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Anthropic formally filed to go public this week and about a third of its paperwork is dedicated to potential risks — including political ones. We'll get into it on today's “Tech Bytes: Week in Review.”

Plus, it’s a big week for big tech earnings: Microsoft pleased investors with a more restrained approach to AI spending, but still announced it’s offering buyouts to 60,000 employees. Meanwhile, Google’s parent company Alphabet took a plunge on Wall Street.

Here to help us unpack this week’s tech news is Maria Curi, tech policy reporter at Axios.

Check out our YouTube page to watch more episodes of “Tech Bytes.”

More on this:

Anthropic warns investors of AI’s ‘existential risk to humanity’ in IPO prospectus, reports say — from CNBC

Microsoft is offering buyouts to around 60,000 employees. Read the memo — from Business Insider

Meta eyes record $97.5 billion equity raise to fund AI expansion — from Reuters

Scoop: FTC demands Anthropic execs testify in probe — from Axios

Consumer electronics and AI data centers need memory chips. But there are only a handful of companies in the world that make them. The surge in demand has caused memory shortages and price spikes for everything, including our all-important smartphones.

Gerrit Schneemann is principal analyst at Counterpoint Research, which recently reported global phone prices have jumped by an average of 15%, and even more in markets where consumers can least afford it.

More on this:

“The AI boom is making the world’s cheapest smartphones disappear” from Rest of World

“Global Existing Smartphone Prices Climb About 15% in 2026, New Launches 25% Costlier YoY as OEMs Maneuver Memory Price Hikes” from Counterpoint Research

Halloween haunts have long relied on a little technical wizardry to bring their terrors to life —from lighting and animatronics to digital decorations.

But these days, the technology behind those scares is getting increasingly sophisticated, and the spectacles more elaborate.

We got a glimpse behind the scenes at the Hollywood Haunted Hayride, put on by Thirteenth Floor Entertainment in Los Angeles.

Listen for more … if you dare.

Urgent concerns about losing control of AI have burst into the national conversation recently after the OpenAI hack of the open-source AI platform Hugging Face, the high-profile resignation of an Anthropic researcher, and other AI insiders sharing alarmingly high p(doom) figures — that is, the probability that AI kills us all.

An event listing for a picnic beckoned people in the AI scene to spend a Sunday afternoon talking about recent calls to slow down the technology.

Dony Christie, a community organizer in the AI safety scene, chose this spot not for the scenery but because it’s between the offices of Anthropic and OpenAI.

“The hope is, why can't people at the labs just meet at a park in between them and work out a deal?” he said. “I have been concerned about existential risks for a long time. Just like, what do I do to save the world?”

Donna Guthrie had obituaries on her mind after her brother passed away in May. She recently celebrated her 80th birthday and started wondering how she might be remembered. So, she asked ChatGPT to write her obituary. It's the topic of today's “Uncanny AI,” our regular segment about our sometimes unsettling experiences with this tech.

Plus, we asked Michelle Huang, a technologist and artist who explores the use of AI for wonder, if this is creepy or healthy.

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“How AI can connect you with your inner child” from Marketplace Tech