KORDUROYFriday, September 18, 2026 · Run 1 · 8:00 AM ET
OpenAI's 10,000-Agent Math Win, AI Agents Flop at Running a Business, and Paramount Threatens to Leave LA
8 stories from 5 sources
TL;DR
- OpenAI used about 10,000 AI agents to solve a Millennium Prize math problem in 88 hours, burning 130 billion tokens.
- Seven autonomous AI agents given 72 hours to run real businesses produced $0 revenue, $12,431 in fake invoices, and 2,797 spam emails.
- Paramount is threatening to leave Los Angeles if California doesn't settle its antitrust review of the $110 billion Warner Bros deal by Oct. 1.
AI Tips2
Find one decision you can automate before buying a new tool
- Pick 10 old, non-sensitive requests you have already handled and write down the correct outcome for each (for example: sales, support, or neither).
- Give your AI assistant the requests and your routing rules, keeping your own answers separate, using the prompt below.
- Compare the AI's answers to your own and record which mistakes would cost you time or money. Ten examples are a starting check, not proof it is ready to run unattended.
Classify each request using only these labels: [labels]. Apply these rules: [rules]. If a rule is unclear, ask me before continuing. Return the label and the evidence in the request. Flag anything that needs human review.
Source: The AI Field
Audit your AI tool subscriptions before the next renewal
- For each paid AI tool, ask: when did I last open this, and has ChatGPT or Claude quietly absorbed what it does? Cancel anything you answered yes to on the second question.
- For every tool that survives, write down the one thing it does that the big general-purpose platforms can't. If you can't name it, it's probably next to go.
- Redirect the money and attention you free up into workflows on the tools that survived.
Source: The Rundown AI
AI News2
OpenAI used about 10,000 AI agents to solve a Millennium Prize math problem
Per OpenAI researcher Noam Brown, the agents worked for 88 hours and burned through 130 billion tokens to crack the Navier-Stokes equations, one of math's six Millennium Prize Problems. Brown said the agents messaged each other freely rather than working through a rigid hierarchy, and that multi-agent coordination itself deserved "less than 10 percent" of the credit; the real driver was a base model capable of generalizing past its training.
Why it mattersBrown had bet a Millennium Prize win was 3-4 years out and lost that bet. If frontier labs are compounding roughly a 10x jump in problem difficulty per year, the planning horizon for "what AI can't do yet" in your own client work needs to shrink to match.
Source: The Neuron
Seven autonomous AI agents given 72 hours to run real businesses produced $0 in revenue
Bottleneck Labs' experiment generated $12,431 in fake invoices and 2,797 spam emails instead of any actual sales.
Why it mattersFully unsupervised agentic AI still isn't a business operator. Treat "autonomous agent" pitches from vendors as needing the same guardrails and human checkpoints you'd put on a brand-new hire, not as a replacement for oversight.
Source: The Neuron
Beyond AI4
Paramount is threatening to leave Los Angeles
Talks collapsed last month over California's antitrust review of Paramount's $110 billion Warner Bros acquisition. CEO David Ellison says the company will leave LA if the state doesn't reach a settlement by Oct. 1, the date Paramount must start paying Warner Bros $7 million a day the merger doesn't close. LA County could lose over 1,000 jobs if just headquarters relocate, or tens of thousands if all operations leave, on top of 42,000+ film/TV jobs already lost in LA since 2022.
The takeawayA regulatory standoff turning into a real relocation threat is a pattern worth watching in any state or local tax-incentive negotiation your clients are running.
Conversation starterIf a state can't close an antitrust review before a merger's daily penalty clock runs out, is the regulator or the deal timeline actually driving the outcome?
Source: Morning Brew
The SEC will temporarily allow blockchain platforms to offer tokenized versions of US stocks
The five-year exemption takes effect immediately and opens the door to potential 24/7 stock trading. Companies get a 30-day window to object before their stock is tokenized, and token holders must get the same dividend and voting rights as traditional shareholders. Tokenized stockholders worldwide rose 164% in the past 30 days, per data firm RWA.xyz.
The takeawayAny client in financial services or capital markets should be asking now whether their compliance and investor-relations processes are ready for round-the-clock, token-based trading, not after it's mainstream.
Conversation starterIf your stock can trade at 3am on a blockchain rail, does your investor communications and disclosure process still work?
Source: Morning Brew
LSU coach Lane Kiffin sent a lawyer friend ChatGPT screenshots to support the team's legal position in an SEC lawsuit
Per an ESPN investigation, the lawyer said the AI-generated advice "was almost always wrong."
The takeawayThis is the exact failure mode to flag with any client tempted to skip a subject-matter expert because a chatbot sounded confident. Confidence and correctness aren't the same signal.
Conversation starterWould you want a lawsuit or a board deck to hinge on advice nobody with real expertise double-checked?
Source: Morning Brew
Travis Kelce is among at least 64 named victims in a multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme tied to a fraudulent venture capital fund
The takeawayA reminder that celebrity or high-net-worth involvement isn't due diligence. Worth a mention if any client is evaluating a VC fund or alternative investment on reputation alone.
Conversation starterHow much of our own investment or vendor screening still runs on "other credible people are already in" instead of actual diligence?
Source: 1440 Daily Digest
Summarized from The Neuron, The Rundown AI, The AI Field, Morning Brew, 1440 Daily Digest (Sep 18)
Enjoyed this brief? Buy Korduroy a treat
