116: Today in AI: OpenAI’s "Head of Preparedness", Meta Buys Manus, AI Missing From News Cycle

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This video is from the ‘AI with Kyle News and Updates Live Stream’

First aired: 30 December 2025

Summary: OpenAI just posted a job listing that's equal parts fascinating and slightly terrifying—they're hiring a "Head of Preparedness" for $550K a year, and the wording is... interesting. Sam Altman's description talks about jumping into the deep end immediately, dealing with models that are getting so good at cybersecurity they're finding critical vulnerabilities, and preparing for AI systems that can self-improve. It's basically the real-world version of that "kill switch engineer" meme from earlier this year, except this time they're actually serious about needing someone to figure out how to let the good guys use cutting-edge AI capabilities whilst keeping the bad guys from doing the same. The urgency in the language is what gets me—why now, why didn't they have this role before, and what exactly is happening inside OpenAI that's prompted this?

Meanwhile, Meta's just acquired Manus for somewhere between $1-5 billion, which is a bit of a surprise. Manus was one of the first consumer-facing agentic AI tools that could actually go off and do proper research tasks, but honestly, it's been losing ground to Claude and ChatGPT who've both added similar capabilities. The acquisition makes sense for Meta—they're probably going to strip it for parts and integrate the tech into their ad business rather than keep it as a standalone product.

And in a nice reality check, I looked at Axios's news cycle chart for 2025 and AI barely registers—just one mention of the "AI bubble." Whilst we're all deep in this world talking about model releases and capabilities, the rest of the world is still focused on everything else. Good reminder that we're in our own little bubble here.

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—— Time Stamps ——

0:00 OpenAI's $550K "Kill Switch" Job Opening

4:47 Meta Acquires Manus AI for Billions