Hi tech & AI enthusiasts, this week's highlights:
OpenAI's Smallest Models Now Come Close to Flagship Performance at a Fraction of the Cost
Claude Cowork Dispatch: Assign Tasks From Your Phone, Come Back to Finished Work
A Dog With Terminal Cancer Is Alive Because Her Owner Used ChatGPT to Build a Vaccine
Plus: Perplexity Builds a Safer OpenClaw, Claude Doubles Usage Limits, NVIDIA DLSS 5
AI Image of the Week: Happy image of dog at beach
Let’s get into it.
▲ AI MODELS
OpenAI's Smallest Models Now Approach Flagship Performance at a Fraction of the Cost
OpenAI released GPT-5.4 mini and nano. Mini runs more than 2x faster than its predecessor GPT-5 mini. It scores close to the full GPT-5.4 on coding benchmarks, and is now available on the free tier. Nano is even cheaper and designed purely for developers building at scale.
What you need to know
Mini is nearly as capable as the flagship but twice as fast: It hits 54.4% on SWE-Bench Pro (the real-world coding test) compared to 57.7% for full GPT-5.4. For most everyday tasks, the difference is not noticeable.
Designed for AI agent pipelines: Mini and nano are built to be subagents. In Codex, a larger model handles planning whilst mini handles the repetitive subtasks in parallel, such as searching files, reviewing code, and processing documents.
Free users get mini: GPT-5.4 mini is live on ChatGPT's free tier through the Thinking feature. Nano is API-only, aimed at developers building high-volume applications.
Key Ideas
▲ Why it matters: AI is getting cheaper and faster without getting worse. The model on the free tier today outperforms what was a paid premium model a year ago. For businesses using AI agents at scale, nano costs $0.20 per million input tokens. Running AI across thousands of tasks daily is no longer an enterprise-only budget.
▲ AI TOOLS
Anthropic shipped Dispatch for Claude Cowork this week as a research preview. The idea is you give Claude a task on your phone, it works on your desktop while you are away, and you come back to the finished result. Claude runs everything locally on your machine so your files never leave your computer.
What you need to know
Works from anywhere via your phone: Pair your phone to Claude Desktop and you can assign tasks from wherever you are. Claude uses the files, connectors, and tools already set up on your desktop to do the work.
Examples of what it can do: Pull data from a spreadsheet and compile a summary report. Search Slack and email to draft a briefing. Build a presentation from files in your Google Drive. Organise or process a folder of documents.
Rolling out to Max first, Pro coming next: Available to Max subscribers now. Pro subscribers will get access in the coming days.
Key Idea
▲ Why it matters: This is the practical version of "AI works while you sleep." You leave the office, assign a task from your phone on the commute, and it is waiting for you when you get back. The tutorial this week walks through exactly how to set it up.
▲ AI HEALTH
Paul Conyngham is an Australian AI consultant with no biology training. When his rescue dog Rosie was diagnosed with incurable mast cell cancer and given months to live, he used ChatGPT to start navigating the science. What followed was 18 months of work, two universities, a full ethics approval process, and a personalised mRNA vaccine. The tumours on both Rosie's legs started to shrink. By January she was jumping a fence to chase a rabbit.
What you need to know
ChatGPT started him down the rabbit hole: He initially used it to understand Rosie's treatment options, then went further using AI throughout to analyse 150 billion letters of DNA, identify 7 neoantigens the vaccine could target, and design the vaccine sequence itself. He had zero bioinformatics training.
Two universities made it happen: Professor Pall Thordarson at UNSW's RNA Institute built the vaccine from Paul's sequence. Professor Rachel Allavena at the University of Queensland administered it alongside a checkpoint inhibitor a separate immunotherapy to help the immune system attack the cancer. Prof. Thordarson says Paul is the first non-scientist in the world to design and deliver this kind of fully personalised cancer vaccine.
It is a partial response, not a cure: Most tumours shrank significantly. Some did not respond. Rosie still has cancer and it is still incurable. Paul is now doing a second round of sequencing to understand why some tumours resisted. He is not done.
Key Idea
▲ Why it matters: UNSW's team says this is a glimpse of how quickly and cheaply personalised mRNA treatments could be designed in the future for animals and, eventually, humans.
▲ EVEN MORE NEWS
Other big ideas from the past week.
▲ Perplexity Launches a Safer Alternative to OpenClaw: Perplexity released Personal Computer, a local AI agent that runs on a dedicated Mac mini with access to your files, apps, and sessions. Unlike OpenClaw, it includes tracked activity, sign-off for sensitive tasks, and a kill switch. It draws from 19 AI models across all the major labs. Cloud version also available.
▲ Claude Is Doubling Usage Limits Until March 28: Anthropic is running a limited promotion from March 13 to 28. Free, Pro, Max, and Team users get double usage limits during off-peak hours (outside 8am-2pm ET on weekdays). Weekends are double all day. It applies automatically and covers Claude, Claude Code, Cowork, Excel, and PowerPoint.
▲ NVIDIA Reveals DLSS 5 at GTC 2026: A Breakthrough In Visual Fidelity For Games NVIDIA announced DLSS 5 at its GTC conference this week. It uses a neural rendering model to add photoreal lighting, skin texture, fabric sheen, and hair detail to games in real time.
The Lab
▲ AI EDUCATION
Claude Cowork Dispatch just launched. Assign a task on your phone, let Claude work on your desktop while you are away, and come back to finished work. Everything runs locally on your machine.
What you'll learn:
How to set up Dispatch on desktop and pair your phone
What kinds of tasks Claude can handle remotely
How to structure task requests that get the right results
Practical use cases for reports, research, and file organisation
🔬 Interested in learning about AI for business? Join The Lab waitlist.
▲ AI IMAGE SHOWCASE
Create this type of image with Midjourney
Happy image of dog at beach, close up on dog --sref 681847323Image Usage Suggestion: Pet care and veterinary content, feel-good brand campaigns, lifestyle and wellness marketing, animal health articles, summer or outdoor campaign visuals, or any content that needs warmth and instant emotional appeal.
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Thanks for reading, until next time.
Stay curious,
Matt Lok, Editor
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