MiniMax M3.1 Flash shows China's AI price race has no floor in sight
MiniMax's M3.1 Flash jumps 13 points over its predecessor to 42 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, at half the cost. It also hits 73.7 percent on the DeepSWE v1.1 coding benchmark for under $0.30 per task, matching Deepseek V4.1 Flash 1017 on both performance and price. The article MiniMax M3.1 Flash shows China's AI price race has no floor in sight appeared first on The Decoder.
Part of a story that several outlets report: MiniMax launches M3.1 Flash model at half previous price
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A Chinese AI company has released a new reasoning model that scores higher than its previous version while costing less than half as much per task. The model performs particularly well on complex reasoning tests, beating some competitors on certain benchmarks while trailing others, though it has a high hallucination rate because it attempts to answer every question rather than declining when uncertain. This release is part of an ongoing competitive pricing battle between Chinese AI developers, with neither this model nor its closest competitor winning across all performance measures. Both companies plan to release their models as open weights, continuing a trend of making AI models widely available.
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Microsoft says its AI tool is better than doctors at diagnosing conditions
Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman. | Getty Images For years, AI leaders have touted healthcare as one of the clearest examples of where their technology will improve lives. Now "it is finally here," Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman tells The Verge. The company claims to have developed an AI-powered tool it says can diagnose conditions up to four times more accurately than human doctors. The findings, published Thursday in one of the world's most prestigious journals, Science,
Microsoft’s Mustafa Suleyman says its AI outperforms doctors on hard cases as he chases ‘medical superintelligence’
Microsoft’s new AI diagnostic system beat generalist doctors on hard cases, according to a study in Science. But most of the improvement seems to come from the AI models underneath, not from Microsoft’s system itself.
Claude Science tackles deadly scorpion stings by designing protein binders from scratch
Anthropic's Claude independently designed protein binders targeting deadly scorpion neurotoxins. Out of more than 318,000 designs, 211 were tested in the lab. Seventeen met the criteria, and the two strongest bind extremely tightly to Cn2, a toxin from a Mexican scorpion. Whether they actually work as antivenom remains an open question. The article Claude Science tackles deadly scorpion stings by designing protein binders from scratch appeared first on The Decoder.
Also reported by The Verge
Inception says Mercury 3 beats GPT-6 Luna and Claude Haiku 5.5 at up to 8x the speed
Diffusion language model startup Inception AI Inc. today released Mercury 3, its new flagship model. In the company’s own benchmarks, Mercury 3 beat OpenAI Group PBC’s GPT-6 Luna and Anthropic PBC’s Claude Haiku 5.5 on eight of 12 tests at four to eight times their speed. The release takes on the main doubt about Inception’s […] The post Inception says Mercury 3 beats GPT-6 Luna and Claude Haiku 5.5 at up to 8x the speed appeared first on SiliconANGLE.
Also reported by The Decoder
OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol and Google's Gemini 4 Argon found critical PHP flaw affecting millions of websites
OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol discovered a critical PHP vulnerability as part of the Patch the Planet initiative that could affect millions of websites. Security firm Wiz independently found the same flaw using Google's Gemini 4 Argon. OpenAI warns that the same AI capabilities that find vulnerabilities can help attackers too. The article OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol and Google's Gemini 4 Argon found critical PHP flaw affecting millions of websites appeared first on The Decoder.
Also reported by TechCrunch
Terminal X matches senior investor judgment 88.6% with GPT-6.1
Terminal X’s Eval Agent grades outputs against a 54-criterion rubric, catching 25% more deviances from a fund’s mandate with GPT-6.1 Sol.