đ BS Killer AI Update: The Empire Strikes Back Edition
Week of November 16, 2025
The $4.6M Model That Just Broke Silicon Valleyâs Monopoly đšđłđ„
Forget everything you thought you knew about AI dominance. While OpenAI burns through billions and tech giants battle with bloated budgets, a Chinese startup just delivered the ultimate reality check: Moonshot AIâs Kimi K2 Thinking model beats GPT-5 and Claude Sonnet 4.5 on Humanityâs Last Exam and several agentic benchmarks - and analysts estimate they trained it for less than the cost of a Bay Area mansion.
The model scored 44.9% on Humanityâs Last Exam, outperforming GPT-5âs 41.7% and Claude Sonnet 4.5âs 32%. Even better? Itâs released as an open-weight model under a permissive license and costs 6-10 times less to run than OpenAI and Anthropicâs models.
The BS-Free Translation: China isnât coming for AI dominance - they might already be here. And theyâre doing it by being smarter, not richer.
OpenAI Drops GPT-5.1: The âPlease Like Me Againâ Update đ€
After GPT-5 landed with mixed reviews and developer pushback over latency and costs, OpenAI rushed out GPT-5.1 with what theyâre calling âpersonality improvements.â The new GPT-5.1 Instant is âwarmer, more intelligent, and better at following your instructionsâ while GPT-5.1 Thinking is âeasier to understand and faster on simple tasksâ.
The model dynamically adapts how much time it spends thinking based on task complexity, making it 2-3x faster than GPT-5 on simple queries. Plus, theyâve added more granular tone controls (e.g., more playful, more candid, more formal) because apparently AI needed a personality makeover.
What Actually Matters: GPT-5.1 costs significantly less than competitors, with Claude Opus 4.1 at $15/$75 per million tokens versus GPT-5.1âs more competitive pricing. The real innovation? Adaptive reasoning that actually works.
Claude Quietly Dominates While Everyoneâs Distracted đ
While everyoneâs arguing about Chinese AI and GPT personalities, Anthropic just shipped Claude Opus 4.1 with 74.5% accuracy on SWE-bench Verified - the highest coding benchmark score to date.
The model improved its âharmless response rateâ to 98.76%, up from 97.27% in Opus 4, with a 25% reduction in cooperation with high-risk misuse scenarios. GitHub, Rakuten, and Windsurf are already reporting massive improvements in production.
The Sleeper Hit: Claudeâs not just better at coding - itâs becoming the go-to for enterprises who care more about reliability than hype.
The AI Agent War Gets Real: Salesforce vs Microsoft Cage Match đ„
Marc Benioff continues his assault on Microsoft Copilot, calling it âClippy 2.0â while pushing Agentforce as the future. Benioff said Microsoft Copilot suffers from âa lack of context, skills and adaptabilityâ and called it a âscience projectâ.
Microsoftâs response? Ship more agents. Microsoft introduced two AI-powered sales agents for Microsoft 365 Copilot, with the Sales Development Agent working autonomously around the clock. Meanwhile, Salesforce Agentforce acts directly within CRM records with transparent, auditable steps.
Whoâs Winning? Both are losing to reality. Gartner data suggests that by 2025, 90% of enterprise gen-AI projects will face slowdowns as costs begin to outweigh the value they deliver, and only 24% of Microsoft Copilot users are planning large-scale rollouts.
The Infrastructure Crisis Nobody Wants to Talk About âĄ
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella acknowledged that âthe biggest issue we are now having is not a compute glut, but itâs the powerâ with chips sitting in inventory that canât be plugged in due to power shortages.
Meanwhile, OpenAI signed a deal with AWS for $38 billion, which is part of a broader ~$1.4 trillion in infrastructure commitments across OpenAI and its cloud partners.
Reality Check: Weâre building AI faster than we can power it. The next bottleneck isnât chips or data - itâs literally electricity.
This Weekâs âWait, What?â Moments đ€Ż
Googleâs Living Room Takeover: Google is expanding Gemini for TV to any television connected to a Google TV Streamer, replacing Google Assistant and offering conversational recommendations and smart home control (The Verge)
AI Actress Drama: AI-generated âactressâ Tilly Norwood has sparked outrage in Hollywood after news broke that agents were in talks to sign her, with SAG-AFTRA condemning the move as a threat to human creativity (SAG-AFTRA Statement)
UKâs AI Growth Zone Bet: The UK government announced a ÂŁ42 billion AI Growth Zone in North East England, believing it will create up to 5,000 R&D jobs (GOV.UK)
What This Actually Means For You đ
If youâre building with AI:
Stop overpaying for closed models - Kimi K2 shows open-weight models can rival frontier models on certain benchmarks
Focus on actual ROI, not benchmark scores
Consider power consumption in your infrastructure planning
If youâre investing in AI:
The moat isnât the model anymore - itâs the application layer
Chinese AI isnât âcatching upâ - theyâre setting the pace on specific benchmarks
Agent fatigue is real - enterprises want results, not more chatbots
If youâre running a business:
Wait for Agentforce/Copilot v3.0 before major commitments
Test open-source alternatives seriously
Budget for 2x the AI costs youâre projecting
The BS-Free Bottom Line
The AI industry just learned that an analyst-estimated $4.6M training budget can beat a $100B valuation on key benchmarks. OpenAI and Anthropic are in an arms race while China is playing a different game entirely. Microsoft and Salesforce are fighting over who can automate sales emails while missing that enterprises donât even want what theyâre selling yet.
The real story? Weâre entering the âshow me the moneyâ phase of AI. The hype cycle is ending, reality is setting in, and the winners wonât be who you expect.
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