On Oct. 22, Alex Albert, a lead at AI company Anthropic, shared a lunch order on X.

The seemingly ordinary receipt for three pepperoni pizzas looked more impressive when Albert revealed who called in the pies: Anthropic’s AI assistant Claude.

Earlence Fernandes, a computer-science and engineering assistant professor at UC San Diego, reacted to the tweet like he usually does when he sees a flashy new technology demo: He had some questions for the chef.

“What if the website has something malicious embedded in it that takes control of Claude and changes your pizza order from 5 to 15?” Fernandes said to IT Brew.

Fernandes has always had a “rational paranoia” when it comes to examining new technologies, from self-driving cars to smart homes to new AI.

Read the rest here.—BH

Microsoft has announced that it is building two new data centers that are partially made out of wood in a bid to shave down its carbon emissions.

The wood in question is cross-laminated timber (CLT), a “fire-resistant prefabricated wood material,” and will be used in addition to traditional steel and concrete. According to Microsoft, the use of CLT can be “cost effective” for data center construction because it takes less time to install and requires less skilled labor.

The tech giant estimates that the hybrid construction model used to build the two Northern Virginia data centers will reduce its embodied carbon emissions—the amount of greenhouse gas emissions associated with the construction of a project—by 35% when compared to conventional steel construction and 65% when compared to precast concrete construction.

Go green. The experiment is part of Microsoft’s efforts to decarbonize its data center and construction operations, as well as its goal to remove more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than it emits by 2030. The tech giant said its indirect emissions increased by 30.9% between 2020 and 2024 because of its growth in data centers and the hardware associated with them.

Wood is good? IT Brew spoke with several sustainable computing experts to scope out the potential impact of Microsoft’s latest experiment. Benjamin Lee, a professor of electrical and systems engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, applauded the tech company’s recent consideration of building materials but pointed out that the experiment does not account for emissions that would be derived from operating the facility.

Read more here.—BM

One way to avoid the threat surface expansion that comes from integrating AI into your system? Sign a mega contract, backed by the federal government, with AWS.

Sure, that’s not on the table for most of us. But for OpenAI competitor Anthropic and analytics firm Palantir, two companies with government contracts who manage sensitive US data, it’s the next step for ensuring speed and security.

Intensity. The two companies announced their deal with AWS on November 7. The partnership will provide Palantir’s AI Platform (AIP) access to Anthropic’s Claude AI model within the AWS model.

In a joint press release, the companies said the deal was done for “processing vast amounts of complex data rapidly, elevating data driven insights, identifying patterns and trends more effectively, streamlining document review and preparation, and helping US officials to make more informed decisions in time-sensitive situations while preserving their decision-making authorities.”

Speed is also a primary motivator.

“We’ve already seen firsthand the impact of these models with AIP in the commercial sector: for example, one leading American insurer automated a significant portion of their underwriting process with 78 AI agents powered by AIP and Claude, transforming a process that once took two weeks into one that could be done in three hours,” Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar said in a statement.

Keep reading here.—EH