Jim Love hosts Hashtag Trending, and highlights updates to TechNewsDay.ca/.com including a new "Best of YouTube" section for curated tech channels.

Anthropic alleges three Chinese AI labs—DeepSeek, Moonshot, and MiniMax—ran industrial-scale distillation campaigns to extract capabilities from Claude models using proxy services and "Hydra cluster" networks with tens of thousands of fraudulent accounts, prompting Anthropic to strengthen identity controls and detection with cloud partners.

Amazon shares fall for nine straight sessions after investors react to plans for roughly $200B in 2026 capex largely for AI infrastructure, raising questions about ROI and future free cash flow.

A cited analysis by YouTuber Nate B Jones argues Google's Gemini 3.1 Pro signals a strategy shift toward deeper reasoning (not just coding/agentic tools), noting a 77.1% ARC-AGI-2 score and DeepMind's scientific problem focus, contrasting OpenAI's product/distribution, Anthropic's agentic coordination, and

Google's "pure intelligence" approach. The episode also references Citri Research's 2028 scenario planning report outlining a plausible fast-arriving AGI chain reaction—falling inference costs, rapid adoption, labor displacement pressure, and geopolitical competition for compute and talent—and promotes the Saturday show Project Synapse on long-term AI trajectories.

Finally, Love discusses Sam Altman's comments at the India AI Impact Summit dismissing viral claims about ChatGPT water and energy use without providing specific counter-numbers, noting growing public backlash as data center water and electricity demands rise; the full interview is linked in show notes.

Hashtag Trending would like to thank Meter for their support in bringing you this podcast. Meter delivers a complete networking stack, wired, wireless and cellular in one integrated solution that's built for performance and scale. You can find them at Meter.com/htt

LINKS

Nate B Jones on Google Gemimi 3.1 https://youtu.be/8jKAT8GNDE0?si=Rz5k1gP0sS9H7XAp

Sam Altman's speach https://www.youtube.com/live/qH7thwrCluM?si=IO_76NsGJ1zgt8J7

AI Scenario https://www.citriniresearch.com/p/2028gic

00:00 Headlines and intro 00:54 Site updates and YouTube picks 01:57 Anthropic warns of distillation 04:58 Amazon AI spending jitters 06:13 Google bets on reasoning 10:31 2028 AGI crisis scenario 11:55 Altman backlash and resources 14:17 Wrap up and sponsor thanks