This Week I Learned - Week 44 2025

This Week I Learned - 

* SLMs are generally under 12B parameters and can outperform larger models for specific agentic-related tasks like RAG, tool calling, structured decoding, and programmatic tool use.

* A new study by international researchers finds leading AI models are about 50% more sycophantic than humans, affirming users’ actions even when they involve manipulation or harm. Carried out by researchers from Stanford University and Carnegie Mellon University, it introduces the term “social sycophancy” – a form of AI behaviour that flatters a person’s selfimage or actions instead of being factual. This kind of subtle affirmation, experts argue, poses deeper psychological and social risks than mere factual errors.

Across 11 widely-used large language models (LLMs) — including those from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta and Mistral — researchers found that AI systems consistently validated user behaviour more readily than human advisers. When presented with moral or relational dilemmas, these AI-based models often told users what they wanted to hear rather than what they needed to. 

It thrives in situations where users seek emotional support or moral validation, such as arguments, relationship conflicts or decisions about how to act. To measure this, the team analysed thousands of real-world adviceseeking posts, including 2,000 entries from Reddit’s “Am I The A******?” forum.  - ToI

* CoreWeave is a cloud purpose-built for scaling, supporting, and accelerating GenAI.

* Perplexity has a great interactive language learning feature that provides the definition of Indian language word you want to know about, its English meaning, and pronunciation guide. It displays the word in native regional language (Telugu  in this example) script with transliteration, an accurate English translation (e.g., "person of steady wisdom/one whose intellect is unwavering"), and includes pronunciation support to aid learners with speaking and recognition. This feature combines native script, translation, and audio, making it valuable for building vocabulary and cultural understanding.

* Holdings of public stocks of US politicians are available on Perplexity Finance. Investors track Nancy Pelosi's stock trades through mandatory disclosures on platforms like Quiver Quantitative and Capitol Trades, which reveal her husband Paul's buys in tech giants such as Nvidia and Broadcom. They replicate these purchases shortly after filings, benefiting from her portfolio's exceptional performance—over 700% returns in a decade compared to the S&P 500's 300%. Copycat strategies, aided by trackers and alerts, have delivered gains like 71% in months for some followers, though delays in public data limit perfect timing.

* Microsoft PowerToys Image Resizer is a handy Windows utility. It does not create a separate folder or change your original file location after resizing. The resized images are saved in the same folder as your original image.

* Ukraine has gamified its war with Russia to keep soldiers motivated: 40 points for destroying a tank, 12 for killing a soldier. Drone teams compete on a scoreboard that rewards units for successful attacks. - NYT

* The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has mandated all banks to move their website addresses to the '.bank.in' domain. India's biggest bank, State Bank of India (SBI) changed its internet banking domain from onlinesbi.com to onlinesbi.sbi around 2017. The ".sbi" is a generic top-level domain owned by SBI for enhanced security and branding. After the new RBI mandated change, the new URL for India's largest public sector bank is https://onlinesbi.sbi.bank.in/