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In the publishing world, a story is raising uncomfortable questions about authenticity and authorship. Canadian publisher Drop Blacksmith has severed ties with debut novelist Thélyson Orélien after confirming he used artificial intelligence to write his prize-nominated book. It's a moment the literary world has been bracing for, and it won't be the last.
Shifting to the startup economy, a company called Blacksmith just crossed the unicorn threshold after landing a sixty-six million dollar Series C round led by Sequoia Capital, putting its valuation at one billion dollars. Blacksmith builds tools that help companies develop and test AI-generated code more reliably — which tells you something about where enterprise software investment is heading right now.
And in crypto markets, Bitcoin climbed back toward eighty-four thousand five hundred dollars this week as a broad rebound lifted assets including XRP and Zcash. The recovery has traders revisiting the seasonal optimism around what the community calls Uptober, though whether the momentum holds remains, as always, an open question.
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