[AINews] Muse Spark 1.3 matches GPT-5.6-Sol, confirming Meta Superintelligence as the newest Frontier Lab, >90% discount for training
Meta's Muse Spark 1.3 reportedly ranks as the world's #3 model, matching frontier models from OpenAI and Anthropic with planned open weights.
The Latent Space AI News roundup leads with Muse Spark 1.3, promised in Zuckerberg's letter, which ranks #3 worldwide per AAII, is slated for open weights, and uses a pricing model over 90% cheaper when users opt in to training. The issue also covers the rumored Gemini 3.8 Flash launch and analysis arguing OpenAI's rumored looped-transformer 'Astra' architecture is a modest tweak rather than a breakthrough. Additional coverage includes ByteDance Seed's HarnessDev harness-evaluation benchmark, a retrieval-invoked actual-use evaluation method, Stanford's revamped agent engineering curricula, and Photon 2.1 adding TTS models and NVIDIA B200 support.
Employee benefits platform Paylogix says hackers stole financial and health
Akira ransomware gang stole financial, health, and passport data on tens of thousands of people from benefits administrator Paylogix in November.
Hackers stole files from Paylogix's network between November 13 and 18, exposing Social Security numbers, financial accounts, health insurance information, medical data, passport numbers, and taxpayer IDs. State breach notices report at least 67,789 affected people, including 64,383 in South Carolina. Paylogix did not name the attackers but appeared on the Akira ransomware gang's leak site in January. The company notified federal law enforcement, is cooperating with an investigation, and faces organizing class action lawsuits.