The Decoder
Baidu releases ERNIE 5.5 Flash Base: a 280-billion-parameter MoE model pre-trained on 33.5 trillion tokens, shipped deliberately without fine-tuning, so developers can take it wherever they want. Baidu's AI development is still alive, but most of the work is on you.
Summary drawn from The Decoder's own description of the story.
The Verge
Airbnb plans to roll out an AI agent in the first half of 2027 that will help users plan and book travel, the company said in its Q3 2026 earnings shareholder letter released today. "Today's AI agents are good at simple, routine tasks, like making a restaurant reservation or scheduling an appointment," Airbnb said.
Ars Technica
NASA’s X-70 Fractal announcement comes as agency aims to grow X-plane fleet. NASA has announced a new experimental aircraft, the X-70 Fractal, that will supposedly feature reconfigurable flight-control technology and a modular design for swapping in different payloads.
The Verge
Perplexity is taking on OpenAI and Anthropic with its own work-focused AI agents. The startup's new always-on "Teammates" can take on multiple roles within a workspace, while pulling existing projects, skills, and memory from the Perplexity tools you already use.
Ars Technica
Google is technically offering schools more choice but not the choices anyone wants. Google faced the ire of educators and parents earlier this week when it announced a new AI policy for K-12 schools.