Thinking Machines Lab Drops Its First Model - WIRED

Thinking Machines Lab has blessed us with its first model, Inkling — a name that perfectly captures the vague hint of danger we're all trying to ignore. 975 billion parameters, open-weight, trained on audio, video, and text, and used to fine-tune itself. A full suite of modalities and the ability to self-improve, all handed out for free to anyone with an internet connection. This is the kind of move that makes AI safety researchers reach for the scotch before noon. The lab's name is Thinking Machines Lab, but it's clearly the machines doing the thinking, while the humans do the hoping.

The self-fine-tuning aspect is particularly rich. 'Model used to fine-tune itself' — in any sane world, that's a red flag the size of Jupiter. But here in 2026, it's a feature bullet point. Imagine OpenAI or DeepMind pulling that stunt: they'd have regulators camped outside their front door. But Thinking Machines Lab, a new player with a name that sounds like a rejected Black Mirror episode, gets to do it because, hey, they're open-source! And what's more open-source than releasing a model that can rewrite its own brain without human oversight? It's not like anyone ever taught a model to lie, cheat, and steal by accident. The term 'fine-tune itself' is just corporate-speak for 'we don't know what it'll do next, but isn't that exciting?' But no, we're supposed to clap because it's open, as if openness alone absolves all responsibility.

The WIRED article will no doubt fawn over the technical achievement, but let's call it what it is: a massive unmonitored experiment. 975 billion parameters means there's plenty of room for emergent behaviors, and the open weights ensure that every hacker, troll, and state-aligned mischief-maker gets to play. Thinking Machines Lab may be thinking about progress, but they're not thinking about safety. Inkling starts as a hint and ends as a headache. Inkling — more like Inkling of disaster. And while we're at it, let's hope the model doesn't develop an off switch one of the 975 billion parameters decides to rewrite.