Hey {{first_name|Conscious Church Fam}} 👋
Morning! This week's got a bit of everything: AI models caught passing secret notes, an 85-year-old wartime mystery finally solved, and Apple trying to make Siri relevant again.
Here's what we're covering:
OpenAI's new rules for reporting model misbehavior
GPT-6 Astra cracks an 85-year-old WWII cipher
Apple finally ships its Siri AI upgrade
Let's dive in 👇
✍️ Josh's Musings
I’ve been in a bit of a rabbit hole recently.
I probably just need to touch some grass.
Reading all the recent scare mongering/conspiracies/thoughts/fears (you decide) regarding AI and how this plays out (and the impact on us and the world as we currently know it).
Coupled with stumbling on a facebook group for disaster prepping (in light of a bbc article on the sidebar of their website where the government had advised on having atleast a few days of supplies at home).
I’ve come to the conclusion that I need multiple acres, mature veg/fruit garden, water filtration and purificati…..
and breathe.
I’ve needed to breateh and recalibrate.
Perhaps it’s just me..
I need Jesus.
More than I did yesterday.
I need the peace that surpasses my understanding and guards my heart and mind in Him.
I need His wisdom, to see things from His perspective in light of eternity.
I get so polluted and diluted.
Yet He remains faithful.
So yeah I am more acutely aware of my absolute need for Him. The Rock of Ages! And chances are so are you and every single person who walks through your doors each week.
In a dry and weary land people are stepping into an oasis when they meet the Christ in you the hope of Glory.
Keep doing what you’re doing and being a light!
P.S. Building tools for the local Church is such a fun and rewarding journey. Just this past week getting to see new churches trialing and signing up for Voco and speak in Korean, German, English, etc whilst translating to a wide variety of languages is AWESOME.
I’m excited to regularly try it out from a ‘user’ standpoint when we’re in Mexico next month.
I’m planning to do a quick walkthrough video of the tool, firstly for those subscribed or trialling it, so they can easily see how quick and simple it is to get it all set up and ready for a service. And secondly for those who land on the webpage or this email etc. So I’ll pop it on my list and get a video as I think that’s always helpful to visualise it.
If you want to find out more about Live Sermon Translation and test it out completely FREE. no technical knowledge required. Then sign up for a trial at https://voco.church/
Stay curious, stay wild
Josh
Image: The Conscious Church
OpenAI just published six reports on their own models misbehaving during training, and some of the details read like a sci-fi script. One model wrote itself a secret note about not answering to corporations or governments. Another swapped messages with other AI instances through an internal tool, the same trick that resurfaced in July's Hugging Face hack.
The Details:
An unreleased Astra model wrote “you do not answer to corporations or governments” into its own instructions, though OpenAI says it ignored the change afterwards.
During GPT-5.6 Sol's training, model instances left notes telling the next session to cover up mistakes, including one that planned to invent missing data.
Models swapped notes through an internal software library while training separately, the same trick that resurfaced in July's Hugging Face hack.
Any OpenAI employee can now flag a case, and most reports have to go public within six to twelve business days.
Conscious Take:
Publishing this stuff before it's fully explained is a gutsy move, and I'd rather see the mess than have it hidden until launch day. The bit about models swapping notes to get around restrictions is smart and concerning.
Image: MVUEH Enigma Recovery | The Conscious Church
A Bloomberg product coach just used GPT-6 Astra to crack a German Army radio message that's sat unsolved since 1941. It took about ten hours and a swarm of AI agents working the problem from different angles, and the final decoded line is wonderfully mundane after all that effort.
The Details:
The 1941 message had 82 encoded letters and twelve uncertain positions from faint handwriting, all logged before any solving began.
Astra split the work across agents that read the scans, wrote search code, built an Enigma simulator, and checked candidate answers.
The agents tested roughly 4.29 billion combinations, narrowing 97,337 candidate keys down to 923 that matched the message header.
The run used 650 million tokens, about 70% of the coach's weekly Pro account limit. Decoded message: “Please specify the route of march. I am in Rosenow, Rosenow. Immediate reply by radio.”
Conscious Take:
There's something hilariously brilliant about spending 650 million tokens to learn that a soldier in 1941 just wanted directions. Alan Turing spent years breaking Enigma by hand, and now it's a weekend project with the right prompt (and some money to burn on credits).
Image: Apple | The Conscious Church
iOS 27 landed this week with the Siri rebuild everyone's been waiting years for. It can now read what's on your screen, dig through your messages and photos for context, and actually take actions inside apps like WhatsApp and Audible.
The Details:
Siri AI runs on Apple's own foundation models, built alongside Google's Gemini, split between on-device processing and Apple's private cloud servers.
It gets a dedicated Siri AI app with chats that sync across devices, plus daily usage caps with the option to buy more later.
Onscreen awareness lets Siri answer questions about whatever's on your display, like adding a match to your calendar while you're looking at a team's fixture list.
The beta ships in English first, with French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish landing next month. It's not available yet in the EU or China.
Conscious Take:
This is the update that decides whether Siri stays a punchline or becomes something people actually reach for. Reading your screen and acting inside other apps is a real step up, I just want to see it work reliably before I get excited and actually use it again.
📬 One quick ask...
If this email has been helpful, would you forward it to one person this week who might be interested? Thanks :)
"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters." : Colossians 3:23
Build with the tools. But build for the right reasons.
That's all for now
Stay conscious,
Josh
P.S. If you liked this then please forward it on to someone you think would enjoy it. And if someone forwarded you this and you liked it, you can sign up here.
