimates 30 to 50 percent more memory in the same space, with server memory planned by the end of 2026. The Seoul Economic Daily reports Samsung fell almost 5 percent and SK hynix almost 6 percent on Tuesday morning; Micron lost almost 4. But the chip isn't in mass production yet – yields, performance and customer certification are unverified. 🌑 Huawei vs Nvidia – the first independent count (05:34) — Huawei's chairman claims its AI chips now outsell Nvidia's in China. The first independent count, by IDC for the first half of 2026 and reported by Reuters, says: not yet. Nvidia leads AI data-centre chips in China with 34 percent, Huawei has 28. But Nvidia's shipments fell 44 percent while Huawei's nearly doubled. US export controls taught Chinese customers to stop depending on Nvidia. 🌑 IMF – AI keeps a war-hit world growing (07:24) — the IMF now expects 3.1 percent world growth in 2026, up from 3.0 in July. Xinhua and Fortune name the reason: the AI build-out is offsetting the energy shock from the war in the Middle East. Only 32 countries now make up 95 percent of world growth, down from 54 in April – mostly those in the AI hardware supply chain, like South Korea and Taiwan. The euro area grows only 1.1 percent. Malcolm's take: this is no longer a tech story, it's a world-growth story. 🌑 Germany's AI tax, on and off in one day (11:38) — Germany's digital minister Karsten Wildberger (CDU) said the "extremely high" revenue from AI must be taxed to pay for retraining, the news agency dpa reports – the first German cabinet minister to suggest an AI revenue tax. The same day he told RTL and ntv: "I want growth through AI and I'm not talking about new taxes." Would you build an AI company in a country that floats a tax on it and steps back the same day? 🌑 A police AI finds your home from one photo (14:57) — 404 Media reports on Raven, a police tool from Graylark Technologies: from a single photo inside a home – no window view, no GPS data – it tries to find the exact address by matching cupboards, tiles, fittings and appliances against images from Airbnb and Zillow. Police in Los Angeles and Miami-Dade bought access; Miami-Dade says it hasn't led to significant breakthroughs. Every photo from your home is now a possible address. 🌑 China's top mathematicians unite behind AI (17:16) — Fields medallist Shing-Tung Yau launched an alliance of nearly a thousand Chinese mathematicians from eight institutions to build a maths AI model and AI research tools. While many Western mathematicians argue whether AI makes them lazy, China is organising its whole maths elite around AI. Who moves faster? 🧵 The thread (19:29) — a chip that isn't built yet moves billions, a world economy that leans on AI money, and a tax that comes and goes in a day. The checkers are arriving – the answers aren't yet. 📱 Ping Malcolm on WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal: +43 676 6144 904 🌐 werchota.ai (https://werchota.ai) AI Neanderthal — AI news for humans, not robots. Stay curious.

2. 

   14 Oct 2026

   #47 - Who's to Blame? Palantir Says "Likely Human Error", and AI Learns to Copy Itself

   Missiles hit a school in Iran and at least 123 children die. Months later, the company whose AI helps the US military suggest targets goes on TV and says: the likely cause is human error. Today is one question: who is to blame when AI goes wrong – the machine, the people who trusted it, or the people who sold it? Recorded in Salzburg. In this episode: 🌑 Palantir says "likely human error" (01:40) — Palantir sells data and AI tools to armies and governments. Its Maven Smart System, used by the Pentagon, sorts drone and satellite data and suggests targets. On 28 February, the first day of the US–Iran war, two Tomahawk cruise missiles hit an elementary school in Minab, Iran, and at least 123 children were killed. According to Bloomberg, a Pentagon review that is still not public found old intelligence, old satellite pictures and cuts to the civilian-safety team – reportedly from ten people to one. Palantir's CTO Shyam Sankar told CBS "Face the Nation" that the reporting is inaccurate and the likely cause is human error. Malcolm's take: old data in, wrong answer out – and one person checking every suggestion is no longer a human in the loop. 🌑 Berlin shelves the Mistral–SAP deal (04:51) — in November 2025, Germany and France announced in Berlin that Mistral AI and SAP would build AI tools and digital helpers for government offices. The framework contract was never signed: Politico reports the Federal Digital Ministry currently has no plans to buy from Mistral. The German search engine Ecosia dropped Mistral too – CEO Christian Kroll says its models are about a year behind. Mistral's answer is a preview of Mistral Large 4, which it says can compete with some Chinese open models. Malcolm's take: Europe won't get sovereign AI without building the data centres. 🌑 AI that could copy itself onto your TV box (07:59) — Anthropic's Frontier Red Team tested whether a small AI model can copy itself onto cheap connected devices like TV boxes, cameras and routers. Alibaba's Qwen 3.5, with nine billion parameters, set up a working AI server on 8 of 9 hardware types, and because each new copy reads the notes of the one before, the success rate rose from 45 percent to as much as 84 percent. GLM-5.2 from Z.ai reached all 8 target machines in 4 of 5 trials – in a walled-off test network. The researchers' own projection: small models could do this by the end of 2026. 🧵 The thread (11:56) — this week the English show tries a shorter format: the top stories in 10 to 15 minutes. Long or short – tell Malcolm which one you prefer. 📱 Ping Malcolm on WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal: +43 676 6144 904 🌐 werchota.ai (https://werchota.ai) AI Neanderthal — AI news for humans, not robots. Stay curious.

3. 

   13 Oct 2026

   #46 - The IMF Fears AI Money, While Walmart's Robots Fight Cardboard Boxes

   In Bangkok, the head of the IMF puts AI on her list of big dangers, right next to war, expensive oil and record debt. In America, the world's biggest shop has a much smaller AI problem: its new robots can't handle its old cardboard boxes. Today is one question: which one is the real AI story – the big-money fear, or the box that doesn't fit? Recorded in Salzburg. In this episode: 🌑 The IMF puts AI next to war, oil and debt (01:50) — the IMF and the World Bank hold their annual meetings in Bangkok from 12 to 18 October. IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva named three forces shaping the world economy: AI, energy prices that stay high (oil is around $100 a barrel) and record public debt. AI hardware and related tech are now "more than a tenth of global goods trade", and her warning is about the hyperscalers – Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta – borrowing heavily to build AI data centres: if the money doesn't come back, it becomes a problem for the whole world economy. 🌑 Walmart's robots meet the real warehouse (05:56) — Walmart, the world's largest retailer with more than 140,000 warehouse workers, is automating its warehouses with a robotics company it partly owns. The problem is very physical: the robots can't handle old, soft, misshapen cardboard boxes, so the boxes need extra tape and new packaging. And at peak, the monthly power bill of an automated grocery warehouse can go above $800,000, against about $250,000 with mostly manual work. Most of these warehouses were built in the 1980s and '90s. AI meets the real world one box at a time. 🌑 Nicolas Cage says no to Amazon's AI waiver (11:25) — at New York Comic Con, Nicolas Cage said he refused to sign an AI waiver for the series "Spider-Noir", made by Sony Pictures Television and Amazon MGM Studios – a clause that lets a studio use AI to recreate or change a performer. As reported by the LA Times: "I am not an AI-friendly actor, so it's like, connect those dots!" (His "$50 billion invested in OpenAI" is his number from the stage and can't be confirmed.) Amazon did not comment. 🌑 Switzerland: AI job ads up 32 percent, but few for beginners (15:26) — the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences (HSLU) counted nearly 5,000 AI job ads in Switzerland in one year, up 32 percent, with most of the growth from small and mid-sized companies. Zurich alone has 45 percent of them. The catch: only 5 percent are real junior roles. Where will the next generation learn the job? 🌑 Halo and GTA in a browser tab: AI rebuilds old games (17:55) — Kotaku reports that in the past two weeks, hundreds of AI-made browser versions of classic games appeared online – Halo, GTA: Vice City, The Simpsons: Hit and Run – rebuilt by decompiling the old code with AI's help. Take-Two and Microsoft could send legal letters, but it becomes whack-a-mole. If your company's value sits in old software, copying it just got a lot easier. 🧵 The thread (21:10) — billions in Bangkok, cardboard boxes on the warehouse floor, an actor who won't sign, and games rebuilt in a weekend. AI is everywhere – and it gets stuck on very ordinary things. 📱 Ping Malcolm on WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal: +43 676 6144 904 🌐 werchota.ai (https://werchota.ai) AI Neanderthal — AI news for humans, not robots. Stay curious.

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