It's Not Just About Building a Lead... It's About Keeping It
Your weekly rundown of what’s been happening in the world of AI and MLOps
📰 News
➡️ Just Call it Pre-Pre-Training
While GPT-5.6 and Grok 4.5 have been made public in the last couple of weeks, Google’s Gemini 3.5 Pro has been delayed. Rumours abound that this happened for the worst possible reason: they’ve had to throw it all out and start again. Reports claim that issues with SVG generation and tool calling have meant that the model wasn’t meeting expectations, then even after an initial retraining it was falling short on benchmarks.
Binning the single most expensive phase of model training and going back to the drawing board must have been very painful for Google. We can only hope when the model finally reaches release it was worth the wait.
➡️ Sovereign State of Mind
Despite the launch of Britain’s £500m Sovereign AI Fund, there are still concerns in parliament about the future of sovereign AI in Britain, with a House of Commons committee this week warning that the UK has “no coherent strategy or framework” for world-leading scientific research and institutions. Which is a concern given their importance in ensuring access to frontier AI. The committee’s report certainly doesn’t mince its words, and ends with a call to action for the next administration.
It seems that the political will for sovereign AI is growing and the talent is here, we just need to continue building the coalition and vision required to make it reality.
➡️ The UK’s AISI in the Hole
While we might not be building models at the frontier, the UK is quickly becoming a world leader in evaluating them. This week, the UK’s AI Security Institute took OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol and found “universal jailbreaks” that unlocked autonomous cyber capabilities. AISI says the jailbreaks were “often developed within hours.” A sure sign that securing these models is a problem that’s not going away
AISI’s success comes as a much needed boost to our national pride. But if the World Cup has taught us anything, it’s that fighting to keep a lead is just as important as establishing it in the first place.
➡️ Pause for Thought
Demis Hassabis used X this week to publish “A Framework for Frontier AI and the Dawning of a New Age” arguing AGI is only a few years off. He argues that the impact could be 10x the scale of the industrial revolution… and a lot faster. To help ease what would doubtless be a very turbulent transition, Hassabis suggests the need for a US-led standards body, with the power to vet all frontier models before launch and coordinate a slowdown of R&D if/when risks emerge.
Source: https://www.axios.com/2026/07/14/demis-hassabis-ai-regulation-google-deepmind
➡️ AI in the Wrong Hands
A University of Cambridge study, published July 10 and built on interviews with former Boko Haram found that the terrorist organisation was not only using AI to help make strategic decisions in carrying out its operations, but even running training for its members on how to use the technology, including the use of jailbreaks to get around safeguards.
The report is genuinely sobering, and serves as one of the best possible examples of why genuine thoughtful regulation is needed to be able to monitor the harms being done by these technologies.
Source: https://casp.ac/reports/ai-enabled-terrorism
👾 Inside Fuzzy Labs
➡️ WTF is ROI?
While there are still plenty of questions around how to get return on investment out of AI, there’s never been any doubt that MLOps.WTF events are great value for money (in fact, they’re free!). If you’re available next Tuesday (21st July), come down to our next event, where we will have a panel of industry experts talking about where AI can add real value to your business, and where it’s just hype.
It’s gonna be a great session!
Sign up here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/mlopswtf-by-fuzzy-labs-meetup-10-tickets-1990010000481