#leadership

An OpenAI reasoning model disproved an 80-year-old Erdős conjecture in discrete geometry for under $1,000 in compute, a result mathematicians are calling one of the most significant AI contributions to pure math to date. Eli Lilly's retatrutide, a triple-receptor obesity drug, produced bariatric-surgery-level weight loss in a Phase 3 trial, though dropout rates from side effects were notable. Google shipped Gemini 3.5 Flash to general availability at Google I/O and announced a $100 AI Ultra subscription tier. The acting head of NIH's infectious disease institute stepped down as senators pressed NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya on leadership gaps and a proposed 2027 budget cut. Kevin Warsh was confirmed and sworn in as the new Federal Reserve chair this week.

The FDA's leadership vacuum deepened this week as the drug center head followed Commissioner Makary out the door, leaving the agency with no confirmed leadership at its two most critical posts. Open-weight models kept multiplying with Gemma 4, DeepSeek V4, and Kimi K2.6 all dropping in the same month, while Sebastian Raschka's analysis of new KV-sharing and compressed attention techniques explains why long-context costs are falling fast. A rare Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak in Congo's Ituri province prompted a WHO public health emergency declaration, and the WHO's move landed as hantavirus conspiracy theories were already cycling through social media. On the economy side, Trump's China visit produced mixed signals on decoupling, while Noah Smith argued that Europe's comfortable stagnation is no longer viable.