Top 10 AI Stories This Week | Codex Pets, Goblins & China Blocks Meta

China's National Development and Reform Commission has blocked Meta's $2 billion acquisition of agentic AI startup Manus, marking a significant regulatory intervention in cross-border AI deals. The decision follows months of review and highlights growing tensions around strategic AI technology transfers between Western companies and Chinese assets. Google achieved a major quantum computing milestone with its Quantum Echoes algorithm running 13,000 times faster than the world's best supercomputers on the Willow chip. This represents the first verifiable quantum advantage in practical applications, demonstrating quantum computing's potential beyond theoretical benchmarks. OpenAI introduced several creative coding features, including a /hatch command that spawns customisable pets in Codex terminals and the open-source Symphony orchestrator that transforms Linear boards into automated coding factories. The company also explained why GPT-5 developed an unusual fixation on mentioning goblins, tracing it to reward signals in personality training that unexpectedly influenced the broader model. Other notable developments included Anthropic launching nine creative connectors for Adobe, Blender, and other design tools; Japan Airlines beginning a three-year trial of humanoid robots at Haneda Airport; and a 23-year-old amateur mathematician using GPT-5.4 Pro to solve a 60-year-old Erdős problem. Google DeepMind also unveiled an AI co-clinician system that scored zero critical errors in 97 of 98 primary care scenarios, whilst Cursor released its SDK to enable developers to build agents using the same technology powering their editor.