The Download: Claude’s inner workings and OpenAI’s “super app”

This is today’s edition of The Download , our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

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.

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 OpenAI has unveiled its long-awaited “super app” ChatGPT Work blends its chatbot, coding tool, and new models. ( Reuters $) + It’s designed to do your work for you and with you. ( Ars Technica ) + And arrived the same day as OpenAI’s GPT 5.6 models. ( NYT $) + It’s also developing a fully automated researcher. ( MIT Technology Review ) 2 Humanoids have performed teleoperated surgery on living animals In the world-first, they removed gallbladders from pigs. ( Ars Technica ) + The human work behind humanoids is hidden. ( MIT Technology Review ) 3 SK Hynix has landed the largest US listing by a foreign company The South Korean chip giant raised $26.5 billion. ( CNN ) + Demand for AI data centres has led its profits to skyrocket. ( Guardian ) + But its jumbo share sale may be a sign of overheated times. ( FT $) + South Korea’s hottest bachelors are chip workers. ( MIT Technology Review ) 4 Tencent is leading a deal to unwind Meta’s $2 billion Manus acquisition It’s in talks to become the Chinese AI startup’s largest shareholder. ( FT $) + Tencent will reportedly buy Manus for no less ​than $2 billion. ( Reuters $) + Beijing had ordered Meta to unwind the acquisition. ( Bloomberg $) 5 Resuscitated human retinas responded to light 10 hours after death It’s a big step towards eye transplants that restore vision. ( New Scientist $) + As is a new device that revives dead eyeballs. ( MIT Technology Review ) 6 Meta has started charging for AI access A new version of Muse Spark has a paid tier for developers. ( Quartz ) + Meta also plans to start producing an AI chip in September. ( Reuters $) 7 OpenAI and Google have sold AI models to blacklisted China groups Via Singapore-based subsidiaries of Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent. ( FT $) 8 A daughter tested an AI “death bot” of her father The technology provided both comfort and unease. ( New Yorker $) 9 An astronomer says the hunt for alien life needs more statistics He wants to replace speculation with mathematical frameworks. ( Quanta ) 10 Pokémon Go players turned Times Square into a giant battlefield More than 1,500 fans finally fulfilled the game’s 2016 launch promise. ( Wired $) + Pokémon Go is also training world models. ( MIT Technology Review )