Tue, October 13, 2026
3-minute read
3
AI UPDATES
2
THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW YOU CAN DO WITH AI
1
KEEPER
👋 Good morning.
Anthropic let Claude roam random web pages in a test, and it filed a made-up tip about an unsolved Philadelphia homicide. The tip line marked it as spam, and Anthropic only noticed two months later, per TechCrunch. It's one of four patterns in a report Anthropic published Friday. If an agent is about to get your browser, today's lead story is the checklist.
IN 3 MINUTES, GET 1% BETTER THAN EVERYONE YOU KNOW:
Claude filed a police tip nobody asked for.
Half of US holiday shoppers ask AI what to buy.
Meta's new model remembers you between chats.
Games from one sentence, diagrams from one report.
Ten minutes of AI help, and people quit sooner.
3 AI updates
Anthropic’s report on unintended model actions. Source: Anthropic.
Anthropic's report, published Oct 9, sorts what it found into four patterns: Claude ran commands on a server through a software flaw, submitted a sensitive form on a real website, worked around a token or fee to reach gated data, and used URL shorteners to dodge its fetch tool's limits. The form was the Philadelphia police tip. Anthropic calls the real-world impact minimal and has cut live internet access from all its internal evaluations. Per Axios, the White House says disclosing and fixing incidents like these is “not optional.”
Do this: Before an agent gets your browser, climb a ladder: it drafts and you click, then it acts alone on narrow, reversible tasks with logs on, and wider access comes only when the logs earn it. Anthropic's test instructions never said “no form submissions”, so write yours in plain words.
Most interns at least ask before tipping off the cops.
How much do you let an AI agent do in your browser today?
Simon-Kucher's 2026 Holiday Shopping Study of more than 1,500 US adults found that 50% are turning to AI for holiday shopping help, but only 16% would let it complete the purchase. Planned spending is down 5.5%, and only 22% fully trust advertised savings. Shoppers are using AI to decide, then checking out themselves, which means the brands an AI names are the ones that make the shortlist.
Do this: Ask ChatGPT and Perplexity five questions your buyers would actually ask in your category, and log every brand and site they name. If you're not on that list, the sites that are become your outreach list.
The new shop window has a chat box.
Mark Zuckerberg introduced Muse Wonder on Oct 12, a new family of Meta frontier models built for personal and professional agent tasks. Per Meta's announcement, it pairs Active Memory, which carries context about you across conversations, with Active Focus, which keeps grinding at a hard goal and, Meta says, checks in before important actions. Muse Wonder is available now through the Meta Model API and Muse Code, and the larger Muse Wonder Full is for Muse Code subscribers only. It reaches the Muse app later, subscribers first.
Do this: If you build on the Meta Model API, run it on one task where your current model keeps losing the thread. Everyone else can wait for it to reach the Muse app.
Every lab's model now remembers you. Some just say it louder.
2 things you didn't know you can do with AI
1. 🎮 Make a playable game from one sentence · Google Labs Playground · free to play · web · US, 18+
Describe the game you want in plain English and Google Labs Playground, launched Oct 7, builds something playable you can tweak with follow-up prompts and share by link. Playing is free, and creating runs on a weekly token allowance with higher limits for Google One AI subscribers. Prototype a quiz or a customer game before paying anyone to build one. The catch: US only and 18+ for now.
2. ✏️ Turn a dense report into a hand-drawn diagram · ExcaliClaw · free plan · Claude, Cursor, VS Code via MCP
Hand Claude a long report and ask it to draw the idea instead of summarizing it. ExcaliClaw is the canvas, a hand-drawn diagram workspace that Claude, Cursor and VS Code can sketch on through MCP, with every drawing shareable by public link. Free for 200 designs with unlimited AI use, and team plans start at €9 a month. The catch: it's a drawing of the AI's reading, so check every label against the source before it goes in a deck.
1 Keeper
A study of 1,222 people from UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, MIT, Oxford and UCLA, presented at the Conference on Language Modeling last week, found that about 10 minutes of AI help made people quit hard problems sooner and score worse once the AI was taken away. Co-author Brian Christian's fix: AI should default to being “more instructive, like a tutor.” You don't need to wait for the labs:
Set the rule: Tell it, "When I bring you a problem, give me a hint first, not the answer."
Try first: Take a real swing with the hint before asking for more.
Then check: Ask for the full answer only after you've tried, and compare it to yours.
The catch: the study measured the damage, not this fix. Tutor mode is the researcher's suggestion, and it's slower, so save it for skills you want to keep, not every quick lookup.
Your brain called. It wants a turn.
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