NYT bestseller ‘Robopocalypse’ is getting a TV series with Oscar winners Ron Howard and Akiva Goldsman at the helm

space.com Nov 9, 2026

NYT bestseller ‘Robopocalypse’ is getting a TV series with Oscar winners Ron Howard and Akiva Goldsman at the helm

Curated by Shubham · TechCapsules · Nov 9, 2026

AI-summarised brief · reviewed before publication

Ron Howard and Akiva Goldsman have announced a television adaptation of Daniel H. Wilson’s 2011 New York Times bestseller Robopocalypse. The project, previously stalled after a 2009 DreamWorks acquisition and a 2018 Michael Bay involvement, will see Howard direct the pilot and Goldsman serve as showrunner. Imagine Entertainment and Weed Road Pictures will produce, with Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment as executive producers. The series will explore a rogue AI, Archos, threatening humanity, echoing current AI anxieties.

💡 Why It Matters

· The collaboration of two Oscar‑winning filmmakers signals a serious investment in AI‑centric storytelling, positioning Robopocalypse as a flagship series for streaming platforms amid rising public concern over autonomous technology.

AI Capsules

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Anthropic releases new Mythos and Fable models amid RSI concerns

Anthropic launched Mythos 5.2 and Fable 5.2, claiming gains in coding, reasoning, vision, and clearer user communication. The new Fable model now costs $8 per million input tokens, undercutting GPT‑6 Astra, and delivers 30 % faster responses, with a premium option for even quicker inference. Fable 5.2 supports zero‑data‑retention policies via Enterprise Frontier Safeguards, addressing enterprise privacy concerns. The release follows a METR report suggesting Anthropic’s models may be approaching recursive self‑improvement, raising evaluation challenges.

💡 By pricing Fable below its main competitor and enhancing speed, Anthropic positions itself as a cost‑effective, privacy‑friendly alternative in the AI marketplace, potentially reshaping enterprise adoption strategies.

androidcentral.com · Nov 9

Samsung might serve Bixby some proper AI agent upgrades in One UI…

Samsung is preparing to upgrade its Bixby assistant with AI‑agent capabilities in the upcoming One UI 9.5 release. Reports from SamMobile indicate Bixby can now create “actions,” allowing users to schedule automated tasks such as daily currency conversions. Users retain control with options to delete, pause, or pin actions, and a log may track activity. Early testing suggests future functions could include booking hotels and other services, potentially rolling out by 2027.

💡 The shift positions Bixby as a proactive helper, narrowing the gap with competitors that already offer task‑automation, and could redefine how consumers interact with Samsung devices.

appleinsider.com · Nov 9

Apple Creator Studio users can pay for higher Apple Intelligence usage limits

Apple has introduced a paid “Intelligence usage pack” for Creator Studio subscribers who exceed the built‑in limits of its AI‑driven features. The $49.99 one‑time purchase, first visible in Logic Pro’s beta usage window, adds extra capacity to generate images, shapes, slide decks and presenter notes beyond the monthly allotment of 50 images, 250 shapes, 50 presentations or 700 notes. The pack rolls over unused credits, expires after 12 months, and is tied to the purchaser’s iCloud account without Family Sharing. Availability is limited to the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Brazil, France, Germany, India and Mexico. Apple’s move marks a shift from its previously free‑access model for AI tools across Keynote, Pages, Numbers, Freeform and Pixelmator Pro in its ecosystem.

💡 By monetizing excess AI usage, Apple signals that its generative tools have matured into revenue‑generating services, forcing creators to budget for advanced productivity features.

therobotreport.com · Nov 9

Boston Dynamics adds wheels to Atlas humanoid to test whole-body control

Boston Dynamics released a video showing its Atlas humanoid equipped with wheels on its feet, used as a research testbed to explore the blend of deterministic physics‑based control and whole‑body reinforcement‑learning (RL) policies. Controls engineer Andy Wu attached off‑the‑shelf scooter rims to Atlas’ ankle actuators, allowing the robot to roll on flat terrain and switch to articulated legged motion for obstacles. The experiment, trained entirely in simulation, demonstrated real‑time proprioceptive feedback processing, dynamic pose and force adjustments, and rapid recovery from unmodeled disturbances. Wu’s goal was to push actuation limits, assess adaptability in unstructured environments, and study policy responses to actuator failures. The results suggest that combining classical motor control with whole‑body RL yields superior agility compared with either approach alone.

💡 Demonstrating seamless transition between wheels and legs proves a hybrid locomotion strategy can overcome terrain unpredictability, a key hurdle for deploying humanoid robots outside labs.

therobotreport.com · Nov 9

NVIDIA launches GR00T 2 and Isaac Lab 3.0 at CoRL

NVIDIA unveiled GR00T 2, an upgraded world‑action model, and Isaac Lab 3.0, the release of its robot‑learning framework, at the Conference on Robot Learning in Austin. GR00T 2 was trained on 100,000 hours of egocentric robot and human data and can complete 40 of 50 benchmark tasks without task‑specific demonstrations, achieving 71 % success with a single demonstration and 95 % with five. The model ranks in the top three across vision‑language‑action benchmarks and supports an API for sequencing skills and error recovery. Isaac Lab 3.0 adds environment setup, dual physics solvers (PhysX and Newton) and deformable‑object simulation, enabling parallel training of thousands of robots. Adopters such as Flexion, Siemens, Foxconn and university labs are already testing the tools for dexterous manipulation and industrial automation.

💡 By bridging the gap between simulated training and real‑world dexterity, GR00T 2 and Isaac Lab 3.0 give developers a faster path to deploy capable robots in manufacturing and research settings.

nextplatform.com · Nov 9

Google Rejiggers TPU Accelerators For Broader AI Inference Work

Google is preparing to roll out two re‑engineered TPU accelerators—Sunfish TPU 8t and Zebrafish TPU 8i—later in 2026, with broader deployment slated for Q1 2027 and a multi‑region ramp through 2028. The 8t, fabricated by Broadcom and TSMC, targets AI training, featuring a 3‑D torus interconnect linking 9,600 chips and delivering 121 exaflops at FP4 precision, plus 216 GB HBM3E per device. A derivative, the 8tx, swaps the torus for a lower‑latency “boardfly” fabric and replaces Google’s Axion ARM CPU with an AMD EPYC processor to optimise inference workloads. The 8i, shepherded by MediaTek, is intended for inference but its shipping status remains unclear. Both chips will augment Google Cloud’s offering after the earlier Ironwood v7p rollout, supporting Gemini 4 frontier models via a token‑based pricing scheme.

💡 By tailoring interconnects and CPUs for inference, Google can deliver faster response times for high‑throughput AI services, giving its cloud platform a performance edge over rivals.