AI is almost as good at a lot of white-collar work as humans, Axios' Megan Morrone reports from a new analysis by OpenAI.

• OpenAI introduced a new tool today, called GDPval-v0, that measures how well AI models perform "authentic work deliverables," like creating legal briefs, engineering blueprints and nursing care plans.

Why it matters: Major AI investments can be hard to justify — and it's also hard to know whether they are worth it — without effective tools to measure returns.

🦾 The big picture: Today's leading models are approaching parity with human professionals on many tasks — and the gains are accelerating.

• In blind tests of 220 tasks, Anthropic's Claude edged out its rivals. Its outputs were as good as — or better than — human experts 47.6% of the time.
• OpenAI's GPT-5 came in at a close second, excelling in domain-specific knowledge.

🧠 Research found that frontier models could complete tasks roughly 100 times faster and cheaper than experts.

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Congressional Democrats are largely dismissing the Trump administration's threats to use a government shutdown to fire scores of federal workers, Axios' Andrew Solender reports.

• The shrugs are coming even from lawmakers who represent large swaths of the federal workforce — underscoring the extent to which Democrats are dug in on government funding.

💬 "We will not be intimidated by your threat to engage in mass firings. Get lost," House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said on X, after White House budget director Russ Vought told agencies to prepare for mass firings if there's a shutdown.

• Any firings "will either be overturned in court or the administration will end up hiring the workers back," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a statement.

1. ✈️ Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth summoned military leaders from all over the world to a meeting in Virginia next week. The directive didn't offer a reason for Tuesday's gathering of hundreds of generals and admirals at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia. Military and congressional officials contacted by Axios' Colin Demarest were bewildered. Go deeper.
2. 💰 Amazon will pay $2.5 billion in penalties and refunds to settle allegations that it enrolled customers in Prime subscriptions without their consent and made it difficult for them to cancel. Go deeper.
3. 🤖 The Trump administration has approved Grok, Elon Musk's AI chatbot, for official use by every federal agency. Go deeper.

'Beast mode," "rizz" and "dad bod" are among the new additions to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.

• 5,000 new words were added for the dictionary's 12th edition — its first hardcover update in more than 20 years.
• They include "cold brew," "doomscroll" and "petrichor" — which is the pleasant smell of a much-needed rain.

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